I Beat My Dad When He Tried to Do to My Sister What He Did to Me

I went to the gym recently and the trainer asked us to do squats. I love squats. It’s one of the trainings I find very easy to do, and everyone there knew it, but on this day, I got tired after the second set. I was soldiering through to get to the end, but the gym instructor kept shouting at me, “Keep going! Don’t stop!”

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I looked at his face and the shape of the lips he was using to shout at me. I burst out crying and stopped doing the exercise. Everyone stopped, shocked, and looked at me. I picked up my towel and started leaving. The trainer followed. Those I was close with came to stop me from leaving. They all asked what the problem was. The tears I was shedding came from very deep within, and I couldn’t stop to talk.

I raised my hand and asked them to leave me alone. They wouldn’t stop until I muttered, “It’s ok. I’m fine. It’s not anyone’s fault. I remembered something personal and it made me cry.”

They left me, but I don’t think they understood me or even believed me. I’d been scarred by my dad, and to a certain extent my mom, and the exercise that day brought back memories of those days when I was a child.

It wasn’t called ‘squats’ when I was young. It was called “M’aso yɛ din,” meaning “I’m a stubborn child.” It was my father’s favorite punishment anytime I erred. He would pick up a thick cane and stand over me while he watched as I went up and down. When I got tired and stopped midway, he would use the cane on me. The trainer’s voice that day brought back memories of my dad.

I don’t remember my age when it started, but I was very young, so young all I wanted to do was play. My dad wasn’t often in the house, but my mom would record my mistakes on the face of a rock and tell them one after the other to my dad so he would punish me.

The first time my dad introduced squats as a punishment, I broke down the next day. The pain was so much I couldn’t stand on my feet. I thought I’d become crippled. All he said was, “Worse things would happen to you if you keep misbehaving in the house.”

I was scared to make a mistake. Anytime my mom screamed, “When your dad comes, I will tell him,” I became edgy. All happiness eluded me. I would see my dad and my heart would skip several beats. His presence terrorized me. I wished he wasn’t home all the time.

When I got used to squats because they were no longer as painful as they used to be, he added cement blocks. I would hold my left ear with my right hand and my right ear with my left hand and carry a heavy block on my head while I squatted. If the block fell, my dad would give me five lashes and I would start again from scratch.

My mom would be around, laughing and urging my dad on to do worse. The block was my mom’s idea. Later she introduced standing on one leg while I squatted on one leg, all the while carrying a block. That was beast mode. It only meant I was going to get beaten severely. My mom wouldn’t do it to me herself. She would wait for my dad and do it with him.

I was a young boy who only wanted to have fun with friends and make use of my childhood. I have marks in intimate places to show for this abuse. It got to a point where I grew resistant to their hurt. I would do it anyway. What could they do apart from squats? I stole from them because they wouldn’t give me food or money when I went wrong. My mom would come to my class and announce that I was a thief just to shame me in front of my friends.

By the time I completed JSS, they couldn’t control me. I was fighting my mom and threatening her. Anytime she said she would tell my dad about it, I said, “Tell him and you will see what I will do to you when he’s gone.” My dad would come home and beat me. When he was gone, I would take it out on my mom. Sometimes I would take her cloth and sell it just to return the punishment.

My junior sister was about ten years old when I came home and saw her doing squats with my dad standing in front of her and shouting at her. That was the memory that made me cry at the gym. My sister was crying and drooling, but it excited my dad to see her suffer. I rushed to the scene and lifted my sister up. I screamed, “Go! Don’t mind anyone, just run!”

My sister was standing there looking at me while my dad was shouting at me to leave. I held my sister’s hand and pulled her away. My dad, angry and his ego hurt, followed me with a cane and hit my head from behind. The cane ended up hitting my left eye, blinding me for a few seconds. I turned to face my dad, and for the first time, I matched him man to man. My mom was screaming, “Fiifi, do you want to kill your dad?”

He was on the floor while I towered over him. I picked up the cane wanting to hit him with it, but I stopped midway. I carried my sister and left the house with her. My sister went back, but I never went home again. As I write this, I can hear the echoes of my mom’s curses ringing in my ears: “You’ve beaten your dad; you will not last long on this earth. You’ll die a painful death for doing this to the man who raised you.”

I reconciled with my dad when I was thirty years old. I lived with friends and relatives and even lived in houses as a house boy. Those houses treated me better than my own house. They forgave my mistakes and didn’t withhold food and money from me just because I erred. I call it my days in the wilderness. The wilderness felt better than home.

Dad said he had been looking for me. His voice was calm, like a man who had learned lessons from life. He said on the phone, “So you won’t come home until I die?”

I went home, but still not trusting them. I had a car but didn’t drive home. I didn’t want them to attack me spiritually, thinking I’d made it in life. We talked about that day when I went away. Dad apologized to me, saying he thought he was straightening a wayward child. My mom sat there and couldn’t utter a word. When I was leaving, I hugged her.

Today, they expect me to be jolly with them. Dad wants to play when he calls, but I’ve become a brick, impenetrable. Our calls don’t last a minute. We can sit in a room for hours and not say anything to each other. My mom does a monologue all the time when I’m around her. I have nothing to say to her. I don’t hate them, but what they did closed me up, and I find it strange receiving love from them or giving it.

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Even with my sister, the relationship is like a ghost town, but we force it. We force ourselves to say something to each other. And when we are not able to talk to each other, we understand. We know what we’ve been through and accept where we are now. We know we are doing our best, considering the distance that has existed between us.
#MyChildhoodTrauma

—Fiifi

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