#do bear in mind that i have never touched an actual tamagotchi in my life

[alquido]

this is extremely cute. 10/10 experience play it now

[letitrainathousandflames-archive]

(tw: abuse m/, family m/, drug m/, depression m/, suicide m/)

Hi, hello there. I’m Luiza. A lot of people know me from the blog letitrainathousandflames on tumblr (some of you cuties even call me by the nickname letti)

I can’t tell you the whole story of my life, but I can tell you I was a happy kid. I played videogames and I had a tamagotchi and I used to dance to Spice Girls and Avril Lavigne. I was a pretty normal kid until my early teens, when I was touched without my consent. It wasn’t rape. It wasn’t even sexual, in a sense. It was the kind of touching I even allow some people to have on casual nights out at parties. But it wasn’t consensual, and that’s what hurt me the most.

Any girl reading this knows how it is to be harrassed or abused. Shame. Self blame. Feeling tainted. Dirty. That’s why we don’t come forward, that’s why we don’t speak. About a year later, my mother had no respect for my boundaries and read my journal, confronting me about it. When I confirmed what happened to her, her first words weren’t of comfort. Or understanding. Or even justified rage at my abuser. They were the worst thing a thirteen year old girl coming forward with an abuse accusation can hear: That I had imagined it, that it didn’t happen.

I must add that to my mother, family image matters more than anything. Having a daughter who had been sexually abused would tarnish her notion of a perfect family. So her logical conclusion was to lock herself in denial, denying my experience and my need for acceptance, for love, support, understanding.

That same year I became very attracted to the goth aesthetic and got really into metal music and anime. I became intensely obsessed with fiction. Lord of The Rings, Sailor Moon and its worlds became the safe place in my head I could always run to. I began writing fanfiction and drawing a lot, and, being a shy kid since always, I became an even more reserved person. My schoolmates knew nothing about me that I didn’t purposefully share.

My mother wouldn’t let me go out in band tees and spiked bracelets and would force me to wear what she wanted me to. Shed laugh at my clothes and would systematically toss away my black nail polish and lipstick. She wanted a perfect daughter that I just couldn’t be. Mind you, these senseless attacks on my appearance happened even as I had more or less good grades, wouldn’t go out, smoke, never ever step out of line. I was the lamest goody-two shoes you can imagine. It never mattered. Even now I still don’t know how I managed to never snap – I was handling the weight of my past abuse all on my own with no one to share, while under extreme pressure to be someone else other than who I was, wanting to experiment and kiss boys while simultaneously terrified of them because of what had happened.

A year later I got a boyfriend. He was a kind person, but looking back now I see he was very controlling and I’m glad I left that relationship. Still, I’m thankful for his support for me to get a nose ring, a bunch of earrings and to dye my hair neon-red, something I’ve always wanted. It was an odd thing, the contrast of emotions. The joy I felt looking at the mirror and the subsequent sinking feeling in my chest when I got home and my mother said, and I quote “I can’t bear to look at you.”

That stuck with me. Call me a grudgy bitch but I’ll never forget the disgust on her face. Her face. My own mother.

Unimportant, but months later, I was mugged and refused to give the robber my money. I felt a rush in laughing in the face of a potentially deadly situation, and luckily a passerby helped me out so I wasn’t injured, and the mugger fled. A few months after, I came down with a severe depression, of which the primary symptom was me throwing up evertything I tried to eat. I almost died.

Depression is to be dead inside. To be a hollow, lifeless shell walking around in absolute crushing sadness all. Day. Long. I cursed the sun rising in the horizon every morning. I’d rub my feet so hard against each other under the blankets i’d get rashes. I lost a semester at college. And at some point i realized I just wanted to die. I’m a fashion major, I have these huge fabric scissors that i hid away deep in my wardrobe because I was beginning to have fantasies of stabbing myself with them and I was afraid I would actually do it at some point.

At one point, therapy wasn’t doing shit for me and I was taking 8 different kinds of medication, none of which fixed my crying fits and suicidal thoughts I still don’t know how I never acted on those. My mother took advantage of my fragile state and convinced me to dye my hair brown again.

I stopped drawing for good. And art was the light of my existence, i needed it more than air. And it was gone.

When throwing up swithed to eating too much and never feeling full, I gained about 22 pounds and was more dead than alive. I couldn’t feel a thing, and when I did, it was crushing sadness. That was when someone very dear whom I had seen go through addiction and full recover recommended me their therapist. After a lot of sessions we came to the conclusion that, “hey, your mother messed you up good in the head” and, not less importantly “you allowed her to get real deep in your head”.

The next thing she said was “now we fix this. We unrevel this mess and clean your head off concerns that are not yours. You’re harboring her concerns. Your father’s. Your boyfriend’s. Don’t you think it’s time to live for yourself?”

Therapy doesn’t help you back to your feet from crippling depression in a couple of days, okay? I’m making this quick for the sake of storytelling. And, long story short, I slowly went back to drawing. I got a beautiful tattoo to celebrate my recover and the ownership of my body, that I was claiming as mine once and for all. Not my abuser’s. Not my mother’s. Mine. And I dyed my hair again, flaunting it every time my mother wrinkled her nose at it. Spite is the mightiest tool to recovery, my friends. Use it.

A lot of things have changed since then. I got a haircut and even stopped dying my hair out of my own will, I discovered myself as a bisexual, I even came out to some people. I made a ton of friends on tumblr, I got mad obsessed with star wars... Life’s not entirely good, not yet, because I still live with my controlling, abusive and invasive mother. But it’s not bad either. I have fun drawing and writing fanfics. I have good people who care about me. And some people even said I inspired them. That means a whole lot to me!

I don’t really know why I told you all this. I guess I really needed to vent. Perhaps I’ll even regret posting this tomorrow. But it’s my story and I’m not ashamed of it. Right now I’m looking for a job so that I can leave this abusive home for good but so far, nothing. If you can and want to help me out by donating me any amount, just click this link to my ko-fi account.

If you read up to here, thank you, and I’m sorry for talking so much. And if you ever need, don’t hesitate to send me a message. You heard me vent, I’ll hear you vent too.

Stay safe, everyone.

I love you very, very much.