I've always had trust issues, ever since I was a toddler. Believe it or not, I've just always been super secretive. I never trusted people to understand me, to help me, to not hurt me, so I didn't want to give them the chance. I would try, but no cigar. When I had the harsh symptoms of my PTSD, like numbness, no one in my family noticed. The self harming, the constant suicidal thoughts since I was eleven, the sexual assaults, no one noticed and no one even bothered to ask: "Are you okay?" When I came out of my numbing, fell in love for the first time (codependent, it was ugly) and had a best friend who actually would listen to me and try to help, I didn't tell anyone. I kept it to myself. I reserved the things that mattered in my life for me. Because if you don't take me at my worst, you don't get to see any side of me. I am the one who owns me. I give myself to who I want and who feels right. My family doesn't deserve to know me on a deep level. Since they were not there when I needed them, I no longer even tried to let them in. They couldn't be trusted. When I faced my first experience with death, my mother confronted me a few days later about who I was talking to all the time, after months of interacting with them. She yelled at me, screaming at me until I had a panic attack and I was on the floor, unable to breathe, and told her about my friend who died, and she said that her death wasn't real and it shouldn't affect me. When I came out as suicidal, after almost five years of it, no one would come near me. No one would even talk to me accept my step dad, who sexually assaulted me the night I broke down to see someone to confess I wanted to die and has three different plans of killing myself. My mother even ignored me for a month when I first asked her if I could go to a mental health clinic. I reminded her twice, because I was going to kill myself at the end of that month if I didn't get better. No one would talk to me. My mother only screamed at me, endlessly, and I got molested. My siblings wouldn't even look at me. Wouldn't acknowledge my existence. My mother, later on, yelled at me for disliking my step dad, saying that he had no blame in my suicidal thinking. My little brother would throw my suicidal urges in our fights. "well, at least I didn't try to kill myself." I learned early not to depend on them. Who kept me safe from being molested when I was a toddler? No one. When I was five? No one. When I was eight? No one. When I was fifteen? No one. Who was there when I wanted to die? No one. So who should I trust out of them? No one. My sister is angry at me because I never confided in her. That I never let her past my front porch. She trusted me, but I didn't trust her. I reserved myself for me. She doesn't have the right to know me. She lost it years ago, when we shared a room and I wanted to die, and she finally knew it, and didn't even say a word to me. Everyone hated me for trying to get help. No one helped me. So I helped myself. I depended on myself. I didn't have any hands from my family, offering to pull me up. They only pushed me down. I made myself depend on me. This is just who I am, secretive. I reserve myself for me. And what's wrong with that? I'm happy. I'm healthy. I no longer want to die, I don't self harm, I even love me. But my family is still angry and upset if I don't tell them something important. But it's not important to them, it is to me. So it's mine. And I am not theirs. I am mine.
