You don’t get to decide that for me

A good childhood doesn’t leave someone spending their entire adult life trying to calm a nervous system that never learned what safety felt like. A good childhood doesn’t leave scars that still ache at 35 years old.

I grew up in a home filled with yelling. The kind that made your stomach drop the second you heard footsteps or a change in tone. The kind that made you constantly scan the room, trying to predict what version of someone you were about to get. I learned early how to live in fight or flight because peace in our house never lasted long enough to trust it.

I remember being hit with sticks (we actually had to go pick our own off the tree) and wooden spoons. I remember words being used like weapons. Names no child should ever hear thrown at us so casually, so repeatedly, that eventually we started believing them. The damage wasn’t always visible, but it settled deep inside us.

Even the smallest things were torn apart. Singing; something that should have felt joyful and free — became something to fear. We were told we sounded like “dying cows,” told not to quit our day jobs, told we should quit chorus. Those comments may have seemed small to the people saying them, but children carry words like that forever. You start shrinking yourself before anyone else gets the chance to.

And then there was the drinking. Watching someone constantly need alcohol just to function. Watching fights explode between two adults who were toxic together, while the kids in the house absorbed every ounce of tension like it was normal. It wasn’t normal.

The hardest part is that when he wasn’t around, things felt different. Lighter. Safer. But no matter how much damage was done, my mother still chose him over us. Again and again. That kind of abandonment changes a child. It teaches you that your pain is inconvenient. That keeping the peace matters more than protecting your kids.

People think abuse only counts if it leaves bruises you can photograph. But what about the constant belittling? The humiliation? The fear? The emotional chaos? What about children growing up believing they are too loud, too sensitive, too difficult, too worthless to deserve gentleness?

That kind of childhood follows you.

It shows up in anxiety.

In hyper-vigilance.

In apologizing too much.

In never feeling good enough.

In struggling to trust people.

In preparing for conflict even when life is calm.

In feeling guilty for having emotions.

In not knowing how to rest because your body was trained to survive, not relax.

And maybe the most painful part of all of this is that the people who caused the damage often refuse to see it. They say things like, “You had a good childhood,” because admitting the truth would force them to confront what they did.

But healing has taught me something important:

They do not get to define my experience.

They do not get to rewrite my memories because the truth makes them uncomfortable.

I know what I lived through.

I know how it shaped me and I know that the child version of me deserved so much better.

I’m 35 now, trying to unlearn survival mode and teach myself what safety, peace, and self-worth actually feel like. Some days that healing feels heavy. Some days I still hear those voices in my head. But I am learning that their cruelty was never a reflection of my worth.

I was not too sensitive. I was a child asking to be loved gently. And no matter how much they deny it now, that child deserved better then — and I deserve healing now.