J's Story - A Little Flower 🌸💓

Trigger warning: My story involves abuse, an eating disorder, weapons, and suicide attempts

My story has a beginning that as much as I want to erase it, at the same time I am grateful for it because it shaped me into the person I am today - strong and confident. But it wasn't always like that... At first, I thought I was a happy child with mom and dad and a nice apartment on two floors, and some masked good memories. I guess I didn't notice what was happening around me because my mom always tried to keep me away from everything and show me the world in pink.

Then my younger brother was born. Seven years younger than me and things started to take on a different look. My happiness for him was endless, but I also grew up enough to understand some things. Mom and Dad no longer hid when they argued and the situation was increasingly tense. The years dragged on, and the pressure grew more and more. At first, I didn't suffer from violence, or at least I didn't think I did, but I felt increasingly rejected and neglected in my own home so I slowly developed an eating disorder around the age of 10.

I entered puberty and every day hated myself more and blamed myself for just existing. My dad was more and more rude and more often violent and I got used to being silent and swallowing all his insults directed at me and my mom. I'm used to crying alone in my room until I wet the bed with tears.

The years continued to pass, and my way of thinking changed according to my age. And as I grew, so did the problems in my head. Dad was getting worse. But I didn't want to keep quiet about him anymore. I got into very nasty arguments with him, we shouted and I think the whole building knew about it. He wanted to hit me, and missed a couple of times, mostly choosing to throw things and hit them. His fist holes are still in the apartment. He pelted me with glasses and a wallet. He told me that I was a whore and that I would be nobody and nothing in life. But then, my mom also started arguing with me, even though he was also abusing her (mental, physical, sexual, economic). She blamed me, because she thought I was making things worse, and I was just trying to protect her from him.

Then, at the age of 13, the first suicidal thoughts began. And they lasted a long time and were unbearable, they suffocated me both day and night. I thought that the only way to be beautiful was to leave this world. I thought that with my kindness I was doing evil to everyone and that I did not deserve to live. That I don't deserve food. And so Anna knocked on the door. But I didn't know who she was and what she could do, so I hugged her. Then the first attacks of panic and hysteria began. 

I never gave up on school, and to this day I am perfect. I have a scholarship and I love to study. But I always had to be the best, to get any kind of validation that I deserved to exist. I forgot what a sincere hug that infuses warmth in your veins looks like. And I constantly felt sadness. I finished my first year (15 years) in high school and that summer was... a crossroads. For the third time, my father took out his weapon in front of us and threatened to kill us and himself. He made us a video of him hanging himself. Then I took the phone and called the police. Then he ended up in prison, where he is still, for committing severe domestic violence.

My mom still blames me for reporting him, but I know that if I hadn't done it then, one of the four of us wouldn't have made it to the next morning. That summer I was no longer me, so everything escalated in October when my heart stopped beating because I was severely malnourished. The next day, when I woke up, after my clinical death, there was a diagnosis on the paper, as well as a referral for hospitalization in the Department of Adolescent Psychiatry, where I spent the next month.

When they conveyed it to my father, who was in prison, he said that he deserved it on his own. However, the children there, with different stories and scars, external and internal, helped me a lot. I came out of there much better, at least with a different way of thinking. They called me "flower" there. In the winter, in February, I met a boy who, after several meetings, visited me. I was devastated. I was still crying out for attention in validation because my mom never accepted my condition and always thought I was acting. He was not the cause, but everything that had been lurking unspoken in me for a long time made me decide to drink a large amount of drugs and alcohol. They barely woke me up. But when I woke up, I was a different person.

This does not mean that attempting suicide is a good way to realize how beautiful life really is, and how many opportunities are offered every day. This story serves to learn from other people's mistakes and to stick together. To give support and a warm hug. Not to judge, not to be caustic and not to compare ourselves. We are all wonderful beings. And I'm still learning to love myself. But every day I succeed more and more.

Today, I am a person full of myself, with a healthy weight and I eat whatever I feel like eating at a given moment. And I just can't believe how every day, no matter how bad it is, carries something very beautiful inside. Every day has a story and a message. That's why I like to write something about each of them. And every moment seems to be the end and just the bottom. Don't do anything. Sit and breathe. It will pass. Trust me. Better days are ahead. Luck is knocking on the door. It doesn't always seem that way to me either, but life is beautiful.