(A follow-up to “When Your Child Is a Psychopath”)

When things are life or death, the simplest moments — the ones others might overlook — become milestones of survival.

I wasn’t a psychopath as a teenager. I didn’t take joy in hurting others. I didn’t feel proud when someone cried or angry when they were kind. But something happened around age 14. A shift. A fracture.

The girl I became — the one I carried until about 21 — was angry, fearful, desperate, confused, anxious, depressed, and constantly dismissed. That girl was traumatized. She was being sexually, verbally, and emotionally abused. She was neglected. And no one saw her pain for what it was.

Instead, professionals labeled her: selfish, delusional, too emotional or too cold. They called it Factitious Disorder. They never connected the dots — that she had an undiagnosed brain injury (a periventricular hemorrhage), a trauma response, and was navigating adolescence under immense distress.

That girl was me.

But I don’t know her anymore.

It’s surreal. I look back and feel like I’m trying to remember someone else’s life. I use “she” even though I know — with a gulp — it was me. We used the same body. The same brain. But I do not recognize her thoughts, her reactions, her rage.

I now live in the aftermath of who I once was. And I carry the damage she left behind. Every so often, I wonder — did we ruin my future?

During those years, no one focused on school. Teachers, social workers, caregivers… they just wanted me to stay alive. One said:

“School’s not the priority. She’s not capable of it. Just keep her safe.”

And that was fair. At the time, even I didn’t care about surviving. I self-harmed. I was vocal about wanting to die. I destroyed things I now mourn. Things I’ll never get back.

Yet here I am.

I’m trying to live — even if I don’t fully understand how I made it this far.