My Curse

I never asked to be born. If I had the chance to travel back in time and see my mother before I was born, I would take that opportunity and tell her not to have me, even though it would mean cancelling out my current existence. I would prefer it that way, because I would never have gone through all the suffering and betrayal of my childhood.

I would never have been molested by a neighbour when I was 5. I would never have gone through multiple cystitis infections and subsequent kidney infection when I was 6, an infection that I almost died from after picking it up from being molested the year before.

I would never have been terrorised and constantly bullied on a daily basis at primary school, being teased day in and day out about my appearance. My mother had miscarried a boy before me, a boy she most desperately wanted. But instead she wound up with another girl, with me. So if she couldn't give birth to a boy, she would turn her girl into one.

I would have never been isolated right from the start from other members of my mother's and father's families, stunting my social skills and emotional growth in the process. Instead mother wanted me to adopt her paranoid belief system that everyone was out to take me away from her and that I must not talk about our home life to no one.

I would never have bare witness to the 7 year long war our 'family' had with our immediate neighbours. The verbal abuse they hurled at us every time any of us was out in our own backyard. The car parts thrown over the fence. My pet chickens taken, interfered with and then brutally killed by them.

I would have never witnessed one of the neighbours pull my dad out of the van and bash him one morning when he was taking me to school. My father was then admitted to hospital and I was told he had to stay there for months at a time because he had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic.

I would never have had to watch as my father's mental state deteriorated over the following years after being imprisoned in the psychiatric ward. Having to put up with his incessant teeth grinding, his irrational outbursts of anger, his withdrawal from me.

I would have never sat with my mother as she laid out a 'plan' for our escape from my father when I was 15, promising me that everything would be better once she divorced from him. I stupidly believed in my mother's lies. It never became better after my mother threw my father out of the house, rendering him homeless. It was all lies.

I would have never been verbally, physically and psychologically abused by my mother after my father was gone and out of our lives then. You see, I never realised it at the time, but my mother was the master puppeteer and all of us - me, my father, the neighbours, my school teachers, the police, the hospital staff - we were all puppets on a string, playing a part in my mother's master plan. Her plan to have complete and total control over me and my life.

I would have never had my life threatened by my own biological mother when I was 19, in my second year of uni. I would have never had to reach out to one of my mother's sisters, who so happened to be working at the uni I was attending at the time and ask her to help me run away from home.

I would have never been betrayed by my mother's sisters, the same ones who helped me escape when they blackmailed me into giving my mother my new phone number, otherwise they would tell my homicidal mother what they had done and where I was living.

I would have never dropped out of uni because of the immense pressure and stress of everything that had happened to me finally catching up, not to mention me no longer being able to afford my study fees due to me now living on my own for the first time in my life.

I would have never fell into a deep depression that lasted a year and a half, where I just lay in bed and slept for days at a time, trying to conserve my energy and what little welfare money I had left after my rent was paid.

I would have never gone to the doctor and be diagnosed with an anxiety/depression disorder and given antidepressants, pills that would later contribute to me developing PCOS (PolyCystic Ovarian Syndrome) after putting on so much weight and having my digestive enzymes and hormones screwed over by the tablets.

I would have never gone 8 long. hard, lonely years with the misdiagnosis of the mixed anxiety/depressive disorder. Yes I did have anxiety and depression, but what I didn't realise at the time was they were symptoms of a far bigger problem - Complex PTSD.

I would have never moved in with my much older half-sister and be further re-victimised and abused by her. We shared the same mother but different fathers. I should have known better, I should have read the warning signs. But of course I gave her the benefit of the doubt because she was "family".

I would have never been informed of my mother's death, when the police came to my half-sister's house to inform us of their grisly discovery. I was on the toilet of all places when the police knocked on the door. Then later finding out how my mother died, alone and in pain as she dropped dead from congestive heart failure in her own bedroom after coming home from her doctor. The doctor had warned her to go to the hospital but my mother being the stubborn woman she was, refused to do so and paid the ultimate price.

I would have never faced a fire at my half-sister's place, where I came screaming into her room to tell them of the fire because I was the only one who had seen it burning and then have absolute chaos ensue around me as I ran back and forth evacuating my belongings from my room. I came very close to losing everything I owned that night.

I would have never been illegally thrown out by my half-sister and faced down the terrifying prospect of being homelessness after a relatively minor disagreement where I tried to establish my boundaries with her. Apparently I had "upset her" after telling her that I felt like I was being taken advantage of. Turns out I was right all along.

And I would never be in my current situation now, right back to where I started when I ran away from home at age 19. Depressed, unemployed, lost and chronically alone. Maybe I didn't learn my lesson the first time around. I am terrified to the core that I will be stuck in this useless existence for the rest of my pathetic life.

Unloved, not wanted, nobody caring that I even exist. Just like my mother was. And that I will die like this, the same way that my mother did. I have been cursed with an unholy life to live. I have the blood of a monster running through my veins and there is nothing I can do about it.

I have spent every waking hour of my life since I was 19 fighting this curse, trying so hard not to turn into my mother. But with every passing day I grow weary of my battle. I cannot change my blood. I cannot change who I am. I was born to be a scapegoat for my mother's suffering and I know nothing else but to suffer.