"I should have pinched your nose..."

My parents were always physically and emotionally abusive. My father would hit me, and I always knew he didn't like me. My mother was more verbally abusive, but her words hurt me more than any kick, punch, or slap my father could have thrown at me. 

It was a normal school day in 7th grade. School had just let out, and like most school days, I stayed around school as late as I could, trying delay going home. I lost track of time and pushed it a little to far. As soon as I got home, the yelling and screaming from my mom started. 

Then she said to me, "I should have pinched your nose and covered your mouth when you were a baby!" 

Basically she said she regretted not suffocating me.

This has always stuck with me. 
 

"I hope to God I never have a kid like you."

When I was little, I had a lot of emotional problems and developed PTSD. Because of my anxiety disorder, I was very particular about things that literally didn't matter at all. 

One year on Christmas Eve when I was 6, I decided that the ginger bread house I had made with my uncle and cousin wasn't right, so I wanted to do it over again. This upset my uncle because we had spent hours on it and now I was persistent that we had to start over. 

After arguing with him for a while, I finally stormed off in a tantrum about the situation and went to the living room to cry and vent. A few minutes later he came over to me, and I hoped he would comfort me. Instead, he proceeded to tell me words that would stick with me forever. 

He said, "You acted like a brat!" He sighed and continued with, "and I hope to God I never have a kid like you." 

He was about 30 at the time and had his first child 5 years later. While he's never apologized to me for the incident, his son has problems of his own, and I like to think that he now regrets saying that to me all those years ago. 

Regardless, to this day we don't have much of a relationship, and I generally avoid spending Christmas with my extended family to avoid incidents like this.
 

"You laugh so loud and strong."

I was laughing at something my sister said at the dinner table. My dad was in the kitchen and he gave me this disgusted look and said, "You laugh so loud and strong." 

He made it sound like such a terrible thing, so I thought that maybe my laugh must be annoying or something.
 
So now whenever something funny happens, I try really hard not to laugh, and I just kind of smile instead.
 

"I'm sick to death of you!"

I was maybe five years old, and my grandparents had been upset with me every day that summer. I still don't know why. 

I remember sitting on the couch and my grandfather was scolding me for something. 

He said, "I'm sick to death of you!" 

This not only made me feel horrible, but it scared me. As a little kid I thought, "I'm so bad, I'm going to kill my grandfather!" 

This has come up in therapy a few times.
 

My First Halter Top

I've struggled with my weight for my entire 28 years of life. I've gone through phases of being very overweight to losing nearly 75 lbs at one point after college. But since the age of 13, I've never managed to be thinner than a size 12. I was constantly teased for being the 'fat girl' in school, but during the summer of my 13th year, I was actually beginning to feel more comfortable in my new, more womanly body. My weight had distributed more evenly to my breasts and butt, I'd grown into my extremely large head, and I'd developed a nice golden brown tan that year from spending a lot of time at the pool at summer camp. 

I remember first seeing the halter top on the rack at K-Mart. It was a cotton spandex material with a built-in bra, and the colors were a mix of neon pink, blue, purple, and green. It looked like tops I'd seen my skinny friends wear. All the colors met in a starburst on the front of the shirt then shot out with iridescent sparkles throughout. "This is a really cool shirt," I thought to my 13-year-old self and showed it to my mother. My mom had me try it on and said it looked nice on me and that it wasn't too revealing for my age. Happy to see my recent self-confidence, she bought it for me to wear on our upcoming family vacation to Myrtle Beach, SC.

I remember being very nervous to wear the shirt in public. As much as I liked it, I'd never exposed that much of my back and shoulders outside of wearing a bathing suit. Even then, I was often known to swim with a t-shirt covering my swimsuit. Didn't only skinny girls get to wear those kind of shirts in public? That's what I'd thought for so long and I was losing my nerve to put it on. As our vacation drew to a close, it was our last night at the beach and my mom encouraged me to put on my "new pretty shirt" for our last dinner out as a family. 

I got myself ready, pairing the shirt with a denim skirt, sandals, sparkly lipgloss, and a tiny bit of blush and mascara I borrowed from my mom. I looked at myself in the mirror and thought, "I actually look kind of normal!" I felt pretty. My tanned skin glowed golden brown and my light brown hair had lightened with the saltwater and sun. My dad also commented how grown up I looked in the shirt, wondering where his little girl had gone. 

We headed to dinner and I climbed into the back of our Ford Thunderbird. On our way to the restaurant, we drove down the Myrtle Beach strip. I sat behind my dad in the driver's seat and watched the cars come toward us on the opposite side of the road, some filled with families like ours and some filled with obnoxious college kids on summer vacation, drunkenly dancing in the car. 

We ended up sitting in slow moving traffic for some time. I looked to my left and saw a handsome young blonde guy, driving a black pickup truck, coming toward us. His friend was in the truck with him and as our car passed his, I looked up at him. Our eyes met for just a second and my first instinct was to smile at him. 

I smiled at a cute guy in my new halter top, full of confidence. A woman unleashed. 
But what happened next would shape the way I felt about myself, and how I thought men viewed me, for quite some time after. 

When I smiled at him, he looked down at me from his truck, and even though our windows were rolled up to preserve the air conditioning, I watched him mouth these exact words down at me, "Don't you smile at me, you fat bitch!"

As he drove away, laughing with his friend, I felt so exposed and wanted to be wearing anything but my new halter top. 

My parents were deep in conversation and had not seen the boy make fun of me, and I was too embarrassed to bring it to their attention. 

As we pulled up to the restaurant, I didn't want to get out of the car. I spent all of dinner upset, barely touching my food, and self conscious that everyone was staring at the fat girl in the shirt she shouldn't be wearing.

It would be several years before I had the courage to wear another halter top or something similar in public. The shirt I once loved so much, laid shining in the bottom of my dresser, until one day I finally threw it out. All because some stupid college guy on vacation decided to make fun of a 13-year-old girl coming into her own. 

To this day, I think of him when I wear something that makes my upper body feel exposed.
 

"My heart broke for you."

I was 19 years old, and I had completely broken down. Again. The world around me that I thought I knew was crumbling to pieces. 

"You're worthless. You're good for nothing. You're worthless." 

These words rang over and over through my empty mind. 

I had just begun my third semester in college, and in every class, I found myself writing my suicide letter. The date would be the anniversary of my dad's suicide. Halloween. Might as well make it dramatic. 

The week before Halloween, I showed a therapist my letter. I convinced him that I wasn't serious. That it was all a joke.

He let me walk out in this state. 

When Halloween came, I got drunk. I ran up this street, with no shoes, no jacket, no dignity. Three cops stopped and asked me what I was doing, if I'd come off my meds, if I needed to go to the hospital. I walked away. 

A woman got out of her car and asked me if I was all right, asked if I wanted food. I ran away. I was shaking, sweating, biting back my last tears. In my mind, I wasn't allowed to cry. This was what I deserved. 

I started to walk out in front of a car. 

The car came to a stop, and someone got out. It was the same lady from before. She rushed out of the car, threw her jacket on me, and held me as a cried. 

She said, "When I saw you, my heart broke for you." 

She gave me new life. 

She gave me a seed of hope to plant. 

Today, I am 22 years old. After various hospital stays, various treatments, I am still on the path to recovery.

To this very day, I still hold her words close to my heart. Every time I dream about ending the suffering I endure every day, I envision that angel who saved me. 

I remember her holding me as I cried. 

I remember how truly promising life can be even when the room is dim.
 

"You look like a boy from behind."

When I was 11 years old, I hit puberty. I got taller and thinner overnight. I developed faster than the other girls, and they all made fun of me for it. 

I came home crying about it to my parents and they told me to laugh it off. 

Over the next few months I became even thinner. I was a stick. 

My stepmom and my dad told me, "You look like a boy from behind," because of my lack of curves. They continued telling me this for years. 

I'm 19 now and I still think about my "lack of curves" and how I "look like a boy from behind." 

I cant shake that.
 

"You'll never pass as a normal woman."

I'm transgender. 

When I came out to my mother, her only response was that I had to be more careful not to get murdered, because I'll "never pass as a normal woman."
 

"Your own mother doesn't want to be your mother!"

When I was twelve, my dad and my mom split up because my mom had a serious drug and alcohol problem. I lived with my dad, who eventually got a new girlfriend. 

Of course having her as the new mom-like figure in my life, and me being an immature teenager, I always told her that she wasn't my mom and shouldn't act like it. It always made her furious, which I enjoyed. 

But I'll never forget the last time I said that to her. We were arguing outside of my brother's school in her van, waiting for him to come out. Full on screaming and pulling each other's hair. 

When I said it, she replied with, "I know I'm not your mother! I don't want to be your mother! Your own mother doesn't want to be your mother!" 

I let go and sobbed into a big ball. 

She felt terrible, but I'll never forget how her words made me feel. 

I knew my mom wasn't around, and I had always blamed myself for that for absolutely no reason. But now my dad's girlfriend was giving that fear a voice that would always play in my head from then on. 

"I picked him but I didn't pick you."

My mother's husband always disliked me and frequently physically and verbally abused me. It got worse when I started fighting back, at around 9 or 10. One day we got into a vicious argument, and he locked me out of the house. 

My mom eventually came home and asked why I was crying on the porch, and I told her what had happened. She told me that I was instigating trouble with him.

I asked why she always sided with him, and her response was, "I will always side with him. I picked him but I didn't pick you."

I've never forgotten that. 

Every time I see her, that's what I think of. I'll never forget that she didn't "pick" me. 

Ever since then, I've never picked her either. And I never will.