Never Enough

When I was eleven, my parents split up. Later that same year, my mother lied and told me her new boyfriend would be staying with us for two weeks. He still lives there to this day.

Soon after he moved in, my mother's boyfriend began "casually" touching me. Mostly he would simply grab or slap my ass, sometimes other things. Whenever my mother witnessed this happening, she would ignore it. It was never enough to be considered sexual abuse, was it?

The next summer, me, my mother, her boyfriend, and two of his kids were all playing a game of pool. Suddenly my mother's boyfriend grabbed one of his various weapons from the wall and held the blades to my throat. Everyone in my family claimed it was "just a joke." It was never enough to qualify as physical abuse.

When I finally got the courage to talk to Child Protective Services, my mother accused me of lying and blamed me for talking about what happened. She would constantly "gaslight" and make up false allegations against my father. She told me my feelings didn't matter (she was studying to become a counselor at the time, ironically.) She constantly kept me from my father. And when I decided it was all too much, she ignored my suicide attempt and note. She left me for dead.

Fast forward to the summer before my fourteenth birthday. My older half-sister on my mother's side, who was 23 at the time, moved into our house along with her three children. She would constantly argue with me and accuse my father of even more terrible things that a child definitely should've never known of. When I built up the strength to tell her of my suicide attempt and how our mother ignored it, she told me "Get over yourself." I grabbed my phone, went as far up the road by our house as I had to to get service, and texted my dad asking him if he could call CPS for me if necessary. I finally returned back home. My mother literally asked "Was I supposed to take [my suicide attempt] seriously?" and accused me of manipulating everyone by telling my father I felt unsafe and unwanted at my mother's house. But none of this qualified as emotional abuse, right? Making half of my family hate me was never a big deal. None of what anyone on my mother's side of the family ever was enough to qualify as abuse.

As a result, I always felt like I myself was never enough.