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I was born in a tiny map dot town in southern WI to two high school sweethearts. My dad was a mechanic, my mom did something with telephone data systems. My earliest memory was being around 3 and ice skating on a frozen lake in Copper Harbor, MI, my mom hanging onto my mittened hand. I was supposed to be outside.
As a child I had huge, oversized glasses and a best friend who shared the same name as me. I wasn’t spoiled, but if I asked enough, I got something. I never saw my dad; he worked odd hours because he built stock car engines and would be traveling or at races or at the shop. During this time my mom was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma, and after boughts of radiation and chemo, entered remission. Somewhere in between these happy days my mom regrew her hair, my dad opened his own shop, and my little brother was born.
When I was twelve my paternal grandma, dad’s sister and my mom all planned a trip to South Dakota. We drove out there in a long convoy of Chevrolet trucks and shiny, silver Avion campers. On our second morning out there, my grandma woke me up to tell me to get ready, we were going to Mt. Rushmore, and that my mom was in the hospital, she had broken her leg walking earlier in the morning. We proceeded with the days events; I bought my mom a cowboy hat and Mt. Rushmore keychain. We pulled up to the hospital, and my mom’s oldest sister and my dad were there. Neither of them had come on the trip. Sometime in the morning, while I was sleeping, my mom had passed away.
My middle school and high school years were a blur of being grounded, yelled at, misunderstood, and locked in my room. My dad, whom I suddenly had to share a house, dog and brother with, was overprotective and overbearing. He met a woman 6 months after my mom’s death, and she moved in with us. It became a war zone.
When I was 16 I began dating my best friend from middle school. I honestly think if things had gone differently, we would still be together to this day. But after two years of dating and two years of hiding things, Remy hanged himself in the closet under the stairs next to his basement bedroom. And thus, to everyone in my high school, I became a murderer. It was “my fault”. My fault that he refused to see a shrink. My fault that his depression was out of control. My fault that he never let anyone see how truly lost he was. He told me in a text message the night he took his life that he was doing it to protect me. I still love him. Regardless.
I graduated high school, and now I attend college to be a graphic designer. Had I not had a hard life, I guarantee I would not be here right now to tell my story. That which does not kill you only makes you stronger. And I strongly urge people who feel lost to reach out and tell someone.
I’ve always been unstable
that’s really no secret
in and out of therapy since i was 8
i was a trouble child, yes, i really was.
it was a mess for a long time
i wore tight skanky clothes
walked around in grimy underbellies
behind heroin houses and indo-pot farms
in the downtown in the next town over.
my own town is small
people would talk
they really already did.
how i got into drugs and what i did with them
isn’t really the point
because you know the basic
partied, burned out
got hurt a couple times
nightmares
no sleep
alcohol
you know that, and i know you know that
but what the big part of MY story is
how i got out
i’m portuguese
a casual friend invited me to a portuguese festival last fall
the festa.
it was magic
it was also hell
pounding headaches
vomit, crying at night
no. fix. no. drugs.
but
at the end of it
candles were lit all down the street
and there was the procession
of N.S. Fatima
and at the end
i felt clean. so clean.
it still hurt
but i was pure feeling again.
i sat on the church steps with my friend one night
and looked at the stars
and talked about God with complete strangers
and i had always been a vehement atheist.
i really can’t explain
how i changed, some meaningful symbolism
but i can say FESTA
and i can say it proudly
and i can also say
that my friend and i
budded into some crazy, true, mad love
portuguese passion, i joked
and i can say
that i threw it all away
made a bad bad mistake
and cheated on him
and i still hate myself for this today
i still mourn his loss
and i stay alone
but
he saved my life
and to him
i am eternally grateful.
thank you.
This isn’t a story of my life, but something that is occurring today.
I look at myself in the mirror daily, as most people do. I don’t see any physical changes. My eyes are still the same bright hazel. My hair is still the dark red I had dyed it. My face has stayed the same for the past two years. I’m not overweight or underweight. I feel.. comfortable. But everyone I know has told me that I have changed. And that made me think back..
I realized the change began when my grandpa passed away 4th of August, 2009. I knew him since I was little, and we were always close. I remember the smell of his aftershave and cologne. How he and my grandma used to bicker playfully. How he proposed to her again on their 50th wedding anniversary. He was a great man. I got the call that he was gravely ill in the hospital. I was on a flight to Hereford TX the next morning. Mid-flight, he passed away. I was numb.
At the funeral, I was the only one that wore white. White is the color of the dead that you truly cared about. I never cried once. Not when I said my final goodbyes at the casket or when he was put into the ground. I only cried alone, in my bedroom or in the car while everyone was grieving around each other.
I returned home, and broke ties with everyone. I barely ate, and mostly drank tea because it was the only thing to stop me shaking. I was betrayed by someone that I thought loved me, and it made my situation worse.
Then, it did a 180. Just with the blink of an eye. I became colder. Not enough to shut everyone out. But enough that people still walk around me when I walk around a store. I hid behind music and reading. I buried myself in the other lives. I wanted to live away from my own sorrows.
My father wanted me to get a therapist. He told me it wasn’t healthy. I told him to ‘f*** off’ because I had no respect for him. Deep down I felt a small twinge of guilt, but I spoke the truth. Today, I’m slowly moving back to the outside world, especially now that the first year anniversary is closing in.
I’m naturally empathetic and happy. I want to be happy again. I alone can make myself happy. And no one seems to understand that I don’t need something or some one to do that for me. They are so dependent that they can’t see that they are the only ones that will be there when they are in great need of support.
But I see. After reading and the strange snap in my mind, I can see.
I promise I will check it more regularly. also I have stories scheduled to release soon, starting tomorrow.
In the past few days we’ve had a lot more follows but yet again a lack of stories. These stories don’t just have to be about your life, they could be about an event which has significantly impacted who and/or where you are today. Don’t be shy!
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08/03/1991
There are so many numbers, that a person will obtain in a lifetime. To the world we are just a date, a statistic, a pie graph, an early evening call centre victim. If I’m to attempt to describe my life I will say now, my aim is not to interest anyone, to garner popularity or sympathy, it is purely going to be written down so that I know I am more than just a number. I am a life.
It’s hard to know where to begin, when describing my life. Life to me is a series of events that we have hardly any control of. I can’t name a definite high point, or a definite low. It feels like over time, all the things that pre occupy our thoughts and days blur into a ball of trivial space. I will try to the best of my abilities to write the condensed of my life thus far. I wouldn’t call my life so far a glowing success. I feel as if I glided through the first ten years of my life relatively unscathed, seemingly oblivious to the chaos that would one day damage me to the point of no return. I guess that’s the beauty of childhood. It’s innocent and unassuming. It’s ignorant in the most positive way. I hit that awkward transition period at around 11. I suddenly had this ideal of how things should be and then a sudden grasp of reality. I controlled nothing. My life was changing faster than I could keep up. I began to realise that I was different. Not in the generic sense. I began to realise that I was raised without a single birthday party, or recognition of my birthday at all for that matter, I was raised without Christmas, Easter, all those things that kids look foward too. I started to realise all the things I had missed out on, but had never questioned. I started to wonder why the only memories I had of my father were of him beating me. All at once I realised I wasn’t normal. I became resentful towards my mother and the lack of normality I had in my life.
I can’t tell you a particular date or event that set off this rage inside me. I had this hate inside of me that made me lethal to anyone that came into my path. I destroyed friendships like a hurricane destroys houses. I couldn’t stop. I had this burning pit of hatred at the bottom of my stomach that I felt I needed to spread through every aspect of my life. I guess you could write it off as teenage angst. You could call it rebellion, you could say it’s a necessary part of growing up. The hate I felt for the world began to become the hate I felt for myself. I started to live a life where I didn’t give a fuck about anything or anyone. I was toxic to everyone in my life. I’m not proud of it but I did things that made me an ugly person, on the inside, where it matters most. I lead myself into situations that turned into physical, sexual, mental abuse. I let myself be worn down and defeated by people that weren’t worth the ground I walk on. It took a lot of time to realise that I’m worth more than anyone who has let me down in my life.
I’m not magically cured of my problems. I didn’t learn a lesson straight away from all these events. It took time, it took some maturity to step back from the emotion of these situations to see what is real and what is not. I still struggle with self pity, a feeling of neglect, a desire to be wanted. I have the strength now to see that things aren’t as bad as what they may seem at the time. When it comes to looking back only a few things will really stick with you and change your ideals or beliefs. Every single thing, good and bad, has helped me to become a better person. I learnt from all these things. I learnt that to be loved by others, you have to love yourself. As horrendously cheesy and generic as that is, it’s the truth. You have to deal with things that hurt, you have to put them behind you. Out of every fucking tragedy in your life is a lesson or a blessing, you may not realise it at the time, but there is good in everything that happens. There is beauty in everything, you just have to be willing to see it. Love is everywhere, you just have to be happy to accept it.
We only accept the love we think we deserve.
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This isn’t a life story, but it explains who I am today.
My father was an alcoholic. He wasn’t a physically abusive drunk, but whenever he would drink he would yell and scream. When I was about 2 my mother divorced him, and my twin sisters and I rarely saw him again until I was about 7 (they were 9). We would stay at his house in the weekend with his new wife and her kid. I remember one weekend my sister and I were watching TV and he comes and sits in front of it and tells us he loves us. We didn’t really care because he did this every time he got drunk and then ignored us when he was sober (which wasn’t often). Our step-mum was screaming about something and then the police arrived with our mum and we didn’t see him again after that until I was about 11. That same sister and I would stay for a week at his house and a week at mums. The only reason I stayed was because he had more money than mum and he wasted it on yummy food and DVD’s etc. so it was like a treat staying there.
It went like that until I was 19, just using him for his money because I just didn’t care about him because he was not my dad, he was this drunk guy who didn’t care about me either. When my sister became pregnant, me and my other sister decided to move in with her to help her out with money and looking after her, and also our father moved in to help with money. He would come home from work and get drunk immediately, every single day. He had two huskies and he never looked after them and I started to resent him because of his blatant disregard for anything apart from alcohol.
It was a Sunday afternoon when he came inside and wouldn’t stop annoying my pregnant sister. I tried to defend her and ask him to leave because she was already having a hard pregnancy and he wasn’t helping her stress levels. He then turned his annoyance towards me and called me a “fucking slut and tramp”. I don’t really remember how it all happened but I went off to my room and he came barging in, broke down my door and started yelling at me, I remember at one point I told him I wouldn’t care if he dropped dead right now because he’s never done anything for me to make me care about him. He raised his hand like he was about to hit me and it was at that moment I realised that I wanted nothing to do with him ever again.
We gave him his noticed the next week and told him he had to move out in three weeks. He went psycho as and we ended up having to call the police, he eventually got arrested and moved out the next week.
My sister had her baby, and we still live together. He tried to contact her and ask why he hadn’t seen his grandson yet and why he had our mother’s maiden name instead of his last name. She said that he is not his grandson and she wants nothing more to do with him, and that we’ve all changed our last names.
I hate that because of him I can’t trust any male, and that I can’t even enjoy one drink without thinking “I’ve got to limit myself, I can’t get drunk”. I hate that because of him, I hate myself because I’m like him in some ways. I think the only thing I like about him is that he married my mother who is my best friend.
January 25, 1989 I was born, but I don’t remember that part. I have a few memories of being very young, little things like my mother cooking, certain toys, but nothing too vivid until I was in Pre K. My first vivid memory is of my first suicide attempt at age 4. I feel this needs some explaining. I was depressed very very young mostly due to the school I was put into and where I lived. I was put in a private all jewish school, however, my mom was a convert, so I was 2nd class. I had very few friends if any, most people only put up with me on occasion and I was generally just used as someone to mock at school. One day I climbed on to the monkey bars and jumped off and landed on my spine on a wooden ledge. Needless to say it didn’t work, no one knew it was anything more than an accident, but I didn’t want people to know.
My home life was good, I had a very loving mother. My father worked, and I rarely saw him much until..well until about last year probably. When I was young his role was as an enforcer, not so much a father. We played catch sometimes, but usually he was busy, I will say he tried his best for me, and few things he did were his fault. He has mild OCD so some things were really bad, I was often scolded for my room not being clean enough..to the point of if there was a stack of papers neatly on a desk, but not put away he would through them around my room and yell at me to clean it. Again, not his fault, and I totally understand why it all happened. None of my friends from home went to my school, and my best friend, Jake, was an extremely suppressed in the closet gay I found out later. He was very physically abusive and often hurt me pretty badly, but it was the closest friend I had. I never talked to him about anything in my life, he was just someone I could interact with so I held onto that. My other friends were much younger than me, so we never were close at all. My best friend also went out of town every summer, so I spent 3 months alone nearly every year.
In Kindergarden I found out I was colorblind after a few months of being ridiculed as retarded. Even some of my teachers thought I was handicapped, this just served to really spur the depression and I had my first conscious, lasting thoughts of suicide starting at age 5.
Life stayed pretty much like this until I was 13, the end of 6th grade. I spent most of my days staring at the walls, I did extremely well in school, I was one of the brighter kids in my class, which only served to make them hate me more. A few of the girls in my school became friends of mine around 4th grade, but boys and girls rarely interacted in my school. I was friends with one girl, Jessica, when I was in about 4th grade because our moms were friends, but that didn’t really last long. So I can’t say I had no friends, I had 2. One who was abusive and the other I couldn’t really talk to for most of the day, neither of them knew my problems.
By 5th grade It got to be really bad, I talked myself out of suicide every night, mostly for my parent’s sake and in hopes things would get better. At its worst I started counting days were things just got worse each and every day. It went on for 572 days before I stopped counting. I began bribing people to sit near me at lunch with candy. I would put candy at each seat near me and just let people come and sit and take it. They wouldn’t talk to me, but I just wanted someone to be near me.
I spent one day being “cool” when I decided to start insulting my teachers for no reason like everyone else, but I couldn’t keep it up, and went back to my position as the looser of my school.
The only real rest I had from all of this was Hockey. I began playing when I was 8 with my best friend Jake. I kept playing until I was 17, eventually becoming the captain of my local travel team and got to compete against teams from all over the world, it was my life until guitar entered the picture.
The summer at the end of 6th grade I finally got to the absolute bottom I could go, I no longer cared enough to do anything or try. I found out my parents were leaving for a week long vacation and I was to be home alone, I decided that was the best time to kill myself, as they wouldn’t have to find my body. The day before they left they told me that we were going to move, and next year I would be in a new school. I decided to wait and see how that went.
My first day of 7th grade was the first time anyone had started a conversation with me that I could ever remember. Prior to that I had to talk to everyone first to get them to talk to me. A kid named Justin said “Hey” and I thought this was the best place on earth. The rest of my life has been wonderful, I have tons of friends now and life is quite good.
I had several hobbies over the years, but at 13 me and my new best friend started playing guitar, about 2 years later I decided to devote my life to it. When I was 17 my hockey team broke up, several kids had failed school and their fathers forced them to quit, I was out with the flu when this happened, came to practice 2 weeks later and no one was there. I had to choose to either quit or join a team that doesn’t get to practice together and only plays tournaments together. I didn’t want that, I liked having a real team, so I gave up hockey and began getting very serious about guitar. I attended Berklee college of music’s 5 week summer program, I took private lessons for 6 years, and I’ll be going back to Berklle for my degree starting next fall if all goes well.
The only other really huge impact in my life was my relationship with Kayla. We dated for 3 years, starting when I was 15 on may 1, 2005. It was a great relationship, I met her through a friend, we rarely fought, saw each other almost every day, after about 2 years the idea of marriage came up and we started planning out our lives together. Not to get married as soon as we could, but we both knew we would when the time was right. We became closest when a dear friend of mine, Squirrley, killed himself. I was completely crushed, I cried for a week, I couldn’t function in class and spent all my classes sitting in the hallway just crying. The whole school really shut down for a few days, as he was really well known and very close with many teachers. I still miss him every day.
Eventually Kayla and I ended very abruptly when she simply wasn’t happy. We never talked about it, and I never had a chance to change things. One night I dropped her off at home, said I loved her, she loved me too, we kissed and all seemed fine to me. The next morning she called me, I went over, and we broke up. I was pretty numb for a few months, but life went on and It was a lesson learned and I’m glad to have known what it was like to be in love.
I am currently enrolled at FSU, getting my finance degree as part of an agreement with my father so that he will pay for Berklee. He and I are getting close now. We had a huge fight over a tattoo I got where I pointed out how little he actually knew me, despite my being his son for 20 years and me trying to reach out to him. The horrible fight sucked, but in the end it brought us closer. He now makes effort to call me from time to time just to talk, and is slowly learning about me as a person. My mother and I are still extremely close. I live with my best friends, and have many amazing friends all over the world and many right here. Some have come and gone, relationships have started and ended, but life goes on. I’m not bitter about my past, I’m actually thankful for it. I learned a lot and it really shaped who I am today. I’m proud of who I am and that I learned all I did from what I went through. I’ve made peace with the things I went through as a child, I don’t blame anyone. I’m a very optimistic person now, I love my life, and my friends, I haven’t spent very long being depressed since the start of 7th grade, and I always have hope that no matter how bad something gets it will get better.. Don’t feel bad for me, I know I don’t.
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Welcome and thanks for following. Right now we don’t really have too many (read zero) submissions so I’d like to see those go up a bit. Don’t be shy, speak your mind!
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Most children cannot remember their memories from when they were two, but I surprisingly can. I remember the sand, the heat, the speakers of people in robes. I was raised in Israel until I was around the age of five. My mother was in the military at the time, and had just gotten out. She met my now ex-stepfather in a bar, and they got together about a year later. I hated that man with a passion. Even at that young age I knew something was wrong.
From Israel, we went to England, and then to the sunny state of California. We first stayed in an apartment, which I didn’t mind at all. I was just a little girl after all. I though the most important things were when my shows were going to be on and if I was going to get pancakes for breakfast. I went to Weldon Warriors Elementary. Mostly had problems because I was still learning English. I spoke fluent Hebrew until I was eight. We eventually moved out of the apartments because of the violence. There had been a stabbing right in the parking lot, and a fugitive murderer had been living in the place above ours for several months. I remember my mom waking me up, handing me my baby sister and hiding us in the bathroom. He had been running on the tin above the parking and he landed in our backyard. It was scary at the time, but now I actually find it kind of cool.
I had many many nightmares growing up. I was lucky to even get a full nights sleep without screaming. I visited my grandma often, and she helped me learn how to control it. At the time, I could hardly see out of my left eye, but when I saw someone at a hospital, or just walking down the street, I saw odd things. I even told my great-grandmother that she was going to die in a week. I didn’t hate her, but I said it anyway. I was grounded for a while, but everyone was spooked when she died six days later. Grandma says it’s a special gift, but I’m not even sure anymore. Since then, I can partially see out of my left eye. Every now and then I hear whispering, or think I see a shadow. I shake it off, or ignore it, but it doesn’t mean that I still don’t acknowledge that it is happening.
Around age five, the sexual abuse started. I didn’t know that it was wrong, I thought all families did it. It made me uncomfortable at first, and I even told my mother to tell him to stop. She had asked if he had done something; he obviously told her no. Only that I had an active imagination. We moved into our first house. I started to attend Dry Creek Elementary.
I loved school. I loved to learn and read. I would try to stay late as possible. I was beginning to dread going home. When I was around six, the abuse went from monthly to weekly. And seven, to nightly. He would sneak into my room and I would play possum, just hoping that he would leave. He never did. Soon, my uncle and cousin began to abuse me as well. My uncle was the worst because he enjoyed to see me cry. The belt was his favorite to use. He and my cousin were eventually caught and were sent to prison, but my stepfather was never caught. No one would believe me about him because there was no evidence.
I started retreating into my own self-made shell until I got into seventh grade at Alta Sierra Intermediate. Thats when I really learned about what I was going through. I was angry at everything. I hated everything. I hated myself for being so stupid and blind. I would wash myself with scalding water every night until my skin was almost raw. Then one day, I snapped. It was my friend’s boyfriend. I hated him as much as I hated my uncle and stepfather. He called me a slut and I kicked him hard enough to leave a hair-line fracture in his shin. That night, I fought back. I kicked, I punched, I tried to scream. But to no avail. Yet I felt powerful that I had tried to stop him.
My anger continued to grow through eighth grade. I slammed a girl into her locker because she was giving me a hard time. I didn’t even get in trouble for giving her a black eye. I was aggressive, but I stayed quiet and still kept to myself.
Throughout Freshman year, I slowly was beginning to be calm. I had joined a martial arts class, and it made my anger flow in a better direction. I started to have male friends, and warned them not to do anything to set me off. One did, and I was happy to make him bruise and bleed. I was different in class. I was actually getting A’s in all of my classes. I enjoyed learning, even if I sucked at math.
Sophomore year, I had my first boyfriend. I thought he truly cared about me, especially since we had been dating for a year. But I found out that he had been seeing another girl. My defense went back up and I gave them my blessing to be happy. I retreated back into my shell for several more months. The only person I let in was my only female friend at the time. I pretended to be happy, for everyone else’s sake. I tried to please everyone, and did not take care of myself.
At my home, it was a different matter. I was angry openly, and I threatened my stepfather every time he took a step in my direction. I began to care for a small pack of coyotes. I cared more for animals than humans. Other people seemed worthless to me. I did not care for them, but I stayed polite and docile when I just wanted to run away and never return. My mother thought it would be good to get me a dog, and she did. I was happy and spent most of my time outside with him. I was my happiest with my pets. It was harder to give them away and watch them be put down.
Junior year, I began to be truly happy. I fell for an old friend, Tyler, but he never seemed interested. I really enjoyed his hugs. Feeling like I could finally move on, I began to date right at the beginning of Senior year. But we slowly moved apart and now don’t talk.
Once I stopped giving into my stepfather’s demands, he turned to a woman he worked with. My mother eventually found out and immediately set up for divorce. At that time, I had started cutting. My skin always felt tight. That’s when I realized that it was a physical way to nurture myself. And it worked.
Soon, my mother had divorced my now ex-stepfather and we moved. I still have him away with a restraining order. My scars are still angry red and sting when I think about picking up a razor again. I talked to a counselor at the school, and even took anger management. I had stopped my martial arts and turned to drawing and writing instead. I could really put my feelings down on paper.
I am now alone, still hiding in my shell but watching the world through a small hole I made for myself. I pretend to be happy when I’m tired, scared, or angry. Everyone is oblivious to it, and I try to keep it that way. I only tell the secret to few I absolutely trust, and I know will never betray me. I sometimes just want to stay asleep.. and sometimes never wake up.
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