I was born 6lbs 4oz on November 9th.

My mother never cared for gender reveals- so I was a surprise. Welcome and warm, like a gift of pyjamas on a cold day. My grandma says she prayed id be a little girl, so perhaps it was a gift or fate, or natural biology. Who can say. I was born at exactly 4 am that Friday morning, wrinkly and wet with a birth mark on my neck the same as every blood relative on my mother's side. I joked in my late teens about the theory that birth marks were how you died in a past life, and how we all must have been stabbed. No one ever laughed, telling me off for it, but I found it funny.  My father went to retrieve my big brothers from home- 7 and 4 sometime that early morning, and at the top of my childhood stairs they stood excitedly bouncing on the tips of their toes, wide eyed and waiting.

"You have a baby sister!" My father proudly said as he entered the door, knowing they'd be there waiting. My aunt beamed from behind the boys, with a boy and girl of her own. My younger-older brother grinned best he could after having his mouth frozen at the dentist, while the eldest grit his teeth and bared an awkward smile.

"That's great." He said, elongating every word like it was an inconvenience.

Bastard. I showed him, I did. He got one look at me nestled under a yellow pleated blanket, and his heart stopped and remolded to always protect. He wore a badge that said his name, followed by Big Brother beneath that he never took off as he sauntered around the hospital halls with my carrier. He refused to stop holding me- was by my side the entire time I was home, for many months.

He would not stop playing Yellow by Coldplay, and in the interim would sing Wonderful World. Both brothers were by me constantly, enticing me in games and hurriedly assuaging my wailing with their own toys. They bought me birthday gifts and would try to outdo each other by goading my attention with shiny wrapping and baby voices. I honestly preferred the decrepit doll I had in my fist instead, blank in the eyes and creepily dressed akin to a victorian child.

My mother adored me. Of course she did. I was her baby- and her baby girl. The youngest and last of my grandmothers grandchildren, her grand shields as she'd call us in our broken English. We learned Portuguese as easily as English, adoring her from the moment we woke to the moment we slept. We would shuttle our Christmas gifts to her as if they were her own, and she would warm our hearts with a bone-crushing hug and peppering of kisses. We got fed as soon as we got the all clear for solids, soup and egg yolks drenched in sugar for dipping with our full-fat bread and very quickly, the stapled family Mac and Cheese (which I have now weaselled the recipe from her to hold over my brothers heads).

My father loved me too. His little girl. Daddy's girl very quickly, bought by huge lollipops only bought from an island two hours away and sneaky nights on the porch with a bag of lays and a bottle of vinegar for the sauce. Disgusting now, but startlingly exquisite in my early years.

My younger-older brother had a magnet calendar on the fridge with every month being a new dog. One month, im unsure which, was a picture of a Springer laying on the grass. He was transfixed, insisting we got her. So my parents got him the Bible of Dogs where he could learn everything about every breed, but he never strayed from his chosen dog. The name Holly was listed beneath the picture of the dog on the calendar, and that was that. We got her on a rainy spring day. It was overcast, and we had to drive several anticipatory hours to get where we were meeting the kennel owner. I remember standing on the gravel, wide eyed as he unlocked the back of the truck and I saw my dog's whole family. A senior, with sad eyes gazing up at me from where they rested their face on their paws, two bigger puppies in one crate and a crate with a lineup of at minimum six small Spaniels. I remember feeling a pang of sadness for these poor dogs- all sequestered to the cold, dark trunk without so much as a blanket. But I was 7, and unaware of anything except the two circular dog cages being set up. The owner set a puppy in each, and my brother who had wanted the dog flocked to the left towards our Holly. Our baby. She shivered on my baby blanket in the back, my brother stroking her neck with a featherlight touch and me twisted around to stare at her in wonderment. That wonderment turned to fear, as she got older and more rambunctious and could knock me over with a twist of her head.

My childhood was one of love, light and joy. My brothers would line up outside my door to give me a payment- listerine strips most commonly- just to watch a movie in my bed with me. The other brother would stand diligently outside my door on their DS waiting their turn for the 90 minutes. My cousin, my aunts only girl, was my sister and mentor in so many ways. We spilled tears in laughter over a Farm game where the horse could talk, and awkwardly averted our gazes on the shared lounge chair during the twilight sex scene. She was the first to ever straighten my curls, and was excruciatingly patient despite how annoying I could get. My other cousin would get fed up quickly, and devolve into video games with my eldest brother while the rest of us were sequestered to watching. When my brother and cousin got their first phones, I was left out. My cousin showed me her phone though, and it made it all the better before our special New Years dinners where we would quickly get overheated in my grandma's basement suite, and on Easter we would find a ziplock of chocolate eggs and a twenty dollar bill. Never the parents though, just the grand shields, and my grandma would offer us a rare smile and twinkle in her dark eyes that promised a lifetime of adoration.

Then, I turned 13.

Ive attempted suicide several times. More importantly- I wanted the morning from 7 to a half past free, so I slept in my school uniform. I kept a butter knife stuffed into the plush of one of my teddy's, and would use that to nervously drag across my skin. Never enough to even cause a hairline wound. I was so disappointed in myself. I spent the mornings on the way to school reading fan fiction in the backseat, which I suppose is to thank for my adoration of writing now. I had a hairbrush that I would rake through the front strands and leave the back a matted nest for months. I would throw water on the back to tame the breakage, and a girl once asked me "Why are you wet?" with such horror and id insist I wasn't, despite the dark spots on my shoulders and back from where my hair laid and the tiles of the bathroom splattered with water.

I didn't have a good elementary experience. I was mute till fourth grade, whispering my answers to questions to the TA assigned to me for class questions or only speaking to my family. I was bullied mercilessly for being too big, or too slow, or too dumb. Roll around 6th grade, and I decided to use a third party texting app to target three of my bullies.I remember the day I decided, I was laying on my left side on my iPod and it clicked- make a fake instagram to torment my classmates. I used the alias 'A' since Pretty Little Liars was the hype of fifth grade, and I thought it worked. I remember standing outside, just on the edge of the group of popular kids or the soccer kids to hear them chatting about the show. Something clicked. Something different, wrong. I never said much mean, either that I was watching or on special occasion 'Unhappy birthday' which struck painfully for a young girl. I wrote a swear word on the whiteboard in permanent ink since I got to school early.

They had a cop come in, and ask the hypothetical of what if they took all our phones and knew who did it? But my iPod was at home. I smirked to myself, I remember, and some poor girl lower on the wrung than me freezed up and everyone hooked their talons into her.

It was revealed to be me. The teacher tried to have me expelled. The priest said we were Catholic and I was just a child who deserved a second chance. Not a great man, but kind in his regard to me that day. I offered up my sexuality as leverage, or apology.

I told my mother it was the evil bunny, because I was on my iPod one day and I saw this image of a fluffy white bunny looking in the mirror and seeing a distorted mirror image.

My family was starting to fall apart, too. Mental health issues I won't divulge and divorce. The usual pain of family. So I tried the butter knife. It didn't work. I found cracking the shell of my brothers shaving razor worked, and used that. Never do that, please. It has scarred me for life, no matter the tattoos or makeup or ointments. You may think you'll like it, be happy for it, not live long enough to see it- but you will live long enough, and you will hate it. A stark reminder of these kinds of cruel times.

And at some point, I downloaded Skout. I was looking for friends- though I did meet one who has been a friend for half my life, I also was abused and assaulted multiple times until horrifying things occurred. I was made to cut myself, send inappropriate things, do horrible things to myself a CHILD should not have to do. But I was threatened. I was scared.

And it changed my mind forever.

I was diagnosed with BPD, panic disorder, major anxiety disorder, and two eating disorders by 16. I fell in love in that time, with my best friend. I wrote a book about it, if you'd like to know deep detail. Anyway, I loved her from the moment we met. A phenomenon for BPD people is having a favourite person, or FP, and she was mine. From the moment I saw her, like one of those cliche stories where you just know youre in love because the world fades away. But it isn't romantic. It is torrential and tumultuous and horrid. My very life depended on her. We absued each other in many ways, her family targeted me and tried to have me shipped off to a school for the criminally insane and I was under the scope of too many adults who'd come to my home bearing gifts of letters written by their daughters blaming me for everything wrong with them. That destroyed me. My mother eventually took to burning them. We didn't have the money to sue. We didn't have the power or resources they did. So I attempted suicide in the change rooms.

After the abuse and before the perception. Pills in my body, writhing on the bench. I don't remember anything past ambulances and stomaching pumping and charcoal down my nose. I don't remember much of any of that time because I quickly turned to drugs. Cutting with refined blades. Destroying myself how everyone else ever has.

I was eventually forced, with stipulation of returning to school into dialectical behavioural therapy, group therapy and personal therapy three times a week. I was put on my first medications, and I hated it.

It saved me. It changed my brain chemistry and I got better. Not cured- you cant cure BPD, just manage it. And I didn't really manage it, but I did much better than I used to. I was still a horror to know- manipulative, selfish, uncaring, emotionally abusive. Id date people I never loved or was attracted to for attention, and threatened suicide when they left and all but physically stalked them. I called these trysts family, and abandoned my own. The people who were there and loved me because they had fallen apart and were struggling and I could not be suffocated by the pain of it all.

So I swallowed liquor and smoked and took things from people I didn't know just to dull the bluntness of life.

It was a horrible time. Until a few years ago, really. I traumatized so many people but refused to accept responsibility. I would hurt people and blame them for tiny faults in the grand scheme. I chose the wrong people to care for. The wrong people to trust.

And I spent many of those months in doctors offices, and within white walls barred off with prison doors and limited visitors who couldnt look me in the eye. I expected too much from children- that friends would visit me in a terrifying ward after doing something they couldnt comprehend. I made it their issue. I made it anyones I could. I bled, and I bled, and I took pills and cried until I was a shell of that little wrinkly, wet baby.

I hated everyone. Because I hated me.

I grit my teeth remembering these things. I have been told for years by numerous people I should write a memoir because the things I told them were unbelievable. And I don't know if I will ever be able to rip off the scab on my heart and talk about them properly, so for now I give you this.

Im still not okay. Because I have sick family members and a broken heart from too many things to count and though my tattoos cover most of the past, when its hot the past raises on my flesh and I can feel it. It's tangible and horribly in reach. But I am doing better. I went to University though I was told I never would. Ive found people who love me, as fleeting as they may be, despite being told no one would. I let people touch me despite the trauma. I take my medications- five times different from the original, but they work. And I haven't hurt myself in almost two years. I am not kind to myself, but I am lenient. I am trying. And I am so grateful for my family and loved ones and I will get better, because at this very moment I have never been so good.

I still feel like a little girl, trapped in a body I never properly learned to conduct so every sound is a jagged note. But I try.