I can’t remember a lot from my childhood. I think my brain built walls around the memories to keep them from damaging me even more. But one of the things that I do remember is thinking that my family was “normal”. All my life up until tenth grade, I thought my family was how every family worked. Your mother would beat and yell at you because that’s just what mothers did. They’d call you things like stupid, fat, ugly, retard, and ungrateful bitch. They’d be the first to give you a bloody nose, or the first to pull your arm out of socket. They’d lock you outside at night because you made the mistake of trusting that your sibling won’t tell her that you want to runaway. They’d threaten to call the cops on you/ beat you for “stealing” food from the fridge. They’d tell you that you can’t be stressed or have problems. That your problems aren’t really and that you need to suck it up/ stop being a pussy. They’d find your suicide note that was never supposed be seen and use it against you. They’d tell you to kill yourself, or to write another and actual go through with the task this time. They’d do so many things that you thought happened in every family. I feel terrible all the time. Everyday I think about how everything I do is a mistake and that I’m a failure. Everyday I want to die and they don’t care. I have to pretend to be happy because if I don’t they’ll only push me further. I want to be happy. I don’t want to be sad. All I want out of life is to be happy..