childhood trauma (TW)

TW: neglect, bullying, depression, abuse, COCSA, attempted (blank) also slight mention of one non-clothed situation, lonliness

i do apologise if this is too much for 7cups i did retract a few excessive things and only recorded the minor things that occured. if it is neccessary i do not mind if this post gets deleted.

please read the TW before continuing. ✅

may be a bit too descriptive - might not be but felt as if thst should be added. i dont want to trigger someone becuase of this post. (also it is 3am so please bear with me on any typos or gramatical error im not an adult either so i may be emotionally insenstive with my words)

you dont have to read - i just want to tell my childhood story events, (because i havnt been able to trust anyone to say anything) and maybe to see if anyone else has been through similar experiences (it is extremely long.)

this all began when i first started living with my mum which was about 11 years ago when i was 5 - im turning 16 this year and at the time she had this boyfriend who seemed welcoming at first. see i lived with my nana before all this and she wasnt exactly emotionally available (sometimes she could be a bit mean and there was clear favouritism) nor physically sometimes but she had to provide for alot of people becuase i had an older sister and a younger one she also had to care for - and also her own teen daughter so she was overwhelmed which i get that. although starting life without that parental love wasnt easy but i knew she cared for me in her own way.

a few years while living with my mums boyfriend and her (along with my two sisters) i noticed how violent he and demanding he was. often everyday my sisters and i did chores. not your run of the mill 'do the dishes' chores. it was pull the weeds, then hang and fold two loads of laundry then there was a chart to do the entire house chores then baby sit the toddler and repeat the next day. my memory has gaps so i dont remember much but what i do remember is that he didnt like me. at all.

reasons for this was becuase hed often bully me, hit me, scream at me, threaten me and lock me in rooms so id be out of his sight. (some events also hapoened to my siblings)

i didnt know his actions werent 'typical parenting' behaviour becuase i assumed this was all normal, atleast i have dinner at the table, clothes on my back and a bed to sleep in. i should be greatful for atleast that much.

i remember some punishments hed dish out sometimes, and most of the time hed soelely do things out of boredom or stress. to start small, a few times before i went to school in 4-5th grade hed write insulting things on my forehead and threaten me not to write it off - for context the words he wrote were the ones youd use to insult filthy animals becuase thats what he thought i was. another thing hed do to embaress me at school was hide my shoes so itd give him a reason to get mad - turns out he hid them. but i didnt know that and he drove me to school only to make me walk to the gates then hed honk the horn throwing my shoes out the car. 😐

some random things hed make us do was when wed forget to eat our sandwiches from the day before we had to eat it in front if him and there was this time when i forgot to finish my sandwich over the 2 week holiday from friday and he made me eat half of the moldy sandwich infront of him. sometimes hed force feed me food because i couldnt finish my dinner, it was pumpkin and i was 7. im sorry but the very smell of it made me gag and i felt like puking when i tasted it (my taste preferences ***). he also walked in on me in the shower letting himself in saying he needed to come in for something. i hated it so much and he stayed longer than he should have despite me having the guts to say "get out". but that doesnt come close to when he got angry when my younger sister was on the trampoline with his 4 yr old kid. he got so mad he pushed her against the wall and slammed her arm into the bricks and kept saying provacative things. she ended up crying and he got mad and things got worse - long story short her arm was broken.

anyways another punishment was locking me (my siblings together with me sometimes or sometimes on their own aldo) in the bathroom for 1 hour to who knows how long. there was a rule that we'd have to have the light off and we werent allowed to make a noise 'or else'. since we werent allowed to make a noise, the punishments often ranged from 1 hour to maybe a bit longer than he should of. when hed finally remember he'd open the door and laugh it off. one time i spent the night in there, being alone in that room felt dehumanizing.

another punishment was when someone 'wronged' the other, the person at fault stands lined up against the fence and the other one gets a bat. now im pretty sure its self explanatory what happens next. see my relationship with my siblings were never ever great, and my sisters often beat me so out of fear thar they would hurt me afterwards, i would never swing hard - i tried not swinging at all but he kept saying i had to. so when i did swing, it was a weak tap. because of my actions hed always blow up, and i never understood why.

more punishments included putting our face in the toilet bowl and shoving it down so deep until he was satisfied. sometimes he wouldnt guve punishments just violently yell at us. hed grab me by the face and yell at me while glaring and then hed say "get out of my sight". not to mention he never called me by name, titles such as '***' or 'oi' or some other thing he felt was better than my name. this wasnt all he did but its what i feel comfortable sharing.

now fast forward im 15 almost 16 and he has 4 children of his own with my mum now and he said to me and my siblings "dont worry ill treat them exactly how i treated yous" ( yous being my sisters and i) but he spoils them with snacks, calls them sweetheart, spends time with them and consoles them when theyre sad, buys thwm expensive christmas gifts. its just idk, annoying? yk how easy it is for him to switchup even though i based my entire younger childhood to please him, adjust my hobbies and preferences to suit his so he could tolerate me, never disobeyed and did almost everything he told me to do.

i now struggle with depression where i have had quite a few moments where i struggled with i dont know how to put this lightly... where i struggled with existing and felt like i didnt want to, so i tried to do something about it. the first time was when i was 11. the most recent one was early 2024 in april. i was ready to fully let go and so i tried, and failed. when he found me, the first thing he said to me was "if you wanted to (blank) yourself so badly you should have come to me so i could (blank) the *** out of you".

i never really had the familial bond with anyone. to get my sisters to like me id beg to be their slave or id give them money that i earned. and not to mention my younger cousins are around my younger sisters age so they played together but idolized my older sister becuase shes cool and my older cousins are just a bit older than my older sister so i never really had someone i could really play with so i just sat in my room. 10 years later i still repeat this behaviour.

despite struggling with all thattt i now struggle with something else entirely. my step brother (younger - my stepdads child with another lady) wittnessed COCSA with his oldest son 7 now with his autistic son 5 now and told me like a full month later and now im unsure what to do. some may be like "tell your parents its the right thing to do", and i understtand that but you also have to understand my standing point. its been some time since it happened and im willing to overlook it as some curious exploration but what he didnt isnt something a child his age thinks about.

despite their flaws my family has changed - for the better of course. my step dad is no longer angry, well sometimes but he only yells he doesnt do his stuff anymore plus he doesnt yell at me its just at his kids when hes annoyed. and my sisters have stopped hitting me, my younger sister by one year still does but she says she just has anger issues.. it doesnt make me feel less sore but i think it alleviates her guilt. my older sister used to be horrible, shes changed yes but i dont like her as a person. shes pushy, and idk shes alot to deal with. my mum can be a bit emotionally immature and says things she doesnt mean and shes completely right in all her words, but it still hurts. despite all their change throughout the years, i really hate them.

i dont see myself ever not hating them. its not like the things i went through were torturous or even bad-bad, im just a weak person that cant do this anymore.

if you made it this far thank you for taking time out of your day to read all of this.