An open letter to my mom.

Someday I’ll send this to her but for now I’ll post here.

I’m done pretending my childhood didn’t affect me becuase it did

For a long time, I minimized everything. I told myself it “wasn’t that bad,” that other people had it worse, that I should just get over it. But the truth is, growing up in that house hurt me in ways I’m still dealing with.

You were supposed to protect me. Instead, I learned how to survive you. I learned how to stay quiet to avoid conflict. I learned how to read every shift in mood so I wouldn’t say the wrong thing. I learned that peace could disappear at any moment. That home wasn’t always safe; it was unpredictable.

And that does something to a kid.

It doesn’t just go away when you grow up. It turns into anxiety, into overthinking, into shutting down when things get hard. It follows me into my relationships. It shows up in the way I struggle to communicate, the way I pull away, the way I constantly feel like I have to protect myself.

That didn’t come from nowhere. That came from how I was raised.

I needed stability. I needed to feel safe. I needed to feel like I could be a kid without constantly being on edge.

I didn’t get that.

And I’m not going to keep protecting you by staying silent about it.

You may not have intended to hurt me. You may have been dealing with your own issues. But intention doesn’t erase impact. What I went through was real, and it shaped me.

I’m the one who has to live with it now.

I’m the one trying to unlearn survival mode. I’m the one trying to fix the parts of me that were built just to get through that environment.

And it’s exhausting.

I’m not writing this to argue. I’m writing this because I need you to understand that what happened mattered. It still matters.

I needed better from you.

And I didn’t get it.

That’s the truth.