Fariha Afsar
‘Father…. Father…. Don’t do that. Don’t commit suicide……. I will take care of everything………P…lease……PLEASE……Don’t leave us, FATHER!’.
‘I don’t know what’s wrong with my Paa, but anytime chaos erupts in my house, my father is the one who yells at us with suicide threats. Why doesn’t he ask Maa directly? Why doesn’t he advise Maa to behave like a ‘Maa ’?
I was small. You know, very small. Not like a baby but was in a position to talk, and walk, and run, and laugh, and play, until one day a grown-up boy took me to a place and touched me.
Uhm …. I wouldn’t call it a touch though; it was more than that…. The next thing I remember – running to my home, blood dripping down my pants. I think that was a bad thing because my parents got in frenzy. ‘I am going to kill… that bastard’, my Paa yelled, while my Maa cried. But they didn’t kill anyone. And in a few days, I got okay. My injury – I think it was an injury that’s why I was bleeding – stopped. Maa and Paa got normal. I was happy. But not as happy as the other kids. I was feeling scared……. all the time…and still too.
I grew big. Not that big though. But I was able to reach the apple branch – which is in my garden. That used to be a difficulty when I was little. School was a horrid place for me. My friends – if class fellows are called friends – were all saying bad things about me. ‘Yuck, look at that woman……ha-ha-ha-ha. He is not he. He is she, oh wait …. wait, he is a shemale…. yuck…ha-ha-ha’. I don’t know why they were targeting me – all the time.
There were many boys in my class, but none of them was called by these names, which was why I would choose to be quiet in the class. Even in break times, I would stay in the class, studying. I was scared to go out. So, books became my sanctuary, especially math. I would lose myself in its complex formulas, which were barely distracting me from my miseries. Slowly and gradually, this small distraction also became suffocating for me. I no longer had the zeal for studies. I had given up on education. One day, in school, a higher-grade boy appeared at the door of my class. When I looked at him, he smiled. ‘Ah…. you will be tasty food for the animal inside me’, he said, while sliding his tongue over his bottom lip. I didn’t know what he meant, but somehow, I felt a shiver in my spine. As if I had been confronted by a ghost. Well, I don’t fear ghosts…. I fear……. Humans. Especially…… men, like myself. But I’m not like the rest. Am I? I feel like I am kind, because I don’t want to harm anyone, especially kids. The way I had been harmed. Fear from the outside world turned me into my shell; my house. I didn’t have the interest in playing sports with my friends, the ones in my neighbourhood. I kept myself within the walls of my house, which was no less than a hellish place. Because of my parents. Paa would have his anger fits most of the time, especially when he would see Maa getting ready, doing her make-up – the results? My siblings and I would get beaten and yelled at. That’s why, in addition to the abuse and loneliness, I got quieter, day by day. I didn’t know why he didn’t say anything to Maa.
I don’t get lost in my thoughts; I distract myself by thinking about trifling stuff. Because the real thoughts of mine are scary. Whenever I try to feel my internal feelings, I get flashbacks of all the moments when I was bullied or abused by people, in addition to my parents. I am too afraid to go through the horrid emotions. Sometimes, the feelings get so suffocating that I get unable to breathe. I want to be…… Nothing; disappearing into the thin air. Like I never existed.
Anyway, My Maa. I love her. She is a beautiful lady. Very pretty. But I get confused about her mood; sometimes she gives us too much love, and sometimes she turns into ice. Yet other times she gets totally grumpy at small little stuff. Maa loves to get ready and go to places with her friends. She says staying in the house makes her feel like a dead person. She is fed up with Paa’s anger. But Paa never says a word to Maa even in anger. He always lashes my siblings and me. Maa just looks at all these scenes, silently. No sign of pity on her face. Every day, Maa applies makeup and gets ready, happily. She smiled at herself by looking at the mirror. It makes me happy to see her getting ready for Paa?… One day I was passing near my parents’ room when my Paa came. He looked at Maa for a long time, but Maa didn’t look in his direction. She just looked at herself in the mirror. At last, Paa left, without a word to Maa, tears shedding from his eyes. Maa didn’t lift her eyes from the mirror…. Her phone rang, all of a sudden, ‘Oh, I am coming, darling, ’ she said. A while later, she left too.
I think my Paa’s anger is usually around this issue, which I am unable to grasp. He doesn’t mention it but it is visible in his inability to do anything about the problem. That’s when we come, and he vents it out on us. I am too fed up to continue like this….
I feel like I’m getting stone; day by day. The continual anger in my house, intermingled with the older boys trying to abuse me, is making me feel like a helpless mass, without bones to support. There is no difference between a barren land and a field full of flowers for me. All the colours look the same. Laughs and tears feel fake, so do the other emotions. Sometimes out of suffocation for the lost feelings, I tried to cut my wrists with a blade. Only then, the piercing pain somehow made me feel that I am living. I am too tired to live like this……’ BASED ON A REAL STORY
Research says that emotional abuse and emotional neglects are the biggest contributors to suicide. Now what is that? It means constant nagging, criticism, threatening, withholding love, blaming, and not being there for your children in their joy and difficult times. And if there is physical abuse too, it becomes drastic. In addition, emotional neglect and abuse leads to loneliness and depression in adulthood. Emotionally abused kids are three times more prone to suicide than physically abused kids. But it doesn’t mean that physical abuse is fine. The rate of trauma is very common among abused kids.
A mother’s mental health has a huge impact on her kids; if the mother is stressed, so will be the kids. That’s how trauma continues from generation to generation. If the parents are shut down, volatile, numb out, or in a freeze state, so will be the child, because they record each and every move of their parents. Due to such abnormal behaviour in parents, kids will fall into attention-seeking patterns. Their behaviour gets so intense that it would shift from throwing tantrums to self-harming acts, just to grab the attention of their parents. Those children who don’t express themselves, who bottle up their emotions, they do self-harm, like cutting themselves, to feel that they are alive. They also do that to let out their anger and sadness stuffed inside them. When the parents get too preoccupied with their own lives, they don’t meet the emotional needs of their kids. The kids learn to be hypervigilant. They feel stress and other physiological issues. They feel abandoned. When those kids turn into adults, they attract the same kind of partners; toxic and traumatic.
Social support or having good friends can minimise their trauma. Having a hobby is also good. But most important is the cultivation of their EQ (emotional intelligence) which can be taught by making them do things on their own. Although they will make mistakes initially. EQ will help them to deal with their emotional problems. Make them take their own decision on a micro level, it will harness their problem-solving capability as well as mental resilience.
In Chitral, it’s quite common that if a person is not mentally and emotionally well, he (she is less common) gets married. But according to research (and apparent common sense), if a person is not well, he shouldn’t get married because then the partners get into trouble. If initially he was the problem, now the wife also becomes a part of that problem. But instead of seeking mental treatments, they decide to have children (with the same nonsense belief that kids will make their relationship work). But kids make the relationship worse. The poor child feels that they need to fix their parents’ problems. Thus, they suffer in that, in addition to receiving traumas from their broken parents. Thus, many lives get destroyed as a result! To heal your trauma, you need to work on your mental and physical state. Do deep breathing, chanting, and meditation.
Research says that 10 minutes of humming can lower blood pressure. Strong willpower can make the trauma desensitised too, but that’s rare to find in today’s world, perhaps.
Whatever it takes, don’t let your and others’ lives be ruined!
For God’s sake, watch out for the safety of your kids. You never know, when a lustful creature can turn their world upside down. As parents, if you can’t save your child, then you’d better not have them in the first place. They don’t need your extravagant clothes or lavish toys; they want safety, security and emotional availability.
UNDERSTAND IT!
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