practically my whole life.

TW: mentions of physical and verbal abuse, substance abuse, and suicide

throughout my whole life i've been surrounded by drugs and violence.

my parents were never together romantically and my mother had me at 22 from an unplanned pregnancy. my mother was a heavy drug user and so was my father as he was (and still is) a gang member. growing up i mainly lived with my mother who lives with her mother (my grandmother) and in my earlier years she wasnt around much so it was really up to my grandmother and my aunt and her husband to take care of me. i would see my father first every weekend but that gradually turned into every other weekend due to my mother "wanting to spend more time with me".

back to my father, he was an alcoholic who also did various drugs. his apartment constantly smelled like cigarettes and weed and whenever youd enter the bathroom you would see ashes in the sink and needles on the toilet tank. he lived with his mother and when i was over at his apartment most of the time he wouldnt be home so i hardly knew about him and it was mostly up to me to take care of myself. when he was home he was either drunk, high, or both and would physically and verbally abuse me and whenever i would cry he would berate me and then abuse me more for crying. i used to cry myself to sleep and when i was 9 is when i tried to commit for the first time. his abuse led to me not crying since i was 9 and only around 3 weeks ago i cried again due to randomly seeing him after 2 years of no contact (im 14 for reference). this abuse consisted until i was 12 (will get to that later) and my mother or anyone else did anything to stop it and i never told anyone about it.

my mother, as previously mentioned, was a heavy alcoholic and abused drugs which is why in my younger years she wasnt around as much but she never abused me. she always tried to take care of me to the best of her abilities which is why when she turned 30 (i was 8) she quit all substances and to this day is 6 years sober from everything which i am extremely proud of her for doing.

when i was 12 i texted my father that i never wanted to see him again and told him that he was abusive and so was everyone in his household and i dont want to be associated with him ever again. he tried reaching out to me after that saying he was sorry and he "doesnt understand why i would feel this way" (his exact words) and that he wishes we could have a better relationship and denies any of his previous abuse even occurred.

after that i started using drugs. it started off with weed soon after i had gone no contact with my father and soon evolved into cigarettes around 13 however now i am 2 months off cigarettes but still smoke weed as a way to escape from reality. there have been times i almost overdosed (both by accident and on purpose) and i just wasnt in a good mental state and wanted to commit

recently things were getting better. i got less and less flashbacks and wasnt abusing drugs as much as i used to until around 3 weeks ago. i was walking alone like i always do and by some coincidence my father was in the same area as me. he saw me and recognized me and came up to me trying to put his hands on me. he called me a junkie even though i was looking in his eyes and they were completely yellow from drugs. i couldnt even respond to him cause i was terrified from the sight of him and his voice i felt completely disassociated and memories i had trouble remembering came flooding back. i ran away from him and started crying for the first time in years. after that i started using drugs more often again and isolated myself from other including my mother however as of now i have managed to calm down and feel much better.

if you read all this then thank you for your time and if youve gone through similar experiences i completely understand what youre going through and just know whatever your feeling is completely vaild and you shouldnt feel bad for feeling bad <3