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!

My family lives in fear of everything

Another thing I realised about this family is that they live in fear and that is how they operate their lives. Every single thing they do, every action they take, every behaviour they chose, is based on their fear. Fear of everything.

They are so hypocritical and so unaware of their behaviours that when I put the mirror up in front of them, they cant handle it and get really angry with me, as it makes their fears almost unbearable for them.

My mother and her superstitions has a lot to answer for! My step-father and his volatile anger has a lot to answer for! My brother with his vicious vindictiveness has a lot to answer for!

Their fears have infected me too. It's such a struggle for me not to feel like certain things are possibly tainted to the point where I cant eat them.  I have realised it's just a fear based on my mother's insanity, telling me that things people gave me were cursed and could hurt me (and in fact, she would take away some of the things people gave me as gifts, because she believed that they would hurt to me even touch them), so of course I internalised that, as a young girl, into a fear of everything possibly hurting me, because if innocuous things from people (who were friends of the family) gifts  to me (ie clothes etc) could hurt me, then everything could, including food from people I didn't know!  So no wonder sometimes even now I get stressed about things I get from other people, thinking that they could contain some harmful thing and hurt me.

Jeez, it's so obvious now, more than ever what the source of all that has ailed me internally has been, but when I used to think these thoughts, I thought that there was something really wrong with me and I didn't know why I was having these thoughts.  It's just so obvious now where they came from isn't it?

My step-father just gets so angry so quickly - he's really volatile and growing up, I never knew when he would suddenly get upset, start yelling at me, making me feel scared and threatening to hit me (or actually hitting me).

My brother, has absolutely no boundaries - he does whatever he wants to do and doesn't give a damn about what anyone else wants or thinks because it doesn't concern him and doesn't affect him. He's so selfish and self-centred.

It makes me sick that I have been subjected to such crappy sickness from these people and then to add insult to injury, they blame me for everything. They refuse to take any responsibility for their actions, their words or behaviours, as if they did nothing wrong and I am the one who is wrong for ever bringing these things up.