Feeling Low… Life is hard.

Feeling low has been a routine in my life. I would feel really low sometimes and then feel okay or don’t even think about it other days. I’m not sure exactly why I have these days all the time. I think it might have something to do with not thinking for myself on days that I’m happy. Does that make sense?

There are days where I would just go with the flow and then the next day I would wake up with regret and this is on a repeat, where I do what others want and don’t heed my own thoughts and then tomorrow I face the consequences of what I have done. I feel like my mind is in a constant battle of what I should do and what I shouldn’t do and I have a hard time getting to the best solution because of my family’s culture of “do what’s best for the family” kind of way. I know that I have come a long way from the days where I was just a bitter person to who I am today and I am still slowly recovering to become a better person every day, but there are days where I would feel the crippling shame of what I have done in the past and I would relive it for days.

I feel like my family line has been screwed over and over again through the downward abuse of my grandparents. From my grandparents to my parents, they were abused immensely and then to us. The generation that are first-generation immigrants in the U.S. It’s hard to come up for air and realize that I am the one breaking the generational curses and that’s why it’s so hard everyday fighting for what is right for me instead of others.

I am a former foster kid. With my siblings not foster kids and still living at home with my parents. My dad sexually abused me when I was 11 and that was the only reason I was taken out of the home. So my siblings are living at home with a sexual predator and they ignore the fact that they are. They blink it away like it’s no big deal. I remember one time when the topic of what my dad did to me came up, my sister referred to the issue as “That’s between my sister and my dad.” I remember being in shock that my own sister said that, but then how surprised can I be when I later find out that my sister has been abused starting from my grandmother sticking her head in the toilet, at 2 to 3-years-old.

It’s been really hard to stomach all of this and be a foster care kid in the U.S. While you are in foster care if you meet certain criteria you would be able to go to college for 4 years all paid for, but as for me someone didn’t file the paperwork all the way, so I was skipped out on a free 4-year education.

It’s been really hard to cope with all of these and be a normal human being in a society where I have to explain to people all of this and they would return with “Wow, my childhood was good.” I felt invisible, I felt my pain was there, but nobody could see the actual hurt I have endured. When I was younger I wished that people would just understand where I came from and all the hard times I went through which has made me a harder human being to be around. But no one would get it.

The last 5 years of my life from the time I was taken out of my home to now, I have started to learn so much more about myself and I have started to grow into a less and less bitter person and every minute that I am out of the home I’m grateful because I don’t have to face my very crude and abusive parents anymore. In which my siblings still have to.

I have been living life as a young professional now, but it seems to me that everyone in my generation is having just as hard of a time as me trying to get by and figure out how to live and be an adult. One of the things that someone said was “Macro Patience, Micro Speed.” Which I totally heed with because “time heals all wounds,” I don’t believe it will heal everything but things will absolutely get better but only slowly so slow that sometimes you don’t even know it’s happening until it hits you like a ton of bricks.

Good luck to everyone facing challenges and obstacles that have been just as hard as mine. Being screwed over by people or the system is a really hard task to get over so be kind, always try to be an aura of positivity or the best of it you can be.