All I wanted was to play with my friends…

Now, you may think I’m just that teenager, who goes bitching about their Mother and has tantrums about who gets the remote.

This isn’t the case.

Throughout my life, I have had a fairly descent childhood, I’m not raped, I’m not assaulted. It’s more of a psychological thing. From the age 0-7 every thing was fine and dandy. Both my Mother and my Father had a healthy relationship, two sweet little girls and a bouncy boy (me). Then it all went wrong. My Mum decided my oldest sister was responsible enough to look after us, cook for us and care for us; being 13 at the time. As Mum got more free time, she started taking more and more hours at work, circulating jobs, looking for more pay. She would come home, tired every day, blaming us as the soul reason for all her work. She would hoover, clean and do everything that was already done (by my oldest sister- never the middle child or me, though.) for a second time. She would say she does everything, if she saw a piece of straw from the rabbits cage on the floor, she would hoover the entire house, just to fall into a heap at the end. We knew this process wasn’t necessary, and it only got worse.

Once my eldest sister left the house at the age of 20, my middle sister (16) and me (13) were next. I was passed the baton. Mum would get home to yell at me for dirt being on the outside shoe mat, or for the dish washer not being emptied. My other sister did nothing. This cycle went on, and on… and on.  If I were to sit down and play a game with my friends like all the other kids do, Mum would storm into the room, screaming that I was addicted- obsessed. Friends stopped coming over, and at school mentioned about how ‘evil’ my Mother is and how much nicer and caring theirs were. I spiralled into depression; thoughts of a family with a kind, stay-at-home Mum rushed to mind, one that cared about my grades, one that kissed me goodnight. I may sound like a cliché, but that was all I wanted from her, not money or toys.

Eventually, I turned to cutting. You may think that’s a bit drastic, but after years of torment it made me feel better, like a symbol of what I’ve been through and how I’ve coped. Later on I started to resort to beating myself, as it was less permanent, but after a while it just wasn’t enough. Thoughts fired through my mind: “Why not end this? That’ll show her, that’ll prove how cruel she really is, driving her child to suicide.” or “Why keep living in a world in which you aren’t happy, where everything you love turns out to be fake..?”. I looked up everything, from hanging to Hypoxia. I wanted to find the least painful way to go, and I tried lots of things… From bashing my head as hard as I could against a wall and taking an overdose of Paracetamol. Nothing.

Every time my body would pull through.

I’ll admit it, I’m not brave enough to put a knife to my neck, but if I do, I’ll have no regrets.