C H A P T E R T W O.
The Dysfunctional Family.
When I seldom speak of my family I prefer not to spit venom because like all of my twisted thoughts people would contradict to what I think of my family. They'd tell me how blessed I am to have a family to love me and provide me with the basic necessities for survival. Oh crap! My family is anything but normal and I am anything but loved. Moreover I believe the bottom-line is not whether you're loved or not but whether you feel loved or not. But being the gourmet that I am I'd admit I am thankful for the food.
Psychology gives my family an epithet that describes it well. The Dysfunctional Family. A bunch of insane people who can not bare each other's existence and therefore become the subject of the pain and annoyance kindling within.
This is certainly not an allegation. I have checked the traits of a malfunctioning family on the internet and 8 out of the 11 traits have been congruent to that of my family's. A quiz acquainted me with the enormity of the abnormality. According to it, my family is 50-75% dysfunctional. Damn! Also before you begin to ridicule and mock what I am presenting as evidence, a stupid quiz on the internet, let me tell you they are genuine. Seriously.
Leo Tolstoy in his book Anna Karenina says that all happy families resemble each other whereas each unhappy family is unhappy in it's own ways. Well, when I read this quote for the first time I exclaimed in joy that somebody phrased that out and made it describable but later on, after years, I realized I'd differ to what he has to say. After deep contemplation, I can actually say unhappy families too resemble each other.
Let's seriously talk about this. Picture a happy family, if you're lucky then you'd probably imagine your's.
Two loving parents and a few siblings with whom you have your irrational and of-no-value fights. You dine in together. Gossip and share happenings.
An unhappy family has two parents who do not a) love you or b) are too indulged in fights that they forget they have a kid to take care of, neglect, vehement hatred towards each other, abuse, injustice, narcissism to an extend, low emotional intelligence, blame games and zero tolerance. Parents yell at kids or worse abuse 'em emotionally, physically or sexually. Either of the spouse is involved in an extra-martial affair or there's disloyalty. Even if the parenting is done well, the parental conflicts break the child into pieces even before they experience the real world.
Basically unhappy families too resemble each other.
******
My family's the epitome of dysfunction. I dwell in a well-constructed house whose walls are bricked with imperishable truths regarding hatred and abuse, whose rooftop is shuttered with abandonment and destruction and whose doors are craved with nothing but shattered childhoods. Yep, I belong from a broken family. Although usually the term is accolade-d to families where parents are divorced but I use it too. Not to sedate my emotional flagellation wreaked upon myself but because belonging to a family with two separated parents who abominate each other and who's hostility for one another escalates with every correspondence is to belong from a broken family.
I have a father who thinks I am a disappointment and makes sure he expresses his growing disenchantment towards a girl he perceives to be an aggressive lunatic who spurns the conventionality and norms and loathes the society. I am not denying anything but I do not have to visit the psychiatrist merely because I possess the gallantry required to question everything that the man-kind has defined as unquestionable. I am not a fiasco because my father can not convince me to accept his ideologies.
I say I am emotionally neglected by my father. I do not say that because I want to fed my masochism or because I have abandonment issues. I say it because that's the truth. Months pass by and we do not talk and when we do it's an argument. Once when interacting after 3 months I told him he never was there to guide me he said I am simply insecure. Damn, man.! Accept your failure as a father and I'd be grateful for your success as a provider.
My mother's a narcissist and a manipulator. This is a realization I lately had. Again, not an accusation. As a kid I was told by my mother my father hates me and my siblings. Not that it wasn't true or anything but she maneuvered me into believing such a thing to strengthen her rivalry with her spouse who by the way sucks as a husband too. As I grew the relationship deteriorated and the emotional abuse got worse. She'd call me names and express her regret for giving birth to me. Oh well, I regret that too. Being the quintessential person who grew up in rural area and extremely religious person that she is, she foresees the future and tells me I'd cause the family ignominy. The opprobrium of raising a daughter who is a prostitute or perhaps has a secret lover with whom she ran away. Crap the fear is real, ladies and gentlemen!
Perhaps my biggest affliction is being compared to my dead sister. My mother wishes it was me for my dead sister was a sweetheart. I won't completely blame my mother here. I am a pain in the ass. I admit.
Once after a critical exchange of abusive words she spoke of my dead sister and said the same usual things that I am used to. This time, with her curly and long hair opened, she started crying and rushed to the bedroom. After rummaging the cupboard furiously she accused me of stealing the only photograph of my dead sister that she owned. I took it all as a drama for my mother is capable of all sorts of dramas. She could use a dead person to harm and abuse me. She never fails to amaze me and I can not enunciate her manipulation.
Next is my living sister- the hypocrite. Oh! I hate her too but I am the manipulator of her life. I am guilty of assault too. In my family we all abuse each other so it is always a mutual act. Cheers to that. There was a time period when she too started calling me a wh**e. I now take it merely as a remuneration for the years of abuse that I hurled at her, maybe not as intense as what she called me but well I am a bad abuser. She likes me to an extend but is a damn impostor. She tells me I can open up to her but when I do, which is rare, she is filled with abhorrence which she expresses and calls me ridiculous and stuff.
I do not remember a single moment we all, the four of us, spent together and happily. We have our scanty share of happiness but not wholesomely. The father's always missing in such moments.
My parents are crazy people. They make a mad couple. My father's the educated and handsome man, as he likes to put it whereas my mother the uneducated ugly woman who has been disliked by her husband from day one. She gains lots of sympathies by telling each and every person that she meets about her prolonged marriage life that has been perennially sorrowful and a little bit abusive. It didn't end because divorce's a taboo. Well, my father yearns to marry once more and we all too speak of it as if it is a normal thing to talk about.
That's the perk of a dysfunctional family, you get to speak of weird things normally. And for an introvert, there's no family gatherings or hangouts too so all in one, I like the fact that I belong from a dysfunctional family.
*******
I indirectly cry for help when I scream and shout at my mother and sister. Father's always away and I rather have an informal relationship with him. Coming back to the overlooked cries for help, so yeah it might sound insane to you but I wish my aggression was perceived as a cry for help because in all frankness, it is. For you and everyone else it might just simply be loathsome and a lout brawling with everyone. But for me it is losing control and going insane because of what is happening inside.
I walk alone on a lonely road. I am drowning. I am desperately screaming and howling inside. Gasping for breathe. The movement of my chest that looks breathing to you is mere suffocation for me. I am going crazy because my mind is constantly berating myself for being fickle and a catastrophe when I was supposed to be a success like the world perceives me to be.
All of this makes me take out my frustration through rebuking at my family. I wish they could understand and just try to help me manage my anger and try to dig deeper. If they did, I could have a chance at recovering but that's all what if and I find what ifs irrational and not worthy of my time. What has not happened has not happened and it is a waste of time to think of the change that can not come.
I also wish that my mother could see the blood on my clothes. I usually self-harm when I take a shower but there are times when I can't control the demons and take out the blade and cut myself and stare at the white flesh. I forgot the blade in my washroom twice and nobody noticed it in-spite of the numerous visits to the washroom so I believe I am destined to self-mutilate.
*******
Love's always been alien for me. I am not capable of love nor deserving it. I face a dearth of emotions when it comes to other people and for inexplicable reasons my sensitivity halts when it comes to other people. But I know a thing about platonic love. It has no rational explanations whatsoever, it just exists. The feeling of readily sacrificing your life for the benefit of a loved one and placing someone else before you is a feeling that I have for no one except Sharona. I never tell her such cheesy things. She already thinks of herself highly.
Sharon's the reason why I am still alive, not exactly but despite that she is not the person who understands me completely or the one who knows the real me. The Depressed One and The Self-Mutilator. Although I am quite sure she has by now figured out that I am a depressed person. I think if she actually knew me she'd loathe me. She is a happy person who lives in a delusional world with a happy family. She won't accept me and I have serious abandonment issues that invigorate me to make boundaries between people and me. I am not really proud of the fact that there are boundaries between her and I.
" Listen, you dark and twisty little bitch, I love you despite everything. Despite the contradictions we have. Despite being completely opposite. Despite your neuroticism. I value you for you are an idiosyncratic talent who's going to make a messy writer who writes bestsellers and I'd be proud to be the first person to love her so now stop with the whining.", she told me once when I was being bitchy and was whining about the fact that my life sucks after I failed my maths exam.
Those words of her made me smile and believe it or not, no one else can make me smile. I feel loved and everything else only because of Sharona but then again what is the point when there is no reciprocity and loyalty. When I am not honest to her?
" Do not tell anyone, I love you too.", I laugh.
"Damn, you have feelings too!", she mocks me and joins me in laughing.
I do not care if there isn't a point. I am grateful for Sharona.
Shiv Shakti
