One

WARNING: swearing language and material that may cause triggers.

     One thing no one seems to get is that everyone is going through something. No one, in the history of the world, has ever had a perfect life. This dates all the way back to Genesis in the bible. We could have still had it good today, had Adam and Eve not eaten the fruit. But it happened. And that's the end of it.

     Here I am, eighteen years old, still in school, no job, married, constantly taking mandatory trips to the county courthouse, and trying to keep my head above everything at once. Let me tell you, it's really fricking hard. Not one bit of my life is easy.

     I find it funny that I always used to think that my life was so hard when I was younger. It's ridiculous, really, because things used to be so much easier. I'll tell you this, though - easy isn't always good. And it wasn't, in my case.

     I never realized how bad things had been until my seventeenth birthday. I don't know why I never noticed. It was pretty obvious that my life was nowhere even remotely close to normal. My mother always abused alcohol, medication, and God knows what else. Not to mention, she was a walking hotel for chemical imbalances. I was always anywhere but home, which wasn't my choice... at least, not at first. I remember losing whoever my best friend was every single year, though I can't say I knew why. One day, my aunt brought it up and we both figured it out. Of course, no one wanted their kids in the same house as a blundering idiot alcoholic.

     This wasn't the worst, though. Losing a couple friends here and there is normal for anyone. It's just stupid that it was for that reason. But what got me was what happened the day I turned seventeen.

    When I got out of school on my birthday, I went home and everyone from church had thrown a surprise party for me. It was the happiest day of my life, and probably the best Friday I'd ever experienced. But around nine at night, my mother grabbed my husband (who wasn't even yet my boyfriend at the time), announced that she was going to get cigarettes, and returned with maybe four or five cases of wine.

     I can't even tell you how pissed off I was. My anger was through the roof. All my friends from church, all the adult ones, were drunk and stoned and off their rockers. And I had to sit through it. When they wanted to leave, I attempted to stop them and asked them to spend the night. But they left, and I damn near had a killer panic attack. I was relieved the next day when I found out they'd all gotten home safe, but I couldn't have been more frustrated with my mother. She knew it, too, because she turned it around on me and said that I was being disrespectful and rude and things I wasn't.

     That Sunday, I went to church and sang my heart out and tore down on that piano. That always helped when nothing else could. There was just something about talking to God through music that always lifted me up.

     Let me tell you, depression is a disease. It's incurable. But there are ways of coping with it, just like there are ways of coping with everything else. My ways are God and music. See, that's the only outlet for me, talking to God. And the way I talk to God is through my music. Sundays were conference days between me and Him. He spoke to me through music, too. He still does. He always will.

     When things went downhill, I went with them. I shouldn't have, but I'm only human. My mother took everything away from me. She took church, music, photography, art... pretty much anything you could think of that made me happy or let me express myself. But worst of all, she took him away from me.

     My husband is amazing. He always has been, and I couldn't ask for a better life-long friend. I don't know why she couldn't see that, but for some reason, she couldn't. I think maybe she chose not to, just because he was older. But she was wrong. I remember she always kept telling me that he was just using me or trying to take advantage of me, stuff like that, when really, he genuinely loved me. And when she cut the line between us, it killed me.

     I was shattered. She told my entire family horrible, and I mean horrible things about him that weren't even true. And of course, having not met him, they believed her. And they believed her about church, too. She'd told them that our church was a cult and that everyone who congregated there was evil. If worshipping God and acknowledging Jesus as your Savior is evil, then I must be downright sinister. It was ridiculous. My family knows the truth now, but it was hell when they didn't.

     They helped enhance her control over my contact with everybody by taking my phone almost daily, confiscating my iPod, forbidding me to use the computer, and all kinds of other s**t. Before I knew it, I had no contact with anybody. My whole world was shut away in my aunt's medicine cabinet. And this is how it was for a while... until I was forced to move back in with my mom.

     Sometimes, I really wish, and hope, even, that I was adopted by my mother and that I'm not really her daughter, the reason being that I've had so many people tell me that I'm gonna end up just like her and that there's no escaping genetics. But I'll tell you right now, I'm not her. And I never will be. I may resemble her a bit, but I would never do to my kid or husband what she did to hers.

     Seventeen is probably the worst age you could possibly get through. I know it was for me. I've never had to deal with so much hell in all my life. I know it's easy for older people to say that you haven't lived a full life yet when you're seventeen, but I'm living proof that they're dead wrong.

     When I moved back in with my mom, we fought daily. I don't have the s****y attitude that most teenagers have. You can ask anybody. I've never had a s****y attitude toward anyone unless they treated me wrongly first. And I know I'm not perfect, but I personally feel that I'm allowed to treat others the way they treat me. So that's exactly what I did.

     Everyday was a nightmare at my mother's. For a while, I didn't even sleep in my room. I slept on the couch in case I might have to make a break for the front door. I was constantly cloaked in fear and anxiety, and I almost never slept. If I did sleep, it was lightly and for a short amount of time. Sometimes, it's still like that. Except now I have someone to hold me if I have nightmares. And now, being awake is better than being asleep.

     What sucks really bad is that this is always gonna haunt me. My whole life is going to consist of trying to forget and forgive and trying to keep myself from becoming my mother. It cancels out. It leaves, but it doesn't, just like depression. It's already sank its teeth into me. It hurts like hell, but as broken as I am, I haven't fallen. And I don't plan on it.

     You wanna know what the last thing my mom said to me was? The last thing she ever said to my face? She looked me straight in the eye and told me that I was the devil. She said I was possessed and that I was the spawn of Satan. And you wanna know the last remark I made? "Well, I am my mother's daughter!"

     That was it. Just like that. I'd never said something so horrible in my life, but, to be fair, neither had she. Of all the things she'd ever said to or about me, this was probably the worst, because it was both at once. I remember when I lived with her, she would call up her "holy" friends every night and tell them how horrible I was. She would tell them what the day consisted of as far as I was concerned. I swear, she made her life revolve around creating my misery. It was like an obsession of hers, bringing me and everyone I love down.

     After months of emotional torture, I guess I kind of just had it. I had no music, no [permitted] contact with any of my friends, and, in all honesty, no life. One night I was taking a well-deserved long, hot bath, and I could hear her telling someone on the phone that I was incredibly disrespectful and that I was the most horrific excuse for a daughter. And then, when she hung up, she called someone else and created the exact same conversation. This happened about four times that night. By the time I heard the third conversation end, I'd dug a razor into my shoulder and gone over it, without exaggeration, about fifty times. That was about a two hour bath, because I had to make sure there was no more blood by the time I got out.

     I want to make this clear; self harm is never the answer. It didn't help me, and it won't help you. It'll make everything you're dealing with worse. It'll drive you into an addiction which will tear you apart, both physically and mentally. And when people find out about it, all hell will break loose.

     When my mom found out about my shoulder, I might as well have shot myself, because that's about what I wanted to do. She told everyone about it and had everyone up my a*s because of it. But I think what got me the most is when she came in my room to 'talk it out' with me. She stood there and said, "Honey, if you look close at my legs, there's scars all over the place. I cut all the time when I was your age, and I did it for attention. I think you're just trying to get my attention, and I don't want you to do that to try to get it."

     What the actual f**k? Attention. Totally, because I covered it up and kept it secret so that everybody and their dog would find out about it and attack me with threats to institutionalize me. Um, no. What I wanted to say to her, what I still do sometimes... you know, if I talked to her, is that I did it because of her lying-a*s mouth and the fact that she didn't even care what she'd done to drive me that far. And there's also the fact that she denied her faults and tried to tell me that I had an addiction to cutting, that I was an attention w***e, and that I was this demonic teenager who put her in a corner and beat the hell out of her.

     I think what pissed me off even worse is that one of my so-called "friends" was saying that I was trying to get my mom's attention, when in reality, I was trying to escape it. I think this got to me so bad because my other friends believed it for a while, which I don't understand. If you know me, you know that I'm my mom's only child. And as much as I hate being alone, I'd rather be alone than around her.

     Sorry I keep jumping back and forth, but would you like to know why it was the last time I talked to her?