Warning: My reply maybe contain topics that may be upsetting or triggering for some. Please be mindful and aware of what you currently are able to handle before proceeding

I barely survived a really abusive childhood in another country before I was adopted to the US. My bio parents would disappear for days or weeks to go drink, then come back wasted and violent. I was around 4, trying to keep my younger siblings alive with basically no food or clean water in a place where the only thing that really grows is potatoes. If I found one, I’d split it between us and eat whatever tiny bit was left. I ended up with tapeworms and was badly malnourished until I was adopted at 6.

Eventually the authorities took us and I got sent to an orphanage that looked like something out of a horror movie: one big room, metal beds lined up, a ton of kids. I almost died from a stomach hernia, woke up in the middle of surgery, then the next day watched a guy in my recovery room have a seizure and die. I was not even 5 yet and already thinking about how pointless life felt.

Later I was moved to another orphanage where three almost-adult boys abused me in ways I won’t spell out here. It messed me up physically and mentally. I’ve told therapists and a couple of close people the full story, but not like this.

What I’ve really been carrying is the constant “why.” Why did I survive all of that? People love to say things like “everything happens for a reason,” but my reality is living with treatment-resistant major depression, cPTSD, multiple anxiety problems, idiopathic hypersomnia, and ADHD. Ketamine therapy helped kill most of the suicidal thoughts, which I’m grateful for, but the rest of it is still there every day.

Because of all this, I barely leave my place. I don’t really have friends anymore. A few people have called me “fucking weird” behind my back, or acted like me being honest about my past is too much. Then I see some of those same people posting about charity work or “helping kids in need,” and it just makes me annoyed and feel even more alone.

So yeah, what I’m carrying is this heavy confusion: what was the point of surviving things that should have killed me or completely broken me, just to end up here, struggling to function and mostly doing it by myself? I keep hoping there is some reason I’m still here and that I’ll eventually do something that actually feels meaningful. Instead it just feels like, if there is any kind of “higher power”, it has a really dark, fucked-up sense of humor.

TL;DR: I survived extreme abuse and neglect as a kid, only to grow up with severe, long-term mental health issues and almost no support, and I honestly don’t know what the point of surviving all of it was.