One: Nothing unnoticed
Something you should know about me is that I love love. My whole life I romanticized what falling in love would be like. I looked at my parents marriage and smiled at the thought of having a house and a family and loving someone in marriage. I had very high expectations for love too. I thought by the time I was fourteen I would be in love and thriving. Unfortunately, that's not how it goes for most people, and it's definitely not how it went for me. I had an incredible childhood from ages zero to ten, at least that's how I saw it. I lived well off, I had what I thought were happily married parents, I was close to family and had lots of friends. I had it all. I was a very creative girl, I loved nature, I loved books, I drew, painted, swam, sang, I loved life itself, it was so colorful. I seemed like the luckiest girl alive for a while. I had lots of potential, smart, talented, kind, bright. I saw a bright future for myself as a child, I was a big dreamer too.
Though unfortunately this was only a season in my life. I was too young to remember most of the happy times now, I've heard it happens when you go through a trauma, you forget. I see pictures in my head that are printed on paper, and the smiles there have been enough memory for me ever since. What seemed to be my perfect family fell apart at the age of eleven. My parents fought for years on end, told us it was normal to yell like that every night, that it was actually healthy too. I thought my parents were the best couple in the world because they yelled so much, I guess I thought if yelling really was healthy, then they must be the healthiest out there.
Yelling is good, they say. Yelling makes the marriage work, they say. It's not a problem, they say.
They finally split up about a year after the worst of their arguing. They sat me and my siblings down a few times in the living room to talk about the most insignificant signs that they were splitting, by then I knew they were done. My siblings were more shocked at first than me, but I didn't take it well once we moved out of my childhood home. I lived there since I could remember, every dinner, every board game, every time we played house, every time we would go run outside and drive ourselves crazy. All of it was ripped away within a month, I didn't know how to process it. I always had anxiety, even as a kid before everything happened, and I was absolutely lost in my anxiety when it all happened.
At just twelve I was having panic attacks every night and every day, my mom shamed me for it. It wasn't just crying, or just having trouble breathing, it was screaming and kicking and crying until you felt absolutely nothing. My mom didn't believe that mental illness was real for me, she told me I was attention seeking, along with my siblings, and my moms side of the family. All the color I had seen before was faded and grey, from that day we moved out, I don't think the world ever seemed bright again. There were no moments that felt okay. That went on for so long, the constant cycle of nothing but not okay.
Surprisingly to everyone, I have now made it to sixteen. My birthday was a few months ago in March. I didn't do much for it, I wasn't very happy then either if I'm being honest. My parents didn't make much of an effort either, neither of them said happy birthday to me in the morning, I got some gifts at night, but still no simple 'happy birthday'. I didn't get my permit or a job on my birthday like I told everyone I would. I had no motivation to do anything, I was barely passing school, and I saw no future for myself. Luckily I've moved past that. Now, in August, I have a permit. I also just got hired to be a hostess, an easy enough job. Before I dive into where I am now, it would probably be useful to give a little background of the past year and a bit.
