TW: physical, emotional, sexual abuse Ever since I started primary school at the age of 4, I’ve been afraid of my dad. I truly believed I was the worst daughter in the world and that I was a huge disappointment to my parents. My Ukrainian immigrant parents were well educated and well respected people, they were quite wealthy and interesting people who had a “perfect” daughter. No one knew what happened behind closed doors, of course, and no one suspected anything as I was taught to hide my feelings and physical signs of abuse (still hate thinking about that word) really well. The physical and emotional abuse started as I started school and was a punishment for something I did or didn’t do, but looking back now, there was no consistency and no “reasoning” behind all of it. The sexual abuse started when I was 8 and stopped when I got my period at 14, when he told me it made me dirty and disgusting. Only at the end of high school I realised that not all fathers were like this and, in fact, this was very severe abuse. At 15 I was sexual assaulted by a coworker of my age at my job in a leisure center. At this point I was attracting the somewhat wanted attention of boys and I was naive. Even now, I am still trying to remind myself that I am not at fault. My 2 years at sixth form were made up of studying very hard and also trying to get help for ptsd symptoms. I met my current boyfriend of 2 years at sixth form too. I have told him about the majority of my childhood and he has been extremely supportive. I am so grateful for him. I am now having CPTSD support and, although I have bad days, I am keen to get better and to start a new chapter of life :)

Thriving but also on the verge of having a mental breakdown every other day at uni :) Quite a weird time but I have been attended regular psychotherapy sessions which have both helped massively but have also put a lot of things into perspective. After reading some other stories on here, I realised it was ok to be so angry and resentful at the people who made me lose out on so much of my childhood and who made me who I am today- a traumatised young adult that is barley functioning. But at the same time I have a ton of friends which means a massive support system, my grades are good considering the amount of physical and emotional effort I put into therapy and just into getting out of bed in the morning. So trying to figure it out step by step, or rather not even bothering to figure it out, but just going to the motions of life and pretending to be “normal”.