furiousgoldfish:

tips for running away from home, from someone
who did that:

• don’t tell your abusers what you’re up to;
  they will put their energy into sabotaging you, for example, I was fairly
  clear about intending to move out, and my parents took great effort to convince
  me that it’s absolutely impossible for me to survive on my own, tried to take
  away my money by any means necessary, even getting me to sign a contract with a
  bank so i wouldn’t be able to access my money in there (luckily i didn’t put any
  of my money there to that scheme failed), and in the end they tried to convince
  me that any money i made freelancing will be stolen before i ever see it, and
  tried to prove that the money doesn’t even exist. it didn’t stop me but sure
  made me a lot more miserable than i should have been
• don’t let your abusers know where you are,
  they will try to get to you; i ran away after an extreme violent outburst my
  parents threw at me, there was death threats, injuries, broken mobile phone i
  tried to use to film the violence, door taken away from my room, it was enough
  for anyone to get the hell away from a place, and when my mother found out my
  first hiding location she came to tell me that i have to think about why all of
  that was my fault. again, making me a lot more miserable than i should have
  been.
• first few days (weeks) you’ll be in state of a
  shock, especially if you’ve been unsure if you’ll be able to get away; i
  couldn’t determine if i could function at all after escaping, my head was
  spinning, i had breakdowns every other day convinced that i’m about to die, it
  was due to the heavy brainwashing that made me believe that i was dead if i
  were to run away, there was no way to escape the fear and the torture of it, I
  hope not everyone is brainwashed this way but I do see a lot of people doubting
  if they have what it takes to go thru life without parents, and the answer is
  yes you do, you got it all.
• your abusers will react in the way that will
  hurt you most; i know of some parents who aimed to injure their run away kid by
  pretending they could live just fine without them, like the
  child was a nuisance to their life and they were better without it, and in that
  case it was the most hurtful and cruel thing they could have done, since the
  child slaved their life away for the sake of acknowledgment and attention from
  parents. In my situation however, my parents kept acting their entire life like
  i was a huge burden and worthless waste of space, and it made me feel like if I
  were to run away they would let me be and pretend I never existed, and I would
  be free. However I was wrong. They contacted my friends, parents of my friends,
  entire outer family circle and anyone they knew to be in contact with me to
  make me feel guilty for leaving and tell me i was wrong and should come back,
  they found the person who sheltered me and convinced even them to tell me to
  return (this was the person who saw me after the violent attack, while i was
  shaking and out of my mind with fear, they saw me hide under the bed constantly
  convinced i was about to be killed, and this person was still convinced by my
  parents that i should go. back. to that.), they made their friends add me on
  facebook and request information about my whereabouts until i had a panic
  attack and deleted facebook, they kept on finding means to contact me and storm
  me with guilt and shame even after i cut every means of contact i knew, they
  still sometimes barge into the house of my friend demanding to get in contact
  with me, demanding that letters, food, even money be given to me that they
  leave there (it took me a while to figure out they would never ever give me
  money for the sake of my survival, but would absolutely use money to control
  and sabotage me) – all you can do is in any case, to be ready for the worst. Be
  ready for whatever you fear the most they would do – because they will do that. Make plans of resistance, plans of keeping yourself safe thru it, plans of retreat and safety if what they do makes you suicidal.
• when you’re free, the trauma symptoms will go
  berserk at first; your entire system is experiencing protection from abuse for
  the first time (protection is abusers not knowing where you are or how to get
  to you), and this means you’ll finally be free to actually feel all the fear,
  panic, pain, anger, exhaustion, torture and everything else your body has been
  holding in all this time for the sake of surviving with abusers around. After I
  settled in my hiding place, I could barely get up for 8 months, panic attacks
  were almost daily, i couldn’t sleep from how strongly i felt i was about to be
  killed and punished for escaping, flashbacks and nightmares wouldn’t stop,
  chronic exhaustion and chronic pain were so bad I could barely move, it was
  draining my life energy just to make food for myself, and i could often not
  leave the place and go outside at all, and would get anxiety attacks around any
  kind of people. Only tip I have is to not feel guilty for resting. Don’t feel
  guilty for taking your time to recover, you need it, what is happening to you
  at this moment is recovery from a war, that lasted all of your life. You are
  wounded and tortured and you need rehabilitation and as much rest as you can
  get. I know it doesn’t feel good to just lie about and not get anything done, I
  know the guilt of not being productive, but lying down for almost a year made
  me feel shameless about resting and taking my time. It also helped me realize
  that causes of my chronic pain and chronic exhaustion were all the things i was
  forced to do against my will, basically anything abusers forced me to do,
  anything school related, and anything i was doing for well being of others and
  not myself. Resting allowed my natural will to do things to awaken, even though
  it took long, I now don’t have to force myself to move anymore, i can get up
  without thinking about it, doing things i want to do makes me more energetic
  rather than exhausted. So, no more doing things against your will, for anyone.
• you will slowly find out just how much your
  abusers lied to you about the world. and trust me they lied to you a whole
  fucking lot. you will find out all the threats they made were empty, all their
  opinions and insults sent at you baseless and imaginary, all the doubts they
  planted into your mind, will start sounding ridiculous and stupid. A lot of
  abusers try to make their children incapable of making their own choices and
  fighting their battles and gathering knowledge about the world, so they would
  always feel like they can’t do anything on their own, and would turn to their
  parents for guidance, however, abusive parents while making choices and
  guidances for you, only thought about themselves and whatever is convenient for
  them, and not for you, which by default, makes you the person capable of making
  better choices, because for the first time, choices would be made for you, by
  you. Control over your life will feel good once you realize it’s not hard or
  scary, but gives you the power to do what you please, without having to respond
  to anyone.
• there will always be people who will try to make you doubt your decision and blame you and take your abuser’s side, those people are wrong, and they are your enemies. From this point on, anyone who tries to make you doubt your decision to save your life is an enemy. Nobody should ever try to make you doubt if you could have done anything else but pick yourself up and save yourself from abusive environment. You can absolutely decide that those people are scum who would have you dead for their convenience, and turn your back on them.
• I don’t have any financial advice, because i
  only ran away after earning enough money to not end up homeless, and I just did
  it by freelancing over the internet, which is something my abusers didn’t expect
  me to be capable of, so they failed to sabotage me on time, they however did
  make sure to throw abuse my way every time i was doing good and achieving
  something, but i stubbornly kept working until it got me out.

Conclusion: running away is fucking hard, you
lose your family, in some cases all of your relatives as well, you lose your
heritage more often than not, your use your security and backup in life, your
life just ceases to be what it was and turns into something completely new. You
gain: yourself, your freedom, your life, your sanity, your health, your
personhood, a chance to heal and recover, a chance to experience life as it should have been. Absolutely. Worth It.