Member-only story
When Home Scared Me
Following my heart helped me heal and become better
I look back at 2014 and am grateful that it's a reference to time and not a place I have to revisit. What made that time really awful was my process of growing up and how that often crashed with the ideas of the community I was supposed to fit in and more specifically the ideas that my step-mom expected me to follow.
I remember having so much joy when I was boarding that flight on July 7th, 2014 knowing that I never had to deal with these people for the next few years. I knew that it was at least 4 years before I would ever see any of them again. The thought that people like my dad were also going to be part of the group I was not going to see again made me really sad but that feeling paled in comparison to the joy I had knowing that I was not going to speak to my stepmom again.
For years, I had endured her words that constantly told me how awful and lazy I was. Since the death of my mom in 2005, she had now become our mom and there were a lot of conflicts there. In her eyes, I think she saw me as her child since my mom was her sister and she constantly used psychological methods to mold me into and help me become better prepared for the world ahead. And I hated every second of it.
