I was born in 1992. Which means that I was raised by parents who were born and lived by the standards of conduct, morality, sense of right and wrong, and values of the late 50's and early 60's... Is this characteristic important? To my way of thinking, absolutely yes.... Since my parents saw with tolerant eyes the fact of applying physical or verbal violence, depending on the case, to "discipline" their children...
But I was not raised by monsters, I won't lie to you ..... But I witnessed multiple times how the way they "disciplined" me and my brother and me was strongly influenced by the way my grandparents had raised my own parents and uncles.... To them, it was totally normal and accepted that way. They said, "that without discipline (physical or psychological mistreatment), we would grow up as slackers." There was no room for the mischief that every child does.
I always had to witness the split personality of my parents. Dad, a loving, noble, hardworking and extremely tolerant man, but who grew up without the ability to express what was happening to him. According to him, "the only mission of a real man was to support his family and have money", the rest was "women's" and "homosexual" stuff.... In other words, the same person who was sweet in a nice way, also possessed a tremendously authoritarian and dangerous side.
My mother, on the other hand, a woman conditioned by my grandmother to be a kind of "functional woman and mother" had only one "purpose" in her life, according to herself: "to have children". Because, according to her, women who do not give children to their husbands, "are not responsible women, and no one will ever love her..." It is obvious that this marked difference between opinions and ways of seeing life was what I saw when I was a child.
If I saw my older brother cry more than 4 times in my whole life, it was too much.... I think I exaggerate. Dad was extremely hard on him. He would tell him that "every time I saw him crying, I was going to give him real reasons to cry..." He ended up growing up and looking a lot like Dad. You'd see him and he conveyed absolutely nothing. Always with a poker-faced face..... The sweet, curious and creative child ended up being a cold, distant adult who always had fits of anger with all his romantic partners.
Nobody said anything to him, nor reproached him for anything. For my mother, he was always a "miracle" of God. I guess for compensation... Since he was a coward. She never defended her son against my father's cold, cruel and violent treatment of my brother. So, she found an alternative to allow my brother a free hand and give him a form of acceptance and impunity that marked his way of seeing women for life....
I had to bear the hard, cold, distant and above all, psychologically violent impositions that my mother had on me. She was never sweet or attentive. Much less complicit or kind to me. Either I did what she told me to do, or the psychological cost was very serious. From public humiliations to strong rudeness and insults. That was, roughly speaking, the childhood I grew up with. And this is also the worst terror I possess and that today I share with you, who today are parents of boys and girls, who I can swear to you do not need this kind of experience.
Sadly, I know I was not the only one who had to live through something like this. Changing what was supposed to have been, has been the most important accomplishment I have ever made in my life, after bringing my own daughter into this world. And I'd rather die than do anything even halfway similar to what I had to live through with my brother.... Curiously, my parents, who today are my daughter's and my nieces' grandparents, seem not to remember what I am telling them here and live in cynical denial. I guess, that guilt and harm as a victimizer, sometimes it is better if it is not relived or admitted. It is up to them... Never do or apply violence to your children, never!
