#there were hardline rules about literally everything. normal childhood behavior was pathologized and punished and as a kid
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lith-myathar · 6 months ago
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#i joke about it and all but like. i cannot emphasize enough what an impact it had on me to be uhhhhhb#micro-institutionalized in the way that i was for the first 14 years if my life#and i am honestly going to count the time i soent in ''elementary'' school bc it wasn't a normal school. it was a charter school#that began as a parent organized alternative and swiftly devolved into an authoritarian nightmare#a bunch of people who were simply not ready to educate children let alone ''problem'' children#of which there were MANY because that school got all the kids who had been turned out of public school for behavioral issues#there were hardline rules about literally everything. normal childhood behavior was pathologized and punished and as a kid#you had no way to understand WHY#and so many of your peers were having problems because ofc those ''problem'' kids were typically severely traumatized#or were actively being abused#so even if it wasn't happening TO you you were being exposed to it in a hundred little ways every day#so i was confused and miserable all the time AND was struggling academically bc i had undiagnosed adhd#(or possibly just trauma?? i honestly neither know nor care which came first at this point)#so my mom pulled me and my brother out. him at 11 and me at 6 and said ''i'll just do it myself'' and#raised us in a way that wasn't religious but resembled evangelical or lds stuff#i couldn't watch commercial tv or listen to popular music bc my parents didn't want me exposed to what they considered inappropriate#and while i still had extracurriculars i was always the odd one out bc i had no exposure to pop culture or normal socialization#for my age group#it resulted in me always feeling alone and like i didn't belong. and since most of my social life was my parents and their friends#that was the perfect soup for adultification#i was fine with adults. put me with my peers and i was a mess#it made the transition to high school incredibly difficult but i DID make it#but that was only 4 years still in an institution. everything began to unravel once i tried to move into anything resembling ''real life''#and then my dad's suicide which was a major trauma in early adulthood which only made my mom's grip on us tighten#i did get to START life until 26. not really. and it's just been a game of catch up for the last 5 years#and im so *angry* at the unfairness of it all. at the time and experience and milestones that were taken from me. at how i blamed myself#for it for so many years and the problems i developed because of it all. dissociation and substance abuse and suicidality#the fear that still has a death grip on me#the courage required to just exist#it's *exhausting*
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