First Few Months

It was naїve of me to think that I could juggle everything going on in the new phase of my life. 

I knew that moving into my parents house was going to be hard, it was harder than I expected. When I start thinking that I’m hot shit I remind myself that I live in my parents basement, really humbles a person. Since word on the street was that I was moving home, my 25 year old step-sister, I call her sister but I want to make our relationship more clear, thought that she should be able to move in as well. My sister, her fiance, and her daughter all moved into my parents house. They moved in a month before I got home. The house dynamic was turning into a battle of wills between messy sister and tidy mother. My parents had seemed to change too, but maybe that was mostly because I had changed. As to be expected, my parents were constantly talking down to me like I had no idea how to wash dishes or ask me where I was going every time I left the house, just work. It was tolerable, but boy did I miss not being accountable to anyone. 

School was very time consuming and I was working so much for no reason. I think it was just because I was used to working and making good money. The imbalance of work and school was the foundation of my stress. Doubt in my ability to succeed in college plagued me, I pushed myself to be perfect. Everyone who has ever been a perfectionist knows how toxic it is and that it is not a trait to be envied. It is mentally exhausting. It makes you cry when the whispers of doubts get to be mind consuming yells telling you how you are so dumb and worthless and at this point you shouldn’t even try because failure is imminent. I promised myself that I would fight my perfectionist tendencies when I went back to school and I did to an extent but the doubts hang around making their presence known even if you avoid eye contact. I knew my energy was running on borrowed time, unable to devote so many late nights at work and the hours I was putting into school for perfect grades. 

Friends I had kept up with wanted to hang out more but I slowly realized that we were very different people. I had this friend that moved to my hometown early in highschool. She always said exactly what was on her mind adding a little what? with a head tilt making her long blonde hair spill forward, after she said something that upset someone, feigning innocence. After years of trying to fit in with these kids that didn’t give a shit about me, it felt nice to know I had a real friend. She would keep my filled in on the gossip while we painted, taking the occasional sip of coffee that we got while skipping class. With her friendship, I became less uptight. When I moved we would talk all the time and I’d always visit her when I came up to Washington. She visited me on Maui too. I assumed we would be those people who were still friends at 40. When we started hanging out all the time when I found her flaws bugged me so much more than they used to. I found her to be increasingly selfish and mean to people for no reason. She would bail on me and shrug it off. I told her one night about something that was literally giving me panic attacks and I felt like I had nowhere to turn (I will expand on later) and she did not even listen. She seemed like she was waiting for her turn to speak. All she said was essentially how someone called her out on facebook for lying and she was pissed off about it. I knew things had to end between us. I became aware of how uneven our friendship had developed and that she didn’t really grow up at all. There were a lot of factors in ending this relationship that would take forever to talk about, but I did not take ending our friendship lightly. On top of all the other shit going on in my life I imposed heartbreak on myself. 

The final straw was my biological family getting in contact with me for the first time since I was adopted. My adoption was closed, that means that as a minor they can not contact me and have no way to contact me. I could have asked the state for a way to get into contact with them since I was 20, I did not want to. As a traveler, I love heritage and had no idea what mine was; my family always speculated but I wanted to know. I took a DNA test and got some cool insights, but eventually one of my biological half sisters found me and told her family. I was taken away from them for several serious reasons, it’s not like I was given up out of the goodness of their heart, which is why I was hesitant. I spoke to one of the sisters first, I did not have any ill feelings toward them and it went alright. I eventually spoke with my biological mother, her name is Tracy. She talked in a manipulative way and said things that made me uncomfortable. Tracy pressured me every day to talk to her. Her daughters showed a manipulative side too by talking to my siblings trying to get me to talk to them and their mother. I told my mom what was happening and she made it all about herself and made demands she had no right to say. I tried to talk to the friends I mentioned above and she brushed it off even though she knew the severity of what I had gone through as a kid. The entire thing became messier and messier. I decided to meet with Tracy, against my mother’s permission, and it was such bullshit. She absolved herself of guilt about things that happened to me and at some points tried to put it on me. I cried most of the car ride home.

The pressure of everything caused me to have panic attacks. I never thought moving home was going to be so bad. I felt fine most of the time, telling friends how wild my life was in a, you would never believe, tone. I had one friend I relied on heavily, yet didn’t want to be a burden or talk about the same thing for the 100th time. I cried a lot in my room that fall and winter. I told myself, this has to be the bottom, it will get better. A year later, things are better.