Ghosts of the Past

Curses

2007-01-09T11:16:00.000+08:00

Robert Seah I remember you. Laughing at me when I sang the National Anthem. Was it so funny? I now go back to that time...and I now pull your fucking jaw from your face motherfucker.

Kevin I remember you. Always sniggering behind with Joshua and all the other guys. Buncha sissy faggots. I remember the way you guys always laughed at me, called me names and made everyone agree with you fuckers.

Timothy I remember you. You with Hock Lye and Boon Leng. Sure thought it was funny telling the girl I had a crush on that I was only playing with her, was it? And she treated me like a pariah after that so it sure was fun, wasn't it? And the funniest part? I didn't even know you fuckers until I found out what you had done.

I remember you Tay Sor Har. Fuck you in all names unholy.

A-fucking Men.

Beasts

2006-10-06T12:29:00.001+08:00

I remember your face when you stood over my bed, ready to wake me up. With that hand raised up to the ceiling, your face changed as you brought it down with all your might.

You weren't trying to wake me up. You were trying to attack me. I remember that change over your appearance - from a docile looking person to an animal intent on killing its prey.

That look you always gave before you attacked me and I was not allowed to fend for myself.

That change over your face into an animal when you attacked me.

I grew to understand and predict the symptoms, the things that I could look out for so that I could behave in a way that I wouldn't be attacked.

You are an animal. And I have that same blood in me. Thanks to you, I have to grapple with that animal in me every single day, and make sure i don't turn into you. Thanks to you, I know the difference between right and wrong. Thanks to you, I know how it is to be hurt...and how it is to hurt.

I will never be you. And I will never forgive you. But the day you die; my hatred will die with you.

Random Memories

2006-07-29T22:47:00.000+08:00

Random memories are flitting across my mind, so fast I can't catch on to any one of them long enough to write them down...but here are the ones I can.

The old fool smashed our video game set - the only one we had at that age - the one we had saved so hard to buy - and then he threatened to kill himself and slapped my mother when she went to stop him, yelling in the open corridor with foul verbal abuse.

I know he would never have jumped. It was only one-storey, the faggot. He had pretended to put a leg over the railing while stealing sidelong glances at my mother, hoping she would get closer. Even at that age, the depersonalized Kerio knew it was an act. Even if he had accidentally fallen off the railing, the most he would have done was to sprain his ankle.

This scene was repeated twice in my childhood.

He also destroyed the toys he refused to buy for us - the same toys we bought by saving up the $0.80 allowance we got a day - and then cut our savings to "discourage" us from even buying our own things.

Even now, he accuses my mother of adultery even as he commits it himself.

Ghosts of the Past

2006-07-10T14:46:00.000+08:00

I remember...

I have tasted fear and vulnerability.

It comes from being beaten by the one you should have trusted to protect you, the fear of the doorknob turning at a specific time when you know he was coming to hit you again.

It comes from watching your mother pack her bags and walk out, even after you scream and plead her not to leave you alone with that monster.

It comes from being alone with a beast who will whisper poison into your ears and hit you when you disagreed, when you had no one to protect you, no one to help you.

It comes from the coldness that runs down your spine when you look at the face of the beast in the darkness of the living room...it comes from the knowledge of your mortality even when you were but a child.

It comes from screaming and crying and wishing the pain to go away - from your heart, your body, your soul.

It comes from fearing the days you're alive - afraid to go home, but afraid to step out.

It comes from having a gutless older brother who will simper and whine and beg for mercy and not once, not once would he stand out to defend the only person who loved him.

It comes from having to say nice things about a person you want to kill just so you could stay alive..and knowing that whoring your principles made you less of a person than you were.

It comes from fearing the school holidays, because it meant he would be at home every single day.

It comes from holding your mother's hands in a crowded area and then getting hopelessly lost...and yet you are afraid to cry because you were afraid they wouldn't want you if you cried. You longed for the warmth of her hand, but yet you feared she would bring you home.

It comes from looking at the monster's face when he used anything he could get his hands on to hit you, and knowing for a certainty - you could have died..but you didn't.

I have tasted Bitterness.

When I realised happiness resided in other people's homes...just not mine.

When I realised he had no right to hit me and toss me around like a ragdoll just because he didn't like Christians and I happened to be one.

When I realised God didn't exist, because even as we picked discarded shreds of the bible out of the rubbish can to read and pray, the beast would curse and beat us and no one would save us.

When I realised we were going to the Christian woman's house just so my mother could pray and cry.

When I realised that those who believed in God had never had their faith really tested by someone who was violently anti-christ.

When I realised that to survive, I had to praise and pretend to be cute to the beast just so he wouldn't hit me.

When I realised that I was not like other children.

When the people I hoped to trust and befriend turned out to be backstabbers and hypocrites.

When I realised that no matter how well I did for my 'A' levels, I'd never go to the U. This act of futility is the stage for which my life is playing on currently.

When I realised I had not tasted a single day of unbridled joy, and had instead gone through an entire lifetime of pain and torment just so I could live and be bound by law to provide for the beast who had caused me my life - the same law that prevented me from killing him.

When I realised that I had Depersonalization because the beast had put me through so much trauma my brain never had the chance to fully develop properly and had also short-circuited my fight or flight response.

When I realised that no one in the world could ever truly understand what I felt, even if I spent years telling them about it...because people like us usually go insane before our tales are told.
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I have tasted anger.

When I see the happy faces around me.

When I realised that throughout my existence to date, I had not lived.
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Dusk

2006-07-07T12:23:00.000+08:00

I have decided to cut the bonds with my past.

I have faced my inner demons too many times and I will list them out for the final time before I let them go.

As I remember them through the coming years I will update this list, and as I type them down they will be purged from me. The experiences and lessons learnt will never leave me...but I refuse to be tied down by the memories past. They will come back to haunt me when I am weak - but I hope I will have strength enough to fight them. Will I suceed or fail? I leave that for time to tell.

All I know is this : I will not run from my past or hide from my shadows. I will face them, and repel them, and I will survive.

It is the one thing I am good at.

Chrysalis

2006-07-06T11:11:00.000+08:00

For too long I have walked in the shadows of my past. And after all these years, I've finally decided - my tale must be told fully, not just for myself to find closure, but also for others who tread the same path as me.

From the age I was 3 I was tormented and beaten every single day by my own father. As a child I could never understand the reasons. It simply meant to me that they didn't want me any more. I cried and screamed every day, and on days that I was not beaten, I broke into cold sweat, cringing in a corner, thinking the pain would come.

I never knew why until I was 5 or 6, then I found out the monster was anti-christ, and I had been born Christian without his knowledge.

And in those years, I only pleaded for mercy once, and that was because my mother was in graver threat from the beast than I was. He had slapped me to the floor when I had asked him why he did not believe in God, and as I tasted blood in my mouth, I saw him raise the heavy metal chair to smash my skull into pieces. My mother rushed forth to stop him, and she screamed at me to apologise and beg for his mercy. I refused, and he slapped her away. Once more he raised the chair, and she ran forth again. This time, I apologised and begged through clenched teeth. I did not beg because I was afraid of the pain. I had lived with it for so long I no longer knew the difference. I begged because if I had not, he would have taken my only protector away from me. I had an unbreakable spirit and absolute faith that only a child can have - I trusted my mother, I trusted God. I wasn't even 10 years old then.

Then my mother decided that she would use leaving the house as a threat, fool that she was. The old monster didn't care. She would pack and leave, and I would scream and plead for her not to leave us with the monster...but she didn't care either. Then, in the darkness of the living room, he would make me sit, and even as the cold sweat ran down my back he would whisper poisonous words into my ears and beat me when I disagreed. But I never agreed. Not once did I affirm his poison, choosing instead to suffer the pain on my body rather than my soul. And when she returned, he would gloat.

And when I was 12, Depersonalization hit me. I still remember it like yesterday. Sitting in the class room, talking with friends, when all of a sudden the world changed, and my voice seemed distant and strange. I shook it off, but I was terrified. I fought it that night, and the next morning, but could no longer hold it off that afternoon. My world became strange that day. And I thought perhaps I would die soon, and I was glad.

But I lived.

For every year after that, when I reached the temple or saw a foreign deity, I'd pray fervently for death. Kill me please! Take me now! End my suffering Please! and it never happened.

He stopped hitting me when I reached Secondary 2. Not because I was taller than him then, but because my maternal grandmother (the last surviving grandparent I have whom I love dearly) told him "Your sons will grow up...and you will grow old."

And it was then that he realised his mortality, and started fearing for his life. For years after that instead of beating us, he tried to poison us with ideals of filial piety and tried to put the fear of God into us - Take care of me when I grow old, or the Gods will punish you.

I'm sorry, "Dad". You were the one who taught me that God doesn't exist. Why should I care for you? You abused me, threatened me, destroyed my childhood, my faith, my ability to feel joy, then you gave me a neurological disease that destroyed my future. If there is one person in the world that I would gladly kill even at the expense of my own death, it'd be you.

You were the one who came home every single day just so you could nag me constantly without fail to go find part-time work during the school holidays. Then when I worked 8am-11pm daily, you took all my money, you bastard. You made me take the 'A' levels so you could show off to your relatives. And when I was able to fight for my own future and enter the University, you took it away from me because you were afraid of me. You deliberately spent all the money you and mother had into buying a 32 year old house infested with rats, cockroaches, centipedes, ants and all manners of pests.

I could not loan from the banks. I could not loan from the government. I could go nowhere.

So I worked, and worked, and hoped that I would be able to save up enough to go to the U, and I never could because you demanded $300 from us every month.

So here I am now, facing the effects of the wonderful life that your violence, your selfishness, your craven fear of the people you abuse has brought to me.

And surprise surprise...You didn't succeed in breaking my spirit. I am still here.

Following this first post will be the black book of things you did to me, the things I felt, the history you gave to my life. Much of my life has been blanked out - because the human mind shuts out trauma - another wonderful medical condition you've given me. And I have delved long and deep into my past to find out more about myself.

I will remember.

So that I can forget.