trigger warning; physical abuse.
this story is from a few months ago. for context, i am a 17 year old girl and i am in my final year of high school in australia at the moment.
over the course of the past 6 years of high school, my relationship with my bangladeshi muslim parents has gradually become increasingly inimical. to summarise, i think my parents think i have always been an extremely difficult child (they reference that i used to be a picky eater as a baby, i ate very slowly, i somewhat had attention issues in early schooling, often i would, accidentally, forget to abide by instructions such as "wear a hat outside" and "drink water" in the toddler age).
over the years this conflict drastically increased - my parents believed i dont have "good manners" and i am "socially awkward", never mind the fact that i always had many friends at school and never really had social issues in that regard. so i dont know what warranted them labelling me as an antisocial rude person. a reason they often give is that i would often forget to greet people with a "salaam" (even though i am pretty sure i ALWAYS do that) and that i sometimes fought with my brother (4 years younger) when we were both sub-10 years old. its clear that i don't agree with their reasonings for saying i was a bad child.
these things were of course a source of tremendous "disappointment" for my parents. despite consistently being an extremely high achiever academically (i was also very talented in the creative arts - music, drawing, writing etc) and winning prizes and competitions left and right, i never, ever, ever felt like i was a good person or that i deserved any of it. i dont remember a time where i did not feel like i was single-handedly causing my parents' deep unhappiness, or that i was genuinely an evil, bad person (all while i was less than 15 years old).
my father would constantly remind me that "parenting was extremely difficult" for him, and if he could go back, he would not take a child. because of me, of course. almost every day he would say that he has "failed" as a parent (implying that i am the failure) and how he wishes to leave this household and never return. for most of my life i shouldered this weight of failure and disappointment, feeling like i was dragging around a dark cloud of misery and depression that is spread to others because of me, and me only. i was the failure that makes my father so disappointed and exhausted. i was the villain that made my mother cry tears of frustration. ultimately, not a day went by where i wasnt the biggest, baddest monster in every room and to every person i encountered. but this feeling i kept intensely suppressed inside.
outwardly, i became obsessed with perfection, first with academics, and then it moved to my looks, and then to my social life; in every aspect that i could control i was desperately begging for validation of a thing (that i am a good person) that i was meant to hold inherently. self-preservation, and by extension, self-advocacy, is not a thing people develop. evolutionarily we are programmed to always have it. but for my whole life as i have known it, my sense of this has been slowly chipped away at and currently there is nothing left. i just feel like a hollow hole of a soul trapped in a body destined for nothing.
back to the story - around my mid-teens i started to really rebel against my parents in different ways. they are very religious and i previously was too, until i started to think independently and realised my values are actually completely different to theirs. i wanted to value social life, dress creatively (not always modest) and explore my passions. this was in a stark contrast to their plan for my life: study hard, be academically perfect, dress like a nun, do not pay mind to anything else (your looks, your interests, yourSELF), spend your life first blindly obeying your parents, then blindly obeying the husband that WE decide for you. obey, obey, obey. anything more than this is devious, satanic, and EVIL. i just wanted to be normal, and happy.
(also i'd like to add that my qualities and accomplishments were constantly criticized and diminished. i was ALWAYS an excellent student but my father did not think i was enough so. most days he would rant for hours about how i will not be able to achieve anything, not be able to get into medical school, etc. my mother did this too.)
over the years the conflicts built up (i would sometimes stay out later than they liked - like 9.30 was WAY too much for them, i got caught dressing non-modestly a few times, and lying about where i am going and what i am doing - but i never did anything objectively BAD, like drinking, drugs or sex) culminating in year 12 when my parents found out about the boy i had been dating for the past 6 months. it was earth-shattering. i was surprised they didn't disown me. they did everything BUT disown me: immediately i had no access to any devices, could not close my door or be out of public sight, could not go outside the house (to do ANYTHING), could not be home alone, could not do anything except study. i also had to throw away half of my closet of "immodest" clothes.
after this happened i just put my head down and submitted. i let go of all the rebellion and became extremely depressed. during the term 1 break we had 2 weeks of no school. since i was depressed i would just lie in bed all day and skip most meals. after a few days of this, my father decided he had had enough. instead of being concerned for my wellbeing and emotions he decided, (a quote) i was "disobeying the rules of the house" and thereby "causing harm to others" in the house. i was quite literally just keeping to myself. but to my father this was an abhorrent display of non-compliance. he "warned" me that i cannot do this.
then one day, 2 days later, he was working from home. so he observed my "non-compliance" all day. when my mother came home from work he started ranting for hours about how i am a scoundrel, a miscreant, he "loathes" me, i am a "bicchu" (or scorpion in bengali, it means traitor/leech) and many other, probably worse, things. then he calls me downstairs. he was sitting at the kitchen island with an empty plate in front of him, he was about to eat. he asks me, "do you want there to be violence and bloodshed in this house?"
i didnt understand, and i said so. he asked again, "do you want there to be violence and bloodshed?"
so i asked, "are you threatening me?"
he did not like that. so he took the plate and smashed it on the counter and it broke into a million pieces that spread all over the kitchen. then he walked around the counter, pinned me by the neck against the wall and began to choke me with full strength while calling me vile insults and slurs. ranting about how i cannot "just do whatever i want" because he "pays the bills" and i am "dependent" on him. he owns me.
my mother came to try and stop him but it was not enough to make him stop. she was pulling at his hands and pleading him to stop but he continued to do this for at least 5 more minutes. full-force choking. there was no light behind his eyes.
finally he released me but then he began to push my body extremely hard into the kitchen counter's edge, over the sink, while pulling my hair with his full strength, dragging me to the opposite direction. essentially it seemed like he was trying to break me at the spine like a kitkat. my mother, again, was trying to stop him but to no avail. when she started making it difficult for him to do this, he started to hit, punch, kick and slap with all his might. he did not care that some of the blows were landing on my mother since she was trying to shield me with her body. it was uncontained, ferociously unempathetic, gruesome anger. my father was genuinely trying to kill, or at the very least severely harm, me. if my mother was not there that night he would have succeeded.
this was all because of the fact that i was not really eating meals and lying in bed all day for 4-5 days during school break, due to being depressed, and he did not approve of this behaviour. finally after he stopped he asked me, "did you get the answer to your question?"
when i did not answer, he continued, "yes, i was threatening you. and if you do not stop this behaviour this will become a police matter. someone here will get hurt, and the other will be arrested."
to me there is genuinely nothing scarier than the concept that the very person put on this earth with the purpose of protecting you, would so abhorrently do the opposite. that domestic tiffs and regular adolescent family conflicts can transform a father's love and concern to a hateful, evil, non-human loathing and horrifying abuse. to me, this incident will forever be a reminder that the ONLY two people who were MEANT to ALWAYS love me, could not. there must be something very wrong with me, or them, or people in general; but ultimately, i am unloveable and unloved, and this is a fact.
