It’s just… proof that I’ve been gaslighted all these years. My best friends and my boyfriend do their best to remind me all the time that I am a good person with a huge heart, who loves hard and freely, despite the trauma of my past. My Nparent and their enabler love to remind me of my past mistakes and to tell me that I haven’t changed, I’ll never change.

I’ve been trying so hard to live better than they think I can. One way I’ve been doing it, is by doing my damnedest to hold to the vow I made 15 years ago, when my childhood best friend had a baby at 17 years old. I saw this beautiful infant for the first time, I swore that I would be whatever she needed me to be. A friend, an aunt, a mother, if need be. She’s been abused her whole life, horribly emotionally neglected by her mother (unbeknownst to me for years,) and she was molested by her stepdad when she was 9. She’s been cutting for years, though she’s finally doing the work to stop that, and she’s tried to kill herself twice since then, in the last six years. It’s been terrible, but I’ve done my best.

This sweet child comes to me today. I’m at the doctors office, and can’t reply immediately, but when she asked if we could talk, I told her of course, I would reply when I could. Five minutes later, after a rapid fire barrage of messages, the last one said “as soon as I felt the guilt, I put it back.” My stomach dropped: I thought she had relapsed and cut again. But upon reading, I learned she had been unable to resist temptation and had hit her mom’s vape, and she was feeling horribly guilty about it.

I talked with her for a while, got her feeling a lot better, and she sent me a voice message… I was shopping, and I stopped in my tracks and started crying. I finally feel like I’m doing something right, and the fact that it’s something so important… 👏🏻💪🏻 go. me.

Her message: