I went to the gym recently and the trainer asked us to do squats. I love squats. It’s one of the trainings I find very easy to do, and everyone there knew it, but on this day, I got tired after the second set. I was soldiering through to get to the end, but the gym instructor kept shouting at me, “Keep going! Don’t stop!”
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I looked at his face and the shape of the lips he was using to shout at me. I burst out crying and stopped doing the exercise. Everyone stopped, shocked, and looked at me. I picked up my towel and started leaving. The trainer followed. Those I was close with came to stop me from leaving. They all asked what the problem was. The tears I was shedding came from very deep within, and I couldn’t stop to talk.
I raised my hand and asked them to leave me alone. They wouldn’t stop until I muttered, “It’s ok. I’m fine. It’s not anyone’s fault. I remembered something personal and it made me cry.”
They left me, but I don’t think they understood me or even believed me. I’d been scarred by my dad, and to a certain extent my mom, and the exercise that day brought back memories of those days when I was a child.
It wasn’t called ‘squats’ when I was young. It was called “M’aso yɛ din,” meaning “I’m a stubborn child.” It was my father’s favorite punishment anytime I erred. He would pick up a thick cane and stand over me while he watched as I went up and down. When I got tired and stopped midway, he would use the cane on me. The trainer’s voice that day brought back memories of my dad.
I don’t remember my age when it started, but I was very young, so young all I wanted to do was play. My dad wasn’t often in the house, but my mom would record my mistakes on the face of a rock and tell them one after the other to my dad so he would punish me.
The first time my dad introduced squats as a punishment, I broke down the next day. The pain was so much I couldn’t stand on my feet. I thought I’d become crippled. All he said was, “Worse things would happen to you if you keep misbehaving in the house.”
I was scared to make a mistake. Anytime my mom screamed, “When your dad comes, I will tell him,” I became edgy. All happiness eluded me. I would see my dad and my heart would skip several beats. His presence terrorized me. I wished he wasn’t home all the time.
When I got used to squats because they were no longer as painful as they used to be, he added cement blocks. I would hold my left ear with my right hand and my right ear with my left hand and carry a heavy block on my head while I squatted. If the block fell, my dad would give me five lashes and I would start again from scratch.
My mom would be around, laughing and urging my dad on to do worse. The block was my mom’s idea. Later she introduced standing on one leg while I squatted on one leg, all the while carrying a block. That was beast mode. It only meant I was going to get beaten severely. My mom wouldn’t do it to me herself. She would wait for my dad and do it with him.
I was a young boy who only wanted to have fun with friends and make use of my childhood. I have marks in intimate places to show for this abuse. It got to a point where I grew resistant to their hurt. I would do it anyway. What could they do apart from squats? I stole from them because they wouldn’t give me food or money when I went wrong. My mom would come to my class and announce that I was a thief just to shame me in front of my friends.
By the time I completed JSS, they couldn’t control me. I was fighting my mom and threatening her. Anytime she said she would tell my dad about it, I said, “Tell him and you will see what I will do to you when he’s gone.” My dad would come home and beat me. When he was gone, I would take it out on my mom. Sometimes I would take her cloth and sell it just to return the punishment.
My junior sister was about ten years old when I came home and saw her doing squats with my dad standing in front of her and shouting at her. That was the memory that made me cry at the gym. My sister was crying and drooling, but it excited my dad to see her suffer. I rushed to the scene and lifted my sister up. I screamed, “Go! Don’t mind anyone, just run!”
My sister was standing there looking at me while my dad was shouting at me to leave. I held my sister’s hand and pulled her away. My dad, angry and his ego hurt, followed me with a cane and hit my head from behind. The cane ended up hitting my left eye, blinding me for a few seconds. I turned to face my dad, and for the first time, I matched him man to man. My mom was screaming, “Fiifi, do you want to kill your dad?”
He was on the floor while I towered over him. I picked up the cane wanting to hit him with it, but I stopped midway. I carried my sister and left the house with her. My sister went back, but I never went home again. As I write this, I can hear the echoes of my mom’s curses ringing in my ears: “You’ve beaten your dad; you will not last long on this earth. You’ll die a painful death for doing this to the man who raised you.”
I reconciled with my dad when I was thirty years old. I lived with friends and relatives and even lived in houses as a house boy. Those houses treated me better than my own house. They forgave my mistakes and didn’t withhold food and money from me just because I erred. I call it my days in the wilderness. The wilderness felt better than home.
Dad said he had been looking for me. His voice was calm, like a man who had learned lessons from life. He said on the phone, “So you won’t come home until I die?”
I went home, but still not trusting them. I had a car but didn’t drive home. I didn’t want them to attack me spiritually, thinking I’d made it in life. We talked about that day when I went away. Dad apologized to me, saying he thought he was straightening a wayward child. My mom sat there and couldn’t utter a word. When I was leaving, I hugged her.
Today, they expect me to be jolly with them. Dad wants to play when he calls, but I’ve become a brick, impenetrable. Our calls don’t last a minute. We can sit in a room for hours and not say anything to each other. My mom does a monologue all the time when I’m around her. I have nothing to say to her. I don’t hate them, but what they did closed me up, and I find it strange receiving love from them or giving it.
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Even with my sister, the relationship is like a ghost town, but we force it. We force ourselves to say something to each other. And when we are not able to talk to each other, we understand. We know what we’ve been through and accept where we are now. We know we are doing our best, considering the distance that has existed between us.
#MyChildhoodTrauma
—Fiifi
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Hmmmm!
Hmmmmmmmm..Such an excruciating childhood trauma….Just find a place in your heart to forgive them….
Hmmmmm, too bad
A mother happy when her children are punished and makes fun of them.
I was raised in a Christian home,my dad was a pastor, for my mom she was under constant attack from her family people, from the time I got to know my mom she was always in pain, from one sickness to another, when I was 8 years my mother died trying to give birth,my father was frustrated,we were left alone by family,my father couldn’t take care of we the girls, sometimes we slept dirty with out taking our bath,my neighbors will call their children when it’s evening to take their bath, but we have no one to call us,we were so sad,I miss my mom, because there was no one to look after us my father decided to remarried,He met a very beautiful Bassa and fullah woman by tribe, and he got married to her, right after one month of the wedding my step mom died at the ELWA hospital,we were so sad again we cried, people will be pointing fingers behind us as we go out,they will be saying this is the man that kills All of his wife children this is how we were called in the neborhood,after my step mom burial,her sister felt sorry for us and wanted to help my dad take care of us, because he was so down hearted,we were six(6) children,my two(2) brothers was taken to Buchanan county,to stay with one of my step mom sister,at first we were happy but that happiness vinish in a week after getting there, things we never done while we was living with our parents we started doing it, she will send us to sell tomatoes on the beach,my brother almost drown in the sea one day I cried and God safe him, I went to sell one day and a man almost abuse me, but God sent a woman to rescue me, my father will always come week end to see us he could tell from us that we were not ok,my father will send our school feels this woman ate our fees and she send us to a Adult illiterate school,we use to sit with old people who don’t know how to read and write, one day our last baby brother fall sick and died, and we left two (2), one day at the street next to our house they were having a funeral service, and she send me the to sell water, that day was sad for the family who came to put their love one to rest, but I don’t know where that joy came from in me,I was so happy because everyone wanted only my water,that evening when I got home my Aunt said that my father is sick but there’s nothing to worry about,that night when I when to bed I pray to God please heal my dad, and something hit my bed high and when I open my eyes I couldn’t see anyone, the next day she said we were going Monrovia city to see my dad because my dad is fixing our documents to travel, but I was sad with in something was not right, when we got in town,as we reached our house I met family members crying and I knew my dad was dead,I cry that day,why only us! after my dad was buried, the family have meetings and my mother sister who couldn’t stand for us stood up that day and said we were not going back, and that’s how that other chapter was close in my life, after one month the American ambassa call us for our father benefits, because my father was a pastor and also working with them,my mother oldest sister who came like a saviour took us there an she received over 60 ,000 USd at that time all of my siblings was under age our big sister was just 18years and couldn’t handle such a huge amount,at first my aunt and her husband was nice but after that money landed in their hands, her husband said he only wants one person to stay in his house, infact his house is not a orphan home,few days our west part of our lives begin,we were taking to my mother step mom who fought her spiritual untill she died,I and my small brother,we cry all day and night and refused to eat anything there for two days, she have to come to talk to my brother and I, she said we are just there for few days she will talk to her husband for us to come back,my brother and I claim down,we have our catholic rosery my brother and I will always wear it under our clothes,my step grandma started to complain about the rosery that we should take it out we refused to do it she put us out from her room and we started sleeping in one of the bathroom which was not fix yet in the house,as time goes by our aunt refuse to pay our fees because her husband has lavish the money, and he left the house, so the people couldn’t keep us because no money to pay our fees so they sent us back to our aunt house,we started living the again but this time her husband has left her, she used our money and open night club, restaurant,she build duplex house,my father left our house she will also collect rent and we were not taking good care of,we will eat the balance soup left form her restaurant for whole week,we started going to her restaurant to wash dishes for our fees to be paid, years pass,her sick mother join us at her house,we started caring for her because she couldn’t walk, she will always pee on our hands while taking her to the bathroom, when she started to recover she begin our enemy she will use words on us, she will say u guys supposed to be eating on the dumb site and my daughter come bring your to live in this house, years past her husband who left her sold the duplex house to one of our respesentitive in the government, and he travel later he died and everything they use our money on my aunt lose all of it.after my high school,I got pregnant because she was not helping us, she put me out of her house,to cut the story short,I give birth to a baby girl and after I attended a nurse aid school I graduated and now I’m happy married with two children, glory to God 🙏