• An incredibly messed-up life
• Beyond
So once upon a time there was this girl named Becky (that’s me!) and she had a lot a lot of learning disabilities (don’t have a single page in this site without these two words). Actually, I had always thought that my life was pretty normal and that I had a absolutely perfect childhood. But, the other day, while chatting with my friends about our respective childhoods, I realized I didn’t. For example they had a perfectly nice and dandy childhood.
“When I was 2, I could count one to ten, when I was three I could count from one to a hundred. Pretty scary actually, all the adults thought I was a genius” and “When I was really young, I can’t really remember but my mom says I won this weird competition and won $100,000 dollars for my university fees, I don’t remember but I know it’s true because my mom cut out that newspaper article, laminated it and stuck it on the wall.”
(And here my history starts, long paragraph… PREPARE YOURSELVES!) So maybe not so normal, they are really smart people, but mine went something like…..
0 to 3 years old
“ I was born a month premature, and I had jaundice, was put in intensive care unit. When I was one, I fell into the sea and knocked my head really hard so I got cranium shift, so all my reflexes were all bleh!(my word for completely messed up) Oh! And when I was three, I hated my mom ‘cause she unintentionally traumatized me.
4 years old – one friend and bullies
And when I was in kindergarten (it was a really expensive one mind you, $1000 a month, but I took half-day so it was $500), the teacher’s daughters used to pick on me a lot, so I had no friends and nobody else would talk to me either, I had this ONE friend but she had to move house so she also moved out of the kindergarten.
So, when I was 5, I was depressed for the first (though not last) time in my life (I wasn’t suicidal this time). My grand-aunt died (I wasn’t very close to her) and I started thinking about what would happen when I died and my parents died. I don’t remember much except this really… empty feeling… like life wasn’t really worth living. And other than my depression, I was angry with my kindergarten and my classmates who picked on me, my mom said that I used to hide under the table and torture my dolls while mumbling incoherently. She and my dad used to work until night and come home so I was normally alone besides my maid, Abigail (my joy in life, I would consider her like my best friend), my mom said she would come home at night and all the lights would be turned off and I would be under the table with a blanket draped over it, and when they tried to turn on the lights I wouldn’t let them, and I was a spoilt princess so I always got my way. So they had to go around with torch lights and candles while I sat under the table torturing my dolls. Kinda reminds you of those horror movies with the possessed, sadistic, psychopaths of children, doesn’t it.
6 years old – suicidal
And when I got over my first depression over death, I had my second depression (I was suicidal this time) I can’t remember why but I think it was because of kindergarten. The children picked on me, the teachers (to me) also picked on me, my only friend moved away and oh, the teacher’s wouldn’t let me graduate. (Apparently, the graduation meant a lot to me, I was a child). I remember my mom telling me that in the newspapers there was this little girl who unknowingly cut the telephone cord and she got electrocuted and died, she told me not to do a stupid thing like that. I remember taking this pair of scissors (it was a really small one, pink with silver curly-ish designs on it, yup, I really do remember) and cutting the telephone line, I didn’t die. Abigail was crying. And, you know, (friends: “no, I don’t know”.) my parents always said that the most they paid for schooling was for kindergarten and that’s where the most damage was done, like as if they paid for me to be mentally damaged so much that until now I’m still in and out of therapy.”
7 years old – anxiety
And now, on to primary school (I didn’t really need to start a new paragraph but the whole chunk up there was really an eyesore). Well, my mom found out about the harassment in kindergarten, so she and dad went to see the vice-principal of a nearby primary school to find out if the school could help me. The vice-principal said “no problem” and I got enrolled. My mum also wrote this really scary (my word not theirs, theirs was “professional”, me: “therefore SCARY!”) letter to my primary school principal, so I had the support of all my teachers, my mom stopped work too, I’m really glad she did or I would never have improved to how I am today. In primary one, I was never scolded. Apparently (my mom said) I was, appearance-wise, teacher’s pet. And I had this big group of classmates crowding around me when I first started school, either because I was really cute, because I was teacher’s pet, or because I was this damsel-in-distress kinda girl (I am NOT a damsel-in-distress now). So, linking back to how kindergarten traumatized me, the girls said that the students would put on a sweet face before killing me and hiding my body under the tables, so frankly, I was TERRIFIED by the attention given to me by my classmates. And I had a hearing difficulty (Auditory Processing Disorder , it sounds complicated but you should break it up, auditory(hearing) processing (understanding) disorder(weird neurological thingymabob), so I couldn’t process what everyone was saying around me quickly enough.) so it was all a blur and I could understand what all of them were saying. It’s kinda like in the movies when the actress in spinning around in a nightmare looking at the whirl of faces and all she hears is this somewhat incoherent babbling and seemingly evil laughter. Picture it? It was exactly like that for me. Well, I thank all gods above (not a Christian so no “dear lord” and stuff, not that I have anything against the religion, Christians are really nice) that the teachers understood that I could not read OR write and never scolded me though I was bottom of the school (NOT THE CLASS! SCHOOL!) and my “class-buddy” was really nice to me and always stood up for me when anyone bullied me. Eh, never really got to thank him for that, well, lost contact, regretting that.
8 years old – trauma and anxiety
So… In primary 2, I was still in the same class as primary one and I was coping better. Not much happening there, OH! I had three traumatizing events that year. Firstly, there was sports day, so…. Our team won, but the other teams were angry, they said I cheated. My team stood up for me (bless their souls) but everyone started jeering at me. Due to my hearing difficulties, it was a very distressing moment. It was like… one moment you are just standing there all fine and dandy happy with your victory (which you JUST found out about because you didn’t hear it when the teachers announced the results) and then the next you realize that everyone has adopted this unhappy, angry, dissatisfied scowl and are yelling at one another. So you turn around to see who they are yelling at and you see this group of angry classmates yelling angrily while glaring daggers at you and brandishing and pointing accusingly at you. And I was just so confused and all the while thinking, What did I do? Why are they so upset with me? And later on your best friends are all cold to you (apparently they believed what everyone said about me cheating) and you are wondering why they are doing that and you still don’t understand what you did wrong. It’s kinda like this puppy that has just been kicked for no reason at all and scrambles off to a corner with its tail between its legs wondering sadly why it’s just been kicked. After that event, I always let others win because I believed that when I allow myself to win a game, it’s a bad thing because when I won on that faithful sports day, I was punished. It’s like training a puppy, is it not?
And the second event was when I got stuck in the lift, the people who were supposed to get me out of the lift didn’t come so I was stuck in there with a bunch of rowdy boys who were jumping up and down and telling you that because they are jumping up and down, the lift is going to give way and go plummeting down to our deaths. Well, low self esteem, hearing disorders, so I was really very gullible. After that I was claustrophobic, and I had difficulty breathing while in lifts and sometimes when I’m alone in lifts, I have panic attacks and feel like clawing at the walls and screaming hysterically but I restrain myself and instead resort to standing stiffly in the lift with a look of pure terror on my face. I’m not angry with those boys because I’m sure they were just messing with me and they thought I wouldn’t believe them. I’m sure they weren’t thinking, Hey! You know, Becky is really gullible ‘cause she has low self esteem and a hearing disorder so let’s tell her that the lift is gonna plummet down and kill us upon impact with the ground because I’m really, 100% sure that its gonna traumatize her to have panic attacks in lifts next time. So, it was actually my fault for being gullible.
And the third event was the car crash, so, for a really blur girl like me, it was a confusing and distressing event. So one moment I’m sitting fine and dandy in the car with my parents and the next, I’m jerked against my seatbelt and there’s lots of smoke coming out from the front. And I remember thinking, this is it, I’m going to die from suffocation and my lungs are going to be poisoned by this evil toxic gas. I don’t think the doors will open because my life is so miserable that the doors are probably twisted beyond function from the impact. Of course I didn’t realize I was actually very lucky but that’s not really the point. At that moment my dad pulled open the door and flung me out. Then we went to the coffee shop where everyone was staring at me because I was literally bawling my eyes out. If you check the dictionary, bawling means to be crying really loudly and you will see a “=screaming” there. So I was really literally doing that. As a child, adults were really scared of me (according to my mom) because I didn’t just cry, I bawled. No sobbing and sniveling in a corner, it was screaming and wailing from wherever I had started bawling from, no crawling into corners to wallow in self pity. So it’s not that unbelievable that the whole kopitiam was staring at me and that the bus driver that had hit us was really so sorry and he didn’t even try to argue his way out of it though he was in the wrong, which I’m sure anyone else would have tried to if I wasn’t bawling as if I’d just been severely mentally scarred for life so piteously. My bawling was always very distressing to my caretakers. It was a magnet for attention from passer-byes and I never ever thought, hey I’m in public man, really shouldn’t be screaming here, it was never that I was spoilt or attention seeking, it was just another thing that came with my multiple learning difficulties. So, obviously the bus driver was really upset and guilty that I was, appearance-wise, so badly traumatized (which I wasn’t, not much effects from this incident, not like panic attacks in lifts and unwillingness to perform) because he was a complete stranger and didn’t know that I always cried like that. We didn’t sue him because we had the money to pay for repairs anyway, even if my dad had just been retrenched and my mom was still not working because she stopped work when I was primary one to help me with my learning difficulties. Later on they argued a lot over me because my mom extended a very assertive control over me (which was actually good for encouraging me to control my neurological impulses but made me cry a lot). Because of her control, I was constantly bawling my eyes out (didn’t I just describe my bawling?) and my dad couldn’t stand my bawling. So he argued with mom because he loved me so much (Bless his soul, my dear old dad. Simply adore him.), since I didn’t understand (once again with whirl of faces and incoherent yelling). I was very upset. My mom tends to always yell “I will divorce you!” in her arguments though she never actually does do it. But I didn’t know she wouldn’t do it so I was really scared and upset. After a while, my dad always came home late so he wouldn’t have to hear my bawling and stayed late at work to work (Duh! What else could one stay back at WORK for?).
9 years old – suicidal
And in primary 3, we were streamed into different classes according to marks. So by then, thanks to my mom, I could read and write and I was placed into the “D” class instead of the “F” class. My Chinese really pulled me down. So, in primary 3, I wasn’t really so obviously “teacher’s pet” anymore, though the teachers still sheltered me. I remember my Chinese teacher calling up my mom when I got 30/100 for Chinese to congratulate her. Not sarcastically, I mean it. I used to get 10/100 for Chinese so it was a “big improvement”. I was suicidal again in primary 3 because my classmates sitting around me used to disturb me in class. They used to put things in my hair and grab my hands to prevent me from removing them. My mom said it was really very scary because I stopped bawling and was lying in bed sniffing quietly and I told her “sometimes, I feel that life is so miserable that its better off for me to die, because then would I actually be happy. But I know if I really were to die, then you and daddy would be really sad. But I really want to die.” So she panicked and told my dad. So he watched me and realized that I had started twitching involuntarily. So he wrote a scary (professional) letter to the school principal, who came to see me one day and noticed that I really was twitching. I can’t remember what happened after that, I think the teacher changed my place. When my mom told me about my depression, I thought that I was just a seriously pampered and severely spoilt brat who pretended to be in depression to get back at my irritating classmates until I heard about the twitching. I had to go to therapy again to get rid of it.
For primary four, it was going quite well, my studies were quite good, and I wasn’t so gullible. I remember actually standing up for myself when the boys teased me. And my grades improved that I was actually promoted to the “C” class at the end of the year instead of staying in the “D” class or even dropping down to the “E” class or “F” class.
I took the TOVA test and the psychologist was really amazed because she was wondering how I coped. And when I first stepped into the room, she was thinking, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this girl, she’s just sitting there with her hands placed neatly in her lap, she’s not climbing up my walls, she’s not even fidgeting with my sweets. And after the test it was like, POW! Oh my! She’s nearly DYSFUNCTIONAL!! And I couldn’t even tell. And I guess all that tens of thousands worth of therapy has paid off so I don’t even look abnormal in the slightest. And I do mean tens of thousands.
In primary 5, I was in the “C” class. I was with my two best friends from primary one and two. I had a squabble with one of them who thought I was “pathetic” due to my low esteem issues. I always slouched and never made eye contact with anyone. Always shuffling along and talking to my shoes with a uniform three sizes too big, socks that were too high and very sloppy hair.
Also my maid, Abigail, left for Canada to study. We bought her a laptop as a farewell gift. She stayed with us for nine years. I miss her lots. So I had self esteem issues again that year (went for therapy again, no big surprise here) and I always slept in class and never paid attention even if I were awake. At the end of the year I was demoted to “D” class again.
In primary 6, my grades improved again and I didn’t have much self esteem issues after therapy. It was art therapy, quite efficient at improving self esteem. However, I had stopped my swimming and sailing because of frequent stomach pains.
At the end of the year I managed to pass my PSLE (joy to the world!) and I was also top of my class even though I didn’t study. I’d gotten 239 (one mark to 240! Utter bleh-ness!).
Beyond
Though my mental stability is much improved after all that therapy, and attitude towards studying is now better, I found out something very shocking. *Gives a sigh of indescribable suffering*. I realize that my health is not that well though it may not appear so on the outside when I had an operation for appendicitis. It was infected so it had to go.
So now that I have begun to rejoice in the victory against my learning difficulties and attitude problems and misunderstandings about philosophy and psychology (yes we do learn philosophy and psychology though not that much in detail), I realize that my bone structure is almost completely off with scoliosis (Utter bleh-ness) and that I am physically unhealthy and unfit.
And my mom was hoping that she could leave me alone and go her own jolly way skipping and singing loudly and basically rejoicing at her freedom but now burden again because of the problem with my bone structure ( “My dreams! Crushed so cruelly by the pitiless hands of unfairness.”). And I really can’t help but pity her.
Well, there is my life story. I feel that a movie/book ought to be made about me and my mom. The tragic story of Becky and her weary mother who is forever tied down to her handicapped child, and how Becky has been traumatized by her teachers, schoolmates, classmates, friends, neighbours, parents, lifts, buses, and the list goes on.