This is not a happy story

Song: “Over my Head”

Artist: The Fray

Year: 2006

I was thirteen years old when I moved to the middle of nowhere. My mom had always wanted to move. She was, and is to this day, the person who always had a new project, a new dream, a new guy in her life. She couldn’t settle down and therefore I wasn’t allowed to settle down either. At this point in my life, my dad was an ex and the new guy was suddenly going to be a lot more permanent than I had initially been told. At thirteen I had to say goodbye to my dad one more time and move with my mom and the guy to the south of nowhere.

My dad had stayed in the city because he had to work to support the new dream life. I remember being so sad and angry that he had been left behind that there was no room for me to give the new guy any compassion or welcome. I was an angry teenager who had been ripped out from the only place I had ever known and the only person who had always been there for me. I didn’t want a new dad. I didn’t want my mom’s new life. And yet, there was hope.

I had seen the movies. The typical cute romcom where the main character moves to a small town in the mountains, she meets this mysterious guy and he turns out to be everything she wanted. After the mandatory angsty scene where they apparently break up, she decides she wants to be with him forever and they end up being high school sweethearts. Oh, and let’s not forget the mean girls that judge her for not belonging and make her life miserable until she finds the “right” group of quirky friends and they form an unbreakable bond until they find out she’s in love with bad boy and then there’s yet another angsty scene than ends up with them accepting her love and they all live happily ever after.

That is what my naïve thirteen-year-old deeply closeted mind thought was going to happen. Of course that had to happen. So, with all my angry emotions and hopeful delusions, I put on my mp3 and we rode all the way to the ass of the Earth to find my movie style origin story. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

To understand what happened next you need to know that at that point in my life I didn’t understand a fundamental aspect of my life. I knew something wasn’t normal about my family but I didn’t have enough connections or knowledge to put my finger on it. Turns out the big mystery was that my mother had severe mental health issues and my dad, my hero, was so emotionally checked out that he wouldn’t be able to do anything about it even if he wanted. Okay, so no big deal. My mom was different. She was the kind of mom that locks you in a room with her and beats you until you beg for her to stop. She’s the kind of mom that yells obscenities at you when you’re six years old. She’s the kind of mom that throws expensive China across the house because dad forgot to change the lightbulb. She’s the kind of mom that tells you all about sex and how it works and what you’re supposed to do when you’re five and your think “making love” means getting married to someone. You know, a normal mom.

She was normal to me. Weird and extreme, for sure. But she only had my best interest at heart. She wanted what was best for me. She needed to do those things because I was such a bad kid and yet so brilliant that if she didn’t control me with an iron fist, I would turn out to be a criminal or, even worse, a failure.

I didn’t know when I was listening to The Fray and being sad and angry to move -but secretly hopeful that I would find a new life in this new town- that I was walking into hell. My mother, bless her heart, was crazy. Before my teenage years, when we lived with my dad, she was her normal crazy but there were limits, or maybe I just didn’t feel things the same way. However, in the twisted version of “Welcome to Derry” there were no limits. Boyfriend was barely an adult, and a codependent abused adult at that. He wasn’t there to stop anything, if anything, he was there to prove that he was the nice big kid most of the time. Thus, my real nightmare began.

You know that sweet little story that I told you about before? Yeah, that never happened. Well, the mean girls where certainly there, but there was no respite. There was no nice boy, there were no quirky friends. There was just me realizing I was different in so many ways it didn’t seem statistically possible and there was my mom who no longer had a leash and apparently got triggered by every single teenage behavior I had. Every day it was doomsday. Every day I withdrew more and more and more until I was practically a zombie at the end of my five-year high school experience.

I was diagnosed with depression at sixteen years old. Later in life, I found out I had severe CPTSD and ADHD. I guess I really was my mother’s daughter.

I wandered through life never fitting in anywhere. I never felt like life had any meaning and nothing that I did was a good enough accomplishment. I never seemed to find anything I was passionate about. I was broken. I was no good. Yeah, like the duck. I see you, millennials.

And guess what? It got worse.

I came out. It was horrible. I was basically disowned. I dropped out of school. I got severely sick. I thought I was going to die. I wanted to die.

I didn’t die.

I’m thirty-three years old and I recently decided to pursue my passion as a writer, something I discovered I loved in that damn town when I was a teenager. It was my only refuge. The stories I created where the movies I wanted to live in. I’m also married to the love of my life. I met her at twenty-four. She’s the reason I came out to my parents and why all the drama was so worth it. She’s the reason why I finally understood that my family was definitely not normal. She also introduced me to this strange state of being called peace. Oh, and I got better. Like, way better. I’m healthier than ever, I opened a small gym with my dad about three years ago and I love that job.

My mom is still in the picture. Picture being the operative word. We mostly talk through our phone screens. We’re fine but she no longer has much access to my life.

Long story short, that movie I told you about? It sucks. My life sucked even worse for a long time there but when I finally opened my eyes, I figured out that I had golden nuggets to find all throughout that journey. Every bad experience led me on a different path and the final path always was supposed to end on a real happy ending. Scratch that. It was supposed to end on a real peaceful ending. Happiness is overrated anyway.