I saw something on TV that really hit me recently. A lot of bad things hae happened to me in the past. More to the point, those closest to me, who should be protecting me, have done a lot of bad things to me. I try not to get too caught up in it, but at times I worry if it's made me too self centered or unable to accept responsibility for things. I worry about reality becoming twisted in my mind and I worry about turning into a monster.
I'm not sure how to let go of things but I am slowly starting to. Last week at work, I took some time to practice my writing. Having neater writing is a very big deal for me. It's the central theme to the story I usually tell people about my past.
My parents did a lot of things to me. They were never happy with the way I wrote. My mom kept trying to ruin my proper pencil grip to some system where the thumb was twisted so unnaturally. Anyway, they had me doing things like copying out the alphabet over and over again. They made me keep a diary and they'd read through it and punish me for spelling things incorrectly, make fun things I wrote or just get annoyed at the lack of neatness in my penmanship. Things got to me. One day I refused to write out the alphabet yet again. As a result, I was spanked with whatever happened to be around, in this case, some wooden paint stirring sticks. It's flimsy stuff, so that snapped easily. Those who've snapped wood before should be familiar with how it tends to split along the grain. This left some rather sharp instruments for my parents. They wound up stabbing me in the rear with them. Of course, the wood broke again. I don't remember why they left after that. I just remember that I was home alone for a while with some bleeding and fragments of wood stuck in me rather deep. It wasn't like a little sliver, they must have been at least one, maybe two inches deep. It was a serious wound that I had to treat by myself. I didn't know much then, but for a while, I was really scared. As for why they left, I can say for sure that it wasn't shock. They didn't go away to calm down after what they had done. I know this for certain because when they returned, I was yelled at for not finishing the exercises I had refused to do that lead to this. There were no apologies, my wounds received no treatment other than my own.
It hurts every time someone asks me how I can possibly be bitter at my parents. With childhood memories like that, it's an insult that I'm asked to justify my anger. That seems to be the story that I tell most often. It seems to be the most extreme.
There's also another story that I tend to tell quite frequently. I tell it because there's a scar on my wrist to remind me of it. I got that scar when my sister bit me. She's seven years younger than I am. My brother would always be placing my toys in her toy box and she'd ruin them or refuse to return them or something. I saw her with one of my toys and chased her into a corner trying to get it back. She bit me to get away. I screamed and everyone came rushing to help. Within seconds everyone was gathered around checking to see if everything was ok, giving comfort and assurances where it was needed, and checking for injuries. This would be nice if she was the one hurt. Once again, I was left to tend to my own wounds. I was the one on the floor screaming and clutching a bleeding wound. Of course my sister is fine, she's the assailant. I on the other hand was the victim and was not ok. I needed first aid, which I had to provide myself because everyone was ignoring me.