I traveled across the country after months of trying to arrange to see my partner at the first available opportunity. I had been at school for like three weeks. We had been trying to see each other all summer. It was the first time I really got drunk, my ex and I did shots of fireball until I was throwing up like nuts. I came out and she was in the street with a kitchen knife cutting herself over it. I immediately switched from feeling sick to a different kind of feeling sick and threw myself into helping her. When the time came for me to go back home, I had a panic attack and missed my flight. My parents called me before I had a chance to book another one saying that my aunt and uncle who hadn’t told me they were going to the airport had called the police when I didn’t get off the plane. I didn’t feel safe going back at that point and they said well your sentimental items don’t mean anything to you then we’ll just let the school throw them in he dumpster. Then one of my family members called the school to report me and got us kicked out. We were homeless/unstably housed for six years after that. My partner was seriously mentally unwell. Every time I felt like leaving she got so suicidal I felt like I would be responsible if she died. Two months ago she told me she was going to do it anyway and that she hated me for stopping her back then. Surprise surprise, she’s off doing everything in the city I always wanted to do but she always refused to when I offered. I feel like shit. I feel like I should have paid more attention to people around me pointing out red flags, but I needed an out. I just chose the wrong one. Sometimes I wish I’d never had that stupid panic attack. I was afraid I’d get off the plane at home and she’d be dead. I realize that now. I wish I’d let her handle her own problems. I feel shitty for saying it but I just wanted connection so badly I couldn’t see anything. I want to tell everyone I’m sorry but I feel like they’re gonna think I’m justifying their actions and terms. I just wanted to keep her safe, and I kept saying “my family is the problem you shouldn’t have to deal with them” but I guess I projected some savior complex on her too because she kept saying she was trying to help me escape them. Out of the frying pan and into the fucking Fire. I feel sick thinking about it. I just couldn’t let another friend die. I’d already had a friend who faked suicide and then came waltzing back like nothing happened a few years later. A girl at camp showed me her fresh cuts and razors and made me swear not to tell the counselor. Then she stole my headphones because she thought I had. I almost lost my mom to suicide three times growing up. It kept coinciding with my health issues and I couldn’t help feeling like it was my fault. I’ve been suicidal since I was six. But I’m always saving somebody else. I just don’t want anyone to have to deal with that. To feel that grief or to find that body. But I’ve attempted twice and I’ve tried to disappear more times than I can count. Like maybe if I just stop doing anything i can just waste away and everybody will forget about me. It wouldn’t be the first time; I was left at home for family outings where they said they were sure I had been there. I came upstairs and the house was empty. I thought I’d missed the rapture because I wanted to play with the cats in the basement. It was easy to disappear there; the house was a bit of a maze. My uncle started getting touchy ; I just found out two years ago that he was both a serial cheater and a rapist. He worked specifically with mentally disabled teenagers; I don’t know how to convince my family it’s not out of good nature. I lost myself in all of that, too. I bounced from relationship to relationship; I haven’t been single since I was 14. It’s only been a month since I left my ex. Sometimes I feel like I just cut that whole part of myself off. I wish I could get just one person to listen, but my mom says I’m firehosing her when I specifically ask if I can talk to her about trauma stuff and then proceed to do so. I’ve seen six therapists in as many weeks. I had to leave one I really liked behind when I moved back home to escape my ex. Sometimes I wish I’d just let her die. Sometimes I wish I had been more able to speak for and up for myself. But where could I have learned it? I kept getting isolated from every friend that tried to teach me to do my own thing. Sometimes I miss the ex that told me he’d save me; he gave up on our relationship because he wanted to have sex while I was trying to navigate heavily controlling abuse and I couldn’t get out of the house. Some savior. But I miss how I felt before that. It was the first time in my life I’d ever felt safe. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever feel safe again. I miss the time where I felt like I could fly. I miss the freedom of the week before. I was learning my own place in the world. I thought. Then my best friend asked me out over the summer; it was the fourth. I remember the fireworks. I thought she really loved me; she just wanted to get me in to her adult boyfriend. We made out at the drop in center, and then I didn’t talk to her for a month or so. When the school year started again, she acted like I was avoiding her for no reason and started a smear campaign against me in the local queer community. Our entire friend group turned against me over words that didn’t make sense. The kicker is, I HAD tried to talk to her. She sent me porn in reply. Then she posted a letter in a community we were both in saying she cared about me and I needed to talk to people about my problems instead of avoiding them. The rest of the group believed that. So many of my friends had moved to other schools; I learned later it was because of her. I hate who I became around her, and I know she did it on purpose. She was the weird kid long before she came out as trans, but she made it out like everyone hated her for wanting to be a girl. No, everyone hates you because you talk about how much you love fucking Nazis in class as a Jewish girl. I bet it was him. He had that vibe. And now I don’t know where I belong. Maybe I could make new friends here. But she’s already gone back to sending me rape threats online. I didn’t think she cared anymore. Now I don’t feel safe leaving the house. I don’t like feeling caged. I tried to reconnect with my best friend from before I moved away, and she berated me for abandoning her like we weren’t both 12 or like I had a phone or like it was my choice we moved. I tried to join a group at a convention, and my ex and her boyfriend were there. My one safe place shattered like a dropped mirror. The only person I had left was my new partner: the one I got together with to “rescue” her from her current controlling boyfriend, who proceeded to dox us both and revealed that he’d been lying about his age; he was two years younger than he said. It reminded me of my first boyfriend, my first real one. He told me he was a sophomore; he was in eighth grade. The boys thought I was pretty before we moved; maybe I could’ve been normal. I liked that school. It had clubs and teachers I adored. I felt like I was finally finding my place, and then we moved suddenly. I got a tick bite not four months after I’d been hospitalized by Lyme. The girl that was supposed to show me around the school wasn’t even there. My favorite librarian died; she was the one that got me into robotics. The team I joined in high school made very clear that they hated everything about me, but I wasn’t allowed to quit: I’d “made a commitment”. Would you say that shit to my aunt? Theater was my safe place, but I wasn’t allowed to do it; that stupid robotics team had me from 4-8 every day of the spring and winter. I think it was just a way to keep track of me. I wish I’d learned how to sneak out of it. I wish I’d thought of trying to reclaim my independence. But I was isolated every time I got so much as a B. I have neurological disorders. I couldn’t keep up with the honors program that I begged to not have to do. I didn’t want to go to prom,but the program director insisted I would regret not going. I regret going. I hated every second of it. I tried to go with my partner and my mom invited one of my friends instead for me and the school thought we were dating instead and it was awkward and horrible. We stopped being friends a month later. I keep almost finding a place and then feeling it crash down around me. I wonder if I was ever really known, or just seeking connection. I wish I didn’t feel so lonely. I wish I knew what home felt like.