You Chose Him.

Another fight. Another tantrum. My grandmother left home once again, hoping this time someone would bring her back as her children always do.

Times like this makes me wonder why is she upset. She wanted this. She signed up for this marriage. “Till death do us part”, it said. These incessant quarrels are the unwritten conditions in the certificate, you should have known that. Why would you agree to that and yet put up tantrums when things go wrong?

You chose him.

History seems to repeat itself don’t you think so? My parents’ marriage went about the same way as well, with much more violence involved. Well, lucky us. It’s alright if you picked a trashy partner, but why let your children bear the consequences of your mistakes? I’m not saying he is not at fault but you could have done something about it and yet you didn’t. Is this what they call “Love is blind?”. I assume because you “love” him so you can turn a blind eye to his flaws and tolerate his actions to his children. Maybe you simply thought “Kids needed to be disciplined” so you allowed him to punish us whichever way he pleased.

Truth is, his “punishments” weren’t normal. I’d reckoned it was cruel and inhumane even. So many times my father physically abused my brother by beating him with books or anything he could get his hands on. Heck, he even smashed a bowl on his head once while my brother was on his knees. For the record, my brother stole money from the house but to be perfectly honest, our allowance was pretty darn pathetic. Hell, I stole a couple of times too. So many punishments, so much “creativity”, I rather not list them down. But are these punishments fitting for a child? I think not. I wanted him to get arrested so badly but what could I do? I was a child. Just a child.

“He is your father. He is always right”

Throughout our childhood, we suffered a hell lot of brutal beatings and creative “punishments” our dear father came up with and I’m surprised we survived. But all this time, I wished you did something for us. Stood up for us. Why can’t you right the wrong and made our lives so much easier? Instead, you simply took us to the doctor, refusing to call the police and kept hoping he would change. So many times.

He didn’t change.

Never mind his lack of experience in parenthood, you’d think that since he fcked up two children, maybe he will treat the youngest child better. Boy, you thought wrong. Eight years later, he continues to use violence and fear to control his children and yet again, mother does nothing. Kid fckin hates dad. The cycle continues. But the most disgusting thing is his mindset. He thinks that having children, three of them at the age of 42 is an achievement. Almost like a trophy he prances around with. But so what if you have three children at such a young age? You managed to fck them all up, kudos to you. Nobody could have done it better.

After all this time, he starts to treat us better, trying to mend broken relations of sorts and I’m here stuck thinking, do I erase all the damage you’ve done to us? Let it go? Is that the right thing to do? Just because you are our parent, we forget all the torture you put us through and move on? Is that it? I think not.

On the bright side, marriage just seems like another tragedy to me. After everything that has happened, I don’t have faith in marriages at all.

I don’t think your children should suffer from the bad decisions you have made and I wished you spared us the agony of coming into this world and enduring such “extreme” trials so early in our childhood. I don’t think I’ll ever understand why you stick by him and I never want to understand why. We can forgive but we will never forget. That being said, let’s continue this facade of a charade we call “family”.