This piece is from Yukimi. Many of us know her through blogger, she always leaves encouraging comments! Thank you so much for your brave words Yukimi!
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Mom,
I still remember when you looked at me with incredulity and perhaps a bit of remorse after I naively asked why you were spanking us everyday all the time. You said that wasn't true and I don't know if I said it out loud or just thought, because my memory of my childhood is pretty vague, that you had spanked us several times that day and the day before and the day before that and so on. You didn't beat us (except once when I was a teenager) but you made us completely scared of you. I still am.
My father, who you despise for the awful way he treated all of us, has apologized to me for it and for placing a big burden on me when I was little for being the eldest but I can't even bring anything negative about you without you getting all defensive and shutting the conversation telling me how much you sacrificed for me or how much worse my father is. I thought people did things for their kids because they loved them, not to use it as leverage with their children.
Now I'm an adult in most practical senses but I still drag all the baggage of our dysfunctional relationship. I have a depressingly low self-esteem, I have a compulsive need of being accepted (which usually makes people run for the hills), I cannot even entertain the idea of disappointing you (which ironically has driven me to a point of being about to academically fail university) and I don't know if I will be ever love you the same or be able to relate to you anymore which it's a pity because you and I are so alike in so many things.
If I have children, I don't want to spank them, I want to listen to them. Their motives might seem silly to adults but they are human beings and they have feelings and when you mock them they suffer. You have already told me that you don't want to baby-sit my kids ever, well at least for now I'll take you on that. Perhaps in the future I'll be stronger to tell you this in person and perhaps then you'll actually listen to me.
Yukimi
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"Their motives might seem silly to adults but they are human beings and they have feelings and when you mock them they suffer."
ReplyDeleteYes! Yukimi this is SO true. My feelings as a child were just as real and they are now. Just becuase a person is small doesnt mean they're not a person. It just means they're powerless to defend themselves.
Thanks for writing this!
That acknowledgement instead of defensiveness is so powerful! Thank you for sharing this Yukimi, and just know that even if she never gets to the point where she can hear you, you are already so strong and so brave for speaking out now.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments, they mean a lot to me ^^
ReplyDeleteThese are all very sad, moving stories of abuse. And I think it does take a tremendous amount of courage to tell these painful, personal accounts. I hope you all will be able to forgive your parents one day and move on to a better place in your relationship. It sounds like a lot of the parents I'm reading about in this series have or had serious control issues. Or some kind of emotional imbalance to treat your children that way. it's really sad that they put that abuse and spanking side by side with eachother. I hope for the best for all of you as you continue in your journey and continue to make decisions in the way you raise your own children. :)
ReplyDeleteIt's always easier to think that abused children have parents with lots of issues. It's easier to think "I’ll never be like that" if the person you're talking about is some control-freak psycho with anger issues and imbalanced personalities. The sad truth, however, is that the kids who grow up damaged had regular, healthy, happy, loving parents. Parents who made the choice to spank, without knowing it would damage their child almost irreparably.
DeleteThere doesn’t have to be anger, or personality disorders, or bruises, or verbal abuse, or broken bones present for a child to be hurt. A simple, gentle, loving spanking is very often more than enough.
That’s the whole point of this series. Spanking IS abuse. Spanking is treating a child like less of a human being. A parent who spanks, no matter how innocently and peacefully, runs the risk of damaging and alienating their child. It's not worth it.
Your mom sounds like my mother-in-law. She blamed her husband for everything that ever went wrong in their children's upbringing, but the fact is that she was by far the more abusive one. I am so sorry you have to deal with this. I will tell you what I have tried to tell my husband, though: If she refuses to acknowledge reality, you must find a way to eliminate her opinions from your own reality in order to heal. You ARE good enough, and when someone has her attitude, the sad fact is that you can never be good enough for her. No matter what you do. If you can, remind yourself every day that she isn't your creator, or your ultimate judge. She is just another human being who happens to have strong emotional ties to you. That does not give her the power to define you.
ReplyDeleteSo much pain and truth in this post. Yukimi, I hope you are able to heal from these experiences. I was spanked, and I was mercilessly mocked as a child. The mockery continued into adulthood, until I learned to join in and began to suffer from anxiety and depression because that's not who I am. I hope people don't know the damage they cause from this, because the alternative is too horrible to consider.
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