As I wrote my blog yesterday I was amazed at how many memories I have of Corporal Punishment, even though I was never inflicted the kind of corporal punishment some of my friends had to go through, which left them with blue hand marks on their arms or tied to the table legs in a dining room that had blood marks on the walls from their heads smashed against it.
My mother used to just mainly slap me in the face, hard, I remember specifically the aftertaste feeling of humiliation immediately suppressed and followed by huge waves of hatred and desire for retaliation.
In my experience nothing compared to that feeling, it was intense, I can still recall it vividly as I write.
I am not sure what parents are going for when they hit their children, what I found out among parents with a 'fast hand' is that they excuse their behavior because they opted to do it LESS than it was done to them, this point seems to bring home the desired justification that it's all right, they survived Much Worse and they 'turned out alright' and so you should be what, grateful?
In my neighborhood, a poor neighborhood where parents worked like dogs, corporal punishment was the order of the day, we could hear children screaming and the beatings going on from my balcony as we shared a common courtyard, I have lost touch with many of my childhood friends, the last time I saw them, none of them had turned out as an overachiever, I guess I became one out of my desire to move on, to move out, the fear of having to go under the rule of my mother ever again was so intense that I shone at every job I did, I developed an extensive attention for details in fear of retort ion, of having to face humiliation ever again in my life, my life became a striving for perfection so that I would safely move beyond that lurking danger, the potential for humiliation in any way, shape or form.
Since I am one odd case out of hundreds I can safely say that if parents hope that beatings will mold children into perfectionist or overachievers they are just wrong, I lived in a constant state of tension, when I finished any job I would review it in my mind meticulously, walking all the steps looking for any possible mistake I may have made before anyone else would/could find out about it.
Living with my mother had been hellish, I have once read about how governments and their secret agencies would pick kids to raise them for remote viewing in the military and I found that I fit the profile perfectly, the best kids were from homes like mine, with crazy schizophrenic parents, I developed the ability to see the invisible in my mother's mannerism and behavior, to hear the inaudible in her tone of voice, to see the one gesture out of place in a pattern to always be in the know about her being either on a normal or on a crazy day, so I could adjust myself accordingly, the invisible became visible to me, twitching eye lids, a specific shake in her hands, I was not aware of the sequence of thoughts but was aware of the accumulation signs, she always surprised me with her 'reasoning', she could go from something absolutely irrelevant, like me smiling while watching a movie and turn it into something about herself, something that she claimed I did to spite her, to provoke her, my life became a walking on eggshells in utmost constant -paranoid- awareness.
In my first jobs I became so good that the stress of keeping up with a zero mistake rate was so great that I could never shake it off, even when I went home and the only way I would stop the fear that I may have done something wrong was to numb myself with pot until the next day when I would wear my professional clothes and personality over the wreck I really was and go to work. I almost never missed out on a day of work, I never cut corners, I was the perfect corporate slave and I was willing to enslave others to the same Fear that drove me to perfection, because it worked.
Only many beatings after, one day I slapped my mother back, the ironic thing about that moment was the shock in her face, she became paralyzed and when she regained her voice it was just to tell me how That was inconceivable, how horrible I was, that it was a taboo to hit your parents back, that she had never hit her mother back -whom never hit her by the way except much later in life when she was off once on one of her crazy all-over-the-place ranting and grandma hit her to bring her back here-, normal kids never even thought about it, this specific point was raised many other times in the future when she tried to show me that I was in fact really bad, I even HIT her (she never used the word BACK, because that was Not the point, the point was that she was the only one with Legal Authority to Harm Me and I did not have any, by Law or by God, to try and stop it) what was wrong with me?
By that time though my life was already a mess, I lived on the edge of insanity in a Cirque du Soleil balancing act, I had run away from home at 17, jumped on a train and went to Ireland with the equivalent of 50 USD in my pocket, I cried for most of the trip but when i got there I found out that I could breathe again and when I came back to live with my mother again one year later, that was when I slapped her back during one of episodes while she unwisely insisted on saying 'you want to push me out of the window don't you and laughed while slapping me-, and I did want to, a thought even crossed my mind that unless I did throw her out of that window my misery would never end but I didn't, I just slapped her back instead, it was my 19th birthday, she left the room and came back to throw my bank saving booklet in my face and told me to leave, I took all my birthday flowers, packed my bags and left for real.
There were other issues after this, they escalated into physical violence only twice, once she threw me down the stairs with one of my Hong Kong colleagues following up, for raising the objection that for someone who had so much hatred for a mother that left her as a kid, she was no Snowwhite either, that DID not sit well with her, specifically because it brought up something that she did that she could never blame on me, no matter how hard she tried.
Still abusive parents have to be told when it's enough, physical violence is a form of (mis) communication, it's the last resort out of frustration, it's empowering and rekindles the sense of ownership parents live in fear to lose - it's a hard one to give up, plus children develop all sorts of copying mechanism to square things out and grow up disfunctional adults as they accept abuse in the name of the 'Loving' Promise of a chance to Survive.
So, this is how we start the life of the children in the world, if they don't bend, we beat them into submission, because we can, because apparently we are their Parents, their Masters, their Owners, without seeing, realizing and understanding that we are just creating armies of submissive weaklings, of tin soldiers who will make Money their God, because after All it was Money that took them out of the Hell that FamiLies really are for the most part, and gave them the Independence and ''Free Choice' to continue Abuse themselves in the name of the Family Construct, because we Honor our Families and this is why we have not yet put an end to our Self Abuse inside and World Abuse outside.
A different Life is possible for All, it's a Lie that we have to learn through suffering or that the best lessons we had came through suffering, I don't remember one good lesson from my suffering if not that I should stop it and that I should never pass it on, but I believed I was scarred for Life, for sure I was scared before meeting Desteni, so much so that I would not allow myself to see that my story was a very common one, that the Abuses of our Parents end up in the Adults that Abuse and that we'll have to Parent Ourselves back into something decent to bring about a world that works for All - to not end up as the jailed/jailers of all others that cross our Path.
Bringing it all Back to Self - Self Forgiveness
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to hold on to the memories of my mother's beatings because that gave me a credit, something I could write on my side under all my apparent Wrongs while my mothers had all the Rights given to her by Money and her power to support me or not, and for failing to see, realize and understand that within holding on to my rights(eousness) within my relationship with my mother, I jailed her back instead of freeing myself and her from the past so that a new future beyond abuse could be created for all
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to remember the physical sensation of being slapped in the face as humiliation, as a diminishment of myself at my mother's hands instead of seeing, realizing and understanding that I was not diminished by the beating, but by embracing humiliation as who I was, by believing that the action of my mother were related to me and not to her, by taking things personally as if I were personally faulty vs admitting that there was something not normal with my mother for fear of being the offspring of someone insane
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe that I was one and equal to the feeling of humiliation that I hang on to when my mother hit at me because it made me feel righteous no matter the wrongs that my mother would come up with about me, and for provoking my mother to the point of beating me so I could at least be right about One Point, that she was Wrong about hitting me and within this develop a pattern in which I would push people to punish me when I would deliberately cross lines with my words, so they could be wrong too instead of me being the only wrong one within a relationship equation
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hold the times when my mother beat me against her as a way to get my own Rights so I would even out with the Rights my mum held on me all the way apparently to deleting me from existence - and for suppressing the negative feelings I connected to those times instead of releasing myself from them, in fear I would no longer hold a credit, be a creditor and in that would become a debtor, because I saw that the world is based on Money and credits and debts and I decided I would not be on the Debtor side, I would make money so I could be on the Right side of this Polarity Equation and this is why I rose from the ashes of a perceived broken self just long enough to go out in the world and make money, to guarantee myself Immunity and buy myself the Rights that parents teach children they don't have and make them long for, until they long for Money as the God that gives the Rights in this existence and deletes All Wrongs
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to be ashamed of my mother beating me because we were not the kind of family where beatings should take place as my mum was educated and played the piano and within this for believing I was one and equal to the shame of being beaten
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to feel proud about keeping my mouth shut about my mother's beatings because it gave me a leverage over her and proved I was better than her because even though she was crazy I covered up for her, which made me good while she was bad instead of seeing realizing and understanding I covered up with the same intent of accumulating credits and ammunition for when I would have to shoot her out of my life, for when I would bring up all her Wrongdoings and in one single swoop even out all my perceived wrongdoings until we would be squared and I would be out of her home
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe that there was something wrong with me when my mum would beat me and state that she knew it was not 'me' but the 'devil in me' asking me to do the things she did not approve of, and for splitting myself up in personalities that carefully selected what she approved of from the devilish ones, according to her desires, losing touch with my own accountability for my own actions that could be blamed on the devil first and then on the environment, on external forces and ultimately on my parents so I would not have to be accountable for my words, thoughts and deeds if I accepted the split my mother offered as an excuse, instead of learning about consequences within a timeline so I could make informed decisions about my behavior and the consequences I was willing to live
I forgive myself that I failed to see, realize and understand that I led myself from abuse to self abuse and from self abuse to World abuse through Money and my participation within it and within my unwillingness to see that unless we live in HarMony Money will do Harm and within this for not stopping myself and investigating why and how we gave Money the Power to Harm, so we could feel safe in the dysfunctional world we were born and become a part of
I commit myself to let go of all memories that are related to my mother's corporal punishment and to investigate if and where I am still invested in my own victim-hood, so I can release myself, take my power back and stand as a Self Responsible part of this world to become Part of the Solution for MySelf and All of Existence, Equal and One.
to be continued with how this intertwined with my participation within and as the World System.
Thanks for sharing.
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