The sickness that is my family

The sickness within

My family (not just my mother, but her mother and sister and probably other extended family members) believe in witchcraft and people putting spells and hexes on you. I shake my head as I am writing this, because it is just so insane.

When I was younger, my mother would take me to women who would get rid of the evil spell on me and also get rid of the demons inside me. I cannot even fathom how anyone could believe in such a thing.

So me, being the sensitive one, gets convinced by my mother, my aunt and also my late grandmother that I have to go see the exorcist to remove devils from inside me. You cannot imagine just how many nightmares this type of discussion gave me, how scared it made me feel, how deep the scars it left and how much it messed with my head.

The reason for me having to go to the exorcist? Because I wanted to go out at night with my friends instead of staying at home with my mother, doing needlework or other house-wifely things (of course my brother, albeit younger than me and not even legally allowed to enter nightclubs was allowed and even encouraged to go out at night and do what he wanted to do - his behaviour was considered absolutely normal). Or the fact that I liked a man who was from a different country to mine. Or that I talked back to my parents, telling them that they were wrong for hitting me all the time. These are the reasons why they believed I was possessed. Oh. My. God. It blows my mind to even think about it now, because it is just so ridiculous that any parents would subject their child to such further torture!

So one of the times I went to an exorcist, it was inside a really small room with all these religious images everywhere. It was really dark, I was in there with this woman I didnt know. It was stuffy (as there were no windows in there) with only candlelight to lighten the room. And this woman was yelling: "Devil begone from this girl", while putting this huge cross on my back, head and above my decolletage, dragging it on my skin (but thankfully not hurting me and not being sleazy as that would have made it even worse). Of course I started crying, because this was freaking scary to me! And of course, this made the crazy exorcist believe that the "Devil" was scared of her machinations and she was exorcising it from me.

OH. MY. GOD.

I realised after we went outside that the woman was full of shit. But that didnt mean the whole thing didnt freak me out and it did adversely affect me, because it was on top of all of my mother's superstitious beliefs that she put onto me, so everything together just totally messed with my head for years (and even to now).

For example, if someone she suspected of being a "witch" gave me a gift, she wouldnt let me have it because she believed that if I touched it, I would get sick or have an accident. And if someone ever said anything nice about me while she was there, she would always contradict them and tell them that, no, I wasnt pretty and no, I wasnt smart and all in front of me. Nice way to be totally embarrassed and put down by my mother. I had no idea she was doing this because she thought that if they were saying something nice about me, they would "curse" me and I would get sick or have an accident and if she contradicted them, she would short-circuit their curse. It's mind boggling that anyone could ever think anything like this in this day and age!

Physical abuse leaves permanent scars

Image Credit: Postmodern Woman - How to End Abuse

My parents used to physically abuse me when I was a child to young adult and my step-father would continue it even today, if he could.

This abuse would occur on almost a daily basis sometimes - mostly physical, but also emotional abuse and I would get abused more because I was the older child, so I was responsible for everything my brother did too (even though he wouldn't listen to me and would also tell me parents if I did anything they had forbade me to do, like read my many borrowed books or listen to music).

They would use my step-father's belt, with the buckle so that it would hurt more. They would make me kneel in a corner with my hands up for 20 minutes at a time, making me kneel on rock salt so that it would hurt more. They would laugh at me for everything and anything I did (and my brother would always join in with them). They would always tell me I would amount to nothing. They called me slut and whore, saying nasty things about me - none of which was true. If I talked to a guy, I was a whore, which is ridiculous.

So I would get hit by them if I didn't do wash the dishes the minute I was asked to do them (I had to help prepare the food with my mother, then I had to do the washing up while she did other household duties, meanwhile, my step-father and brother would just be sitting watching tv or playing or relaxing as it wasn't "men's work"). I would get hit if I didn't put my clothes away from my bed into my wardrobe. I would get hit if I didn't want to do embroidery on a Saturday, but rather wanted to go outside and play. I would get hit if I didn't do some minor thing that my parents considered to be the worst thing in the world.

I remember crying and crying after each beating. Asking myself "why are they hitting me? What did I do that was so bad it warranted such a punishment?" And if I cried or said "please stop" when my step-father beat me, he'd get angrier and hit me harder until I stopped crying. And I did stop crying, basically out of fear that he would get so angry that he would hit me so hard all over my body, like he did one time, where he bruised my skin in so many places and I felt like I had to lie to my teachers and tell them I fell down the stairs.

My step-father's temper is so bad. So many times their friends (who actually got to see how they treated me when I was younger) would tell my parents they were too hard on me and should treat me better. And this is without them even knowing how much my parents hit me. I am sure if someone knew about it, if I told anyone, they would have charged my parents with child abuse and taken me away from them. I guess I never really told anyone because I didn't know if it would be better if I was in a children's home, given the many times my mother told me how awful it was there whenever she would tell me that she could have left us in a children's home after my father left her (mind you, I was 6 at the time) but she decided to keep us out of there and that we we so lucky she didn't just dump us in a children's home because we were really a burden.

My mother would advise my step-father to only hit my backside and the palms of my hands, because that way no-one could tell they were abusing me. She didn't want the neighbours and her friends and family (who were over our house constantly) to see how much I was being beaten up.

The household I lived in, therefore was completely chaotic and full of drama - which they caused and I got sucked up into it. And the ironic thing is that I was completely different to the three of them - I read books, I was good (and am) at mathematics and loved science and I loved writing stories. None of them is very educated and I think part of their issue with me is that they resent me for just being born with attributes and personal characteristics they don't have. My mother's aim was to make me a dutiful housewife who knew how to knit, sew, cook and take care of her husband's every need and I was not that girl and she couldn't deal with it, so she hit me to make me conform to what she wanted me to become. How grossly unfair!

Obviously they weren't nasty every single minute of every day, but it happened more predominantly than not and it affected my psyche, so much so that now I can't seem to have a normal relationship with a man that is healthy and positive. Only the other day I realised how much I crave drama in relationships because that is the only thing I know about in familial relationships and so it has pervaded into my subconsciousness and it makes me want that drama in my personal relationships.

When my father left my mother constantly told my brother and I, but mostly me that my own father left "me", that he never loved me. She would say to me, "your own father never loved you enough and left you because he didn't love you", over and over and over again. I basically figured out from those words that I was unlovable at the tender age of 6.

I have never felt like I deserved to be loved (hence the reason why I go for unavailable men) and needless to say, I haven't had many relationships because of this reason - I don't trust that someone who says they like me actually does like me.

This article from CBS News, "Spanking, physical punishment may raise risk for mental health woes in adult years" infers that studies show people that are abused as children don't do so well in their adult life because of the early abuse. I am yet further proof of this theory, unfortunately.

And as I read back all of this and re-live it in my mind, it really reiterates why I m so upset with them, as my parent behaviour is just awful and no-one should ever have been abused this way.

Now all of this former abuse is the basis of my gripe and resentment towards my disloyal family. I am sure you can understand why.

The allergies rise again - should be living in a bubble

I am so allergic to everything, that it makes like difficult. Other people simply don't understand. And my family, they cant seem to understand the concept of severe allergies, like what I have.

Today my parents were out at their friends house and when they came home, I asked my mother to get changed out of their clothes because the perfume was starting to bother me - my head and my sinuses was starting to hurt.  Even thought she was standing about 2-3 metres away from me, the aroma was pervading the room already and starting to affect me.

The interesting thing is that my mother wasn't wearing any perfume herself, the aroma came from being in the same proximity, touching and kissing her friend and his wife, in just normal social interaction - shaking hands, hugging, kissing on the cheek hello and goodbye, probably touching their arm - and because their friends wear a great deal of deodorants and perfumes it pervades the air and everything they touch. So just being around them, some of it will rub off on other people. This wouldn't affect other people - just me!

After arguing with me about why certain things affect me more than others (I told her I cant control or predict what will affect me) they finally went to their room to get changed.  When my mother came back, I walked past her to get something and the aroma was so strong near where she was standing, that immediately my nose started itching and I started to cough with an asthmatic-type, dry cough. I told my mother that she should see the cause and effect of how allergic I am and instead of being sympathetic, my idiot step-father told me to "piss off out of here" and to "piss off to you room" and "you're good for nothing, you're always sick".  My mother, meanwhile, just stands there and lets him say whatever he wants to me, even as I was leaving left the room, he was still talking his crap. It's only when I have totally gone that he stopped.

Nice huh?

They are completely unsympathetic towards my illnesses. It's rather disconcertingly awful to be treated in this terrible way.  They simply (a) don't believe that I am that allergic and (b) cant understand how someone can be that allergic. Shows just how ignorant they are. And it of course makes me feel bad to be treated in this shitty, abusive way. Why would I even expect anything better from them?

What a family. No need for enemies when you have a family like this!

Just from that very brief exposure to the perfume my lungs still hurt, as do my sinuses, even though I am now in my bedroom, with the heater on and nowhere near them. I am so completely sensitive and allergic to almost everything - like the girl in the bubble!  This family of mine just doesn't seem to understand this at all!

It just upsets me that they would be so obnoxious to me, when I do everything right. I collected all their clothes from the clothes line and put them in the lounge to get dry (the sun is not very strong now so it takes ages for clothes to dry and if you collect them from the clothes line after 4.00pm, they feel a bit damp. I also closed up the chicken house, I washed all the dirty dishes and I even started the fire and so the house was nice and warm when they came home. But nothing I ever do is good enough for them. I could give them a million dollars (if I had it) and they would still complain and bitch about me to me and behind my back. They are just ridiculous people without any sense at all and they just take great pleasure in hurting and abusing me!