I think I’ve referred to my thought process as either now or back then. I don’t think about my future. I’m deeply conflicted.

I was told I’m going to Hell, but I’m living my life. My traumas are truly part of my story. And I own it. The story and all the chapters. I don’t have to like myself. No one said it was mandatory. And no one explained to me how to survive in the world and why I should matter to the world, or the world should matter to me.

I cannot say for certain that there are certain people that I actively blame. If you hurt me and I remember it, it was bad. I do not have a great memory for the more pleasant times. I know I had them, I just can’t remember a lot well from being a kid. I can only bring up a few without trying hard to focus on the good. And there was. I just think at some point, the lines were lost. I couldn’t see good anymore… So fuck it. And so, I had.

I had great memories with my cousins, growing up. We had a lot of fun together. Once we became teenagers, things changed. As they do. And my life began to tank. And I wasn’t trying to take them with me. If I could seem good, I wanted it. The facade only lasts for so long, I suppose. Even that guy from the church that I really wanted to date and wanted him to like me. He didn’t grow up in Negaunee, but he knew my reputation. And he had been grooming me, manipulating. It was a slow process. Once he told me he’d only sleep with me if I gave him a blow job.

No thank you.

I regret a lot of ways that I hurt people. Whether I meant to do it or not. I was in deep survival mode. I was just trying to keep going.  Just appear like things are okay … Despite the fact that you feel like you’re dying inside. No one wants to see trouble. Even though they know there’s trouble. It’s someone else’s trouble though . We’re not going to get in the middle of it. Well damn.

And when I felt I had been failed from adolescence to early adulthood by people, I tried to figure out what to do. Who was safe? Who would support me? Love me? Who has proven themselves – even if I don’t understand why they’re doing it. I found a different kind of family. A group of multi level functional, to some personal extent.

No matter what I did, no matter what job I had, I never thought I’d ever amount to anything that anyone would not be bothered by filling in the blanks. Oh, yes, Janet is doing great! Things are really coming together. Kind of seems to me like… The Titanic hitting the iceberg. While my example is very exaggerated, in purpose.. it’s life changing. You had a culture, a community, a town. Now you’re dropped into “best of wishes to you. Good luck staying alive.”. The resources will be purposely hard to find and nothing will make complete sense.

I kind of feel like where I’m at, in my head, is intentional to get me to my next plotting. Where I get to define who the fuck I am. Not by a collective set of thoughts, but my own. And I can accept my thoughts. That part, I’m really working on. I’m nervous.  That’s to be expected, I suppose. This just feels like I’m imbalanced.