This is a story about being young and dumb. Do you remember the days you were 18 years old and just graduated high school? You felt like you were invincible when truthfully, you were fragile, you really were still trying to just learn who you were as a person.

Well, this is a story of a young girl, an only child, born of immigrant parents. A girl who is the epitome of the long lasting effects of narcissistic abuse from a young age. You know they always say that history repeats itself. Well, in the story of this young woman we will name Bahar, it did.

Bahar had an awful relationship with her birth mother, one where she was heavily emotionally and psychologically abused. Truthfully, her father and her Stepmom, really were her saviors. You would think someone who would have such strong role models in their life would be able to pick a supportive partner, much similar to the relationship emulated by Bahar’s dad and her now mom. However, the reality is, the story is just proof that childhood trauma and chaos really has lasting effects and repeats itself in the future.

At 18 years old, Bahar was into cars & jewelry. She was into feminine things, but also loved to play video games, kind of a tomboy, but also kind of a girly girl. She was just an average Manhattan kid, who moved to Long Island, and was trying to still live in her city ways. Trying to resist adjusting to life in the slower lane on the outskirts of the 5 boroughs. Hell, she remembers the first few weeks trying to sleep and not hearing the sounds of buses outside her window.

With an everlasting obsession and love for cars, Bahar decided to go to college locally making a deal that her parents that they will pay for her education and her car so she’d be able to go to college then medical school and graduate without debt. Naturally, she took the offer as any smart business person would.

Back in the early 2000’s , online forums, were websites where people with common interests used to come together. Well, Bahar decided to join a forum for cars. Guess you could say this was a form of “online” dating for her. She met a plethora of guys because she was one of the only girls on there. It helped she was attractive to many. She was young, Middle Eastern, and she knew about cars. She was into things that many of these guys were into, she met a few of them, started talking to a some, a few tried to take her on dates, but she never took that plunge. It wasn’t she met this one man from Philly.

He was 4 years older than her, Latino, dark, quiet, mysterious, however not the most attractive or in shape person she had met there. He had a cool car blacked out; he took an interest to her, but he played it coy. He was not as aggressive as some of the other men that were around, probably why something sparked an interest for Bahar. She couldn’t figure it out. They hung out a few times, chitchatted, mostly in group settings. Then she started inviting him to some of her pool parties.

Truthfully… that whole time in Bahar’s life is now one big blur. She can’t really piece together how they even began dating, when was their first kiss, where was the first place they hung out solo together. This is a story of Bahar’s fight for survival.

You know, abuse comes in many forms and abuse can form something called brain fog, and can teach a Survivor how to compartmentalize and… well, one can say this is really a story of the power of compartmentalization. It’s actually very frightening about how much a survivor can put away because you’re body is constantly setting off fight or flight responses.

It’s time to tell the story of abuse that started at a young age, abuse that effected this young girls life and eventually will have an effect on Bahar’s children’s lives, because history always repeats itself.