Someone once asked...

“For anyone who grew up feeling unwanted, unloved, or broken by their past—how did you find the strength to start building a life of your own? This is my story of going from complete abandonment to finally finding peace. I don't really know where to begin. Perhaps with my childhood, because that's where it all started. Or perhaps with that little girl I used to be—the one who simply wanted to be loved, without understanding why she always felt like she was in the way. My parents separated when I was three years old. I first lived with my mother before she entrusted me to my grandmother, who was part of her foster family. With my grandmother, things went relatively well. I had a structure, a certain stability. But my mother was absent. I almost never saw her. There were occasional phone calls, and then visits whenever she heard I had done something wrong. In those moments, she would come to scold me, sometimes slap me, or hit me with a whip. I never really knew where she was, what she was doing, or why she didn't come to see me. I learned much later that she was pursuing her studies and having other relationships. She was building her life, but I felt like I wasn't a part of it. Then one day, she came back to get me. She had met a man, and we moved to start a new life with him and his child. Except that I had no real bond with either my mother or this man. I quickly felt excluded, like a stranger in my own family. From my very first meeting with him, something deep inside me made me uneasy. I was afraid to find myself alone with him, without really knowing how to explain why. So I kept that feeling to myself. Very quickly, things began to deteriorate. My mother suffered domestic violence, while I suffered the psychological harassment of her partner. I was told I ate too much, that I was too fat, that I cost too much money. I wasn't allowed to celebrate Christmas, receive gifts, or even watch television. I often found myself locked in my room copying lines for reasons I didn't always understand. At school, I pretended everything was fine. But inside, I was destroying myself bit by bit. I felt like I existed without being wanted, like I was present without having a real place. And then there were my intestinal problems. Since I was very little, I had suffered regularly from terrible pains. Yet no one seemed to want to believe me. My mother said I was lazy, that I was faking it. I cried in the bathroom, sometimes leaking blood, but instead of receiving care and comfort, I received reproaches. I didn't understand why no one was worried. I only knew that I was in pain and that no one seemed willing to help me. Until the day that man decided to check for himself what was happening when I went to the bathroom. He pulled down my clothes, then he touched me. I was nine years old. I froze. I couldn't manage to scream. I was afraid, I didn't understand what was happening to me, and I feared the consequences if I reacted. Then he asked me if I liked it and if I wanted him to do it again. Those words made me want to vomit. I waited about fifteen minutes before finding the courage to talk to my mother about it. At first, she didn't believe me. But when she saw the state of terror I was in, she went downstairs. Her partner hit her. I had to run to get the firefighters. After that, I was placed in a foster family. I saw my mother some weekends. I thought things were finally going to get better. But my mother committed suicide. Her death was a heartbreak. At first, I didn't understand. I wondered if I had been wrong to speak up, if everything would have been different if I had kept silent. A part of me even wondered if I should have kept suffering in silence so she would still be here. Then came another pain: feeling abandoned a second time. I discovered public posts on her Facebook where she talked about her desire to have a child, particularly a boy she would have named Noa. She explained that she wanted to finally experience the maternal bond. And me? I was never mentioned. Not once. I had idolized my mother throughout my childhood. Despite her absence, despite the violence and the moments when she had hurt me, I kept hoping she loved me somewhere, in her own way. Discovering those posts broke me. I felt like even after her death, I still had to wonder if I had truly mattered to her. I wasn't just suffering from losing her. I was also suffering from the feeling of never having truly existed in her eyes. After her death, I became difficult to live with in my foster family. I struggled with authority. In hindsight, I think I no longer knew how to trust adults. I had never truly known an authority that protects you, listens to you, and reassures you. So, naturally, I had trouble accepting rules being imposed on me. My intestinal problems were finally taken seriously after an intestinal obstruction. But the treatments weren't working properly, and these problems stayed with me all my life. Next, I was placed in a group home (foyer). It was a new ordeal. Young people who were all suffering—though not necessarily for the same reasons—were grouped together in an environment where it was sometimes difficult to find your place. I kept to myself. I was beaten, harassed, and targeted. People stole my belongings, they destroyed them. I felt like a permanent punching bag. So I ran away. I fled, but I still kept going to school. Even there, I felt isolated. I was afraid of others, afraid of what might happen, afraid of everything. I sometimes wondered why I was born into this world, since I never felt truly welcome here. Then my father came back into my life. I thought I might finally find something I had always missed: a parent I could count on. But my hopes were quickly dashed. I’m not saying my father is a bad person. What I know is that when I was doing badly, his responses often boiled down to a simple "OK." When I ran away, he would call me to ask where I was. I would answer, he would say "OK," and then hang up. I felt no worry from him, no desire to understand what was driving me to leave. I had the impression that my distress provoked nothing in him. One day, he used the money from my bank account—which came from my mother's death—to buy Christmas gifts for my half-brothers and half-sisters. For me, there was only a pack of cigarettes left, even though I had asked for novels and books. This time, I argued with him. His response was to draft an abandonment letter. Yet I had been brought closer to him geographically. I thought it would allow us to build something. Instead, I found myself in a group home even worse than the previous one. I was doing a work-study program in the restaurant industry and sometimes came back at three in the morning. The other girls ran away and caused situations that kept me from sleeping. I was still enduring harassment and violence. I was exhausted, but I didn't know how to express my anger except against myself. I made suicide attempts. I ran away from the home, but also from my work-study, because I could no longer bear everything I was experiencing. I still tried to give my father another chance. But the same things repeated themselves. I found myself alone, or tasked with watching his other children. I felt like my only purpose was to be useful to others. No hugs. No affection. No concern. Nothing. And sometimes, what hurts the most isn't even the violence. It's the lack of reaction. It's being there, in front of people who should care about you, and having the feeling that they look right through you, as if you don't exist. This period lasted until I was eighteen. And yet, my story was far from over. Adulthood: Seeking Love and Losing My Footing Like many young people, I experienced my first love stories. But they were marked by deceit, lies, and disappointments. One of them lasted five years. Five years of violence and horrors I never could have imagined. This time, I was the one being beaten, sequestered, and locked in a relationship that was destroying me. This man drained me of everything I had left. He even tried to make me believe my mother was still alive. And I believed it. When you've spent your life hoping to find the love of someone you lost, it sometimes takes very little for that hope to come back to life, even when it comes from someone who is hurting you. I wasn't allowed to freely use my phone, play, or enjoy things I had never been able to experience during my childhood. I had to run the household, endure his crises—sometimes all night long, until he finally fell asleep, intoxicated. He cheated on me, made me doubt myself, and tried to convince me I was crazy. I tried to leave several times. Every time I fled, I went far away. Yet a few days later, he would find me with his truck. He would follow me in the streets, harass me, and make my departure look like the behavior of a troubled woman. Four times, I tried to leave. The fifth time, I understood I needed a different strategy. I stayed calm, played along, and made him believe I had to work with my boss. Meanwhile, I rented an apartment and organized my departure. Then I discovered I was pregnant. I didn't want him to know the child was his. I pretended I had cheated on him to successfully distance myself. When he realized I didn't want an abortion, he threatened to slice open my belly. For the first time, I felt a fear so intense that adrenaline took over. I defended myself, broke his nose, and left with my belongings. I filed a complaint, with support. After that, I didn't hear from him again. But a new ordeal awaited me. Becoming a Mother When I Had Never Learned How to Be Loved I gave birth to my daughter at a time when I was deeply broken myself. I weighed 42 kilos for 1.70 meters (approx. 92 lbs for 5'7"). I was fainting in stores. My body could no longer keep up. The social services supporting me grew worried about my condition, and adoption was ultimately decided for my daughter. At first, I didn't want that decision. I didn't realize how fractured I was in every way. I knew I had been depressed since childhood, but I didn't yet understand the full magnitude of the wounds I was carrying. When the possibility of my daughter being taken away became real, everything I had lived through resurfaced. I thought back to my own childhood, my mother, the abandonment, that little girl no one had known how to protect as she needed. I didn't want to repeat my mother's story. I didn't want to subject my child to what I had suffered myself. I wanted to do good, but I wasn't well. I was a young woman who needed help, care, and support, precisely when she had to learn to become a mother. The adoption was decided fifteen days after I gave birth. For the next six months, I felt like nothing more than a lifeless corpse. I didn't understand. I had made mistakes, yes, but I had never wanted to hurt anyone. I kept to myself, stayed alone, trying to understand why every time I tried to find a little love, something ended up being snatched away from me. Why did I have to lose something else? Why did I feel like I didn't have the right to be happy? I ended up wondering if the problem was me. If I was a monster. If I should never have been born. These are terrible thoughts to carry, but they had become my own. I no longer saw a future. I had no more pleasure. Even my passions disgusted me. I would sometimes turn mirrors around because I couldn't stand my reflection anymore. I believed neither in sincere friendship nor in true love. I was never someone who sought out multiple affairs. I simply wanted to be loved. Once. Just once in my life, without having to pay for that love with suffering, without having to make myself useful, without having to endure the unacceptable just so someone would agree to stay by my side. Even if that love had only lasted a moment, I believe back then I would have already been grateful to have known it. I never fell into delinquency or drugs. I also stopped drinking at eighteen because I became suicidal when I drank. I wanted to live. But I no longer knew how to live with that void inside. Depression: Surviving Without Truly Living My depression worsened until a diagnosis of severe post-traumatic depression was made. The traumas had accumulated, sometimes repeated, to the point where I struggled to imagine a way out. My body and mind seemed to have given up together. I was losing weight and had a very hard time putting it back on. I could go through periods of hypersomnia where I slept up to seventy-two hours without waking up, followed by others where insomnia and incessant thoughts kept me from finding rest. Sometimes I was so absorbed by my thoughts that I no longer even heard what was happening around me. I no longer wanted to go out, meet people, or maintain friendships. I gradually locked myself into a solitude that seemed less dangerous than human relationships. Then something changed. The thoughts fell silent. But the anger did too. And the sadness itself seemed to have exhausted itself. Only an immense weariness remained. "I knew it." "I was sure of it." "I was right." Everything seemed obvious to me. I no longer expected anything, and I ended up preferring my solitude to the relationships that had hurt me so many times. I had learned to spot inconsistencies, hidden intentions, little details that didn't add up. I had developed a deep mistrust, because trusting had too often cost me dearly. Did that make me stronger? No. It mostly taught me to accept everything, even the worst. I had confused the lack of reaction with strength, silence with peace, and passivity with the ability to endure life. In reality, my brain was exhausted. It was running on autopilot. I was surviving. I got up without always knowing why. I did things without understanding what was driving me to do them. I felt like a puppet in my own body. I was still here, but I no longer really knew how to be present in my own life. Understanding Why I Always Fell Back into the Same Relationships I then had a short-lived relationship that left me even more disillusioned. This man cheated on me while I was paying the rent, bills, and all expenses alone. I even funded a train ticket for him to supposedly go see his uncle after his father's death. He ended up coming back with a woman he presented as his cousin—though she wasn't—and made her sleep in the same bed as me. I had been stripped of my money and my trust. But this time, I left. Without a scene, without a big argument. I took my belongings, my cat, and went to stay with someone who took me in. It took me a year to rebuild myself and start asking the right questions. Why did I always fall back into the same patterns? Why did I give so much to people who gave me so little in return? I finally understood something. Since childhood, I had been desperately searching for sincere love. I had grown up with absence, rejection, and the feeling that I had to earn my place. So, out of a chronic lack of love, I had clung to people who seemed capable of filling that void. I wasn't necessarily looking for the right person. I was looking for someone who would silence, even temporarily, the pain I had carried forever. And when someone gave me a few scraps of affection, I tended to hold onto them, even if everything else made me suffer. Looking back at my four relationships, I realized I hadn't truly received the love I hoped for. I had mostly been used, cheated on, or treated as a secondary person—like a tissue you throw away when you no longer need it, like a third wheel in someone else's life. This realization hurt me, but it also allowed me to begin understanding my story differently. I was not condemned to endlessly repeat the same patterns. I could learn to recognize them and no longer accept them. Meeting Someone Without Having to Hide My Wounds Then I met my current partner. Right from the start, we were honest with each other. I told him about my life, my wounds, and the things that had scarred me. I told myself that if he got scared and left, then he simply wasn't the right person. He didn't. He had his own story, too. He was adopted and had been through difficult relationships. He, too, had known depression and periods where he stopped taking care of himself. At first, our relationship wasn't easy. We both had our defense mechanisms, our fears, and habits acquired from our past relationships. We had to learn to understand each other without letting our wounds make decisions for us. But there was something different. There were no insults, no blows, no judgment. We tried to understand each other, to talk, to acknowledge our flaws, and to repair together some of the things life had broken inside us. Little by little, we built something healthy. Today, we no longer function like two people who have to fight to be heard. We communicate. We listen to each other. We try to understand what the other is feeling. I feel loved. And above all, I no longer feel like I am giving my love into a void. He is affectionate, attentive, and present. He worries about me, accompanies me, and helps me when I need it. Sometimes, some people might find that suffocating. I find it reassuring. Because, for the first time, I do not experience someone's attention as a threat or as something I have to earn. I can simply receive it. Today, we are expecting a little girl, Stella, whom we already love immensely. And when I look at our life, I feel something I long thought was inaccessible: the simple happiness of having a home, a partner to move forward with, and a child we are waiting for together with love. I don't claim that everything is perfect. My past doesn't simply disappear because I met a good person. The wounds we carry since childhood do not vanish overnight. But today, I am no longer alone facing all of this. We are building our cocoon, our family, our way of loving. And we are trying to do things differently. The Family I Never Had, I Want to Build For a long time, I believed I was born to be abandoned. I believed I wasn't good enough to be loved, that I was the problem, that something in me explained why so many people could hurt me or remain indifferent to my suffering. I spent a large part of my life looking for a place in families, group homes, and relationships where I felt in the way. Today, I understand that it wasn't up to a child to earn protection. It wasn't up to me to find the perfect words to make an adult take my pain seriously. It wasn't up to me to bear the consequences of the violence I had suffered all by myself. I was a child. I needed to be loved, listened to, cared for, and protected. Like all children. And even if I didn't receive all of that the way I needed to, that doesn't mean I didn't have the right to it. I don't want to pretend that everything I went through made me stronger. Some things broke me. Others left me exhausted, mistrustful, and incapable of believing that life could still offer me something beautiful. But I am still here. I have learned to face my story, to recognize some of my mechanisms, and to understand why I had for so long confused love with sacrifice, presence with attachment, and suffering with something one had to accept in order not to be abandoned. I cannot change my childhood. I cannot go back in time and take that little girl in my arms to tell her it wasn't her fault. I cannot fix all the injustices she suffered. But I can try to offer her, today, a life where she will no longer have to fight constantly for the right to exist. I can build a different family. I can love Stella without asking her to fix my wounds. I can be present for her, learn alongside her, and offer her what every child needs: safety, affection, a listening ear, and the right to be herself. I am not a perfect mother, nor am I a woman who has healed everything. I am a person who has lived through a lot, who keeps moving forward, and who wants to do her best with what she has learned. And I believe that is already important. Because sometimes, the family you never had, you have to manage to build yourself. Sometimes you have to cross a lot of solitude before meeting someone with whom you can finally feel at home. Finding that person can take time. Learning to trust them does too. But it remains possible. So, if I had to pass on a message to someone going through hardships, it would be this: Do not lose hope. Or lose it, if that's all you have left to do for the moment. You have the right to be exhausted, to no longer believe in it, to not know how to go on. You don't need to be strong every day. Sometimes, you just need to hold on a little longer, until the moment something changes. An encounter, an outstretched hand, a realization, or simply the day you begin to understand that you deserve better than what you have known. For a long time, I believed I wasn't cut out to be loved. Today, I am learning that sincere love exists, that it can be gentle, reassuring, and reciprocal. And if I have one thing to take away from my story, it is that my past is a part of me, but it doesn't get to dictate my entire life. I did not choose what I endured. But today, I can take part in building what comes next. And for the first time in a long time, I can't wait to find out what happens next. I hope this testimony will help some of you, or perhaps people who will recognize themselves through these lines. Stay strong.”

Someone answered with kindness...

this is tooo tooo long tbh

Wandering voices — answers no one has read yet