I’m 17, going on 18. I’m about to go to a good college. I have prom coming up on Saturday and three friends are excited to see me. And yet, I feel filled with regret, anxiety, and insecurity over everything.

To clarify, on my mom’s side, I’m the oldest of five children, ages 6 to 14. I have one half-sibling who is 6 while the rest are full. We all live together in public housing and are black. My mom was recently laid off from her job and she has plans to sue them for discrimination (they had offered her a severance deal.) My 14-year-old sister was diagnosed with Osteosarcoma last year and my mom is planning on moving to a new state so she can have research done and get better.

On my dad’s side, I have three half-siblings; one brother between my dad and my stepmom (who is technically his ex-wife, but they’re not legally divorced) who’s about to be seven this year and I’ve known since he was a baby, another sibling who was the result of an affair he had while cheating on my ex-stepmom and was put up for adoption, and another girl who is a toddler and I’ve never seen nor met. I haven’t spoken to my dad in a year now, so that’s why I don’t know her. He has always been neglectful of my siblings and me while he and my mom were married, and would stupidly fight for custody despite not having the capacity to take care of us.

Everything my dad touches turns to shit, and after he ended up getting kicked out of housing, I lost contact with him and he disappeared off the face of the Earth for about a year, randomly getting a text from him (that I later found out was actually from my stepmom pretending to be him when they were fighting) that read “I don’t love you guys anymore, I wish I wasn’t your father.” I didn’t talk to him during 8th or 9th grade until after my “incident.”

Over the summer before I entered 9th grade, I was SA’d by a male family member. Filled with guilt, I was crippled with anxiety and would desperately look things up over and over again to relieve the guilt and fear, twinged with real event ocd. I called my dad, feeling so alone, and he asked me if the assault had been justified (what were you wearing was the response pretty much.) So I stopped talking to him again.

I’d cope by sleeping all day and being absorbed in my phone. When I couldn’t sleep, I’d use sleeping pills/aids to help, even when it wasn’t the right time to use them. I think I was taking them every other day. I was ok with dying at that time I believe. I barely ate and drank. I barely talked to anyone, including my family. I didn’t have any friends at the time since I didn’t have their numbers. I lost ten pounds. I had to do school via cyber school since my mom needed me to watch my baby sibling and because she didn’t want me to catch covid from the high schoolers.

I remember very little of this time. I don’t remember doing any assignments, I don’t remember talking to anyone, I don’t remember ANYTHING of my 9th-grade year. I remember the SA, I remember before 9th grade (although barely) but everything at 2021, I simply don’t remember. Even when I go through my phone and see the pictures, I never remember the context, who took them, and when. It’s like the entire time had been wiped from my mind.

The only thing I remember was at the beginning of 10th grade, my mom wanted me to go back to public school because she couldn’t stand me being depressed and doing nothing in the house. We went back to school shopping and she bought me some jeans. When we got back home, she made me try on jeans and I accidentally broke the adjustors trying to squeeze into them since I was overweight. I broke down crying and said I felt too ugly to go back to school and my mom just held me.

I had a terrible mental breakdown in February 2022, 10th grade (I ended up going back to public school) and started writing a suicidal letter, intending to take a bunch of my mom’s prescription pills and then swallow them, but instead, I just called a suicidal helpline and was convinced to not follow through with it. It was late at night. No one knew what was happening but me. The following week, I broke down to my mom and I was promptly sent to a psych ward for three weeks. I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder and then prescribed an antidepressant. My dad was nowhere to be found during this time. According to him, he doesn’t even remember the fact that I got SA’d.

I had lost contact with most of my friends since you can’t have your phone in the ward, but once I got out, I found that only a few people had even cared that I had been gone. I’d figured it was due to my annoying personality; I was an overachiever who knew it to make up for the fact that I had done terribly in 9th grade, so I reinvented a different persona, which ended up falling through. My mental breakdown was over Instagram too; I would post depressed/suicidal things on my story and a few people had even reported it to the guidance counselor, which they told my mom. She was livid with me. She was convinced that I had a personality disorder of some kind, and I was inclined to agree. At first, I’d begun to feel better after leaving the psych ward, but then I’d begun to wish I was dead again. I took antidepressants to cope, but it felt like it did little, if anything. Still, I ended that year with a distinguished honor roll, and with a slightly better outlook on life.

While this was happening, my ten-year-old sister started to have autoimmune problems. She couldn’t run and had issues walking, and parts of her body began to swell with fluid, effectively making her partially disabled and unable to go to school without assistance. Then, my father fell into a coma almost a month later. He had been doing drugs stupidly and they had been laced with other stuff and his heart had stopped. He was in the hospital with tubes running out of him and had almost died, but my mom was there and took care of him, despite all of the abuse he put her through. I guess she was thinking the same things I did; he didn’t deserve to die. So he and my mom started to talk to each other again (not talk talk, but stay friendly and keep in contact).

After that, I began to talk to my father again. He had broken down and apologized for how he treated me, so we maintained a relationship where we could video fall maybe four times a week, and occasionally, he’d take me out to do activities with him. In fact, he drove me to the summer camp and wished me luck. It finally felt like I had my dad back and my life was going right.

Unfortunately for my dad, he and my mom had a falling out in November 2022. He wanted to get back together and she didn’t, so they fought and my dad started his abusive behavior again. Regardless, my dad and I tried to continue our relationship like normal, even though I was getting tired of him treating the people around him poorly. I sent him a long text about how I felt like he didn’t love me and was only trying to ease his guilt, and he apologized and said he would work on it.

I went into my junior year with an overachiever mindset, nonetheless. I had my eye on two colleges; Howard University and a good state school very close to home. I had some drama with a few friends, but it was just typical high school shenanigans. I had plans to take the SAT, score at least 1200, go to Howard, and major in psychology. I was so confident in myself. I had good friends, good grades, a study plan, and a dream school. But none of those things ended up happening.

I had scheduled my SAT for May 5th, 2023. However, my 14-year-old sibling who had been complaining of her leg hurting turned out to have bone cancer that very day. The scans came back and a tumor was found. No one had been expecting it.

I called my dad after almost a month of not talking to him and he answered the phone yelling. I needed someone to take me to my SAT testing center, and because my mom couldn’t take me to the hospital with my sister, that meant I would have to stay home. I was so hoping my dad would have driven me, and yet…He thought that I was my mom. He screamed at me while he was on speaker and my mom and sister were right there.

I hung up. A few hours later, after I missed my Sats, I called him back. He said he didn’t know it had been me on the phone. I said I didn’t care. I yelled, “Your daughter is fucking in the hospital with cancer and all you can think about is yourself!” He said there are two sides to every story. He didn’t even apologize. I hung up as soon as he started talking.

A few weeks later, he called again. I asked, “What do you want?”

He got offended that I had asked him such a thing and said “I had changed.” I had always wanted my dad to love me. I had spent my entire life chasing his affections to no avail. I said he was a selfish person and I didn’t care if he died. He just laughed at that. Then I hung up and never talked to him since. It was May 2023.

A GoFundMe was set up for my sister and a lot of my friends donated/supported my family. Still, my siblings and I were forced to miss two months of school. We traveled to Philadelphia and stayed at my half-sister’s father’s house for about a month. The doctors said she would need a full 29 weeks of chemotherapy, so we were prepared to stay in the area.

After that, my Aunt made me reschedule for my SAT at the last second (she wanted me to get into Howard) and we drove two hours to take it. I scored barely above average, barely in Howard’s range. It was June 3rd, 2023. It had been a month since my sister was diagnosed with cancer. I barely remembered anything for the SAT, my brain was thoroughly filled with everything that had happened. My mom said that would be the first and last time I would be able to take it.

Between June and July, my mom, siblings and I would travel from hotel to hotel to hotel (some were clean and nice, some were dirty and dank, and one had a gas leak to which my siblings and I had to wake up in the middle of the night to evacuate out of while my mom and sister was twenty minutes away at the hospital) in Philadelphia so my sister could stay close to Children’s Hospital to get treatment.

I was left alone virtually; most of my friends, while supportive, couldn’t relate to the situation so it was awkward. I spent most of my time watching my younger siblings. I had also started to fast; I was feeling an overwhelming sense of self-hatred for my body and felt useless that I couldn’t help with anything, so I began to do 24-hour fasting daily. I didn’t have anyone to talk to apart from occasionally calling my friend from summer camp and another guy friend. Everyone else moved on without me. I couldn’t even talk to my therapist anymore.

At the end of July 2023, my mom, siblings, and I moved to a one-floor apartment paid for by Children’s Hospital. We were planning on homeschooling through my other school, but my mom said with my brother’s ADHD and my eleven-year-old sister’s special needs, we decided to just transfer to a school in the area in September 2023.

The school was top-rated. Everyone was rich/well off, the average SAT score was very high and everyone was aiming to go to Ivy Leagues. It made me feel like an imposter.

I wanted to retake my SAT, I did a bunch of AP classes and studied every day. The school was very rigorous and I had a test almost every day there. My guidance counselors knew the situation and asked if I wanted accommodations, but I wanted to seem normal, so I refused them. I signed up for five clubs, and studied for my SAT and AP classes, all to feel like I had a chance at an Ivy League school while I knew the truth deep down.

It was too late.

Meanwhile, my sister had to get leg surgery to get rid of the tumor, as well as multiple rounds of chemotherapy and physical therapy for about five months. She and my mom would be in the hospital for a few days, sometimes a week, multiple times a month, meaning that I was left alone in the apartment with my siblings often.

During this time, my mom cut contact with some of her family, namely her mom and her siblings, because they didn’t make an effort to visit my sister while she was going through this. So apart from my aunt, my mom’s two cousins, and my great-aunt, we had no support from anyone. My grades started to slip slightly, and I had frequent breakdowns because I was so drained between having to pick my siblings up from school sometimes and then watching them by myself and having no one to help me academically. It felt like I was coming apart at the seams. On the plus side, I made really good friends and we hung out all the time. They were better friends than the ones I had back at home.

Unfortunately, I never got to retake my SAT as my mom and sister were constantly in the hospital and I had no one to drive me to a center. I was forced to go test-optional even though I had desperately wanted a good score. In December, I completed my applications to my choice colleges and geared up to move back home since the lease for the apartment was ending at the end of January.

My sister was supposed to be in remission and ring the bell on January 31st, which is why the hospital stopped paying for the apartment. My mom and I had to move everything from the apartment back home by ourselves in the dead cold. It took two trips for us to get all of our stuff with my siblings. We were finally home after six months and my sister’s chemo was finally over. I signed up to do a PhD program from Howard since I had gotten accepted and it seemed all was well. If you were selected, the program would give you a full-ride scholarship to Howard if you were a humanity major. It was like the program was made for me, so I signed up for it and prayed.

However, the very next day (the day she was to ring the bell), another tumor was found in her spine, meaning that she would have to get more treatment for an unprecedented amount of time.

In February, we had to travel back and forth to Philadelphia often so my sister could get chemotherapy. My siblings and I were also not in school during the time since we moved too often to be placed with a school district.

During this time, we stayed at more hotels and had a large issue with one. While my siblings and I were staying in the hotel room while my mom was at the hospital with my sister ten minutes away, two security guards busted into the room while I was taking a shower and accused us of trying to stay for more time than was allowed. I had no idea what was happening and I assumed we were being robbed (two grown men busted in the room, so I think that’s a fair assumption.)

I tried to explain to them that I wasn’t the one who booked the hotel since I was 17, but I couldn’t since I was nude and in the bathroom, so they thought I was lying. It turns out, my Aunt had booked the hotel and the departure time had been slightly off on the website. They apologized and offered us a free night stay, but ever since then, I hate staying in hotels and got paranoid about people busting in my room.

Then in March, a lot happened. First, I was chosen as a finalist for the PhD program and was scheduled to go to DC at the end of March. Despite all my fears, I was thrilled. However, a few days later, my sister was contacted for emergency treatment as the tumor in her spine had begun to spread quickly. The next day, we had to rush to Philadelphia again so she could receive it.

Unfortunately, the doctors pushed the Chemotherapy too hard in addition to giving her steroids, so while she was in the bathroom at my stepdad’s, she passed out and I had to call 911. The ambulance came shortly after and they took her to CHOP where she stayed the night.

Shortly after, she ended up having to get back surgery for her spine. At the same time, I had to go to DC for the program, so my aunt had to take me while my siblings stayed with my stepdad.

I had an interview with the Ph.D program holders, met the other contestants, and left feeling confident. It had been a long two-day process, and they told us final decisions were coming sometime in April.

I came back to Philadelphia and stayed with my stepdad for a few days until my sister got to go home, but on April 7th, I found I was rejected from the program.

I’m not sure why, but that has been my final straw. I got into another good school and rejected Howard sure and I got rejected from other good schools, but it was something about that program that broke the camel’s back. I’ve begun to suffer from more memory issues, I forget where I am or what I’m doing frequently, I break down often and have bouts of insomnia and I have started to incessantly get showers or feel the urge to vent. I haven’t talked to my therapist in almost two months since he’s been on vacation.

I’ve started to become very depressed and antisocial. I barely talk to my friends and I don’t leave the house the brief times we’re there and not at a hospital or a hotel.

A few days ago, more scans came back for my sister and she has three tiny more tumors growing again, so it’s apparent the treatment isn’t doing its full job. Because of that, my mom wants to move to North Carolina to have research done.

The school I got into, while good, also isn’t my demographic. It’s an elite liberal arts school just ten minutes away from my house. Everyone there is rich and white and smart and I’m not. I don’t even HAVE a house, I live in community housing and my mom is currently unemployed. The financial aid they gave me was really good however, so my mom really wants me to go.

I barely had the stats to get in and the only reason I did was out of pity. As far as everyone there knows, I’m a diverse, pity applicant who’s probably going to struggle there considering my bad mental health and less than average sat scores. Also, the main reason I even chose that school was because it was close to home and now, my mom wants to move 10 hours away.

The only plus side is that I can graduate from my old school after months of being out of school. I had some work to make up since I was gone from January to late April, but at the very least, I get to go to Prom which I wasn’t expecting.

I graduate on May 30. My mom wants to leave on May 31st. I’m not sure what to do or how this is going to work out. I barely have friends, my memory is down the drain, I’m not going to have any one to support me back at home if my mom decides to go to North Carolina and as far as I know, the college I’m going to is far too good for me. I feel so overwhelmed and paralyzed that I just lay in bed all day and accomplish nothing but feeling sorry for myself.