Just joining this group now. Grew up in an unbelievably verbally abusive home where I was neglected all my life. Gaslighting, name-calling including being told I was stupid and a "little bitch." My mother was/is unbelievably unstable and I also grew up in a hoarding situation. When I go home now, as an adult in my 30s, there is cat poop stuck to the floors. Growing up, somehow everything was always my fault. I was both a punching bag and scapegoat for my parents to divert acknowledging their own shortcomings. They tried reliving their childhood traumas by taking out on me what they couldn't process as children. Every emotion I had I was deemed too sensitive. I was always overreacting, spanning from receiving verbal abuse, being hungry and asking for food, trying to clean up after the hoarding, or being bullied in school. My father would placate my mother and hop on the gaslighting train of saying my mother's behavior was my fault. When I confronted him on this as an adult he said, "Oh, why didn't you tell me your mom was mistreating you?" I was 8 when I first remember this behavior starting. So maybe that's why you fucking asshole?!

I am also bisexual, with a strong female preference (I identify as female/cisgender) and and grew up in a conservative town where women were essentially taught not to have a sexuality and that masturbating was "gross." I went through puberty at a young age, and knew of my orientation from the time I was 8. I spent years repressing my sexuality. I was too afraid to go to sleep at night for fear of having sex dreams about other girls at school. I began masturbating at the age of 10, discovered through peers this was "disgusting" for girls to do but not boys and, although I'd never confessed to doing it, I then didn't do it again until I was about 14. This has caused, to this day, excessive guilt surrounding my sexuality, which is something I am really working hard on reframing. Additionally, when I was 18, I was repeatedly sexually manipulated/violated/assaulted by my first sexual experience/relationship with a man, a man who was much older than me. I didn't tell anyone about what happened until I was 31 and a part of me feels that had I never had a sex drive to begin with, or curiosity about having sex with a male (something I didn't experience until early adulthood, before then I'd really only been attracted to other females) I wouldn't have been in that situation. I am learning that it was not my fault, but because I'd repressed it for 13 years, there's just so much to uncover. I am frequently flooded with flashbacks of what happened and learning to cope with that now. I had another instance, when I was 23, where I was taken advantage of by a woman I went on a date with. I was so drunk that I couldn't sit up on the subway ride back, she very much could, but she still took me home and we had sex. Had I been sober, or quite frankly even just a bit tipsy, I would have never gone back with her. I also didn't tell anyone about this night until my 30s. Because that happened when I was older I was able to not engage in self-blame, but it was still, of course, beyond painful. There was also a period when I was 20 where, in a short period of time, I spiraled and slept with a lot of strangers I met in bars/clubs, including men who were over 20 years older than me, to numb my pain and trauma.

In high school I attempted suicide twice and was hospitalized in a psychiatric facility when I was 16. I also started cutting myself my junior year of high school. I was so addicted to this that I did this all day, including during school hours in the bathroom. In a sense, I was trying to punish myself before my parents could get to me. I learned that if I remained in a self-inflicted punitive state I was too quiet at home to engage with my parents at all, so a significant portion of screaming and gaslighting could be avoided. I had also developed anorexia at the age of 13 after being bullied online for my weight (this was the early 2000s when online bullying first developed). I was in no way overweight, or even close to it, but not only was I impressionable, the boys who bullied me were also dating my best friends at the time. These friends never stood up for me. I internalized this bullying and developed anorexia, which I did not treat until I was 21. The anorexia helped keep things safe and peaceful at home because I was too hungry to engage with my family; I just locked myself in my room. Too, as a part of the neglect I experienced my parents didn't feed me often anyway, so they didn't notice I wasn't eating. They barely noticed I lost weight. If anything, these behaviors brought my closer to my mother because she has severely disordered eating and we could talk about dieting together. The eating disorder repressed emotions, my trauma, and it also eradicated my sexuality so I didn't feel as strong a need to masturbate or engage in sexual thoughts about other girls. I have been in and out of treatment for the ED for the past 10 years, including a month-long residential stay in Renfrew when I was 21 during my senior year of college. I also suffered from drug abuse for many years, doing cocaine and smoking weed during the school day in high school, as well as going to class very drunk.

My parents constantly berated me my whole life, calling me stupid, despite graduating from both high school, college and graduate school with honors. I graduated from Columbia with my masters with a 4.0 but they still criticized me, saying I could have done my work faster and at one point suggesting my mother do my work for me since I was incapable. They always expressed how much smarter they were than me. I would often gets facts right, but my parents would always tell me I was wrong. Now, when I know I'm right about something in any situation, I struggle with expressing my answer whether that be in school, work or amongst social situations. For decades I dumbed myself down, engaging in self-doubt, agreeing with someone who I knew was wrong about something, because I was so unsure of myself. I also tended to take responsibility for things that weren't my fault, over-apologizing for everything. Everyone at work would always know me as the "I'm sorry" girl. It took me so many years of therapy to stop saying "I'm sorry" as my default adage.

Last year I underwent additional trauma. At the age of 30, I came down with mono and it lasted nearly a year. I was a teacher and missed the entire school year. I caught this illness from a student. I was in bed the entire time, my wife would have to carry me to the bathroom which was about 6 feet from my side of the bed. If I was home alone I had to wait hours just to use the bathroom, as I could not get up off the bed or couch by myself. I could not stand in the shower and I had to use a shower bench. Oftentimes my wife would bathe me. Most doctors I spoke with gave me false information, saying I'd recover in a matter of weeks. My primary care physician gaslit the situation, saying it was my fault for the excessive fatigue as I was "de-conditioning myself." Some of my "best friends" of decades couldn't be bothered to reach out to me even once to see how I was doing. I was sick when the pandemic hit and people texted me about how upset they were that gyms were closed. My therapist (who I have since discontinued working with) didn't listen to me when I spoke with her and she was eating over the phone. She made inappropriate comments about medicine and my health and I felt betrayed not only by so-called friends but also practitioners on whom I was very reliant for years.

In regards to my job, for the first semester of the year, my school made me continue to work by grading and submitting lesson plans without pay. Eventually they hired a leave replacement. I recovered from the mono during the summer after using alternative methods such as meditations, graded exercise therapy and an antiviral and supplement regiment. This academic year, when I returned to the same school, I was told I had to come and teach in person despite having a compromised immune system. In the spring I was told I wouldn't have a job for the following year despite getting outstanding observations and working for free last year. It was made clear this was because I was out on disability and the school is suffering with enrollment due to Covid. They instead gave the job to my leave replacement, a male with a pHd who the students hate. This particular school has excessive misogyny and fires women for taking any kind of leave, whether that be maternity or disability. The only teacher who was permitted to work remotely this year is a 70-year-old male with a pHd. In regards to the ubiquitous dislike of my leave replacement amongst the student body and the majority of faculty members: not to toot my own horn, but I have always been a very popular teacher at my school both amongst faculty and students. I am the only out female teacher and run the GSA. I have developed LGBT curriculum across the school. LGBT students very much rely on me for emotional support and advocacy. I used to love this job. I am too wounded to find work for next year and will be taking time off.

I also wanted to state that too, throughout all this, I relapsed in my anorexia. Per my new therapist's suggestion, I entered ED treatment this year where I was in an intensive outpatient program for months. I lost so much weight from mono and using my ED to numb out the trauma I endured from being chronically ill and the PTSD/aftermath of the illness. I've been doing very well since this treatment and am almost at my goal weight.

Right now I feel very sad and traumatized, as well as unbelievably disrespected and wounded. My entire life I felt like I was always treated very cruelly. Of course, there were innumerable situations when I wasn't and I'm so grateful and lucky to be in a wonderful marriage, but in terms of upbringing and many past relationships I sought out as a result of the internalized abuse, I was cruelly treated. The culmination of events that have transpired in the past 18 months have left me so heartbroken and devastated. When I was sick I couldn't read due to vertigo. (I have always been an avid reader and I was an English teacher.) The disability checks were only a few hundred dollars a month. I had to use a cane to get to doctors appointments and people would cut me in line. I didn't get a seat on the bus or subway while clutching onto a cane. I'm terrified of getting any virus, of my life being taken like that from me. And now that I'm recovered many of my relationships, although in the end for the best, have been severed. A job I'd excelled at and loved for years let me go (again, clearly for the best if this is how the company is run). I'm so sad and unmotivated and feel very alone and isolated despite the overwhelming support I have from my wife and friends. Unpacking this trauma in therapy can be entirely overwhelming. My last session got so intense that I actually cancelled on my therapist for our next appointment because I needed more time/space before feeling safe talking to her again.

While I do not have any self-harm urges or ideations, I do just want things to get easier. I want to feel more motivated and present. I can't help but feel the victim in so many facets of my life and I hate people who pull the victim card, so I find myself often trying to push away that feeling even though it can of course, depending on the situation, be appropriate. I miss the times before I got sick and had different worries/anxieties. I get resentful when I see people I grew up with leading nice peaceful lives because their families were kind and loving. I just want to know that everything is going to be okay again and I'm not so sure I can trust that in a way that I did before I got sick.

If anyone has any words I would so love to hear.