“Stop Trying to Manipulate me Rachael.”

This is the running joke in my family, “Stop Trying to Manipulate me Rachael.” Because my half sister once started the rumor that my brother and his wife manipulated me into moving in with them after I graduated high school because they needed a nanny. Well, news for everyone my brother and his wife weren’t even pregnant when I first moved in with them and they didn’t even know they could get pregnant then.

In fact, moving in with them was the best thing I ever did for myself, getting away from that abusive and toxic filled house helped me bloom into my own person.

The last five years of my life, have come with a lot of growing and healing. I’ve realized that I deserve a lot more respect than I get from some people who were once in my life. The best decision I ever made for myself was moving away and cutting ties with toxic family members, scratch that, abusive family members.

I’ve healed a lot lately and have come to terms with the fact that situations that happened in my past, we’re never my fault. At all. How I was raised and treated, I didn’t deserve. On top of that, I know my mom would have never wanted that for me. 

However, lately I’ve been dealing with something that is hard to talk about because I feel like no one will understand. I have nothing of my childhood and nothing of my mothers. I have three things and that is it. I have an art project from the third grade, a necklace my mom gave us three girls the Christmas before she passed and screenshots of photos from family members Facebook accounts. Half of these photos, I can’t even see my moms face in, I have nothing of hers.  I don’t even have a grave site. 

It has become unbelievably hard to look at any photos from anyone’s past without wanting to sob. Last week I was helping my best friend clean out her storage unit and the more photo albums we found the more I wanted to curl up and sob. It is absolutely horrible to me that I have nothing and never will. 

I have tried for so long to not let this bother me, but I can’t keep pushing this down anymore and pretending it doesn’t bother me when it does. The fact is I know I will never have anything of my moms. Sure, I could ask, even beg, but my half sister will tell me that I’m ungrateful, don’t deserve it or that I’m not responsible enough. Actual words, she has used in the past when I have asked for things. 

Let me take a moment to remind you, my mom passed away when I was 9, I’m 23 now. That’s 14 years. I have nothing of hers. I don’t even have a death certificate. 

Now sure, I could ask for things and I have over the past five years. I’ve been told that I’m not responsible and will destroy stuff. However, every time I try to open that can of worms I get hurt worse than before. Or I get told off on Facebook about a stupid post my half sister thinks is about her when it is not and then she’ll puts my personal business on Facebook. Then my heart gets ripped out of my chest, AGAIN.

Frankly, I’m done taking abuse I don’t deserve, having everything they ever did for me thrown in my face, like them deciding they wanted to be my sister and I’s guardians and “everything they’ve done for us.” When they made the decision to care for us after our mother passed. I’m also done being manipulated and pointless drama started. 

I will forever love them. But I will love them from afar because having them in my life just is not worth my mental stability anymore. The fact of this sad reality is, I believe that the only way I will ever have anything of my mothers/my childhood is through a courtroom.