Everyone has a story, this is mine.
My dad passed away when I was a teenager. Before he fell sick he and my mom got a divorce. Their split was horrid and traumatic for me because I witnessed a lot of violent physical fights. I can still remember he held a knife and wanted to attack my mom. He swung and slammed the door into her and she let out a terrifying scream. Both of them are bad tempered and toxic towards each other. I witnessed all these when I was below the age of 10. I suffered from PTSD for years.
I remember feeling helpless and terrified whenever they start fighting. I forgot the number of times the police showed up because of all the yelling and screaming. Sometimes there’s blood on the floor at the scene where they fought. This was how I remember the bulk of my childhood.
My mother is literally a crazy woman as a single parent. In today’s day and age, I guess she can be called a bipolar, narcissist, borderline or maybe all of the above. She had no one to fight and argue with so she would regularly unleash all her emotions onto us, especially me, because I’m a female. When I hit puberty, she became more violent towards me. I was not rebellious. I studied hard, but she was never proud of me.
None of our needs mattered. All our birthdays were meant to celebrate her instead. Because that was the day she suffered to give birth to us. Every holiday was supposed to treat her like a queen because she deserves a break. She only cared about controlling us no matter how unreasonable and nonsensical the request is because we owe her our lives. She was not happy even when we followed her instructions. This was how I remember my teenage years.
I was always mentally preparing myself for her to explode on me. To be battered mentally and physically is the norm. There was no way out as I can’t bear to leave my younger sibling alone with her. In a sense, I became a mother to my younger sibling. I fed and supported my younger sibling the moment I could because my mother abandoned all her responsibilities to ‘find herself’.
She went on to have affairs with married men. Travelled out of sg for months, in the name of love. Lucky I already learnt how to cook by age 11. I remember bawling my eyes out when she left home with her luggage. I was 13. How tf do kids run a home for months without any adult? But we survived.
When her mood comes, she would go on a rampage and say we are cursed and we will grow up to lead the same kind of life like her. She hated our existence because she lost her freedom, her youth, her everything. For a while, I actually believed her that I should not exist.
Took me decades to understand why she hated me. I didn’t end up having a lousy life as she expected. I found a job that I love and actually enjoy. I met someone, married and lived a totally different life from hers. I have long term friendships unlike her. All of us are leading peaceful lives now.
She is wrong about all of us.
Don’t believe everything your parents tell you. They aren’t always right. Never believe you are doomed to walk in their footsteps. There’s always a chance to change your destiny.