I was never really a child in the way children are meant to be. Not fully. Not safely. Not freely. My childhood didn’t unravel in the soft, predictable ways it was supposed to. It was jagged and lopsided, full of emotional whiplash and premature responsibility. There were moments that looked like childhood—sleepovers, birthday candles, cartoons in the early morning light—but they were always laced with tension underneath. A sense that something was off, or forgotten, or about to fall apart.

Even as a kid, I knew I wasn’t just being raised—I was helping keep the structure upright. I wasn’t the one being held. I was the one holding things together. That kind of knowing doesn’t develop overnight. It creeps in slowly, showing up in small ways until one day, you realize you’re not just living your own childhood—you’re managing your parents’ adulthood, too.

One of the clearest memories of this reversal came when I was fifteen and found myself making my own eye doctor appointments. At that age, most kids rely on a parent to handle those things without even thinking about it. But I knew no one was going to do it for me. I remember looking up the number, calling the office and pretending to be more confident than I was. I tried to keep my voice steady so the receptionist wouldn’t realize I was still a child, still scared, still hoping someone else would step in. But they didn’t. My mom didn’t make the call. She didn’t schedule the appointment. She waited for me to do it first—and then, sometimes, she’d follow through. That was the dynamic: me taking the initiative, her responding. Me organizing, her reacting. Always backwards. Always upside down.

It became a pattern that played out in dozens of ways. I had to make the first move if I wanted anything to happen. I had to name the need, set it up, create the conditions—and even then, there were no guarantees. I grew up with the quiet grief of never being proactively cared for. No one was watching the calendar for when my check-ups were due. No one was paying attention to what I might need next. I had to ask. I had to push. And eventually, I stopped asking altogether.

Looking back, I realize how hungry I was for the kind of love that just shows up. The kind of care that anticipates rather than reacts. The kind that says, “I’ve got you. Don’t worry. I’ve already taken care of it.” That kind of love was foreign to me. It still feels foreign sometimes.

What I got instead was silence. Forgetfulness. Avoidance. And sometimes—worse—dishonesty. My mom didn’t just drop the ball; she actively created confusion. I remember when I was twenty and needed a routine blood-work panel. She told me we had health insurance, even gave me an insurance card, so I booked the test—and then weeks later, I got a bill for $800. When I brought it up to her, panicked, she said, “Don’t worry. I’ll handle it.” I believed her. I wanted to believe her. But six months later, the doctor’s accounting office was calling me, asking for payment. That’s how I found out we never had insurance. She lied. Let me walk into a situation unprotected. Let me take the hit. And didn’t say a word.

And the moment I turned 23? She took me off her health plan without telling me—just so she wouldn’t have to pay anymore. No conversation. No transition. Just a quiet, calculated cutoff. Like the minute she no longer had to be responsible for me on paper, she wasn’t going to be in practice, either.

That same pattern of betrayal showed up in other places, too. During college, when the school would send a refund check at the end of the year for any leftover loan money, I would usually use that to pay down debt. One year, the check never came. I waited and waited—then finally called the school. They told me it had been issued and cashed. I was confused, certain there had been a mistake. They sent me a scanned copy. And there it was: a check with my name on it, deposited with her handwriting, her endorsement. She stole it. She signed my name and deposited it into her account. I found out not because she told me—but because I had to investigate it like a detective.

These weren’t just oversights. They were breaches of trust. They were proof that I wasn’t safe—even with the person who was supposed to protect me. And when you grow up in a home like that, you learn to take over everything. You learn not to ask. You learn not to rely.

Thank God for my uncle and his wife. They quietly paid my phone bill through high school. If they hadn’t, I probably would’ve lost service—or worse, had it constantly held over my head by my mom as a tool of control. And the minute I had to get my own phone bill? I did. No hesitation. No looking back.

Because I had to teach myself everything. How to read a bill. How to set up auto-pay. How to navigate customer service, avoid late fees, and dispute charges. I taught myself what an insurance premium was. How to read an Explanation of Benefits like a puzzle. How to survive bureaucracies I was never meant to be in alone. I taught myself how to pay rent, how to budget, how to avoid overdrafting my account. I taught myself, because no one else did.

At an age when most kids are figuring out who they are, I was figuring out how to survive. I became responsible—not because I was ready, but because I had no other option. People called me mature, capable, grounded. They didn’t see the panic underneath. They didn’t see the girl Googling what a deductible meant while crying in her dorm room. They didn’t see the cost.

And yet somehow, I still believed I needed to earn love. To prove I was worth keeping. I became hyper-capable, hyper-responsible, hyper-independent. But it wasn’t empowerment—it was armor. Armor I forged out of necessity, not choice.

My dad was another layer of unpredictability. Never malicious, but never stable. He struggles with decisions, often acting without thinking. I’ve watched so many things fall apart in slow motion—and he always seems surprised when they do. There’s always a reason, always a justification. “I just need $5 for cigarettes.” “Let me make a quick score.” And I always saw it coming. I became the one who anticipated. Who planned. Who worried.

I remember being eleven when my dad’s sister sat me down to teach me how bills worked. Not to burden me. But because she could see the cracks in the system I was growing up in. She tried to hand me the tools she knew I’d need before I was even old enough to understand why. As a child, I resented it. I felt burdened with holding that much responsibility. I saw my cousins live carefree childhoods, while I worried if the rent was going to get paid or if my parents will have enough money to cover expenses. And now, as an adult, I don’t resent her for that. In fact, I’m grateful. But I also mourn what it meant—that someone had to teach me how to be a grown-up before I was even out of childhood. That at eleven years old, someone looked at me and thought, she’s going to need to know how to survive soon.

And now? Now I want to go back and protect that little girl.

I want to wrap my arms around that version of me and whisper in her ear, You shouldn’t have to know any of this. You’re just a kid. You deserve to feel safe. I want to tell her that someone should have caught her. That it was never her job to parent the people who were supposed to be parenting her. I want to undo the tension in her shoulders, the fear in her stomach, the guilt in her chest. I want her to know that what happened to her wasn’t normal. Or fair. Or okay.

I couldn’t protect her then. But I can now. I can protect her by protecting myself. By refusing to reenact what was done to me. By drawing boundaries with the people who let her down. By choosing softness where there was hardness. Stability where there was chaos. Truth where there were lies.

I will never be the kind of parent mine were to me. I know how to show up. I know how to keep a promise. I know how to listen, how to repair, how to hold space. I know how to nurture, how to stay, how to create safety. I’ve spent a lifetime learning it—because no one did it for me.

And that grief? It doesn’t swallow me anymore. It lives alongside my strength. It reminds me what I survived. What I’m capable of. And what I’ll never allow to continue.

I love my parents. But I’ve had to learn that love without boundaries is not love—it’s self-erasure. And I’ve erased myself enough. That’s why I went no contact with my mom. That’s why I limit contact with my dad. That’s why I stopped trying to fix what I didn’t break.

It’s strange to be the adult now. To carry wisdom I never asked for. To still feel grief for the kid I couldn’t be. But that grief is sacred. It’s a reminder of what I deserved—and what I will never go without again.

Because now, I get to choose. I get to choose what I carry forward, and what I finally, mercifully, set down.

And I am setting it down.
All of it.
For her. For me. For every part of me that was forced to grow up before she was ready.
She’s safe now. Because I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere.