The Shit That Built Me… and Broke Me (18-22)

Age 18–22: Escape and Aftermath

By eighteen, I was done being trapped. My body was adult, my mind still carrying every bruise, every scar, every word that had been drilled into me for over a decade. I had learned how to survive—but surviving doesn’t mean you’re free.

I started college. Got a car thanks to the saint that was my maternal grandmother. Landed more steady work, though it was in food service and barely paid anything that felt like freedom. Still, it was mine, and that craving for recognition, for validation, for just a sliver of being good enough—it never went away. I wanted out, wanted space to breathe, wanted to exist in a world that didn’t come with constant reminders that I was worthless.

But leaving wasn’t instant. I moved in and out of my mom’s house, desperate for autonomy but still tethered to the chaos I’d grown up in. One academic year I spent away from home, thinking distance would fix me. Spoiler: it didn’t. I failed out of that college and had to return, and the old patterns followed me like shadows.

Every corner of my early adulthood carried the fingerprints of years of emotional abuse, mental abuse, and exposure to violence. I realized slowly, painfully, that what I’d lived through wasn’t just “bad luck” or “bad parenting.” It was trauma, deep and fucking persistent. It shaped every choice I made, every relationship I entered, every time I looked at myself in the mirror.

Finally, at twenty-two, I moved out for good. That was the moment I cut the direct cord of abuse, the moment I said fuck you to living under someone else’s control. And yeah, it was freeing—but don’t get it twisted. Leaving the house didn’t leave the trauma behind. The mental and emotional scars came with me. The lessons I learned about fear, shame, hiding who I was, and survival? They became the armor I’d wear into the rest of my life.

This was the start of figuring out who I could be without someone constantly telling me I was worthless. It was the beginning of processing my identity, my sexuality, my trauma. But the past doesn’t just vanish because you pack your shit and move out. It clings. It whispers. It reminds you that leaving is only the first step, and the rest—the real work—is up to you.

The escape felt like the end of one nightmare, but the aftermath? That’s a whole other goddamn story. One where you finally get a chance to breathe, even if it’s shaky, and maybe, just maybe, start figuring out how to be human again.