I am so glad I found this site. It's encouraging reading others' stories. Here's some of my story. I experienced emotional and verbal abuse from the age of 12 to 18. I was 22 the first time I ever told anyone about the abuse and even then I didnt tell them the whole story. Almost every day my father would scream at me and make me feel like nothing. He would call me stupid (even though I made nearly all A's in grade school each semester) and ugly. In fact, he only called me by my real name a handful of times. I was always addressed as __itch, mother f___, whore or some other obsenity. At home, I was neglected, sometimes even denied basic necessities like food. Although this was happening at home, I felt compelled to show the world a happy, carefree face. People at school never suspected what was going on.I went through years of depression, suicidal thoughts, and self-injury.Going away to college and getting away from home helped build up my self-esteem tremendously. I thought I had gotton over my depression and other issues, but now I'm not so sure. Its been 2 years since I graduated from college and I've been noticing some patterns. No matter how hard I try, I can never seem to build any stability anywhere. I'm 24 and I've never dated or had a boyfriend, and I jump from job to job. I've managed to stay at this job I have now for almost a year , but I'm thinking about leaving. Sometimes when someone criticizes me at work, I get defensive because I feel not good enough and it reminds me of my father telling me I was a failure. Also, at this job, everyone else seems to have bonded with one another, but I can't allow myself to get close to them. I never thought I had a problem with intimacy until the same disappointing patterns kept happening over and over again.Although I am now able to talk somewhat about the abuse (although several of my closest friends still do not know), I hate feeling so different from everyone else. Sometimes when I'm at work, all I can think about is how different I am from everyone else because I had to experience these things when I was growing up. Everyone else is living it up, laughing, talking about their boyfriend or girlfriends and the good relations they have with their parents. Sometimes I feel so jealous of them. I have made tremendous steps forward, but I still feel as noone knows my true self. I put on a mask with mostly everyone I come into contact with. Sometimes I feel as if the abuse never allowed me to develop a true sense of self. I was seeing a counselor for a while, but stopped seeing her because I didn't think she was helping- I don't know if that's another excuse I made up to avoid closeness or not. But these same things keep happening over and over again. I just wanted to know if any of you have had similiar experiences and how did you get help for it.
