This is is tough. Really it's a toss up between so many people who have caused me pain.
Where on earth to start?
I guess I could start with my dad, but it's a pretty tangled web. He wasn't necessarily a bad dad when they first divorced. He and my grandmother moved to into a house that was 2 blocks away from my school, and my grandmother still took care of me after school, so I saw a lot of my dad then. He would take me on trips, try and talk to me, which was probably difficult because his grasp of english is tenuous at best. Then....my mom decided to remarry. As she puts it, she was blinded to his faults because she was....well....horny. This man was in no way a good man at all. When my mom told my dad that she was going to remarry, he took it as a hint to stop his involvement in our lives.
Actually.....that was exactly what He Who Shall Not Be Named wanted. He was insanely jealous of my dad, and hated me because of the fact that I was proof that my mom had been married to someone else. I remember overhearing him telling my mom that he couldn't wait until I was older so I could just run away. That way he could have her all to himself. I still to this day don't understand how she could've stayed with him after a declaration like that.
My mom stayed married to him for a year. That year was pure hell for me. Everything about me was crushed, suppressed, and I was forced to stay in my room a lot. I felt like an unwanted guest in my own home. I slept over at my best friend's house a lot. I think that they saved me in more ways than I can imagine. Finally my mom got up the courage to kick him out, and we've been a family of two ever since.
During all of this time, I was constantly picked on. I was....different. I wasn't tall, I wasn't slender, I wasn't bubbly. How on earth could I have been expected to be bubbly considering my home life? I was bookish, I attached myself to teachers, so the label of teacher's pet followed me around until the 8th grade. To say that I had low self-esteem would be an understatement. I tried to hid my insecurities with a prickly manner, I was cruel with my words, and lost my temper often. I was a total tattletale, and invoked "the teacher" at every opportunity I could. To say that I was unhappy.....well I think you can see that ages 7-14 pretty much just sucked.
During high school I started really working on myself. Therapy really helped me a lot. I worked towards forgiving my dad (yeah still working on that one) did my best to give myself the confidence that I was beautiful and worth it. I did my best not to lose my temper anymore, not to be cruel to others. I think that now I've been able to do the majority of the heavy work when it comes to working out my childhood issues. Sometimes it'll all come crashing back at me, and I just need to take a step back, breathe, and remind myself that I am beautiful, I am deserving of love, and I have so much to be grateful for. I am a true believer that everything happens for a reason, and my hard earned self esteem is something I am very proud of. I really do wish that I didn't have to go through so much drama and heartache to get there, but.....then I wouldn't be the me I am now would I?
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