I just realized I’ve been taught that I’m the least important thing in my life. I grew up the oldest kid in a family that was southern Baptist, military, and southern. I grew up being taught that I’m an inconvenience, my personality was annoying, I needed to help others, I needed to keep others happy all that stuff. I’m 20 and dealing with unknown health issues and I’m sick a lot. I really need to lay down right now but I can’t cause I need to take care of the family and all the dogs. I need to clean the kitchen, watch the dogs and make sure the others are taken care of. My parents keep getting dogs then pushing the responsibility off onto me and my sibling(17). Im exhausted after a week of packing, moving, watching the dogs and not sleeping well cause of a floor replacement. Its my job to clean the whole kitchen. The weeks worth of dishes, trash, all of the dust, tile debris and everything else my family didn’t clean up. I probably should’ve been cleaning through out the week but I’ve been sick so much this week that I’ve not been able to. I’ve been taking care of the others so much lately and I think it’s catching up to me but I have to ignore it so I don’t make anyone mad. I can just see the situation if I lay down, I’d get in trouble for not helping enough and get the cold parent treatment. I put off all my comfort for others. My health is treated as something to ignore til I can’t work or clean anymore then it’s something I need to take care of so I can get back to my regular duties. I am less important to my parents than the dogs. The 7 dogs. I am less important to my family than church. I am less important than a clean house and an empty sink. The most important thing to my family is that I do my jobs.

Before anyone tells me to leave, I can’t. When my partner is done with college they’re moving in and gonna help me out as we save to leave this shit hole of a place. I’m working on driving so I can get a job and be out of the house. Rn it’s just a waiting game that I have to survive and outlast.