My life 2: Childhood

When a couple starts a family, they bring in all of their own belief systems, behaviors, and emotions, as a soil for the children to grow in. The complete inner worlds of both parents, including all the parts they keep running away from, literally permeate every imaginable corner of this foundation of the family.

Concerning my parents, in order for them to constantly escape their many deep fears and pains, their inner worlds exist very far away from reality. This is described in detail in the previous article (XX).

The mixture of the inner worlds of my parents created many twisted dynamics, with innumerable illogicalities. The result is the creation of an inner world of the family, that simply is a parallel universe: completely out of touch with the current reality.

Overview on the family

On a high level, the situation was as follows. The family consisted out of six children: two children in an adult body, and four children in a child body. Our family lived in an isolated house in the country side, with a large distance to the road and our neighbors. Our parents could do with us what they wanted.

My mother ruled the house, and she used her husband to hide her pain and mean behavior. An example is that she frequently started conflicts with her children, out of desperation to feel validated and seen. When she was losing a conflict with her children, she made her husband to beat them. The children were not allowed to reflect back the desperation, pain, and humiliation she threw at them. She always proclaimed to never have hit her children, while she actually abused her husband for that. When she was mean or abusive towards anyone, directly or indirectly, she would protect it with a fragmented and self-contradicting narrative.

My father was convinced that he was emotional incapable, acting like a victim. He was systematically fulfilling his own prophecy. This also enabled my mother in being the hero/victim towards my father. My father was convinced, that he did not have to take emotional responsibility for his behavior, because he was so incapable. Furthermore, he could not make a stand for himself in the society. To balance this feeling of not being seen, he abused his family, mainly his older two children by oppressing and beating them. He would force his rules violently onto the family.

Consciously, my father thought he was in charge, but emotionally he was constantly played out by my mother. My mother openly humiliated her husband in front of the children, as part of her power play. She would say things like "he is just sitting home all day, I have to take care of him to get him outside" or "He doesn't know what clothes to wear, I have to watch him all the time". In between the lines she was constantly saying "look at what a pathetic loser he is". My mother was heavily acting out her wounded behaviour of humiliation towards my father. But because of her limited emotional awareness, she was simply not aware of her humiliation towards my father and her children. In fact, my mother had my father by the balls.

My father stayed unaware of this, and additionally that, he was using his wife to take care of himself. Like my mother, he was stuck using and being used. My father rationally was convinced that he should always be loyal and protective of his wife. Subconsciously my father had a lot of anger towards his wife. My parents were frequently fighting. If it was not openly, they would be fighting in silence, with silent anger, frustrated looks, and indirect comments. My mother used the tactics of emotional violence and humiliation, and my father used the tactics of physical intimidation and authoritative anger.

<info block: the child is dropped when parents are fighting>

My mother was in charge of raising the children, but her own wounds of humiliation and desperation, severely wounded the children as well. Being responsible for four children gave her the validation she desperately wanted. My father was mostly either working too hard, or resting. He could not moderate himself. When my father needed validation, he enforced his perspectives on the upbringing of the children, adding extra chaos to the chaos my mother already created.

There were four children, and the younger two children were not to be touched by any serious negativity, they were expected to be happy, social and successful children: the white sheep of the family. They were the pride of the family, being strongly favored over the older two children, getting more affection, clothes, presents, support, attention, etcetera. Sometimes they were reprimanded and sometimes beaten, but always lightly. They helped maintaining the mask family-image, representing the mask self-image of the parents.

This idealization was needed, to hide the wounded family-image, realized through the older two problematic children, me and my Ob, the black sheep of the family. If my parents were having negative feelings, they used the older two children to unload their feelings. As a result, the older two children developed excessive emotional problems, they represented the wounded self-image of the parents.

The separation between the white sheep children and the black sheep children was very strong. Because as soon this separation of the children would break, my parents would be confronted with their own wounds. Preventing this, my parents could stay hypnotized in their own narrative, that they were fair and loving parents, they did not have severe wounds, and that the older problematic children were not their fault. The separation was always maintained, in many ways.

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A big theme of the family were the fragmented and self-contradicting perspectives my parents had. My parents had many disconnected concepts on how to raise children. They frequently mentioned or used those concepts, adding more chaos, because their actual behavior was completely opposite to those concepts. By having those disconnected concepts, they created a fragmented and self-contradicting narrative, through which they hypnotized themselves and the children that everyone was doing fine. It led to many destructive situations.

An example would be, that once my father asked the older two children if they had feedback for him. In this way, my father convinced himself to be open, vulnerable, open to self-reflection, and valuing the opinions of his children.

At the same time, he was a father that beat up his child (me, in this case) for crying too much when his child felt intensely alone, a child that has plans for suicide because he felt unworthy of living. My father kept beating him until he was silent. Because my father felt they should not beg for attention in that way, even when the child already tried to get the attention of his parents in so many other ways.

Complementary, my mother approved the return of the silence in the house. Otherwise, she would have protected her children when they were crying, or visited them after the beating. Which she did not do. And in this way, she maintained her mask self-image. Sometimes, when my mother was crying, she would on purpose walk in front of me or the other children, hovering around them for a while, like a mosquito. She was pretending to learn the children that it is okay to cry, while at the same time she was using her husband to beat crying children into silence.

For my father, asking a child for his for feedback in this way, was only for keeping up the mask self-image my father had of himself. He learned me, that concepts like asking for feedback is something you pretend. He was not really interested in his children. Because through the excessive beating he showed, that on the deepest level he is not open to the feelings of his children. The child already stopped showing his father what he needs a long time ago. Because he does not want lie on the floor again, being kicked and punched on his body and face, in agony and terror, fearing for his life.

For my mother, she would cling to disconnected concepts like "It is okay to show that you are sad". When she was acting like that, she learned her children, that emotions were also some kind of act, leading them away from the true magical and sacred powers of emotions. In the meantime, she used her husband to attack her children, also inspiring the children into manipulation and hypocrisy. And she was destroying her own children on a much deeper level, infecting them with her poisonous emotions of desperateness and chaos. As a result of this, the children get destabilized enormously, while trying to hold on to anything toxic their parents offer them.

Further illustrating the fragmentation and self-contradiction, my father was the director of the board of the local church: A community of people that regard themselves as loving and accepting. And my mother, she worked at the child protection agency, to advice the government and police how to deal with matter like child abuse and chaotic families. For families, there are many, many different ways in which it can get off the rails. In the ways of my family, this could be such an example.

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Zooming out, it is was a horrific situation, not only for the children, but also for my parents. My parents already had many severe wounds from their own childhoods, and now they were creating a family that made them relive everything, wounding their children at the same time. Every day, every month, every year, every child.

They were simply disconnected from their own capacities, so that they could not guide the family based on principles of love, harmony, and integrity. From their own childhoods full of abuse, they inherited many patterns of destructive, anti-social, and unloving behavior. As long as they did not choose to heal the wounds of their youths, which they never did, they had no choice but to continue behaving in the patterns they learned from their own childhoods. That meant deeply wounding two children with their own deep wounds, and raising the younger two into fake happiness. Their emotional awareness stayed very small. As a result, the ability to "choose to act in an emotional responsible way", that ability was simply not available to them.

Without emotional awareness, they constantly steered the family into all kinds of conflicts, situations of stress, division, fear, and emotional and physical unsafety. Nobody could be who he/she really was, but was constantly reacting to all kinds of very unsafe situations and ever-present destabilizing dynamics. Nobody could get what he/she needed, so everyone started to get what/she needed in other ways. And everyone felt threatened all the time, so everyone constantly was in his/her defensive strategies.

My mother mainly acted through her patterns of playing the victim/hero, manipulation and humiliation, and constantly needing validation to be seen. My father mainly acted through his emotional helplessness, authoritative terror, and physical intimidation. As a result of this, the children got destabilized enormously, while trying to hold on to anything toxic their parents offer them. The destabilized behavior of the children created even more chaos.

Intellectually, my parents memorized some concepts about raising children, but emotionally, they did anything but understand them. This resulted in my parents maintaining a very fragmented en self-contradicting narrative. It kept everyone hypnotized in their own painful role, including my parents themselves.

My Older Brother

My Older Brother(Ob) was the first child in the family. Growing up, my Ob(Older Brother) felt that something was totally off. He was completely alone, in opposing the fragmented and self-contradicting world that my parents were creating. My parents had many difficulties with caring for one child, that constantly tried to challenge their boundaries. The boundaries of my parents were very restrictive, because they have so many pains they constantly try to run away from. Having one child already, was simply too much for the many pains for my parents. They started become offensive towards their child, through their own patterns.

For example: He was not allowed to be angry, when he was transparent he was taken advantage of, when he stood up for himself he was shamed and humiliated, his pure hearted intentions where cut off, and when he showed courage to rebel the twisted way of life my parents had, he was met with full destructive attacks to keep him in line. And being the oldest, he tried to care for the family at the same time. My father being in competition with his sons, kept attacking him for that.

Through emotional and physical violence alone, my parents were not able to withstand him. They resorted to deep manipulation: they deceived his 3 siblings, including me, in believing that he was an anti-social criminal, and made him into a living-in outcast. He was someone that was living in the house, but actually he was not welcome. Every day of his youth. The price my Ob(Older Brother) paid for staying connected to his authenticity, was a youth full of fighting and constantly being shamed and humiliated. In the childhood of our family, he is the unrecognized hero, that lost every battle.

Because my Ob was the rightful rebel in the family, my father started constant physical fights with him. Through this, my father taught my Ob, that the only way to win a conflict is by fighting. In the beginning, my father was always winning because he was at least twice his size, weight, and strength. But my Ob continued fighting back, and at some point he was able to really fight back. Around that time, my father started to frame my Ob as being an aggressive criminal. At some point, my father openly started to say in the family about my Ob "He is an asshole". My father was desperate in his role, and totally clueless about how he was destroying his own child, and his own family.

The whole family, including me, was hypnotized by the narrative of my father, and sided with my father, all strongly condemning and judging my Ob. But the one that actually introduced aggression in the family, onto innocent small children, for even the simplest things like dropping a glass, and who is responsible for the physical safety in the family, my father, was left untouched.

A child that gets physically abused, can get restless, and develop problems keeping his attention. Because my Ob was an outcast within the family, nobody helped him. He found his refuge by smoking marihuana, a drug that temporarily helps him calm down. Otherwise, my Ob could not sleep, because of all the judgements and aggression that daily was thrown his way.

My father was in constant war with my Ob, so the use of marihuana was another opportunity for my father, to win a battle, and to make a junkie outcast of him. This also made my father feel seen by taking a stand "against" use of drugs, even when my father himself was the cause of my Ob using it. Logically, my Ob had problems on school: trusting authority because his parents abused him, and problems learning because of his shortened attention span. My father was physically fighting my Ob because he was underperforming at school.

Having a child that you can label as aggressive and anti-social, feeds the hero-victim pattern of my mother. Every time there was conflict with my Ob, my mother kept on repeating "Oh, I understand his behavior so well", so she could fake being the understanding mother. If she really understood his behavior, she would give him the support and protection he needed. But behind her child's back she kept on asking her husband to beat my Ob, and to friends and family she complained about having a problematic-child. She and her husband problematized her child by themselves.

At some point, my parents where constantly threatening my Ob to put him outside the house. And because they were neglecting the needs of my Ob, logically my Ob started to take what he needed without asking. My parents bought a safe, to even further prevent him to take what he needed. And they used "buying the safe" as an extra reason to label him as a criminal. My parents were completely out of touch with what truly was happening.

Me, the second child

21 months after the birth of my Ob (Older Brother), I was born. Growing up next to my Ob, I noticed that standing for what you feel is right, was not working out. I constantly saw my Ob being beaten, humiliated and labelled as an outcast. As a result of this, I took the opposite strategy as my brother. Instead of standing for what I felt was right, I completely adopted the fragmented and self-contradicting views my parents had on reality: I chose to be dominated by my parents.

They price I paid for this, was shutting down my heart, and my emotions. And to function, I used my brain at overcapacity, to always exactly follow the rules, constantly scanning the environment, constantly heaving headache, and being 200% honest all all times. Paradoxically, while shutting down my own feelings, I became over-sensitive to the feelings and perspectives of my parents: Every time my parents would only even get slightly agitated from anything, it would increase my dangers of getting abused. Being hyper vigilant. Always.

I did not succeed in escaping the dark sides of my parents. I actually became a very easy target. Being extremely opposite to my Ob, ironically, my parents had a wide range of children to unload their negativity on. My parents have innumerable inconsistencies, and their rules were always based on which of their pains and fears is currently active. Because of this, they constantly changed their rules, and it frequently made me angry: I did exactly what they wanted, but they did not follow up. It practically meant they had enough reasons to be angry at me, whenever they had a need to feel seen or validated.

At some point I stopped taking them seriously, because whatever I did, they would feel offended anyway. Because I was socially underdeveloped, I could not escape to any friends. My refuge was having bought my own computer, and playing computer games all day. If I would play computer games, I would have the lowest chances on getting beaten and humiliated.

Because I did shut down my feelings, I prevented myself from developing socially, and I missed out on a lot of social activities. This was an opportunity for my father to feel validated as a father, he could explain a child how your emotions work. I do not recall learning anything useful from him in this regard. My mother convinced the family, that I had very little emotions, so that they can be ignored. I grew up believing that what I felt was wrong, and that my emotions were deeply broken. And it gave my mother an extra child that she could call problematic: an extra opportunity for her to be the victim-hero mother.

Because I picked a role opposite to my Ob, obedient vs rebel, we were constantly fighting. This was increased by the aggression and other emotions our parents forced into us. Related to the opposite roles, I was brainwashed by my parents that their twisted rules were completely fair, and that my Ob was totally crazy. But my Ob was not letting himself fooled by them. We developed completely different characters: silent vs expressive, mind-based vs feeling-based, controlled vs impulsive, honest vs dishonest, authoritative vs rebelling, cold vs warm.

When we were in conflict, we learned from our parents that the best way to solve it, is via fighting. I used the tactics I learned from my mother: emotional violence and humiliation. My Ob used the tactic he learned from my father: physical violence. Because I used the same tactic as my mother to attack my Ob, I could do almost whatever I wanted to my brother. Because as soon as I would be exposed, my mother had to stop too. That was out of the question.

Through the chaos in the family, I developed an allergy for my brother. It meant that everything he touched, I treated as if it was infected with a highly contagious disease. I needed to wash it, before I could touch it. What was really going on, is that I expressed the hidden feelings my parents actually had for my brother: he was an outcast, and he should not infect or damage other people with his behavior.

My Younger Sister and Younger Brother

While growing up, my Younger Sister (Ys) noticed, that both the strategies of rebellion and obedience, do not result in getting any safety and affection. She chose the strategy of withdrawal, suppressing her own needs, validating her parents, and caring for her parents marriage. My Younger Brother(Yb) saw that withdrawal is not ideal either, and chose the strategy of over-connection. He always tried to stay in connection with everyone, always being nice, social, available and empathetic. He desperately tried to reconnect the family, an impossible task.

My Ys (Younger Sister) and Yb (Younger Brother) also figured out how to be the perfect children their parents wished for: they needed to give up their own authenticity. With all the twisted stuff my parents did, they learned to not confront them with anything, but to just accept it: Play by their rules, and act happy at the same time, ignoring all their own feelings that something is totally off. My parents wanted "happy" and "successful" children, they got what they wanted. At the end of high school, my Yb won the award of being the most likeable and perfect student. Eventually, my Ys became a medical doctor, fulfilling my mother's need for validation who was 'only' a nurse. My Yb became a business man, fulfilling my father's aspirations who failed in business life.

My Ys and Yb became the white sheep of the family, while me and my Ob where the black sheep of the family.

If the younger two children were also heavily abused, the mask family-image would break, exposing the wounded self-image of the parents.

Having two problem children, was enabling my parents to run away from their own problems: having created even more problems outside of themselves. They were not looking at how they destroyed their own children, but at how their destroyed children brought even more chaos in the family. Attacking, shaming and condemning their problem children, was another way in which my parents did not look at their own wounds.

Whenever my mother had a need to feel like a hero/victim, or had any negative feelings she needed to dump somewhere, she would spend time with me or my older brother, creating more misery in us. Whenever my mother had a need for validation, she would ignore me and my older brother, and spend time with my younger brother and sister. They would be spoiled, forced to accept manipulative love, so in return she would get validation from her white sheep children.

Separation of children

There was a strong separation between the two older children and the two younger children. It allowed my parents to hide and shove their wounds onto the older children, and spoiling their younger children into upholding their idealized narrative.

My parents used me and my Ob as a garbage bin for their dark emotions. As a result, we were frequently angered, sad, disorientated, scared, and we developed many emotional illnesses. Which in turn, was an excuse for my parents to say "look, all these problems our older two children are having: it is them, not us".

Their illusion was supported by having two white sheep children: it made them conclude they were able to raise children properly, despite all of the chaos that existed in the family. They greatly protected their illusion, by denying that they were favoring their younger two children. Because as soon as they would break their illusion, they would have to look at themselves, why they had deformed their oldest two children and their younger children. That would mean they had to face their immense fears, anger, and pains. They simply could not gather up the required courage and dignity. They prevented that from happening, at all costs.

This separation, was maintained through the following mechanisms.

◆ In the first place, my parents had established a relationship with me and my Ob based on negativity. My parents had deformed us into two emotional garbage bins. They needed two children for that. So, after "emptying" themselves daily into me and my Ob, my parents could better connect to their "loving" side, to connect to my Ys and my Yb. With me and my Ob, they were living their wounded self-image.

◆ Second, this separation was created, after my Ys figured out how to be a "perfect" child. She learned from the mistakes of her older siblings. She learned herself how to withdraw, avoid confrontations, accept all hypocrisy, hide authenticity, care for her parents to please them, and to just appear happy and nice.

◆ Third, my parents were relieved they finally had children that were "not causing problems". They were happy to finally be the parents they wanted to be, so they could show them their "real love", manipulatively spoiling them, receiving validation, increasing the separation. The found a way to realize their mask self-image, their false idealization.

◆ Fourth, thinking the black sheep children really were the problems, they wanted to "protect" their white sheep children from the black sheep children, increasing the separation.

◆ Fifth, my Ys and Yb learned from my parents that me and my Ob were the cause of all the problems, and seeing us as lesser children. For example, my Ys was hypnotized into believing that my feelings did not matter, following the example of my parents. My Ys and Yb learned to maintain the separation as well, by acting accepting towards us, but silently condemning us. Seeing that the strategies of rebellion and conforming did not work, my Ys and Yb had no choice but to accept the hypocrisy and side with their parents.

◆ Sixth, desperately wanting to believe they are good parents, they completely lost themselves in their illusion that they had bad and good children. This meant that any negative feelings they had, it must be related to the bad children. And good feelings must be related to the good children. So based on how they felt, they chose to which children they expressed it: abusing the black sheep children, or spoiling the white sheep children. <todo? put this as the first bullet point? "maybe" they caused it from the start?>

Me and my Ob were representing the wounded self-image of my parents. It meant that how my parents were treating my and my Ob, that was actually how they were treating themselves. How they abused us, that is how they abused themselves. How they neglected us, that is how they neglected themselves. How they humiliated us, that is how they humiliated themselves. How they hated us, that is how they hated themselves. And how they were fake to their younger two children, that is how they were fake to themselves. They fled into raising white sheep children with fake happiness, using the black sheep children as stepping stones.

To get an idea of how this played out, the following examples might be helpful.

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My mother needs constant validation to have her feelings heard, and to feel seen by someone else. At times, I was able to get some distance from her, to get a some rest in my system. It made me feel okay, being able to connect with myself, and life started to become a bit more peaceful again. But, that was too much separation for my mother. She would start to feel alone, helpless, and desperate, and she would start to project those feelings on me. And with those feelings, she would show up in my room, and create a big drama and hysteria: She would say how worried she is about me, that she really doesn't know what to do with me, "in god's name", and that I should be extremely worried and careful too, about what I should "do".

<todo: my mother made me feel guilty when she showed up in my room>

I really didn't know what she was talking about, but she sent me so much desperation and hysteria, that I could not keep it outside. She forced her darkness into my system, and I would begin to feel desperate and helpless as well. And in this inflicted state of desperateness, I was supposed to reach out to her, really not knowing what I should do, and surrendering to her "care". Which I did. She forced me back into being connection with her, in the way she needed, as close as she needed.

In this way, she used me has a garbage bin for her dark emotions. Plus, she could play her pattern of being a hero/victim mother again, by caring for her helpless son afterwards. So as soon as I would start to stabilize myself, she would destroy that, making me unstable again. I started to associate taking care of myself with getting attacked by my mother. And I was trained to be desperately helpless, so my mother could "save" me. I stopped taking care of myself.

Alternatively, my mother would never think of bothering her white sheep children with her hysteria. Otherwise the strategy of withdrawal of my Ys would not have worked. Concerning my father, when he needed to seriously physical abuse one of his children, he would never choose his white sheep children.

For me and my Ob, by getting systematically attacked, we kept being associated with negativity, and we developed severe developmental disorders. This was widening the separation of the children. When I was young, I really believed I was the one making these serious problems: Not knowing how or what, but that it definitely was me. There must have been something seriously wrong with me.

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From the the other side, my parents would get positive validation from my Ys and Yb. My Yb learned to care for everyone that is near him. My Ys learned to validate her parents. Once, we were playing a board game. I was referring to a rule about how to play the game, and there was discussion about how to interpret the rule. My father remarked "when you are playing a game, it is not about the rules, but about the fun".

This is a self-contradicting message from my father: in such situations, through violence, he is willing to force obedience to his remark. But my Ys said in reply to my father's remark "nicely said, dad". Despite all the chaos that was going on in the family, she learned to flip potentially dangerous situations, playing along with the fragmentation and self-contradiction of my parents. And she managed to stay friends with her parents by giving them validation. She was caring for her parents, instead of the other way around.

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White sheep children naturally get more affection than black sheep children. At some time, I said to my mother that I wanted to play a harp. She immediately replied, that a harp is too expensive. When my Ys wanted to play an instrument, my parents bought a transverse flute for her. A beginners transverse is flute is a bit cheaper than a beginners harp, but totally insignificant for the big salary my father earned. When I wanted to learn to play the piano, I had to go to the music store by myself, and buy from my own money the books I needed. When my Ys wanted to learn to play the piano, she would get the books for free from my parents. With the argument "she plays so nice".

In primary school, initially my mother would drive me to school together with my Ys and Yb. After school, I always needed a few extra minutes to arrive in the car. I simply was a different child with a different speed, quite possibly due to the abuse. Me being a slower person, she could use that to keep the separation. She got angry at me for always being "too slow". Eventually she refused to drive me to school, and I had to bike to school everyday, while she kept driving my Ys and Yb to school.

Someday, I mentioned to my mother that she was favoring my Ys and my Yb over me. She replied that it is not true, and it is a horrible thing to say, and that I should never say that again. As a child hearing this, I was shocked. I banished that thought from my mind, and I simply started believing that what I felt was not true: I had to choose between feeling the truth or having a connection with my mother. A child will always choose his parents. So I closed my eyes for seeing what was actually happening right in front of me.

Later when being an adult, once my Ob said to me "our parents were enormously favoring our Ys and Yb over us, it was heartbreaking for me see". That made me reopen my eyes again and connect my forgotten memories.

As result of my above attempt to set thing straight, during my youth, my mother repeatedly humiliated me in front of the family and our guests. She would use one of her favorite sayings "I will give you a weighing scale on your birthday, so you can be happy". For years and years, she kept on attacking me for having confronted her, and I could not do anything about it. I needed her to survive. She had me by the balls. Me too.

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The separation had much more implications. As a result of this separation, me and my Ob experienced completely different parents, when compared to the parents experienced by my Ys and my Yb.

When my and my Ob where fighting, our parents would frequently ignore us. They allowed the one that was losing, to be surrendered to the attacks of the other. But almost every time I was in a conflict with my Ys or Yb, my parents intervened. For example, I would get hit when I was verbally teasing my Ys, but many times my Ob could hit me as much as he want without repercussions. Besides that, my parents had virtually no clue, that when children are teasing/bullying, they are asking attention and affection in a negative way. They asked negatively, only because before that, they were ignored when they asked in a positive way.

Even in the house setup, there was a separation. On one side of the house, I had a room above the room of my Ob. And on the other side of the house, my Ys and Yb had their own rooms. When camping, my Ys and Ys slept in the same tent as my parents. This pattern even is continued today. In the will of our parents, my Ys and Yb are designated as the executors of the will.

Now, when I think back of living together with my Ys and Ys, there is a very clear but hidden separation between me and them. The white sheep children were not to be touched: they programmed me to live by that rule. As if I am not allowed to touch them, as if I am contagious, as if I am less worthy, they are more important than me. They get the preferred treatment, and we don't speak about it.This is just as it is.

The separation between the children in my family, is just one of the many results of the fact, that my parents refused to face their inner pains, anger and fears.

My mother: desperate, destructive, and mean

It can still make me speechless, how she managed to terrorize me. Owning me. Possessing me. There are so many deceptive very mean things she has done. She was an expert in staying under the radar, but at the same time being extremely humiliating and possessing. At one moment she could pretend to be very sweet, and at the other moment she was luring me into a conflict with her, for whatever reason, to make me play her games. If she could not win, she asked her husband to make me surrender to her. Using her husband as her minion, he would physically abuse me, leaving me in agony and terror.

After that, my mother would strangely keep her distance to me. And after some time, she played the good mother again, inviting me to be an helpless lost child, crying in desperation, only wanting to be cared by her. At the same time she would humiliate her husband for anything, also for his beating. It made me believe that my father was the cause of all chaos, anyone but her. Through anything, she stayed in utmost control. This kind of manipulation was extremely hidden, extremely effective, and extremely mean.

As a child, I would never see through the deception that my mother was actually very mean. Instead, I experienced a mother that I was in a conflict with, and because I was heavily beaten afterwards, by someone else, I was believed that the problem was me. Because, afterwards, my mother was a sweet mother to me again. Subconsciously I developed an enormous rage, mistrust, and hate towards her. But because I was so disconnected from my subconscious, it wast just another loose, disconnected feeling that I did not have access to.

The very effective game of terror she played, she being the good/helpless cop, and my father the bad cop, I believed it. Because if I did not believe it, trying to expose her, I would get beaten again, fearing for my life. And she always pretend to have never beaten me: If I would not believe that, it meant I would be beaten again by her husband. So I believed her.

Through her manipulative destruction, she completely detached me from living in reality. I could only mirror her fragmented and self-contradicting way of living, being dominated by her. I didn't know anymore what was right or wrong, authentic or inauthentic, loving or hating, truth or lies, sad or anger, joy or danger, safety or manipulation, trust or being used. The only thing that mattered, was keep on believing her, whatever she said, whatever she did, whatever she felt. And the problem was always me. She fucked with my mind, with my feelings, and with my heart.

The words that best make sense to me, is emotional rape.

When my mother felt in a bad place, and she needed validation, attention, love, or anything else, she would force that out of me. She took of control of my innermost feelings of beauty, purity and love, and abused them in any way she needed it. Apart from damaging my own connections to my heart, she also forced her very dark anger, pains, and fears into my heart. These are feelings of utter chaos, destruction, emptiness and desperateness. She was leeching my heart. As a result, my own inner world was flooded by her destructive chaos, leaving it in ruins. Day after day, being humiliated by my mother, my heart being filled with her destructive and manipulative chaos, I started to believe it was me: "deep inside, I am very ugly".

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My mother was constantly using me and controlling me at the same time. As if she constantly had me on her leash, and that leash was wrapped around my balls. If I would even make the tiniest movement, in which I was not humiliating and sacrificing my life to her, she would pull that leash, making sure I would feel intense pain. But she would do that very discreetly, very small, but very clear. And if I dared to step out of line, she would always have her husband as a backup. One of her favorite expressions was, saying it in a very mean way: "Don't you dare!". Reading between the lines, it meant "I will destroy you if you do".

Because my connection with her was very intense, she would feel my feelings very intense as well. That meant, that every single time, I decided to not listen to her in any way, even if it was only for one percent, she would feel that I ignored her. But I needed to explore life on my own, so I also made my own decisions. But because she has a very low self-worth and is very desperate for validation, she would feel immediately offended. She would be touched in her wounds of severe humiliation, so she would feel severely humiliated when I made my own decisions.

Because of her limited capacities, she would think that I severely humiliated her. That is why she attacked me very strongly, resulting in my mother possessing me. And because her wounds are very big, almost anything I did, resulted in touching her wounds: She possessed me constantly. My mother desperately wanted to be validated in her wounds of severe humiliation. But she did not face it herself, so logically, it controlled her. Being controlled by her wounds, she abused me through her wounds. And the only way in which I could meet her in that wound, was being severely humiliated myself, as well.

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An example would be, that she had comments on how I was opening a bottle of syrup, to make my own lemonade. I was not listening to her advice, because I did well on my own. At some morning, I made a mistake, and the contents of the bottle fell all over my sweater, making it very sticky. A conscious parent will take that opportunity to discover what went wrong, help the child learn from it, and give it a clean sweater. My mother, offended that I have been ignoring her comments for so long, punished me for that: "you don't want to listen to me, so now you will have to wear that sweater today". She humiliated me for not taking her serious, and she humiliated me in front of everyone seeing me that day, by wearing a very dirty sweater.

This kind of meanness was her strategy, constantly making me play by her rules, in the tiniest details, or else she would attack me. She humiliated me on all kinds of things, portraying me as someone who has no feelings and scoffing me for it, what cup I wanted to drink out, portraying me as being selfish, standing up for myself, not being deserving of a girlfriend I had, or portraying me as overdramatizing in my pain and loneliness I felt.

Once in my thirties, I was seeing a therapist, who could be very sharp and clear, if that was supporting anyone's process. When she saw my picture on my passport, she asked me :"Boy or Man?". She was asking me, if I thought I was a strong man, or still a helpless boy. I replied: "Boy". I felt a strange feeling near my thighs and moved a bit on my chair, and I said: "I feel as if you just grabbed me by my balls". She advised me: "Don't give away your balls so easily". Living with my mother, I learned to give my balls away to any woman.

I was extremely terrified of her, and with that, of any other woman too. Being with my mother, as soon as I saw even the slightest sign of any discomfort in her, I became scared: I scanned myself and my surroundings, if there was anything that I could have done wrong.

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At he same time, my mother had an intense hate towards me. As the result of the "misparenting", I developed serious emotional illnesses, and I was diagnosed with a developmental disorder. The people that were diagnosing me, just looked at how I behaved, and how I looked upon myself and my family. They never took the effort to investigate, if I might suffer from severe physical and emotional abuse. But the diagnosis was an extra win for my mother: she concluded that I was the problem in her family (next to my Ob), giving her an extra reason to play the role of victim and hero.

For my misdiagnosis, I was prescribed social training. What I actually needed, was getting care for my many traumatic experiences of severe abuse, helping me to see and believe it was not my fault, and protection against my parents.I immediately sensed the diagnosis and the training was nonsense, so I stopped going to it after few times. My mother held on to the idea that I was the problem. She was blaming me for stopping it, and being the hero mother she likes to play, she instead went to parental trainings herself, "because I refused to go".

At some point, in my childhood, I was so overwhelmed by all the daily negativity, that I broke. Crying, I admitted to my mother that I believed I was really broken, accepting that diagnosis. At some point later on, she told me that she insisted on keeping telling me I had that diagnosis, saying "you will know it, you little man!". That sentence was accompanied with so much meanness, that she actually was saying "I insist, you wíll know that yóu are the cause of my problems, and I háte you for it".

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Because my mother was not aware of her desperateness for validation, love and intimacy, she used her children for that. At home, we had several cats. When my mother's cat was lying on my mother's lap, and my mother was 'stroking' it, it looked like my mother used the cat to suck life energy out of the cat, as some kind of intravenous therapy. Knowing the stories I do consciously remember, I can only conclude that she must have done the same to me my siblings.

When at one time I was earning money for myself, I kept buying toys for myself. My mother saw that, and was fearing for her validation she needed from me. She asked "but what if I give you presents at your birthday, you won't be happy with them anymore, what do I do?". I was already trained to put her on a pedestal, and I replied "but then I get the presents from yóu mama!". And my mother was happy again.

She also asked directly validation from me. I remember a conversation in which she was complaining to me that I was not appreciating her qualities. As I was programmed to serve her, I asked her what her qualities were, so I could adapt myself to "appreciate" her. Offended by that question, she said I had to discover them by myself. Many times, she was pretending to be a mature adult by replying in these kinds of ways.

Around my 11th year there was a time, when she started to talk to me in a strange way. I could not really make sense of it, it felt as if she was leaning into my heart and my into genitals. She talked about her deeper feelings, and I was just standing there, replying as I thought I should reply to her. It even felt romantic from her side, telling me things she never told me, like how she looked onto life. During these days, I caught myself thinking "if I want, I can take the place of my father, and become her partner." Feeling into it now, it felt very strange and destabilizing for me, to relate with my mother in such a way. As if she wanted me, and I needed to be there for her. Later having read about the surrogate spouse theory, it became clear as day for me. Additionally, it turned out I was the one in the family, that was cooking for everyone each Monday. In me she saw her potential perfect husband, and she started to connect with me on that level. It is disgusting to me. Forcing a child into a surrogate spouse relationship is also known as emotional incest.

She would complain to me about her childhood with "my mother has done things to me that I can only tell when you are an adult". I don't question the severity of her statement. But essentially she was being the victim in front of me, her child, forcing me into caring for her. And because of her "cliffhangers" I assumed my life was "quite okay", since hers was "really bad". It made me believe that my own family does not have any problems. And if I felt bad or my parents react bad on me, it must be because of me.

In this constant chaos between desperateness and humiliation, one extremity is that she threatened to put me out the house, to live at another place, because I was causing problems. Another extreme example is, that she was complaining to me that I don't love her, and that I don't care anything about her. Me being shocked and not knowing how to reply on that, she forced me to say it. "Well, then tell me that you love me! You don't love me, do you!!?". As I was totally in her control, I said to her that I love her. Seeing that my mother was very angry and desperate about my heart, I started to believe that my heart was not okay. Additionally, the words "I love you" got a very twisted meaning in my life.

<todo: anti-fat>

My Father: authoritative, intimidating, and insecure

I remember my father as someone how is extremely unpredictable, and at the flip of a switch can turn into a monster that can kill me. When he was beating me, lying on the ground, I had extreme pain and fear, totally disoriented in space and time, protecting myself at all costs, desperate for the beating to stop. I am lucky that I never broke a rib that punctured one of my organs. I had nightmares that he attacked me for my life, and that he shot me. Later in life during therapy sessions, when I relived some of those experiences getting beaten, many times I did not believe how extremely terrified I was. Being with my father, there was only one rule:

Make. Sure. You. Will. Not. Be. Beaten.

Dropped a glass on the floor when you are learning how to hold things? Slap in the face. Didn't listen to his demands? Punch in the face. Accidentally did something that was very serious according to him? Lying on the floor, getting beaten, fearing for you life. Irritating him? Same. Getting in conflict with you mother and not letting her win? Same. Saying something I shouldn't be saying? Whatever he came up with. Doing something I shouldn't be doing? Same. Even it was innocent? Same. Were you doing something good but he couldn't understand? Same. Was I experimenting with my emotions, so that maybe later I could use them maturely in society? Same. Was I making stand for myself? Same. Did he had a bad day? Same.

He acted like a total maniac, and when he was not in his role, he pretended to be the reasonable and nice father. When my father was at home, and I came into the same room as he was, I would tense up. I would scan around, if there was not any object I could accidentally touch, so they would fall on the floor and break. And every time I was with my mother, if she was discomforted by anything, my mother could play her wildcard: put her husband at the frontline.

Out of the blue, my father could come up with some rule or principle...tbc

Once I saw a picture of him when he was young. I saw still the same look in his eyes. I knew I was being raised by a child, making me angry. But then being a child myself, I could not put in into words.

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Just like my mother, my father also had a desperate need for feeling seen and validated. But because he could not make a stand for himself in society, his needs were not fulfilled. At home, he was dominated by his wife. And because of the separation of the children, he could not really touch my Ys and my Yb. So in his life, the only place where he would truly feel seen, is when he was physically abusing me and my Ob.

To hypnotize himself that he was a good father, he convinced himself that the only way to steer children, is to beat them. Later, he once disclosed, that at some point in my childhood, I was not responding anymore to anything, except "physical stimuli". My father shut down his feelings so much, that he had became apathetically technical, about raising his children and managing feelings. For him, it was a matter of applying the right "stimuli" to steer the "process" in the "most optimal way". In his own youth, he experienced severe abuse, making him feel immense agony and terror.

To hide from the intense pains of his childhood, he hypnotized himself, that the whole world is composed of predictable patterns, causal facts, random events, and optimal processes. He reduced himself to a biological robot. He hid his feelings so far away, so that when he was beating his children, he was made blind to see, that they suffered from immense agony and terror. When as a consequence his own children became very lonely, fearful and sad, he couldn't recognize those feelings in them either. In himself, he had deeply hidden these feelings too.

On a deeper level, he was repeating the pattern he learned from his father: "If you are disobedient, you will be beaten". As soon as he saw one his own children being disobedient, he would feel an impulse of anger to beat them. Even towards his own children. He was beaten so many times when he was young, that beating was his only association when seeing a disobedient child. Other more constructive associations with disobedience, like dialogue, respect, learning, empathy, believe, trust, acceptance, he buried deep below his pains. He could not reach those anymore.

My father was constantly acting very primitive, and by acting like that, he lost respect from his children. Feeling disrespected, he would only get angry faster, beating us more, becoming even more disconnected in his behavior. And every time he was beating us: deep, deep, very deep down, not aware of it, he was feeling his own immense agony and terror. The only way left for him to respond, was to repeat it.

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Wanting to feel validated and seen by his wife and his children, he was in competition with his three sons. When we innocently would try to imitate him, he could become irritated. He was scared of his own children stealing his show. When I was still young, I had a lot of life energy, on which my father was jealous. He suppressed my aliveness, mainly through beating me. He taught me that being a man, you should be scared of your place, instead of being at ease in your dignity and playfulness.

My father had a picture of a bodybuilder, and as a joke he cut out his own face and put it over the face of the bodybuilder. He looks very muscular in that picture, with clear signs that it is edited. Children like to imitate their parents, and at one time I recreated a similar picture with my own face. When I showed it to him, he made an agitated and sarcastic comment. He could not have any imitation or competition.

Being older when I expressed my wish that I wanted to do two university studies at the same time, he became angry about it, calling me arrogant. I succeeded in doing both for one year. But then I lost interest in the university, and just focused on one so I could get done with it.

When I left home for studying and periodically came home, my father could not suppress me anymore every day of the week. I started to reconnect with some of my qualities. When I started to make more jokes, just for fun, he got angry and said I should not practice my jokes at home so I could tell them to my university friends. He could not deal with the possibility that one of his sons might be funnier than himself.

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When I was about 7 years old, I had history lessons in school, about the second world war. The discussed topics were far above my understanding, but I learned a new symbol: the swastika. At that time, to me it had no meaning whatsoever, and through experimentation, I drew a swastika on my hand with a pen. For me being a 7 year old child, the swastika was just some random collection of lines. When my father saw that drawing on my hand, he had no clue how to have a talk about this from father to son. It could have been a meaningful talk about important topics, with the possibility to together wash the symbol from my hand. Instead, he said: "if you ever draw that symbol again, you have to leave the house". I had no clue where that came from. Hearing that, something broke in me, because my father was willing to banish me for some random symbol? It felt as if the relationship I had with my father, someone to always wanting to care for me, broke. I felt very alone and disillusioned. I had no one to depend on anymore.

The more agitated my father was, the higher the chances were, that I could be beaten. So I was always hyper vigilant, making sure nothing would agitate him. One of his patterns is offering help, as a manipulation to get love and validation in return. So appearing unselfish, he was actually selfishly offering help to people. When he would offer any help to me, and I refused, he would get agitated. So I rarely refused. It was one of the many ways in which I had give up my boundaries, through a seemingly nice act of getting offered help.

Every second of my youth, I was terrified of getting physically abused by my father. I developed a chronic headache, because I was hyper vigilant all the time. Because I had so much fear in my body, my legs started to shake at one point. And when I was sitting on a chair, I was nervously shaking my knee up and down. For me, it was a way to release stress from my body, to calm down a bit. But my father got annoyed from seeing my shaking knee, and made a directive comment about it. An annoyed father meant, I had higher changes on getting beaten. So I stopped shaking my knee.

It was very humiliating for me, to not even be able to control my own body. I was completely controlled by the grievances of my father. But I needed to discharge stress, so instead, I found a way to scratch my lower back, without anyone being able to see it. 20 years later, I could still see the scars on my lower back. Being an adult, when I am reminded about my abuse, my lower back can start to itch again.

In my twenties, I confronted my father with the fact that I felt extremely alone, terrorized and humiliated when I was young. I told him, that at as a child I concluded "nobody really loves me, and I just have to live with that". He immediately replied, that as a child I was not able to have those kind of thoughts. His immediate refusal shows, that he lives in a complete different reality on what children can feel and think. And, that he heavily suppresses is own childhood, including the emotions and thoughts he had at that time. But he is not aware of that. And because he made himself in a biological robot, he thinks his children are robots too, without any emotional inner world.

Christianity in our family

Sometimes adopting a religion can be very helpful. If you do not know what to believe or feel, it can give you direction in life. And when you have travelled in that direction, you can choose something new. Just like a child that is learning to ride a bicycle, adding two side wheels at his back wheel, so called training wheels, helping him to stay upright. Additionally, the training wheels restrict the child, in how fast it can ride and make turns at the same time. The choices in his path to travel are heavily restricted, but it can learn to drive safely. My parents were very fearful of falling down in life, and our family practiced the religion of christianity fanatically. As a result, my parents used so many training wheels of Christianity, that they greatly restricted themselves in personal growth. It fragmented the chaos in the family even more.

Our Christian family life was as follows. Every evening we prayed before dinner, and read the bible afterwards. We went to church each Sunday, we were not allowed to watch television on Sunday, except my father, who wanted to watch soccer. We mainly had only contact with other Christian people, it was rare for us to have nonbelievers come inside our house. I played soccer at the Christian soccer club. When I went to middle school and high school, I had to bicycle two hours each day to the nearest school of fanatic Christians. Each day at school was started with reading out of the bible, and singing songs for worshipping. We regularly bought our fruit and vegetables from the Christian groceries store. We were sectarian Christians.

We had to go to church two times on Sunday. Sundays were perfect to rest: sleep out and play all day. Both were not possible for me, because we went to church in the morning and in the afternoon. The church was boring. When I complained about going to church, my father replied that water is also boring, but you really need it too. When I am thirsty, water tastes amazing. Later in life when I skipped the church for some weeks, it was still boring.

Once, a cassette tape of The Lion King movie found its way into our house. Shortly after, my mother read in our Christian daily newspaper, that the movie contained many un-Christian references like using nature as an inspiration for living life and reincarnation. So she threw away the tape, and bought a replacement movie. That turned out to be a movie about Asterix. My parents had totally no clue that Asterix is a story about Celts living in northern western France, that resisted the invasion of the Roman empire, the Romans that spread the Christian religion. The Celts were strong believers of many concepts that are also in The Lion King movie. So by getting Asterix into the house, our parents actually got a symbol of resistance against Christianity into the house.

Our family practicing Christianity, meant that every day, the whole family was feeding itself with Christian messages and thoughts, disempowering us in all kinds of ways:

We cannot create our own life, but our lives are guided by someone else. We do not have to reflect on ourselves, because Jesus takes responsibility for all our actions. And even if we develop powers to forgive ourselves or someone else for anything that happens, it does not matter. Because what only really matters is that Jesus forgives us. Trying to work on yourself is maybe even sinful, because why do you need anything if Jesus can give you everything? When in my late twenties, I started to become interested in personal development. My father commented on me, that it is unhealthy to explore myself through these other perspectives.

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Something I like to stay very far away from, are rituals of black magic. It is an environment of fear, death, pain, possessing, and suffering. Dark magic is used to call in evil powers from other realms. Practitioners of dark magic use techniques like torturing, cannibalism, drinking blood, sacrificing animals and people, helplessness, unworthiness, ownership, and casting curses.

<Todo: explain white and black magic here?>

When I was in the church with my family, we practiced similar rituals: We worshipped at a medieval torturing device (a cross), and at "celebrating" Holy communion, by consuming bread and red wine, we imagined we ate the flesh and drank the blood of another human person. We were singing songs about how weak we are, and needing to be saved by someone else. We were made to believe these songs are celebrations, but we sang them being lifeless, numb, and without expressions. We worshipped a life form that expects us to worship him. A life form that expects worshipping from other life forms is a form of narcissism. When I was born I was "baptized": A curse was cast over me in front of the whole church, that I am a helpless sinner, that by nature I will sin in life, and that my life belongs to another entity. Everyone in the community was cursed this way. We read in the bible about sacrificing animals and people. There is a very dark esoteric engineering of black magic in Christianity.

Nowadays, many communities exist that still practice some Christian elements, but are slowly moving away from the dark magic rituals of fear, unworthiness, and needing to be saved.

In the church, my family and everyone else was hypnotized to believe we were engaging in rituals of light and love. Actually we were sending our energies away through dark rituals. We were made to be totally disconnected and disoriented from our own spiritual powers and compass.

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When singing songs to worship in church and school, we were hypnotizing ourselves with simplistic views on life, literally singing songs like "Satan is scared because Jesus is alive", "Be scared of God", "blessed be when staying away from nonbelievers", and "I am a man whose powers fail". Constantly hypnotizing ourselves that nonbelievers are bad, hell exists and is terror, and every man is believed to be weak on its own. Next to that, all our friends and contacts were in the church, making any thought of leaving the community scary and lonely. A Christian follower is in a very tight grip.

We were encouraged to becoming a victim, by being made to believe that we are not in charge of our own lives, and just have to accept anything that crosses ours paths. If we would be trying to understand what happens and why, it was considered a grave sin, because we cannot be God, all we needed was Jesus and he is there for us. And anyone who does not believe in this, is a bad person. We are the good persons, we are the chosen children of Jesus.

We were deceived into believing, that when we only did some simple things every day and week, we would be "good" people. We would only have to pray for forgiveness every day, read the bible every day, go twice to church each Sunday. On Sunday we were also not allowed to buy anything or watch television. Watching movies with profane language and nudity was also forbidden. The primitivity of our fragmented and self-contradicting believes, were reflected in exceptions that watching soccer on Sunday was okay, just like watching Asterix, but not the Lion King. Also, when watching a movie on television that contained nudity or profanity, we pretended we didn't like it with expressing an exasperated sigh.

For my family, adopting Christianity meant that we were encouraged into a very simplistic perspective of life, meeting only similar people, preventing us from any real self reflection and personal growth. A universal spiritual law is that anything that happens outside of you, is a reflection of what goes inside in you. This is the most essential law of personal growth, that we completely missed.

As a Christian family, for our many disappointments in life, we tragically accepted the life God had planned for us. Our parents had no clue, that actually we were all doing it to ourselves, by our own ways of living. We did not question anything inside or outside of ourselves, missing many, many valuable opportunities for personal growth. This greatly prevented my parents and the family from growing out of the mess we were in.

Through practicing christianity, my parents were abusing themselves and the family severely. And just like their other forms of abuse to us, they were totally clueless about the damage they were doing.

Life in the family

Living in this family was a surreal experience. Deep down, my parents did not feel like parents to me. For example, when we grew up, we were repeatedly told that we had to leave the house when we reached the age of 18. This was told indirectly, by saying that children that still live at home after 18 are ridiculous. Furthermore, my mother complained to us about doing our laundry, sometimes threatening to stop it, and when my father was at home, he wanted us to to be silent. My parents having children, felt like a wish that was not deeply connected to their perspective on life. Being around the children and doing basic tasks was already too big of a challenge for them. Let alone meeting their children in their emotional needs. We rarely had eye contact in the family. Except for when my parents were angry, they forced me to look in their eyes. For me, eye contact meant danger, humiliation and shame. I rarely made eye contact with anyone.

Also, we where not calling our parents "mama" and "papa". In some strange way, we ended up calling them by their first name. My parents gave me food and shelter. And them telling me what to do, think and feel, felt like a strange agreement that was part of living in their house. They had very fragmented and contradicting ideals and demands about having children. I had to live up to their picture of an ideal family, while they were deforming and abusing me. When I became emotionally sick of them, they threatened to make me live outside the house, somewhere else. And when I was older, it became clear they would start to see me as some friend to take for granted, so that they could use me to have day trips with. They only had the capacities to think from their perspectives, so that is what they did.

When me and my Ob were very young, our parents portrayed us being very naughty. Calling us "naughty", is one of their coping mechanisms to not look at themselves. It is the same as being around a dog: When you are letting a dog out, and you are not clear to him what behavior you want and don't want, he will do anything what he wants, showing behavior that can be seen by humans as naughty. In reality, the owner of the dog is not giving clarity on what behavior is approved. If the owner is very clear and the boundaries are communicated, the dog will behave, and will even relax into the leadership of its owner.

Knowing from my own middle childhood memories that my parents were very inconsistent, they must have been very inconsistent as well when I was very young. So already at a very young age, they were blaming me and my Ob for their inconsistencies they put on us. My parents didn't know what they wanted, because they were not connected to their deep truths about how they could lovingly support us. Instead, they reacted out of their wounds and fears, attacking us physically and emotionally.

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I still have many black spots in my youth. When I try to remember my childhood, I can list several situations and feelings, but these memories do not feel like a continuous stream of life passing by. It feels as if I only know some movie frames, but I don't remember living the whole movie. Many times I try to remember a movie frame, a certain period. But then I can only feel an emptiness, like someone has made many cuts into my movie. The images that are the most clear to remember, is my mother standing in front me, screaming in desperateness, or humiliation me in her anger, followed by a getting attacked by my father. Related to my father, it is getting kicked and punched while standing or laying on the ground, bracing for impact. The other image is getting lectured by him on some rule. Those were the main things that matters for me, to avoid that at all costs.

How much I was beaten and humiliated, I just can't remember, I must have suppressed these memories. Being able to remember these moments would have disabled me in my daily functioning, I would constantly be physically frozen in my body, being in shock, not being able to move. So I hid this constant frozenness and shock, in deep parts of my subconsciousness. When I rationally try to reconstruct, I figure I must have been severely attacked every one, two, or three weeks, getting punched daily or weekly, depending on the current state of the family. It is similar for the attacks from my mother. Together with the constant threat of any abuse, and the constant implicit suppression as a result of it, I was constantly living in a state of deep fear: I was living in terror.

When I would get gravely attacked by my father, I experienced an intense mix of terror, agony, humiliation, and sadness. He forced himself to be seen by me, like I had to worship him in intense fear and pain. It made me feel extremely unworthy. And together with the attack from my father towards my Ob, I would be constantly reminded that the danger of getting tortured always lurks around every next corner.

I just didn't understand what my father was doing. Why was he hurting me so much? Wasn't I doing my best enough? Did he even love me? Why didn't he care that I had so much pain and loneliness? Am I an inconvenience to him? What is he trying to say to me? I concluded, that it must be because of me. I am wrong. I am wrong of existing. I do not deserve to live.

The attacks from my mother were even more devastating for me. There was so much hidden humiliation towards me. She only needed once or a few times per week, to show me that she owns me. A humiliation, a command or even a request, was enough to keep me in line. If I did not follow them exactly, she would become irritated or unstable, with the danger of getting attacked by her desperation and meanness. I would be getting told and felt, that every form of conflict, misunderstanding, pain and chaos is my fault. And she could always ask her husband to control and humiliate me further.

She once asked me to cook for her every Monday. She pretended she asked me, but if I refused, I surely would get a big backlash, some periodical humiliation and an intense beating. So I "willingly" agreed. I was cooking for her every Monday. My mother was playing her game of polite mother, so she expressed to me being very thankful for my efforts. I was programmed to receive her thankfulness with a validation and a smile. My ideas of all kinds of social concepts, like asking for help, were extremely distorted.

It was extremely disorienting for me. She appeared nice, but there was so much danger from simply being around her. Because she played good cop and bad cop at the same time, my core feelings of trust, safety, truth, and love were severely damaged. I was made not being able to trust myself anymore, in anything. At what place should I place what item in the fridge? How should I say thank you to her? What clothes do I need to wear when we go to town? Or should I put on an extra sweater? Will be she angry about having to wash that sweater? How should I do my hair? Can I say to her that I am feeling cold in the house? Did I just looked at the wrong way? Moved the wrong way? Thought the wrong thoughts? What questions should I ask her when we drink tea together? In what bucket should I place my laundry even if we have only one? How much bread can I eat? How long should I stay when she talks to me? What should I put on my bread? Can I show that I am scared because of this? What feelings should I have towards myself? And towards her? Which wishes are wrong to express? How much friends should I have? How do I get them? How much should I love her? What did I just forget to do? Did I do anything wrong? Did I had to feed the cats even when I never have to do it? Why is it my fault that she is angry now? Is my father around now, so that I will get a beating because of her anger?

Everything I did was wrong, even if I tried very hard to do it the right way. Every mistake, however small or big: she was keeping score, and it was making me one step closer to the next humiliation, desperateness, or beating. I was made extremely insecure, and my mother thrived on this. She welcomed me with open arms, being able to tell me what to feel, to suck me deeper in her chaos and abuse.

Having this openness towards her, she sent me all kinds of desperation, humiliation, fears, anger, and sadness. Because I was made completely out of touch with my inner compass, I started to believe that I was the problem. I was the cause of all this desperation and every kind of negativity. I don't know what, why, or how, but it must certainly be me. I must be very ugly inside.

And so, a blanket of constant shame was put over me. It was maintained through constant threats and frequent attacks by my parents. I became this blanket of shame. And I was not welcome in my family. Everywhere I went, I took these feelings of unwelcomeness and humiliation with me. At school, during soccer, in the church. Everywhere I was not welcome, and people, apart from some mature adults, responded accordingly.

I felt so much pain and hate from my parent, that I started to believe they could not be my real parents. Because believing that my real parents were hurting me so much and did not love me, that was simply too painful for me. So I hypnotized myself. Once, I was taking a shower, and through the bathroom window I saw my father and Ob in the garden. I started to cry, realizing that that man outside, was not my real father. And that boy outside, was not my real brother. I cried very hard, feeling so lonely. And my mother, she is not my real mother. Hypnotizing myself, I felt the pain how much they were hurting me. My real parents existed elsewhere, and they would really love me. Some day I will meet them. Suddenly, my father knocked on the bathroom door, and asked if I was singing again. Being terrified of my him, I said yes, and he went away. Before that shower, I stopped singing a long time ago.

Every second of my youth, I was terrified of getting beaten. I carried this fear around me, in my eyes, in my feelings, in my body, in my bones and muscles. I was expecting to be beaten all the time. When could be next moment? How could I prevent it? Or if it happened, how could I minimize it? Constantly, I was searching for danger, and I tried to prevent it. I was constantly scanning my environment. I was never safe.

Once in school, a single classmate tried to claim superiority over me, by attacking me and trying to wrestle me to the ground. After some wrestling he did not succeed, and I ended up being in control over him. Other classmates that enjoyed the fight, in turn encouraged me, to hurt him and claim my victory. But instead I said "No, I am not like that", I let him go and I stopped the fight.

But even while I was born in purity, growing up in a poisonous family, I learned to disconnect from myself. Everyday my parents would abuse me, and because I could not safely express my anger, I had to keep that anger inside, hiding it. This anger grew inside of me. Gradually, it turned into hate. My hate became so intense towards my parents, that I just didn't know what to do with it.

At some point the hate started to turn into plotting revenge. Every time they would abuse me, I wrote down what they did to me on a piece of paper that I kept in my bedroom. I would write down abuses like: getting beaten, punch in the face, not getting dinner, being forced to have my head under a tap with cold running water, drinking rancid milk because I forgot to drink it, having to stay at home while the rest of the family went to a concert, getting pinched hard in my ear, and my Yb and Ys getting favored over me in any way.

I plotted, that when I was older, and thus stronger than them, I would visit my parents, tie them up, and do all these things back to them. Plotting this, I did not realize that the hate I had for my parents, I also grew towards myself, and all the other people I would meet. Whenever I experienced any form of inconvenience from someone, even very small ones, I learned that I could not communicate about it. The only way to set things straight was keeping a score in the background, that later in some way I would pay them back. I had feelings of hate with almost everyone I met.

Through the beating, my father learned me to not take a stand for myself. He systematically destroyed my defenses. I was helpless. My classmates felt this, and throughout my youth I was an easy target for them. I learned how to be a garbage bin at home, so automatically, I would also be it outside of home. At one moment in school, I found myself lying on the ground, getting kicked by four classmates. It felt as if I was in trance. I could not bear it anymore, I disconnected from my feelings, glazing into their eyes while they were beating me. And as I learned from my father to be an easy target, I laid helplessly until they stopped. For me, at that time, it was normal getting beaten. I learned from my father and mother that no one really cared for me. So I never talked about it with anyone. My classmates could do with me what they wanted.

Over time, I became convinced that emotions were bad, because I only saw them creating negativity and pain. It made my mother unhappy, it made my father unhappy, and it made me unhappy. So what is the point of emotions? Every kind of emotion I felt in my body, I suppressed myself from expressing and living it: Even the smallest things like a sigh of relief after stretching my body, or a smile from enjoying a warm shower or tasty food.

As much as possible, I tried to shutdown my feelings, otherwise it would have derailed me further, or it could have killed me. While suppressing my emotions, still my fears started to show up in my thoughts. I became convinced that a gang of criminal people was out to kidnap me. While being outside, I was trying to look around, what they might look like. As far as the understanding of a destabilized 8 year old boy goes, I figured they were people that had their upper arms uncovered. This fears was another expression of my believe that everyone was trying to destroy me. I couldn't connect it too much to my parents, because they were my only chance of survival. Frequently I thought about running away from home. But I thought that was forbidden. I was extremely scared and extremely lonely. I had nowhere to go.

Where do you go when you have nowhere to go? Where do you hide when you have nowhere to hide? How do you keep on living when you are unworthy of living? What is loneliness if it is the only thing you know? How do you stay sane if you are constantly destabilized? What do you conclude about yourself, if the only thing you know is getting attacked and humiliated?

As I tried to hide from my fears, I tried to run from my sadness as well. But I couldn't. At one point during night, I started to cry very hard. Crying my guts out, hoping that someone, somewhere, would hear me and start saving me. My father came into my room. He pretended to care for me, and then he left. I kept on crying, my soul was crying through me. My father came again, and warned me that I should stop begging for attention. He left my room, and I couldn't but continue crying. Very hard. Very lonely. Very sad. If just someone would hear me.

Then my father came into the room again, angry that I did not listen to him. He started to beat me, until I stopped crying. I learned to stop expressing my loneliness and sadness. It froze in me. My mother did not come to save me. She knew that I was being beaten because of crying. She ignored me. Behind the superficial game of playing mother and child with her, I didn't trust her for one inch.

I couldn't take it anymore from my parents. But I didn't know what was going on, or who it was. My body knew, and tried to resist. At some point, I could not keep inside anymore what my parents forced into me, figuratively and literally. At dinner, I started to throw up what I was eating. After some dinner's my mother said: if you throw up one more time, you have to eat everything of what you just put out. My mother forced herself into me. I was helpless in front of my parents.

I could not resist, I could not hide, I could not defend, I could not run away. My parents literally owned me, forcing me to swallow whatever violence, hate, anger, desperateness, destruction, manipulation, and hypocrisy they threw at me.

I forgot who and what I was. The more they fed me their darkness and destruction, the more I started to believe it was me. I was that violence, I was that hate, I was that anger, I wast that desperateness, I was that destruction, I was that manipulation, I was that hypocrisy. How could I love myself after getting fed all of their poison? I could not. I started to believe that I was very ugly from the inside. Unworthy of anything.

Eventually, when I caught myself starting to smile at something, I reminded myself that I was not worthy of smiling, and I stopped smiling. I deserved to be unhappy and very lonely. When I was beaten again, or emotionally attacked by my mother, I would go outside, sit in the high grass where nobody could see me. I would be silent, deeply sad without crying, immense lonely without asking for help, looking out without hope, having pain in my heart without feeling it, being dead while having a body, breathing without having a breath.

The poison of shame got deeper into me. I was surrendered to it, and I could not stop it. If I cause all this pain, conflict, and all other negativity, I should be not worthy of living. Gradually, I became convinced that I should kill myself, because I am not worthy of living. It grew in me, through all the darkness my parents fed me.

When I was around 11 years old, I went to bed at night, and stayed awake. I needed to kill myself, so I needed a plan. Around 02:30 am, I got out of bed and I walked to the kitchen drawer to get a knife. In the living room I took the anatomy book from the bookcase, and I searched around my neck and in the book, where my carotid artery was located. I found it with my hand, and I pointed the tip of the knife in the skin of my neck.

So that is where I was: being an 11 year old boy, in the middle of the night, standing all alone in the living room in his pyjamas. My right hand was balancing an anatomy book, opened to the page of the blood vessels of the neck. In my left hand I was holding a knife, and pointing it in the left side of my neck. And while standing there, I was crying, saying to myself: "This is what I have to do because I am not worthy of living" (Dutch: "Dit is wat ik moet omdat ik het niet waard ben om te leven").

This is the darkest moment of my life I can remember.

Sometime later, I put the book back in the bookcase, and the knife back in the kitchen drawer, and went back to bed. At least I had a plan now. The following months, I started to warn my parents and my teachers me that I was going to kill myself. For them I was just the same child that was trying to get attention.

I never did put any further action into my plans. But preparing my plan for suicide, something clicked in me. I understood a deeper reality: There is nobody that really loves me, and I just have to live with that.

It became my new conscious believe, and I used it to hide all the previous believes and pains: Everybody is destroying me. Emotions are bad. My parents are not my real parents. Deep, deep down, I am very, very ugly.

My newfound believe helped me to struggle through life, without falling every few meters. I found something that worked, but at a very, very high cost.

I closed my heart, I closed my soul.

The next article describes the continuation of my life: Childhood 3: Struggling (XXX).