The Shit That Built Me… and Broke Me (8-12)

Age 8–12: The Beginning of Abuse

This is where the quiet ended. This is where the real storm began.

I moved in—or maybe more accurately, was absorbed—into the world of my mother’s fiancé. A man I had never met. A man who would set the tone for the next decade and a half of my life. When I say “absorbed,” I mean it felt less like joining a family and more like being dropped into someone else’s territory, where the rules were already written and I was the lowest thing on the food chain.

At first, it wasn’t clear exactly what I was walking into. Kids don’t always recognize abuse right away. You just think adults are weird, or angry, or that maybe you did something wrong. But the signs were everywhere, almost immediately. Emotional abuse. Mental abuse. Words designed to make you disappear: “You’re worthless.” “Bastard.” “Why are you even here?” Sometimes it was quiet cruelty, the kind that seeps into your bones. Other times it was explosive—random violent outbursts that would erupt for reasons I couldn’t anticipate. A glass slammed on the counter. A door kicked open. A voice suddenly screaming across the house.

Living in that constant unpredictability teaches a kid things they shouldn’t ever have to learn. You start studying people’s footsteps. The way a door closes. The tone of someone’s voice when they say your name. You learn to read the room like your life depends on it, because sometimes it feels like it does.

At 10 years old, you’re supposed to be worrying about bikes, video games, and whether you’re going to get the last Pop-Tart. Not survival. Not how to navigate a world where the person supposed to protect you becomes the person you fear most. Not how to shrink yourself so small that maybe, just maybe, you won’t be noticed.

This is where my childhood resilience started to fracture, but didn’t fully break. I didn’t know it yet, but this is where I developed what would later feel like imposter syndrome—that gnawing voice inside that says you’re never enough, you’re always wrong, nothing you do matters. That voice didn’t just appear one day. It was built slowly, brick by brick, every time I was told I was a problem, every time I was blamed for something I didn’t understand.

School wasn’t any kind of safe haven either. If home was chaos, school was its own kind of battlefield. I was bullied relentlessly for looking or sounding different. For being feminine. For the way I talked, the way I moved, the way I existed. Kids can smell difference like blood in the water, and once they do, they circle.

I remember the whispers. The laughter when I walked by. The names. The shoves in hallways. The way teachers sometimes saw it and did nothing, or pretended not to notice. I was bullied at home, bullied at school. No refuge. No escape. Just two different arenas where I had to survive the day.

Around this time, I started seeing pornographic material. I don’t remember exactly when or how it started. It wasn’t some dramatic moment where someone sat me down and explained anything. It was more like stumbling into a world I wasn’t ready for. Maybe it was curiosity. Maybe it was loneliness. Maybe it was a desperate attempt to feel wanted, even if it was through a screen or a magazine or some half-hidden image.

When you grow up feeling unwanted, your brain starts searching for proof that someone, somewhere, might want you. Even if it’s fake. Even if it’s confusing. Even if it leaves you feeling worse afterward.

I lost my virginity sometime during this period too. The timeline is blurry. Trauma does that—it smears memories together until they feel like fragments instead of a clear story. What I remember most isn’t the act itself. It’s the confusion. The shame. The feeling that I was already too far gone from whatever “normal” childhood was supposed to look like.

At eight—almost nine—my sister was born. And suddenly the house had a new center of gravity. She became the golden child. The one who could do no wrong. The one everyone smiled at, protected, doted on. I don’t blame her for that. She was a baby. But the difference in treatment was obvious, even to a kid.

Where I was a problem, she was a blessing. Where I was criticized, she was celebrated. It wasn’t always loud or obvious, but it was there in a thousand small moments. The way people spoke to her versus the way they spoke to me. The patience she received that I never did. The warmth that seemed reserved for her.

And that contrast burned.

At one point, I had the courage to tell my elementary school counselor about the abuse. That was one of the bravest things I did as a kid, even if I didn’t realize it at the time. I sat there in that little office, probably swinging my feet because they didn’t reach the floor, and I told the truth.

I thought that was what you were supposed to do. Tell a safe adult. Ask for help.

Instead of reporting it to CPS or the authorities, she called my mom and her fiancé.

That moment sealed something inside me. It cemented a terrifying truth I would carry for years: no one would protect me. The system that was supposed to help kids like me had just handed me right back to the people hurting me.

After that, I stopped telling people things.

We moved a lot during this period—every few years, sometimes sooner. Different apartments. Different houses. Different neighborhoods that never quite felt like home. Cars got repoed. Rent went unpaid. Threats of eviction were constant background noise.

You learn very quickly what matters and what doesn’t when survival is unstable. Food, water, electricity? Those were covered most of the time. Everything else? On the chopping block. Stability. Comfort. Security. Those were luxuries we didn’t really have.

Memories blur between apartments and houses that could barely be called stable or home. Different bedrooms. Different schools. Different streets outside the window. But the same tension inside the walls.

And somewhere in the middle of all this, I realized I was gay. Around age 10.

That realization didn’t feel like freedom. It didn’t feel like some beautiful moment of self-discovery. It felt like another secret to hide. Another vulnerability to bury deep inside myself. Because the world I lived in had made it abundantly clear that being different was dangerous.

Being me—being true me—would only make the storm worse.

So I learned to compartmentalize. To lock parts of myself away. To build mental boxes and shove things inside them so I could keep functioning. Kids are weirdly good at that. We adapt because we have to.

My ACE score—the measure of adverse childhood experiences—skyrocketed during these years. Emotional abuse. Neglect. Household substance use. Instability. Bullying. Exposure to sexual content. All of it stacked on top of each other like bricks in a wall I didn’t even realize I was building.

And I carried those bricks with me, unknowingly, as baggage that would follow me for decades.

This was the first time I learned that innocence isn’t guaranteed. That the people who are supposed to protect you might be the ones who harm you the most. That survival sometimes means shutting down parts of yourself, locking them away in a box, and hoping the world doesn’t notice they exist.

This was my reality between eight and twelve: the quiet childhood I had tried to build was gone. The storm had arrived, and I had nowhere to hide.

Looking back now, I can see how those years shaped me. They sharpened instincts I still carry today. The ability to read people quickly. The ability to endure things longer than I probably should. The ability to keep moving even when everything feels like it’s falling apart.

But those skills came at a cost.

And that cost was the first real taste of what trauma feels like when it starts young, digs its claws in deep, and refuses to let go.