Family trauma doesn’t define you. You do.
ONE OF THE BEST DECISIONS I MADE FOR MY MENTAL HEALTH WAS DETACHING MY IDENTITY FROM MY FAMILY. THIS IS MY SURVIVAL STORY.
By Hayli Parry
(Matteo Di Lorio / Unsplash)
Family is something that brings us all together. Every single person usually has at least two immediate biological connections and those connections are often fostered into emotional connections, or what is often deemed a normal family unit. Most children, like me, are raised with the constant reminder that family is the most important and loyal aspect of life. I mean, blood is thicker than water, right? That must be why drowning amongst your family is so much harder.
I was raised in the middle of an emotional war. My original family unit consisted of myself, my two older brothers, my mother, and my father. My parents divorced when I was nine years old. It was an ugly divorce that consisted of 911 calls, court meetings, and lots of tears. My brothers chose my father, both being in high school and old enough to decide who to live with, leaving me behind to split my time and myself between my parents. My parents, who I once saw as the blueprint for love and happiness, were completely consumed by their hate for each other, and my brothers were joining their fight. Every day was another battle, and every word dug my family's grave deeper.
I hoped that this would quickly pass, that the adrenaline of signing the divorce papers would soon wear off, and although they wouldn’t be together, my time spent with each of them would no longer be filled with discussion about how much they hated one another. But, as the years passed, and the war kept raging, my mental health declined. I was only eleven years old and yet I was failing school, withdrawing from friends, and my brothers became two strangers.
It continued like this for years, my father, and brothers on one side, my mother on the other, and me somewhere in the middle, in my own no man’s land. I was still heavily plagued by mental health struggles, my anxiety so severe that I could hardly function in public spaces, my depression worsening to the point that I struggled with suicidal ideation and even began to self-harm, and when I reached the age of fourteen, it somehow got even worse.
My brothers had taken a page directly from my parents’ book. They started to absolutely detest each other without any logical reason at all. One week they were carpooling together, attending concerts, and going on double dates, but the next they were breaking each other’s noses, damaging each other’s cars, and attempting to force each family member to choose between them.
This war, alongside my parents, continued for years. I was once again stuck in no man’s land, a place that I had begun to feel unacceptably comfortable in. Each brother took turns explaining to me how terrible the other was and how he deserved an agonizing life. All this negativity seemed far too similar to my parents, and all these venomous words spit out by each of my family members only worsened my mental health, pulling me back down every time I came up for air. I was drowning in front of my family, I was drowning because of my family, and yet all they did was stand on the shore and watch.
Every day I felt as if I carried the entire world on my shoulders, and I worried that if I took a breath, or closed my eyes, it would all come crashing down. My parents still despised each other, but I had learned what not to say in front of each of them, as well as how to hide the parts of myself that they each viewed negatively. I constantly wondered if anyone knew the real me, or if there even was a real me. My brothers’ war was tense as ever and had become so violent that every time my phone rang, I was expecting the news that one of them was dead. I continued to live like this, picking up my family’s mess at the expense of my own happiness, until my sixteenth birthday, when I got the call I had always expected, but never wanted to receive.
When I saw my father’s name appear on my phone, I was anticipating a kind happy birthday message, something I had been looking forward to receiving from him all day. Instead, I was met with the words “there’s been an accident” and I knew in my gut that one of my brothers was hurt, or dead, or both, and I was almost positive it was at the hands of each other.
My middle brother ran over my oldest brother in what I believe was an attempt to murder him, but that he claims was an accident. Thankfully my oldest brother survived, although he had physical, mental, and emotional wounds.
I spent my sixteenth birthday bailing my brother out of jail. I had never had so many emotions swirling around in my mind. I felt anger, sadness, disappointment, anxiety, desperation, practically any emotion you could name buried itself deep inside my stomach. I had always wondered when I would hit my breaking point, and in the silent backseat of my father’s car, pulling out of that parking lot, I realized that I was already broken.
My whole life up until that moment had been sucked away by my family, their own self-hatred, anger, and toxicity had seeped into me. I was done allowing them to have such a drastic effect on my mental health. I couldn’t physically bear any more of their negativity inside myself.
I decided at that exact moment that although I was raised to believe that family is above all else, I could no longer let it be above my own happiness. At that exact moment, I realized that the most difficult part of my life, the thing that weighed down my mental health the most, was disguised as my support system.
Family can be the most important aspect of life, but family should never be prioritized above the importance of mental health.
This piece was written and shared during the IDONTMIND Writing Workshop. Learn more about our free, nine-week course and be the first to know about the next workshop here. Visit Mental Health Connecticut’s YouTube channel for a video version of Hayli’s story.
Hayli Parry is an avid reader, writer, and poet. She currently studies full-time at Utah Valley University and plans to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in 2024.
