It gets personal.

A long time ago, 16 years to be exact, my little cousin broke my favourite mirror and since I was only 10 then, I ran to mommy and showed her what happened. The raucous angered my father so much that he gave me a slap across my face and a couple more blows which I couldn’t remember cause after years of being manhandled by my father, I can no longer tell apart between a slap and a punch or a shove and a kick. It all spells out pain to me. What was significant about that day wasn’t the amount of hits I received but was his words that hovered over me till today. “Sejak kau dilahirkan sampai sekarang, kau anak sial. Anak sueh!” In English, it basically meant I was a child that brought him nothing but bad luck and misfortune since my birth. He then went on to reiterate the car he had to give up, the job he lost and the financial struggles our family went through at that point of time. And it was all because of me. My birth had brought on such dire consequences to him and the rest of my family. Mummy was the ONLY sole breadwinner that I can remember for a long time to come. My father was unemployed most of his life.

You would think that these are only words spoken in an outburst of anger. Words that do not carry any weight. But few days after, my father brought me to the clinic and I had my first (which I could remember) blood extraction done. I remembered the doctor asking my father the purpose of the blood test and I remembered my father saying it was for a personal reason. But I guess the doctor knew. My father wanted to know if I was indeed his. And I knew that too, despite being only 10.

My father wasn’t always unkind to me. There are moments when he bragged about my academic achievements to friends and family and I believed I was the favourite child. But that was all I ever was. I was just a bragging right. Cause my father, he is a proud man.

I would go on further but these are the kind of things nobody wants to talk about. Everyone has a painful story to tell. And this is mine.