It’s a strange experience to be hit by the realization that you don’t know who you are. That’s where I’m at.

From the point of my entry into this world up until I became independent of my parents, I had been trained and held hostage to be a chameleon for two main reasons: to maintain a perfect appearance to the public and to appease the people around me. I was forced to serve under the guise of being respectful, compelled to believe that my worth as a human being only existed in specific contexts, and conditioned to live by the rule that I must annihilate anything and anyone in my path, including my own family. Kindness, sympathy, and empathy were signs of weakness. Weakness meant your defences were down. Helping anyone was only allowed if it benefitted you or someone superior to you. But you were not allowed to help someone if it would be a detriment to a superior, even if it benefitted you. Finally, everyone was out for themselves – including mommy and daddy. Especially mommy and daddy. And if you didn’t comply, they would decimate you.

This was my reality until August of 2020.

Now, in April of 2025, I am convincing myself to write out the depths of my mind to get myself to talk. I am finding inspiration from wherever I can and looking to things in my past to determine what still holds true today and to see how I’ve changed over time.

Words in text form have always come out better than words out of my mouth. Forcing myself to face my truths is also necessary to identify my problems and shortcomings. Someone once simplified my existence in a way that made sense to me and led me to believe there may be some good in me worth exploring. They said, “if you were a bad person, you would be your parents today. They wouldn’t have broken you. You would have broken them.”

Why post about this? I wondered to myself why I would put this out into the world instead of writing in a journal. In all honesty, I want my story out there. The selfless side hopes my sharing can help someone out there feel less alone in some aspect, even if they don’t identify themselves and I never know. The selfish side of me craves genuine connection. I hope to feel seen. I hope to feel accepted. I hope to feel less alone.

So here I am, putting all this out into the abyss because I can adopt Dr. Seuss’ mentality of, “those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” I only mean that to the extent that if you disagree but can remain respectful while sharing your perspective and end a conversation before it gets ugly, I’m happy to do the same. However, I have a strong disdain for the belittling of a person simply for their opinion. That’s when someone loses me and no longer matters.

Here’s to the goal of personal growth and connection. Here’s to unpacking everything I thought I knew, everything that seemed to be…