Childhood Trauma

 Recently I have been asked, 'did you reach a stage where you decided you have to do it all alone because of everything that happened in your life? '. I answered that with,' this is who I have been even with or without the unfortunate turn of events in my life.'

And today I can say that there could be something which contributes to this temperament of mine but that is definitely not what happened post my marriage. Its true, I too had a childhood trauma. 

When I was 1 n half years old, I had to move to my grand parents house as my mother could not manage a  new born child and a one n half year old me along with her other responsibilities. So grand mom came forward to take over my responsibility. However, once I reached my grand parents home, I grew amidst a lot of love, care and pampering from my grand parent's siblings and families who also lived around the same neighborhood. It was such a golden period. My grandfather has a younger brother and three sisters everyone living in the same neighborhood. My younger grandfather and his wife has only three sons but no daughters. They were so fond of my mother and considered her their daughter. They kind of took over me entirely within a short span of time and had been an integral part of my growth since then. That time was also amazing up until I became 5 or 6 years old. Once my uncle, their elder son turned 24, this grandfather actually requested my father to get him a job. As my father knew a few people at that time, he contacted his peers and one among them who happened to be a politician actually offered him a job at airport in exchange for a sum of 50K which was a huge amount at that time. My thazhathe ammachan (younger grandfather), out of his necessity even handed over the amount to my father so that it can be paid to this politician's assistant of whoever is in charge of taking care of all these. The money was paid as well. For unknown reasons even after months of payment, offer letter did not come by. They waited and waited, only to get agitated after a point. 

 My grandfather was angry with my father but for obvious reasons he also knew there was no point in demanding that money from my father as he was not in big support of this transaction since beginning.. One thing I forgot to mention about this grand father is that he actually happens to be a miser, if that is the right term for someone who puts his all in to make money, saves that tad bit even if it means skipping a day's meal. Can't put it all only on him because that's the kind of effort he had put into making that amount which he paid and much more. Well, he is rich but for him even 25 cents is 25 cents. Ever since that incident happened, that dynamic this person had with me changed completely. I already mentioned I was just 6 years old or something. That person who used to tag me along to all temple visits which he made with his wife, that person who used to give his stored cut fruits only to me, that person who used to bring candies from his shops in the evening only for me, that person who used to wake me up around 5 am if I did not wake up to join him in his early morning prayers and other rituals, that person who used to say only nice things to me,.. everything changed as in one quick snap. Ever since then he used to comment on the quantity of food I eat, amount of water I drink, amount of water I use to take bath, milk, sweets, fish, you  name anything, everything he used to quantify and comment on it. I was so young that I don't even remember it as a bad thing at that time, but for obvious reasons even at that time I felt something is different which made me cry to sleep almost every night since then. Because it was an every day event since then.. I knew something was not right but one thing was that since I got separated from my parents at a young age, I have always visioned them as visitors or maybe I placed myself as a third person in their life even when they were taking care of my education and a lot of other expenses. And later I even got to know they were always asking my actual grandparents to bring this up with my younger grandmother (thazhathe ammamma) to get me back. My younger grand mother was always taking care of me, such a loving lady but totally afraid of my grandfather she did everything she could to make sure I am fine and not affected by his continuous cursing. Even though she could not figure it out then, everything was affecting me subconsciously because I was just growing up and even though I could not understand the true meaning of his actions and words at that time I was grasping all of those. I must admit today that this familiarity and habits are a setback when it is not contributing to your overall wellfare. If I had known those remarks were not right for me and my growth, I would have changed my environment willfully or atleast informed someone who actually cares about my betterment that this is happening in my life. Instead I conditioned myself to accept it as my reality..

I think it was back in 7th standard or something my mother actually started talking to me or rather educating me on so many things related to health and hygiene. A month to this newly opened channel of communication, I had already conveyed to her that my younger grandfather is continuously cursing me, scolding me for some money. She did not understand at first as they had almost forgotten about it as it has been years by then. But then when they finally figured it out they understood it is related to that incident. Maybe he was afraid to ask my father to return his money or something. But that entire time I had to go through all that torment because I didn't know what to do better to take me out of that situation. My mother discussed about this with my younger grandmother, even though she denied it at first, she opened up to my mother about all of that because it was not just me who had to go through it all but also her as she was trying to protect me from his rage. It looked like she was also doing everything in her hand to prevent a drift between two families. Whatever was that about, even though the younger generation tried to ease it all out what happened between my actual grandfather and younger grandfather after that was actually scary. They completely drifted apart. I moved back to my actual grandfather's house that year itself and in 8th standard moved to our new house. 

One thing I know is that, I love him because there was a time when he was different to me and I remember all of that but he also taught me the kind of changes money is actually capable of making in people's life. The determined me first decided what I want to become (exactly the same degree I did and exactly the engineer job I do now ) back in 8th standard to actually return back that amount. Took some time but I did return it..he was long gone by then though  but trust me when I say this it was not a revenge scheme so his absence didn't matter that much..

But one important thing is that when these kind of incidents which are out of your control happens to you, the effects are far fetching. You see, today I cant convince myself that someone might not turn around in the matter of a span of time, I can feel safe and secure only around things I buy for myself or achieve for myself, I cant help myself feeling or thinking as a third person or a third wheel no matter how close others are to me in any friendship or relationship, for good or worse I have seen the kind of drastic changes and drifts money is actually capable of making in people's lives.

I think this completes my personal blogs as well because I need a bit of away time from all of these.. Have a masters to complete, yes, have loads of responsibilities to juggle with, yes and most importantly a personal matter to deal with..