Dear Parents,

Today is my birthday and I just wanted to tell you that I don’t know whether I can love you anymore. This is probably a huge blow to your quixotic perception of our life together. Our relationship was and will always be toxic to my well-being— I am just too scared to cut you out of my life because I don’t know if I am strong enough yet. So at least for the time being, I will go on pretending to be the happy daughter that you thought you molded and contained into submission forever and ever. Whether it was the lies you told me in order to keep me “protected” or how you purposely kept me from any sort of contact with other family members or any sort of past or heritage to be proud of, I am now suffering the consequences.

I cannot walk down the street without fearing for my life; I constantly turn around wondering if the person you told me to hide from would be right behind me. I don’t know how to have friends or be social because you would never let me be a kid— I always had to be within your circle of friends, within your life— an extension of you. You never let me grow and discover. I never knew how to think beyond the bubble that the three of us lived within. School was my only home, but then the whole incident sophomore and junior year really made me lose faith in ever finding a safe place to escape to ever again.

Sure, there were a few good times between us, but the bad times were just so bad that I cannot go on trying to believe and hope that there will be more good times ahead. Because that is really no way to live: falsely dreaming for a life where I am loved and cared for in the ways I need to be by all of the people who are supposed to love me.

Did you know that I used to cut myself? Did you know that I tried to kill myself 4 times? Did you know that the only reasons I didn’t was because I didn’t want to die knowing that you would distort the story of my life without my consent, and I didn’t want to die without knowing what it felt like to actually live. What do you think about that?

Thanks for bringing me into the world scared and thanks for making me the fucked up person I am today, on my birthday.

- Your daughter who just wants to get away, age 19