My apologies for the length of this post.
Until I moved in with my "father" and his new wife when I was 12 years old, I had been rotationally living with my grandmother, aunt, and other relatives. During the first 12 years of my life, I have been beaten, deprived with food, had my head knocked by hard objects, locked in a cage with the family dog for many nights, among other things. The greatest hope I had had was when I could reunite with my "father" and receive the type of love that other kids who are living with their parents do. So I decided to take my fate into my own hands and continuously plead with my "father" to take me in to live with him.
When I did move in with my "father", things didn't turn out as I had wished. Within weeks of moving into the household, my stepmother started complaining about me and took every opportunity to show how much she despised me. However, this did not bother me as she was only a stepmother, and she understandably saw me as an outsider who didn’t belong there. But I was most hurt that my own "father" seemed to feel the same way about me. In addition to ignoring me on a daily basis, beating me for the smallest offences, forcing me to eat leftovers, and constantly indoctrinating me on how little I was worth, he even seized one particular opportunity to tell me that the biggest mistake of his life was not aborting me when he had the chance. Remember, I was 12.
Providence was merciful to me as he finally decided that it would be in the best interest of his family that I get out the picture. This move probably saved me from insanity and inevitable suicide as I was near my breaking point mentally. He rented an apartment for me and kicked me out of the household for good. So at the age of 13, I was on my own and left to the tender mercy for fortune. I remember being hungry to the point of insomnia for many many nights. I remember being very lonely. I also remember crying each day I come home from school as the school was primarily made up of African American students, and they picked on me quite ruthlessly due to my race. However, I did have a good friend who was black, and he was my only consolation in those dark days. One day, my "father" decided to come and visit me at the insistence of my uncle who told him it was unethical to leave me be for months on end. It so happened that while he was in my apartment, my black friend came to visit me. Upon discovering my friendship with a black person, he delivered what was even to me an unprecedentedly savage beating. Only up to that point did I realize the extent of his sadism. That particular event probably did more to permanently unsettle my mind than all of the abuses I had received up to that point in my life. Seven years later, I can still remember that night as if it was yesterday. I remember how I did not want to fall asleep as I repeatedly told myself: "Do not fall asleep, remember today's humiliation, and never allow this occasion to be forgotten or forgiven".
Indeed, I could not forget, but I have attempted to forgive. However, due to those experiences, I have deviated so much in personality from who I was that I no longer recognize the man in the mirror. With the additional burden of social anxiety, which resulted from the bullying I received, low self-esteem, which inevitably followed all the beating and abuses, I have indeed because something that neither I nor my childhood friends recognize. I have long become accustomed to loneliness, suffering, and the absence of every cherished gift that makes this life worth living. But the hardest part of it all is my inability to stop the self-hatred and self-loathing which make my life that much more painful to bear. I have succeeded to achieve many things in spite of having been taught very little both in school and, well, at home.
I graduated high school despite being repeatedly pressured by my “father” to drop out so I can work and pay my own expenses (he also asked me to pay back every cent he spent on my rent and food), I am going to graduate college with an accounting degree soon, and I comfort myself that happiness, for the first time in my life, is within reach. Unlike before, now I have the means to dream. But I can't rid myself of the dark memories of the past and all its negative effects which have been carried forward to accompany me. It seems I have unknowingly inherited from my "father" the tendency to see nothing but worthlessness in me. I want to free myself from this tendency, and I have tried so hard to do so, unsuccessfully. Please enlighten me as to how I should interpret my past, because I cannot make sense of the person that I have become.
Topic: How can I make sense of the person I have become (Read 367 times)
January 02, 2009, 05:36:50 AM