65 Years Old, and Still Trying to Find My Way Out of the Storm

[Mystery]

Hello everyone,

I'm 65 years old, and I've spent most of my life trying to survive a childhood that I never really escaped.
I grew up in a world where love was something I desperately wanted but rarely experienced. Fear, humiliation, physical abuse, and emotional cruelty were part of my everyday existence. The person who was supposed to protect me was often the person I feared the most.
By the time I was 16, I was on my own. I spent of the next 20 of the next 30 years as a homeless drug addict trying to survive in a world I had never been prepared to live in.
I understand I was child; I have been told that so many times and in so many ways, but what my memories pound into my consciousness, what I see when I look in the mirror, is a little monster who possibly deserved everything that happened to me.
The strange thing about childhood trauma, or any trauma for that matter, is that even when you escape the people who hurt you, you don't necessarily escape what they did to you. So, I wonder, am I in her nightmares too?
For most of my life, I've lived inside my own head. I've fought depression, anxiety, intrusive thoughts, and a constant sense that something terrible is about to happen. I've struggled to understand why I feel the way I do, why I can't simply let go of the past, and why the things that happened so many decades ago can still hurt as though they happened yesterday.
I've tried medications. I've tried therapy. I've tried to understand myself through logic, reasoning, and sheer determination. Some things have helped; others have made things worse.
For over 45 years, I've written poetry and songs. Writing became a way of expressing the things I couldn't say out loud. Sometimes I think my words have understood me better than I have understood myself. Words for me started coming when I escaped one Nightmare, and traded it in for another of my own making.
One of the hardest things for me to accept is that, at 65, I'm still fighting battles that began when I was a little boy. There are days when I feel as though I've spent my entire life trying to become someone I might have been if I'd simply been loved.
I don't know what healing is supposed to look like anymore. I don't expect to erase the past, and I don't believe there's some magical moment when everything suddenly stops hurting.
But I would like to know what it feels like to live without constantly fighting myself.
I joined this forum because I'm tired of feeling alone in a struggle that most people cannot see or understand. I'm hoping to find people who understand what it's like to survive something only to discover that surviving was just the beginning.
I'm not here looking for pity. I'm here looking for understanding, connection, and perhaps a little hope that the years I have left can be different from the years I've already lived.

Thank you for allowing me to be here.

Mr.E.  "Mystery"

I go by E, it was my mother who picked the name Edward when I was being named, and I refuse to give her the honor of holding that over me.

I also go by "One of the Broken" for my Writing and Music

I Wanna Cry
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ll49OG88rMRbcpwct2M83DkB75Ge4gym/view?usp=sharing