This blog isn’t for sympathy. It’s not a call for help, not a sob story, not a confessional booth for strangers to whisper prayers into.
This is documentation. A chronicle. Debug logs, if you will, from a system that's survived every voltage spike life has thrown at it. Abuse, dysphoria, neglect — these aren’t plot twists. They’re boot logs. Initial conditions. Background processes still running in low power mode even today.
I don’t remember a time before the damage. I remember the first time I was hurt and it wasn’t an accident. I remember what it taught me — not just about pain, but about silence, about invisibility, about how to fold myself down so small I’d take up less space in a world that clearly didn’t want me in it.
These ramblings, these memories, these moments? They’re not about making you feel anything. They’re about letting me speak. If you understand me better afterward, great. If you don’t, well... I never wrote this for you in the first place.
Let’s start at the beginning.
I was about four when I first understood what it meant to be punished for something I couldn’t control. My sister and I were being sent to a babysitter during the day — both our parents worked full-time, so childcare was outsourced to whoever could watch us. I wasn’t verbal yet, not really. Therapy sessions every week tried to bring the words out, but I was still figuring out how to shape my voice into something useful.
The babysitter? Not someone you crossed. She had a basement rigged into a playroom — full of toys, games, noise. But that wasn’t for me. That was for the sighted kids. For my sister. I was background static. Easy to ignore.
Lunchtime came with rules. We were herded upstairs but blocked from anywhere except the living room, kept behind a barrier like livestock. In our bowls? Soup. Vegetables. Nothing I had an issue with — I was a good eater. But while we sat down with our broth, her family hovered above us at the kitchen table, chewing on meat and staring at us like we were some kind of lesser class. That hierarchy was loud, even in silence.
But things truly shifted one stormy day. My father warned her I was sick. Accidents could happen. And they did.
During the forced afternoon nap — something I’d grown to hate, but now can see had its use — my body betrayed me. I soiled myself. Not awake. Not aware. Just a kid with a flu and no control.
When she discovered it, I thought maybe she’d help. She told me to go into the bathroom and pull down my pants. I obeyed — still trusting adults, still thinking the world had rules.
She didn’t help.
She beat me. With a wooden hairbrush. Old. Unused. Until my skin split.
That was the moment I stopped believing in god. Because what kind of god lets that happen to a four-year-old?
That was also the moment my imaginary friend stopped being imaginary. They became real. They stepped in. They took the hit. My protector — who would later become Mike — didn’t speak, didn’t need to. They just held the pain. Took the blows. Made it survivable.
Before then, they were a story-sharer, a listener, someone to sit with me in the quiet. But that day, they became a wall. And I’ve never stopped leaning on them since.
The second time I broke? It was over math.
Sounds ridiculous, right? Getting shattered over numbers and symbols and homework. But trauma isn’t logical. It doesn’t ask if the catalyst makes sense. It just sticks the knife in and twists.
I didn’t understand math. Not because I wasn’t smart, but because I wasn’t given the tools to express that it didn’t make sense. I was handed words, commands, expectations — but no clarity. I was told to try again. And again. And again. As if brute force repetition could force a breakthrough. It couldn’t.
That alone could’ve been enough to scar me. But it got worse. Because my father didn’t like that I froze when faced with homework. That I’d just sit there, hands on my Perkins typewriter or on the rubber board with the hollow tiles, unable to move. Locked. Blank. Paralyzed.
He didn’t see a struggling kid. He saw defiance. Laziness. He saw a fight he thought he could win with discipline.
One night, I told him I couldn’t do it. That I didn’t want to. That I was tired.
So he grabbed me.
By the back of the neck. One arm locked around my body so I couldn’t escape. He opened the back door and dragged me outside, still in my indoor clothes. The snow was knee-deep. He dropped me onto the patio. Shut the door. Left me there.
Thirty seconds.
Then he brought me in. Asked if I was ready to do my homework.
If I said yes? I got to try again. And freeze. And then the cycle would restart.
If I said no? Back out into the cold.
Rinse. Repeat.
Until something inside me shattered. Not cracked — shattered.
Mike came back that night too. Or maybe they never left. Maybe they were always waiting. Because someone had to keep me alive. Someone had to take the damage and keep me upright.
I was not even six years old, and I already wanted to die.
Not because I didn’t want to live — but because living like that, stuck in that loop of punishment for being unable to understand, didn’t feel like life.
It felt like failure, endlessly replayed until my mind and body simply couldn’t take it anymore.
The third time? I was a bit older. Seven, maybe eight.
It was one of those days where school wasn’t in session, but the “service de garde” was open. Think daycare lite — a holding zone where kids waited to be picked up, full of Lego, snacks, Friday movies, and occasional craft activities. Most days, harmless. Sometimes even fun.
This one started out great. A chocolatier was visiting. We were going to make our own chocolate candies. My hands buzzed with anticipation. The smell of warm cocoa and sugar was everywhere. Even lunch was perfect: pizza. Pepperoni and cheese — my favorite. Mike was happy for me. I was happy for me.
Then the movie hour came.
I hated movies. Always did. I told the adult in charge, and she gave me an out: I could join the group of kids playing outside on a water carpet — one of those slippery plastic tracks you sprint down before launching yourself into a slide.
I thought: jackpot.
Until I heard who was supervising. Her.
I don’t remember her name. I just remember the contempt. We didn’t like each other, and her dislike of me didn’t feel subtle. It was cold, sharp. Weaponized.
Instead of joining the others, I was sectioned off. Left in the sun with a tiny bucket of slightly soapy water and some sponge shapes — the kind toddlers play with in a bath. No water slide. No check-ins. No sunscreen. No towel.
Just me.
Alone.
For four hours.
By the time they called us back in, I was scorched. My skin throbbed. My mouth was a desert. I stared at the bucket wondering if I should drink from it, or dump it over my head. Both seemed equally desperate. Both felt like defeat.
Ever felt your body cooking from the outside in? No breeze. No shade. Just the sun, brutal and indifferent.
That wasn’t oversight. That was punishment. Passive-aggressive abandonment dressed up as supervision.
And it stayed with me. Because sunburns fade. But being made to feel like a burden — a problem to be isolated and ignored — that brands deeper than UV rays ever could.
Coming in part two: The Helping Hand That Became a Fist
What happens when the one adult assigned to help the blind kid turns on them? When the person meant to guide and support begins to manipulate and control? The fourth breaking point is coming — and this time, it’s not hiding behind a brush or a snowstorm. It’s dressed as help. And it cuts deeper than anything before..