Hi! I just found this forum and hoping to find people to connect with and relate to. Please exuse my english, but I hope at least I can make myself understood. I will be super honest with how I feel now. I am scared you will judge me. That you will say that Im just playing the victim and that I should be more positive. I already feel like I might need to defend myself. Tell you that I don't go around and say this stuff all the time or think about it all the time. And I don't. But I don't function anymore in so many areas, and I think that my upbringing has a lot to do with it. I am 36 years old now and struggle in almost every area of my life. I have so much anxiety and self hate. I try to love myself, or at least not to be so hard on myself, but whenever I feel like I can't fit in, or be "normal" or people see my anxiety attacks, I feel so much shame. I can go from feeling basicly ok to feeling that the world would be better of without me, in like 10 seconds. It is crazy. I also always tend to blame myself a lot, and never other people. It's almost like I even take the blame for them if they do something wrong to me. Maybe so they will feel reassured that they are ok. I also feel like I should not have turned out like this. People went through so much worse things than me and turned out much better functioning. I feel like I should be better. Shouldnt feel like this. So, gonna make this as short as I can, but it will probably be long anyway. My parents got a divorce when I was 5. It was a good thing I thought, because they argued a lot. I had one sister that was 1 year older than me and a brother 2 years older than me. So we were all close in age. I didn't understand that my parents was drinking, I only understood that later on. I can think back of the times my mom kicked my brother out so he had to sleep outside. He was probably only 7 or so. I also remember things like waking up in the middle of the night and being scared, going to my mums bedroom and she wasnt there, because the was at the pub. I remember I always hid when I cried, didn't wanna show anyone I was sad. And that I never called for my mom, for example when I woke up scared in the middle or the night. Never. Always tried to not be a burden or something. But I don't know why. Then when I was 10 things took a turn for the worse. Mom had a severe burn out and stopped working. She started drinking from she woke up until she went to bed. At the same time we had just moved to another city and started new schools. We had no safety net. No aother adults in our life. We siblings only had each other and our mother. She stopped cooking, cleaning and spent all days sitting by the computer and drinking. She threw up a lot and I was very worried about her all the time. Why she was so different. Why she stopped opening the mail. Where I live there is an opening in the door where the mail-man deliveres the mail. It all just lied there on the floor, spreading further and further into the apartment. Larvas started crawling in the old dishes and on the walls. Flies where everywhere. Crawled in my face and woke me up at night. We sometimes had to ask neighbours for food. I felt filthy and like I had to hid it all. The state of our home made me feel like it was not only our home that was yucky, but ME. If I was out in public with my mom, I saw the way people looked at her and it made me so angry. I felt I had to defend her. I got one friend at school. We started smoking, stealing, skipping classes. She got us into a lot of trouble, she had the biggest mouth and wasnt scared of anything. So several times we both got beat up by other girls. My sister got in even more trouble. Started doing break-ins, hanging with older people. But she always protected me in school. If someone was mean to me or bullied me she saved me again and again. My sister and I had always been so close, she had been my best friend since I was born. Sometimes my mom beat my brother and my sister at home. But when my brother was maybe 14 or 15, he beat her back for the first time. She never beat him again. He started pulling her away If she beat my sister. Both my siblings were my saviours. My sister always seemed to know what to do. When my mum tried to kill herself my sister called the psychiatric. She confronted her about her drinking. If I was sad or afraid they were the ones who comforted me, told me it was gonna be ok. My brother tried to kill himself by throwing himself off the balcony, head first, 10'th floor. My mum and I dragged him back in by his feet. First time I had an anxiety attack. He just went straight back into his room and slammed the door and we never talked about it again. Me and my friend got beaten by like 8 other girls. My sister saw it and came up to save us. She threathened them with a knife. After this my sister got taken away. The case went to court but mum didnt even show up. So they just took her, put her in a place with other girls who had issues. Problem was all the other girls there had suicidal issues so it didnt take long until my sister first tried to kill herself too. My brother moved to our father. I was left alone with our mother. Didnt wanna leave her. Wanted to save her, to get her back the way she was before. Then me and my friend got beaten again. I called the police, who called my mother. My mother called me. Instead of being worried or something she of course yelled, told me to come home. But I was too scared to come home. I heard in her voice she would beat the crap out of me. She said "Come home now or never again" I said "Never again" and I didnt. That was the last time we would speak in many years. She never called me. Never wondered where I went. But I went to my father, where my brother already was. My father had a new family. New kids. He never wanted us. He knew all this time what happened at my moms, because police had called him on some occations and forced him to come pick us up. He and his new partner drank too, but only evenings and weekends. They could still keep a job and things like that. Anyways. Me and my brother was never included at dinner. It hurt when they called our siblings name for dinner, but not ours. I had a broken bed with a big hole in it. Barely got any new clothes. They disappeared for vacacions only leaving us a note. When they went away they put a locker on the fridge. Once we had an attempted break-in which scared them so much they took our siblings and went away for a couple of weeks. But they left me and my brother. Sometimes dads girlfriend hit her kids. I started to supress my feelings. Instead of breaking out in anger I started to talk to her like an adult. Try to make her understand it wasnt ok. I got in a relationship with a narcicisst. I was almost 15 and he was 18. After a couple of years with that a almost stopped talking completely. Everything I said was wrong. I kept hurting his feelings unintended. Before this relationship I was a pretty chatty person, but I am still more quiet today and afraid to say the wrong things. Sometimes he was physical, but didnt hurt me that bad. The worst was the mental abuse. How worthless he made me feel. How everything was always my fault. The same time this happens I live both with him and still home with my dad. My sister during many years repetedly tried to take her life. She was still at the same place. Every time the phone rang at weird times I froze. Thinking maybe this was the time they couldnt save her. And she was my everything. The ongoing stress of this for years and years was really taking a toll on me. Age 18 I crashed and had a severe burnout. From almost never feeling anxious despite everything I went thorugh all of the sudden my body went bananas. I still struggle with the burnout today. Can barely eat. Under weight. Full of anxiety. So thats basicly it. When I was 20 or so I contacted my mother again. She was even worse of. I went into another saving-mission. Tried to fix her. Started my own company and hired her, thinking maybe a job could help her. When she didnt show up for work I still gave her full pay (like a good girl/codependent) Sometimes she disappeared from work for weeks and there was several times I was sure she was dead. Even when I texted her and said I am scared you have died, please answer me or turn on a light or something so I know you're alive" she didnt answer. Police had to break up her door several times to check on her. So, when I was 26 she had been laying in bed drinking for weeks and hallucinating. Thats whe she finally got rehab. She is still sober today and I am very proud of her. But I had a fantasy of this mother I would get back when she was sober. Turned out she never really was the mother I always tried to get back. But anyways. We still have contact and I love her. But she has her problems. I know now the alcohol abuse was just a symptom. I just started at a new work and my social anxiety is crippeling me. Next week we will have a big meeting at work and everyone needs to introduce themself and things like that. Makes me feel like I wanna quit. Cant face the humiliation If I cant get a word out or stattle or say something weird. If you read all this, thank you. I havent really been able to tell this much to anyone, I think it is so bottled up the anxiety gets too much for me to handle, even in safe places like therapy.