Last year wasn’t my best year… honestly not a lot of the years after 16 were good years for me… I tend to over indulge in everything I try. I always have to do too much, always feel like I have to prove a point. I have no idea how I am perceived by people. But I do know that this new year I want to reinvent myself. Rebrand as a new person, a different person.

I wish I had more guidance as a child. They mostly just left me alone, they in this context being my parents, for some reason they always assumed I didn’t need help or attention and that I’d figure everything out myself. It seemed as though every chance they got to not be my parents anymore they took it. Every chance they got to be distant or pass up the responsibility of raising me they took with both hands, so naturally I lived with my grand parent as a young child.

It was a full house, aunts and uncles everywhere. Cousins living in every room. Never enough space, never any privacy, we all just sort of had a way of blending… of living together. I can’t say that I’d describe us as being poor. But I remember that my parents never bought me any new things. Everything I owned was used, hand me downs from my aunts and cousins, thrift clothes, messy hair, skinny tall child. I was a walking, talking neglect case. But even then all the way back to my earliest memory… being a 9 year old. I remember just wanting my parents to love me. Wanting to have the house that my cousins had, a mom and a dad living together. Hanging out and doing family things. My father doesn’t even have my phone number.

Everybody always wants to talk about “don’t compare yourself to others” but why not… why can’t I? Why didn’t I deserve a happy childhood, why did I need to be abandoned and left, why couldn’t my parents love me? Why couldn’t I have nice clothes and go to nice schools? Even my hair wouldn’t grow. All I have are sad memories… why couldn’t I have been happy ?? Why couldn’t I have been a child?