When i was around 4-7 (i cant remember), my cousin (who's around 6 years older than me) took me to the bathroom in private and licked my genitals, claiming it was for "medical reasons". He was like an older brother to me at that age and I dont know how to feel about it. I haven't thought about it at all for a while until i really started thinking about it a year ago. Im at the point where im hoping it wasnt real and some weird dream because of how little i remember. I don't think badly of him for it, he was kid, he was curious, and he probably regrets it a lot. I have a feeling it was why he stopped hanging out with me as a kid too. Ive never told anyone because I don't want anything bad to happen to him, because he doesn't deserve it. I just don't know how to feel about it. It's weird and its not like it was a traumatizing experience. it was... just a thing that happened. I really just hope i either forget it at some point or convince myself it wasn't real

My mother is an extreme alcoholic. There aren’t many days she isn’t highly intoxicated and on those rare days that she isn’t, she tries to make up for the fact that for a majority of my childhood and now teen years she’s been absent by acting more like a friend then my own mother. She never apologizes and she blames her alcoholism and other issues on me and my dad and my brother even though we’ve done nothing but try to support her, and In doing so my family has lost so much especially financially because things like detox programs and rehab are really expensive. I want so desperately to look at her like a mother figure and to take the advice of the people who say things like to “support her because it’s just a disease” but the things she says and does to my family and me specifically when she is under the influence is absolutely unforgivable. Most nights the things she’s said to me give me nightmares. I also can’t get over the fact that she claims it isn’t her fault and that she’s perfect and it’s the reason she refuses to go back to rehab and AA because she’s “so much better than everyone else there” when in reality that just isn’t the case at all and also the fact that when she’s sober she’s the one that makes the decision to put the bottle to her lips and to drink knowing that Every time she does so her family dies a little.

• June 1, 2023