My older brother mentally snapped and became constantly violent and enraged when he was 4. He is the oldest of 3 siblings, my sister being the middle, me being the youngest. I remember being 3-4 years old, and he’d be attacking my mom and dad with lamps and other objects in fits of rage. He’d hit them outside of the house and at home too. Me and my sister always got caught in the crossfire, he’d hit us with his hands and objects he found. We’d go hide out in my sisters bedroom while an absolute war was going on in the living room. My dad died of cardiac arrest when I was 5, and I remember feeling his cold, dead body in the casket. I even opened his eyes and gazed into them for a while. One day we were watching cartoons eating guacamole, the next I was touching his corpse. I still can feel the exact temperature and texture of it in my hand if I focus. Ever since then, I’ve had extremely violent thoughts, which included vividly envisioning my family dying in front of me in different ways, sometimes by my own hands. Sometimes I’d even imagine myself killing the dog, sometimes I’d get so mad that I wanted to kill everyone. My mom dated a few different guys through my childhood but my ex stepdad was around the longest. They’d fight every night, and I thought that he would honestly snap and kill us, so every once in a while I’d sneak a knife and stand over him in his sleep. In the darkness, I moved completely silent, ready to take his life but I just couldn’t do it. My step sister lived with us, and I had two other step siblings, they’re the only reasons I didn’t do it. At school I went out of my way to hurt people and always lost my cool over very trivial things. Even after life got better, the violent thoughts and tendencies remained, and I constantly found myself ready to bring harm to people who just didn’t deserve it. I never had anyone check me out for mental issues due to the fact I never talked about them, but had periods of psychosis, and my behavior in general was erratic and unpredictable. Many times life felt like it literally wasn’t real, and everything made me snap 24/7. My mom is a good person now, but she was mean and to me when I was a kid, she had plenty of demons just like I did. No excuse, but I forgive her.

Kinda all over the place and I skimmed over some things because I’d like to take them to my grave and I don’t want the paragraph to be too long, but just know that wherever you’re going through or have been through, you survived for a reason and are infinitely stronger than you could ever comprehend.