{"id":9469,"date":"2025-12-30T15:30:45","date_gmt":"2025-12-30T15:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/?p=9469"},"modified":"2025-12-30T15:30:45","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T15:30:45","slug":"here-am-i-leaving-my-house-for-prom-yes-my-house-i-shared-with-a-roommate-i-had-no-one-to-zip-me-up-i-wrestled-with-my-dress-for-half-an-hour-finally-getting-it-zipped-with-a-coat-hange","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/?p=9469","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Here am I, leaving my house for prom. Yes, MY house I shared with a roommate. I had no one to zip me up. I wrestled with my dress for half an hour, finally getting it zipped with a coat hanger.\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI see you.<\/p>\n

I see you who zipped your own prom dress.<\/p>\n

I see you who taught yourself how to address an envelope, file taxes, and sort laundry. I see you who learned every single life lesson by trial and error with no one to soften the blow. I see you who started miles behind your peers in life. I see you who brought your own children into the world alone and terrified. I see you nurturing yourself and learning to parent them simultaneously, and I know it\u2019s a bigger job than most can fathom.<\/p>\n

I see you who avoided cooking dinner like the plague, and then burned a million meals before figuring it out.<\/p>\n

I see you who carried your own toxic habits into adulthood simply because you didn\u2019t know any better.<\/p>\n

I see you who cried a million tears in some of the most treacherous trials of your life with no mother to answer to your pleas, and if those pleas were answered- matters were made worse.<\/p>\n

I see you who had no home to call.
\nI see you with a lifetime of unreturned calls.<\/p>\n

I see you who rose from the ashes, clawing and fighting like hell to surpass the statistics and become more than you ever should have.<\/p>\n

I see you, loving more than you were loved.
\nI see you, giving more than you got.<\/p>\n

I see you, working so hard on creating your own healthy emotional response programming, and I also see how it\u2019s become a beautiful, empathetic way of living despite your coping mechanisms being poisoned again and again.<\/p>\n

I see you, at a complete loss as the wrong party plays the victim one too many times.<\/p>\n

I see the despair that hits when you are successfully scapegoated.<\/p>\n

I see how many million times you\u2019ve tried and tried again to prove yourself as loveable, and I see how many times you\u2019ve offered forgiveness with no apology or changed behavior given in return.<\/p>\n

I see you, whose hurt has been scoffed at. I see you who has been the butt of every joke. I see you who was made enemy number one from day one.<\/p>\n

I see you, who has been labeled the villain after making the hardest decision of your life, the one that no daughter wants to make, estrangement.<\/p>\n

I see your pain.
\nI see your grief.
\nEven more than that, I see your resiliency.<\/p>\n

I see the longing and ache you feel when this holiday rolls around, the envy and disconnect that comes with a newsfeed full of picture perfect families and tributes to role models for days.<\/p>\n

I see you winging it, learning EVERY SINGLE life lesson on your own. I see you rewriting everything you were ever shown.<\/p>\n

I see you, because I am you.<\/p>\n

In fact, I have photo proof. Here am I, leaving my house for my high school prom. Yes, you read that correctly. I was in the car, leaving my house that I shared with a room mate. My house, where I had no one to zip me up. I did my own hair and makeup, and then I wrestled with my dress for half an hour, finally getting a successful zip from behind with a coat hanger hook. God only knows where my mother was, we didn\u2019t even share a zip code, much less a zipped dress. I hopped in my car, which you can see was chalked full of clothes because to be honest, I lived out of it half the time.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Didn\u2019t I look so happy?<\/p>\n

That was almost a decade ago now. I do not miss this broken little girl, but at the time I was working with all I had to work with. I was the only true mother I had. I know I gave everything I had in me to survive.<\/p>\n

We simply must honor how we raised ourselves, today and every day. No more hiding.<\/p>\n

I say this with genuine pride in all of us.<\/p>\n

Oh, and just for the record, life turned out great!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI see you. I see you who zipped your own prom dress. I see you who taught yourself how to address an envelope, file taxes,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9472,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9469"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9473,"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9469\/revisions\/9473"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storieshub.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}