Anonymous Anomalies 2

A new series where anonymous members of Team Fahmidan, and beyond, reflect on the difficult, the sublime, and the shocking in their lives.

For all Children who detest but do what is right

One of my earliest memories is of my self-awareness and my perception of how different those who created me were to my very being. As I grew up, lacklustre parenting, physical and verbal abuse, and mental anguish became all too common. As I got to my teenage years and my parents began to fight more and separate whilst still living together, I had to navigate fending for myself more. Gone were packed lunches and prepared food, mum caring to pick me up and drop me off, or dad not slowly becoming increasingly unhinged and violent.

My mother is the type to promise you the world, then hold all of it against you whilst also gladly taking copious physical, financial, and other support. My father is the type to lie and conceal, manipulating his reality, or so he says. Or so I know he does badly without much success! Violent and impulsive. But both have similar cruelties, similar broken childhoods, adulterated and unfortunate.

I always knew I was different, not better per se, but certainly not the violence, poor decision making, weak, feeble-minded parenting that forced me to look for knowledge, growth, and success elsewhere. I was lucky in that I had one normal grandparent (to some extent at least) who made sure I could eat when my mother was sleeping before going out with friends all night, or my dad was conducting mysterious outings that always saw him come back looking a little too jaded and strange before his violence would start. The grandmother who helped me get shoes and clothes, or helped when I wanted to travel at the end of my first set of high-school exams, after working and saving.

Don't get me wrong, she was a tough woman. I still remember being 8 and being slapped across the face on a holiday. But she cares, in her own fucked up way and when I need it, she ensures I get the support Beavis & Buthead could never supply to me as sires. I no longer speak to my father, willingly due to the exhaustion that accompanies the violent outbursts, the fear of the next beating or choking. My mother, God bless her, is guilty of a great deal of the suffering I experienced growing up, but I've tried and continue to. In my eyes, though I've grown numb to her and increasingly distant, at least I help, pay for things, and try to support her in whatever ways possible, right? She's a victim too. However, replicating what you know is wrong is worse in my eyes than simply acting without knowledge.

So I dampen my 20+ years of disappointment, fear, and being let down and live in the moment. I yearn for the loving mother who doesn't let you down, the type that some folks have and idealise. The type of father that brings home the bacon but nurtures your growth beyond the patriarchy, beyond instilling fear of violence at fatherly hands.

But I am not alone and most certainly unwilling to accept pity. I am strong because I choose to do better daily. I choose to bide my time to escape the malignancy, the fecund familial farce slowly. Being an only child, on one side of the family, and completely different from the other side and its children, forces you to carve out a new path beyond the dysfunctionality of childhood trauma and abuse, and parents who never truly grew up.

One thing I know is true: you cannot blame your parents for all your problems or life. So that means that the repetitive failures of previous generations can only be remedied through unequivocal divergence from the root. So I will yearn and yearn my heart out, I will be compassionate, I will be successful, I will find it in my heart and soul to do better even if it kills me. Because family isn't eternal, but love is.