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this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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I was born into an impoverished extremist right wing family. I enlisted in the military back when DADT was a thing. I was disowned as an LGBT teenager, and medboarded out of the military after being committed to inpatient facilities multiple times. After that, i was homeless for a couple years, living out of a car and then a backpack.
I finally ended up in this little town in Georgia, got a job at a little retail store, and moved into a trailer with one of my coworkers. Her friends kind of adopted me and i felt accepted for the first time in my life. We were all broke kids, but i told them i was going to be a millionaire by age 30. I was still pretty emotionally unstable and eventually moved on from that friend group, but it gave me the hope i needed to rebuild my life.
I slowly built a career for myself after that, working 70-80 hours a week for a couple years, until i had my foot in the door. It got a lot easier after that. I didn't quite hit my goal by age 30, but I'm close. I founded my first company at age 28, and raised a 10 million series A. My company is now worth 60 million on paper, but of course that's meaningless until we IPO. But it's profitable, and in the meantime, I've adopted a little family of people like me, and built a comfortable life for us. Life is good, and I'm content.
Now that you're pretty wealthy has your family decided to become your best buddy now?
No, they refuse to speak to me to this day. My gf's family called her to wish her a happy birthday last week, and i cried quietly wishing mine did that too.
Happy Birthday. Better late than never. We are here for you.
(Very?) Belated happy birthday! Your family are the people youโve chosen to accompany you at this stage in your life, the other one, the one you simply happened to be born into, donโt deserve you. Lots of hugs!
Happy belated birthday girltwink! ๐ ๐
The older I get and the more people I meet and lives I understand, the more I understand that true family are the ones you choose. You can't help who you are born to. It's nice to get their love and approval, but in the end, if they don't accept your choices or even you, that's not on you. That's on them. If you've done your best to be a good person, then they should have no reason to turn you out but for their own selfish reasons. It may never stop hurting, but over time, I hope you can find that comfort from your chosen family that chose you back. I won't soapbox too much about it though. I hope you had a great birthday. :) Big hugs from an internet stranger!
As a side note, talking to a therapist can really help you accept things if you ever want to give it a try.
Aww, thank you for your kind words JighlySackles ๐ I'm doing ok, all things considered. It still hurts a little, but yes therapy has helped.
I'm glad you're feeling mostly alright. That's a good place to be. Sometimes that's the best we get to be for a very long time too.
I think some things will always hurt. But it gets less. And it's not so crushing. It just takes time.
A great analogy I heard once is to imagine you have a box which represents a past source of grief, and in that box is a button and a ball. As we go about life, the box gets jostled and bumped by things that remind us of our grief. This moves the ball around and every time the ball hits the button it brings on the feelings of grief and sadness. The size of the ball shrinks with time though. When we first go through something traumatic our ball is very large, taking up most of the space in the box, so very small events bump the button, and it's going to hit that grief button a lot at first. But over time as the ball shrinks. As it gets smaller, the jostling and bumping doesn't make the ball hit the grief button so much. It might even graze it without pushing it. We may always have that box, and that's ok. And that button may get to the point it gets hit once after 20 years. But that's OK too. The grief gets less with time. ๐
You are super cool, thanks for your story.