A letter from May 7th, 2020

Dear Future Me, Today is May 7th 2020, I am currently 13 years old with 2 months until I turn 14. You're probably 18, about to turn 19. If you're reading this then I guess we made it :). I hope I'm still alive and we are okay. We are currently in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic that started a few months ago, it's getting really bad around the world globally, but here, in Australia, it's not so bad. The funny thing is, I'm supposed to be doing my online school work right now but instead I'm writing this. The current global statistics are 3,812,513 cases, 264,109 deaths, 1,288,726 recovered cases and 2,259,678 currently active cases. You're lucky, you're probably recovered from this pandemic now, but I have no doubt that the world is in ruins. So I have a few questions. I wonder if there was another war? Is Trump still President of the US(and of the world)? Has meme culture changed that much? How are Zendaya and Sebastian Stan doing? (if you don't really remember, we were obsessed with them from 2019 till now, (2020) I hope we're still fangirling over them). Is "euphoria" still running? How has marvel changed and developed? I remember how obsessed we were with it. How are the marvel actors? I wonder if some of my favourite celebrities are married or something now? Some famous celebrities must have died as well, haven't they? Now to get onto a more glum and serious note, this might bring up some bad memories. Around 4 and a half months ago, we tried to end our life, but not by ******* ourselves. We're in an abusive and toxic home, I tried to report it on the 25th December 2019, Christmas day. Long story short after pouring my heart out to the caseworkers and police assigned to my case, telling them about the physical, verbal, emotional and possibly even ****** abuse that we and our siblings were enduring from our disgusting parents, they still kept us in the custody of our parents, with close to zero hesitance. Ever since then I have been going through unimaginable anxiety, depression, PTSD, hopelessness, doubt, feeling trapped, lack of privacy, respect and rights, it's the worst situation honestly. I hate it here. So, how it happened, I've been wanting to report our parents for months in case you don't remember, In October 2019, I done something really stupid to someone I really cared about and I was talking to my friend, Zara, on the phone, outside about it, so when I came back inside our nosy and no-respect-of-privacy mother asked who I was talking to and what about, I told her I was talking to my friend Zara and it doesn't matter what we were talking about, she kept pushing me to tell her, but I kept refusing to tell her, she then screamed at me for caring about my friend's privacy more than her. The next day she had a talk with me about how she knows nothing about my life and that for all she knows "I could be friends with lesbians," (In case you forgot, (I doubt you'll forget though) our parents are super homophobic and religious). So the next day (October 18th) after I came home from school and had a shower and everything, I came downstairs and gave a cold greeting to mum, she and my dad exchanged some looks and then told my siblings to go to the study room so they could have a chat with me. They gave me the usual scream/lecture, You hate your family! You never talk to us or you siblings! Who do you love!? You don't love anyone! You're obsessed with your friends! You don't believe in your religion! bla bla bla. Eventually they told me to give them my phone, I was reluctant (obviously), so when I took it out of my pocket I started swiping up to close all the apps and then dad got up put his hand around our neck and started choking me. They took my phone and kept it with them when they dropped us off at our Aunty Roua's house to eat. When we got home that night, mum took me up to her room and had a talk to me about what she found on my phone. She found texts of us talking about me talking **** about mum and dad, school/gossip stuff and some other stuff that they didn't like. they had a big talk about me hating them and all the other stuff they found. That's when they told us that they're gonna send us to a different school next year, cos well, you know, too much ****, "influence" and a bunch of other dumb **** from their dumb ******* bigoted *****. I really can't stand them. So on our last day of school at Northmead high was 18th December. I really wanted to cry but the tears didn't come out. I got my shirt signed by my friends and left, so angry that my parents won- they dictated my life because of their selfishness and they got what they wanted. Sending me to an Islamic school because they think it'll make me religious and I'll stop hating them, ha they wish. It happened a week later, when we reported them, we were at the beach with Aunty Gina and her kids and in-laws, It was the regular routine, dad made us socialise with the males because god forbid I... talk to... females. We kinda fell off the boardwalk while trying to jump off to get down. Dad got angry at me instead of caring for me. But then we were in the car and something clicked, I was going to do it today. After dinner we told mum that we were going to go to IGA and then we went to the park and made the call, we were very hesitant about the call when we got to the park, but eventually we pulled ourselves together and done the brave thing, it didn't last long, halfway through the call with child services I hung up and had a panic attack, or a mental breakdown or something. Right there in the park. We called the police and told them I made a fake report to FACS, but when they got there we told them it really wasn't a prank and they had to take me to the station. Just after I got in the car, mum came, hysterical and told the police I was missing, then dad showed up, all this while I was scrunching myself up in the back of the police car. We got to the police station and I started calling around to my friends... and so did our family, we got about 30 calls from our cousins, aunties, parents, grandparents. I ignored all of them. I was calling around to our friends (Mikayla Hooke, Constanza Gonzalez-Herrera, Zara Keats etc.) to let them know what was happening and asking them if I could maybe stay for the night. They were all very kind, most of them said that they couldn't really take me at the moment, it was kinda my fault, since I chose the worst day of the year to do it. Eventually Constanza called me back and her mum was on the phone with her, so she could ask me a few questions about me staying the night and how I was doing etc. I ended up being allowed to stay at Constanza's and we were estatic. But as we both know, nothing good ever lasts, we still had to wait for the FACS people to respond and give Constanza's family permission to take me for the night. I was waiting at the police station for 6 hours. One of the officers woke us up at 1:30 in the morning and told us that we are gonna have to go back home and stay there for the night, but first thing in the morning we are gonna go to the DOCS/FACS centre in West point and get interviewed, it wasn't great, we thought at the moment but it was better than my going back to mum and dad permanently. We got home at about 2 am and I was forced to hug my mum and I went straight upstairs. Our phone was dead so we charged it and saw some missed texts from Constanza, and I went to bed. By now my parents had already known what I had done, because mum had a friend in Child services (Sarah) and she asked her about the Child services thing in West point and Sarah told her it was for Child abuse and ****** assault, so then they knew. The next morning we got up had a shower and took some money and my phone, we went to West point. When we got there was a brief explanation to me on how it worked by the guy that was gonna ***** us, I remember his name - Andrew Wells. We went into a room with an interview and told him some highlights of our abuse, Every maybe 15 minutes he would stop me and step out of the room for a minute then come back in. After the interview he spoke to the other people from FACS and then they came in and told us that they're sorry but we're gonna have to remain with our parents. They said it's not sufficient enough evidence and that I'm just gonna have to deal with the verbal abuse by myself, I told them multiple times that I wasn't comfortable going home with them. They didn't care. We were feeling ******* furious, confused and depressed, we tried to self-harm in the room I was waiting in alone with sticky notes, I tried to fold the sticky notes in the room and use the paper to cut myself when my interviewers were talking to mum and dad. Eventually they were finished talking to mum and dad, they took me out and told me to go hug my mum. We went home and my mum went to go get our siblings from our grandmothers house (also to tell all the adults what happened), my dad went to the gym and I was home alone. I was very surprised, I was so ******* stupid, I was home alone, my parents knew that I had just reported them for child abuse and I didn't think to delete everything off my phone? Mum came home and I was taking a depression nap and my mum came into my room and told me to give her my phone, I pretended I didn't know where it was and eventually we had to give it to her. My clown *** really thought that she wasn't gonna go through it because she said she gonna "take it for the holidays," she was obviously lying. It was an awkward few days and eventually on the 30th December dad took me on a drive and confronted me about everything they found on my phone and Christmas etc. I was ******* horrified. Ever since then I have been given zero privacy, zero rights, mum and dad have barely any trust for me, it's really hard. About a month ago they also confronted me about the fact that they knew I was emailing my friends from Northmead, that was horrifying as well. I feel trapped, like I'm a prisoner in my own home. Their trust issues are super bad. I know that I won't be able to live a normal life, I just hope that when I'm 18 I can turn my life around. I have some hopes and dreams that I really hope that you (future me) are pursuing right now. I wanna report them again, this time for real and it can't be rejected, or I wanna get emancipated when I'm 16, I really hope it works. I really want to go back to Northmead and see my old friends, be my old self, I hate not being able to be myself at all. AIA is really the worst, I'm sick of mum and dad being able to dictate my life. I really hope when future me is reading this, I'm living in another country with a different name, I can be myself, I hope we are somewhere in Europe, maybe France, away from our parents and old life. Dear future me, I hope we are safe, I hope we are happy xoxo 2020, 13 year old you