Anonymous Anomalies

A new series where anonymous members of Team Fahmidan reflect on the difficult, the sublime and the shocking in their lives.

Parental Disenchantment

It's cool in the air conditioned second floor of the villa overlooking a mighty garden not teeming with life, but powdery auburn and sunburnt lawn decor, second hand and tired. There is no moon, only stygian skies surrounded subtly by stalwart clouds that dare remain as screaming reverberates through crisp floor. I am four, slightly teary eyed but listening with intent as rapturous screeches force me to open the door, until, peering I see my dad throwing my mom on a bed. Her rapid ascent back to attack. The screeches that find rhythm like a metronome in 4/4.

My grandmother stealthily creeps up the stairs as 4am hits the clock and takes me away, in contrast to her own marital discord. I, unlike her children was removed from the situation. Not left to absorb more neuro-trauma, more vitriol too warping for a toddler. It was at this age that I became disenchanted with my parents. A disenchantment that ebbed and flowed, yet remained resolute until I grew more consciousness in my teen years and it could only blossom into a frigid resentment glaring.

But what can we do when those tasked with raising us, were themselves raised with the cold whip of a belt, the degrading commentary day in and day out? The moral decrepitude of the misraised and those that should not have borne has weighed heavily on me as I navigate the violence and dysfunction of my childhood and youth. Now only speaking with one parent, I am still challenged on numerous occasions, still sore from repetition and complaints and nagging that never ceases. But I too can recognise the efforts made, the conversations had, the mental work it takes for someone to depart life-time thinking.

But I was left to question, would parental disenchantment ever end? Would I ever forgive, forget or maybe even feel proud of at least one parent? Perhaps the over exuberance of youth, the parental failures and the malaise of society has rendered me unsympathetic, unempathetic and jaded. But I am no stagnant being. Sinner that I am, I am forced to consider greater isolation, disappearing into the crowd of a city like a ghost in some suburban attic for a year or two. Maybe in isolation, my mind can find reprieve, maybe obsidian woe must precede the light?