My parents were married in their thirties, had children and bought a (once) nice home for themselves and we were all still severely neglected. (Granted, mental illness was involved in the parenting) I’m already seeing girls from my highschool and (obviously) my sister who’ve done the dirty a little too early show signs of neglect/abuse toward their own children.

Understandably, a lot stems from the emotional/financial stresses of being a single mother. Getting pregnant before 18 means forfeitting nearly a decade of independent living/learning, possible college life/degrees and more dating experience. It means clocking a couple/a lot more years into your hometown after graduation. It means having a hell of a time finding a babysitter/PAYING the babysitter and (possibly) ruining relationships because of it. It means maybe not having the best support from your parents, and sometimes your friends. It means having a ton of (court or emotional) crap go down with the father. For my sister especially, It means dating the loser guys who fizzled out/stayed behind after the graduation pool and only want sex, money or your pot. (Which may, also like my sister, lead to more babies)

The upcoming generation of kids coming from the (specifically unsuccessful, because I’ve seen a few adjust profoundly well) teen moms/16-and-pregnant starlettes might be carrying more trauma than a lot of us can imagine.

I see it happening to my neices and nephews and I can’t call social services because the foster care system ensures that the chances are extremely existent they’d be abused all over again.  I was so close to calling last december until I started to read forums online of adults who were in the system their whole childhood. (Some witnesses/victims to child rape)  

It feels like there’s really nothing I can do, but be a good aunt. I can’t be their mother, and I wouldn’t try to if I was given the opportunity. That’s not my responsibility. I’m broken enough as it is and I’m still learning to be dependent on myself. I personally condemn my grandparents for not trying harder to see what was going on with their grandchildren. I wished somebody had found out so I could’ve been taken away, and given to good parents. But that sounds like a stupid fairytale, and in all actuality, it sort of is, especially now that I’m an actual witness and I have no idea what to do.

I hate that whole endless cycle of abuse statistic. It’s terribly true. :/ Which only makes me nervous to have kids in the future.

Video: Gercacn on YouTube

This is the first time I’m considering that maybe my experiences at home has ‘traumatized’ me. I’m not unable feel love certainly, but I do have extreme fears, trust problems, and shame/guilt… 

How do you recover from the long-term effects of child neglect/abandonment? Is this something I should take to the bishop or do I need to see a therapist? Or… is this something I can’t ever change and I just need to keep it to myself? Something that I’ll just have to live with for the rest of my life and hope for those moments of peace. Hope that one day, it won’t kill me. 

I feel dangerous. Some days, it hurts so much that I become concerned with passwords, loans and who will have my sketchbooks when I die. I think about the way they’d find my body and I wonder if it’s better I hide somewhere and leave flight plans and travel research on my computer so they think I just ran off to another country. Among all the thought-out scenarios, reasons and effects, I usually come to the conclusion that suicide is pointless and causes more problems than it solves. I know it’s true.

If I’m going to be so suicidal one of these days that I actually do it, I can’t really do much to stop it. So I think I might as well do as much with life as I can; Learn as much from the gospel as possible, draw as many pictures, see as many movies, listen to as much music, talk to and have fun with as many good people as I can. And of course, help as many people as possible in hopes that maybe somebody else’s day could become just a little easier… Especially if they’re like me. Then at least I would have tried my hardest to be happy and make my human experience as worthy as possible.

I guess my biggest question for right now is…
Is it really true that Jesus Christ can heal all wounds?