The love of my parents has me in shackles, their devotion in a chokehold that barely allows for breath. I feel like I’m constantly spiralling, spiralling so hard that my thoughts have me suffocating and I keep having absurd thoughts that make me question my feelings and everything I am. I just keep getting sucked down this rabbit hole of uncertainty, of a sense of guilt at potential impropriety, at thoughts of feelings I didn’t know I had that make me confused and scared. They make me feel isolated from others, they make me want to scream.
Ever since I can remember, my parents have schooled me on fear: how to fear, why to fear, who to fear, and how to fear them. They taught me how to mistrust the world. It was too vast and vicious, the people all serpents smiling their beatific smiles, with foxlike eyes watching and waiting for me stumble. They then taught me to fear men, and in-turn taught me my naivety, my submission, my inability to trust myself. My thoughts chameleon around boys and what they can do to me so frequently, that it’s almost a pastime activity now.
My every move is always second guessed, with every thought recurring behind my eyes tiresomely. I’d recurrently dream of traumatic events, with their motifs of fear getting the starring role like an ever-present neon lit billboard on the highway, insurmountable. I try to run away, I even try to be brave, but it feels futile for someone like me.
My parents mirrored each other’s pasts one way or another before they’d met: both headstrong, blunt, seasoned lovers, and somewhat fearless around the fearsome, be it people or situations. I think they learnt fear when they had me. My sister skipped this recessive gene, you see, and amongst them all I’m the black sheep with the cloudy thoughts and murky morale.
I’m so tired of being submissive, of being obedient like a nice lapdog that obeys every beck and call. Yet if I would voice this, they’d tilt their head and pinch their mouths, I must be a delusional child. Their delusional child with the everchanging heart. I’m afraid to acknowledge my debilitating fears that may have morphed into an incapacity to love romantically, to commit and dream of longevity. I feel so sad that it might not be for me, I wish it could. I wish wishing it to be would make it so.
When you’re an infant you have no fear, you can’t imagine nor perceive what you don’t know. My schooling on fear began as a toddler and continued on all throughout my life up till this moment. It started with fearing separation with my father; work always carried him and flew far away from me. Then, my grandmother’s ever decreasing visits, they were the highlights of my little life. Then it was my mother crying, hell, my grandpa dying, hell, my sister’s clinginess, hell, my father’s stinginess, hell, social exclusion, hell, and lover’s delusion. Also, hell.
I was taught to fear God before loving him; same applies for everyone I meet as an adult. I’ve learnt to expect the blow before the kiss, cold feet but never warm hands. It’s second nature to me now. I don’t have to think about it to think about it. If my body were to take up space, then rule of thumb is always: the smaller, the better. Maybe that’s why I am always left without gumption, I guess having guts must take actually having guts.
Gutless and wretched, I desire a rebellion that feels fiendish in its nature. My rage waxes and wanes with the moon, my hair sheds its strands like falling leaves, my skin is left irate, as are my bones. I think of an offspring that may not actualize itself out of my womb. But if it does, if I were to allow it to, would I teach them to do what I could not, or would I just yield them into emulating my cowardice?
My fearful mother taught me how to be brave, the thought makes me smile.
Calla The Cairolite 
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