I think I was 7 the first time I realized that my family wasn't normal when I realized that it wasn't normal to live with your grandmother, that it wasn’t normal to have the only meals you eat to be the two the school gave, that the Eviction Notice on our door meant we were too poor to afford an apartment, that food stamps told we didn't have enough for food either.

When I was 13, I realized that what was happening in my house wasn't normal, that it wasn't normal to be woken up at midnight and screamed at, it wasn't normal to be yelled at for a teacher calling home because they had heard or seen something concerning, it wasn’t normal to be taught by the rest of your family how and when to call the cops on your step-father.

Around the same time, I found the person who would become the closest thing I ever had to a mother, the one person who knew everything, and who supported me through everything. But then I had to leave, and that was the heaviest grief I have ever felt, and by the end of that summer, I was done, completely and totally done. On Monday, August 14th, I attempted suicide for the third time in my life, and as I woke up the next morning in a daze, the only emotion I felt was anger, at the world, at other people, but more so, at myself. Then on August 17th, I got myself up and went to my first day of high school, as if absolutely nothing happened. 

Now looking back on that night and the many struggling nights over the summer and school year, the thing that makes me the angriest, is that when I did ask for help, and I did, no one noticed, no one helped, I was deemed as “overdramatic” and “exaggerating”, instead of being helped I was ignored, and told that I was “making it up” and that it was “all in my head”. 

Being told you're mature for your age-at least when you’ve been abused- doesn’t mean that you’re smart, or you like mature topics, it means you raised yourself and you comforted yourself and you protected yourself from the abuse that held you in its razor-sharp grip. It means you became a 25-year-old living in an 8-year-old's body. It means that when you finally escape the abusive hell, you don't know how to be your age anymore, because you’ve always had to be older, you had to do the maturing that takes most people 25 years in 1 year.  

I was never a child, for 13 years I wasn’t a child, but now, I'm expected to be one. I'm expected to want to hang out with friends and go to fun places when in reality, I don't have many friends, if any at all, true friends at least. But I don't want to go out, at least not with other people, I want to hike up a mountain alone, and watch the stars alone, I don't like being around other people because I’ve been alone my entire life, it's always just been me. 

For most people, the idea of being alone forever scares them, the idea of dying alone scares them. It doesn’t for me, if anything, it comforts me. I prefer being alone, it's easier, there's no one you have to spend time with to keep the relationship, there's no one who you have to impress, and there's no one you have to put on a mask for. 

Except at school, there's a new mask for every new class, every new teacher, every new person. I don’t understand how schools go around saying that “they care about mental health” and “if you need someone to talk to there's someone available” but in reality it just “well, you should get your grades up”, “How are you failing”, “You grades are slipping since last year”. Because all I want to say to those people is “Yeah, my main priority has been keeping myself alive and safe but thanks for the concern about my grades”. 

I remember, when I was 7, 8, 9 all the way through 13, watching Homecoming and Prom and all the other school dances on TV, on Disney Channel, and thinking that there was no chance I'd be alive to go to them, that there was no chance I’d make it to high school. But now, after going to my first homecoming, I realize how surreal this year has been, I'm not “recovered” or “healed” by any stretch, but I'm at a year in my life that for the past 7 years, I never thought I’d make it too. And if we’re being honest I probably shouldn’t have, medically at least.