mental health monday: where's mallory at right now

One month ago, I started taking my first course through Western University's continuing education. I've been wanting to take this course since I discovered it last year... but it's part of a dream I didn't peruse when I was a young adult. I wanted to be a writer. I was talented and I was even rewarded for some of my works. I stopped chasing my dreams in 1998, when it was time to pick our college/university selections in January before graduating high school, I picked courses that I was not even interested in perusing. I chose three art programs, and did not meet the expectations to earn a spot in their programs. I failed to select my journalism or writing program choices and no one in my family knew I was failing or why I was failing. I gave up when I was escorted out the door by a person who was mean and my maternal parental unit told me that this was family. This was not family. He purposefully locked me and my boyfriend outside. When I returned through another door, he was blocking the entrance to the living room, I shamefully stayed away and tried to please my boyfriend because I didn't want him mad at me. The following January after being locked out on Christmas, I stopped believing in myself and my future because no one in my life was caring for me. I was completely alone and I thought my boyfriend was the only one who got me, which he did not, he was taking advantage of the lack of care. He knew I would never tell.

example of no one caring: left to right, my stepmom, me, my sister. July 31, 1997.

​Right now, I'm in the middle of mental health crisis... it used to feel like spirals when it was about Cody, my sister, and my LM household. But now my spirals feel like they are going back and forth. As a child who grew up in two household because of my parents divorce, there was a custody agreement where we would go from house to house on a set schedule. It started off weekly, then half a month, and towards the end was monthly.

Right now, I am falling apart in new ways every single day, realizing how I was not safe or welcome in my OM household. I kept trying to convince myself that this was my safe family and I was apart of this family but it really doesn't sit well with me anymore. My partner, Kirk tells me this is my worst week. I asked him is this the worst week since my last hospital stay or just the worst ever? He's unsure. This has been very hard this week. I've hurt my hand in a fit of rage and told my OM parental unit in an unpleasant way to stay away, to never call or text me again. I gave her some of the questions that haunt my sleep and what has destroyed me and she is justifying their terrible behaviors', I cut her off before she could justify the third question because I do not want to read her defend two adult males who are suppose to be family being inappropriate with a preteen (for male #1) and a teenager (for male #2). 

Right now, I am dealing with the realization that my step dad was not a parental unit at all. He told my mom that he already had his own kids and that she was on her own with us. Sure that's fine but things are blurry and confusing when you think this is family and I want him to be my step dad, and it's blatantly obvious that doesn't want me around him. I see it now in pictures from our shared birthday cake in 1997 and the photo I thought was the best photo of us, me hugging him on his daughter's wedding day. He looks so annoyed that I am even there. His family made it clear at the first family function I went to with my new family, there was a family photo to be taken I went to join and I was told I wasn't family. The same man was the one who locked me out on Christmas 1997. I was not family. I was not respected. I was treated badly by adults and cousins who were older. I was a preteen when one of the cousins and I would play in his room in his bed; I would sit in his lap facing him and he'd have his hands on me, around my waist and comment how great it was that I was a skinny girl. It's not okay if he was a cousin or if he was a stranger, because I wasn't family. My last family function before I moved out, my step brother leaned into me while I was changing music on the cd player and said to me "what I wouldn't do to you if you weren't my stepsister". I danced to one more song, then went to my tent and cried myself to sleep. It's gross every which way, whether is he my family or a stranger, he's ten years older than me and I was just eighteen; and it was the third time since Christmas that he said things about my potential to be a good girlfriend. I'm very broken and disgusted that my mom just lived with some dude and his family was shit to me and she kept telling me that it was family. When I look at the photos of my stepdad and I - I mean my mom's boyfriend and I when I was a teenager and see it's written on his face, I can see why I thought I was loved, not just by him but other males that came into my life. I was told this is love and I look his face in those photographs and I see how much disinterest he had for me.
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Right now, I'm barely holding on. It's absolutely devastating to realize how unimportant you were in their lives and how people treated you, and that the person you need to hear you and understand you, defends the bad behavior as a joke. It is unacceptable to even think that when your child is hurt by another adult and you call it a joke. It was like this my whole life with step families. I was treated like I was less than nothing and I was destroyed before I even had a chance to begin my life. It took me twenty-five  years to get to this moment to be able to speak these truths and how much they've hurt me. And I'm not heard and it's been justified in the other peoples favor that kills me.
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What's next; I keep trying to heal. I keep going to art therapy. I will be returning to talk therapy and joining a new support group to work on self identity. I keep trying. That's what my partner keeps reminding me, just keep trying.