Trigger warning: mentions of domestic abuse, trauma
Hi! Growing up, I always wanted a happy family that feels complete. It’s been 22 years, and yet I never ever got the feeling of living in a complete happy family.
I don’t know why, what, or how, but the house I live in is not a home.
When I was a kid, my parents never attended any parent-teacher meetings. They never encouraged me to go for co-curricular courses outside school. They never took me for holidays or vacations, never even gave me the liberty to participate in school activities, all of this and more which all the kids my age around me were doing. I was just always told to study hardcore.
I grew up in a household where I saw and was subject to violence, discrimination, ownership and no relationship. I could never share a thing with either my parent or sibling. I was that child who, at the age of 8, once took all the knives from the kitchen to the school, hidden in my school bag, just so that dad wouldn’t kill mom. I was the kid whose best friend’s dad assaulted her. I was the kid who didn’t do well in academics and who didn’t have friends. Gradually, with time, I stopped trying to fit in. I don’t know why I was like that.
As a growing child, my mind was engrossed with ‘others’, how do I keep mom & dad happy, how I keep the few friends I had stay with me and not leave me, and when I was in my teenage years, it was all about how do make a boy love me and not leave me. I forgot that I am an individual, too and that I need growth. You know, I too want to try my hand at different things. I did not care to give myself that exposure, and as a result, I lost that growth and confidence and experience that kids my age had. And for this, I will forever hate myself. I did not even have those people, as in my own family, stand by me, support me and love me in times of need.
The endless number of times when I fainted due to panic attacks, shivering, or lying on the floor, mom would see me, give me a disgusting look and just leave the house. Oh, and dad? He did not even come to see me when I was too sick; hospitalized two to three times urgently in the middle of the night for two months…It was our landlord’s son who took me to the hospital. Oh, my sibling, my sister, boycotted me and did not talk to me. And yet I was just lowkey begging for dad to come because I felt so alone in those days when my undiagnosed illness for weeks almost made everyone believe I was about to pass out.
I am 21 now and soon will be 22. Most days, all I do is live in isolation and cry myself to sleep. I did everything in my life to make my parents love me, treat me better, and understand me, but they dont! And they won’t! No amount of friends, boyfriend or anything amazing in this world could take the place of my parents in my life. Funnily, when I post sad relationships or love quotes on my social media, people think it’s for a guy, and they begin to share their relationship stories and trauma, but heck, it’s not a boy.
It is India, where parents are worshipped as a god; if you mention a hint of parental trauma, you will immediately be either stopped, judged, or even outcasted as if what you’ve lost and been through was not sufficient enough.
As I sit with the girls in my class, I hear them talk about their stories of how this one girl’s father took her out for a surprise shopping day, how this other girl’s dad had a deep heartfelt conversation with her in the middle of the day, how this girl Vanshika’s mom is her best friend and they do their make up together and gossip together, and I have no such stories, I do not even have an understanding of what I like or what I want to do in life, I get awkward in these conversations, and people think I am not real…
“Keep yourself busy” or being compared to almost young adults my age is what happens to me mostly but tell me, when I grew up in an entirely not typical household or environment, constantly being neglected by people I have loved all my life with every atom within me, being a sick teenage and young adult with anxiety and conversion disorder, still being given “looks” at home, doing household chores all morning and evening, financing my own education, how the hell you dare compare me to other people?!
Our journey was not even near similar, life has been especially unfair to me in almost every possible way it can. How do you expect me to laugh, chill, not be worried about my future, go to movies and socialize, to get into relationships when I am constantly so lost?
And now…what can happen is…maybe someday things will be better, I will be better, but what I lost is lost forever! Maybe someone will come along in the future who will accompany me in living life in a much more joyful and loving way, but up until now, and till the time life does not get to that better place, all I know is the reality, which is that I have been so alone and abused all my childhood up until now and till I do not know when. Hey, and I dont want a pity party, okay?! Because I do strongly believe that god will only give you the struggles you are capable of getting through if you have the necessary striving, you will make it to exploit your fullest potential.
( I hope you will take something out of this, and if not, maybe you’ll just have a good cry, but no pity because I don’t want that. If anything, appreciates strong girls and people like these around you. You never know someone’s journey, so dont judge them, be nice and supportive as a human being.)