I Didn't Have Emotional Problems. I Had Emotions About Real Problems.
I didn’t have emotional problems. I had emotions about real problems.
That’s the sentence that took me thirty-something years to find. The labels, the family stories, the things my mother told me about who I was. I wasn’t dramatic. I wasn’t obsessed. I wasn’t jealous of my brother. I was a child responding, accurately, to abuse.
I’m writing this blog for the people that sentence resonates with. For the scapegoated daughters of dysfunctional families. For the children who got labeled the problem because someone had to be. For the adults still untangling what was done to them while their golden-child siblings keep insisting nothing happened.
I’m staying anonymous so I can be honest. My mother is still alive. My brother is still in my life. I work a normal job. I can’t write what I want to write under my real name, and I’d rather be useful here than recognizable. Some of the stories I’ll share are graphic, maybe dark, or emotionally triggering, even incriminating.
This blog is part memoir, part real-time processing. I’ll share pieces of my life and the breakthroughs I’ve had, along with the ones I’m still having. I won’t pretend to have it figured all out.
What this is: writing from inside the work. Reframes that took me years to find. Things I wish someone had said to me at twenty. Specific dynamics — scapegoat and golden child, trauma bonding to a parent, what triggers actually are, what it’s like to recognize the family script for the first time. Whatever I’m working through, you’ll find here.
If you’ve been told your whole life you were the problem, and you’re starting to suspect you weren’t — welcome. We’re going to figure it out together.