I use the saying “you can’t choose your family” like it’s a
broken record… but I keep playing it anyways because it’s true… I never got to choose my parents or my
brother or my aunts or uncles… I was just born into this mess of a life. The sympathy that I get from people when they
hear minor details about my family is unwanted… I don’t want you to feel bad for me.
There’s nothing to feel bad about.
This stuff? It’s already happened…
an apology isn’t going to fix it… sympathy isn’t going to fix it… it just is
what it is. I live with it every day and
I’m finally starting to be fine with it… so you should be, too. At this moment in time I’m twenty-six years
old and I’ve finally gotten to choose my family. My friends are my family… so stop feeling
bad.
This has been my first semester in Graduate School: a
whirlwind of self-discovery and personal missteps and life lessons I thought I’d
already learned. Somewhere in there I
lost my way. I stepped away from everything
that I had built up and decided to try to be a new me… it was a mistake I
shouldn’t have made. Instead of playing
everything “close to the vest” I opened up too
much to people… so much that I may never recover the privacy fence I usually
employ. I stressed myself out to the
point that my brain split off and hyper-focused on something I wish it never
had… but it’s too late to turn that clock back… the damage has already been done…
any attempt at repairs would be a waste… it’d be futile.
My patience was tested… and it bit me in the ass. I repeatedly gave second chances to someone I
now know was undeserving… who was continually and horrifically homophobic (towards
me/about others) on many occasions. The
final straw was when it was implied that I can be cured… as if I have an affliction. This idea that there is something wrong with
me is something I’ve been dealing with it feels like all my life… but it’s
because of people like him… and my mother… and my other family members… that I
feel this way. They’ve engrained it in
my head that I’m flawed… I’m broken… I’m worthless… They’ve engrained self-hate
into my way of thinking. I hear their
voices echoing these words in my head over and over and I just hate myself…
I hate myself so much I can’t stand it. But
there’s nothing wrong with me… there never has been… and I need to start
accepting that instead of doubting it.
I’ve been trying to remember that moment when everything
changed… When I went from being the kid that I was to what I am now… I’m specifically referring to my germ phobia
and anxiety and OCD but there are other things too… and all of these things were
just there one day in full force and
I’m not sure when it is exactly that happened.
I’m not even really sure if I can move on from it or if I’m just going
to have to learn to live with it in the same way I live with the fact that my
family is shitty… I'm just not sure what to do.
