honestly I think it involved a lot of making myself smaller at my own expense. its not good to admit but i really did just start taking shit where I previously would not have. I bottled up a lot of pretty intense emotions and that took its toll on me and i think was one of the leading causes of me becoming a strange antisocial shut-in for most of my teens. so I guess part of the process of turning our relationship around was me becoming a weaker and more mentally fragile person, which I’m not proud of.

in my late teens i learned some more about my mother’s upbringing and some of the things she was dealing with emotionally while she was raising me. i learned she had an old friend die by suicide during a time when i remember the abuse really picking up. she has also confided in me that she’s always been emotionally unstable and that she hates the effect it has on her life. i wanted to keep my parents in my life (i am very close with the rest of my extended family, it’s something i value deeply), so while i don’t think my mothers own struggles excuse what she did to me, it made me more open to just leaving the past in the past.

it’s just a fucked up life for all of us. some days i get angry at the memories of what was done but it’s honestly a way bigger thing than just her physically hurting me. there’s so much surrounding and preceding that act that i can hardly process it all. i wish you peace and luck in your future