What physical abuse has done to me

Times have changed and child abuse is not the norm of child upbringing anymore but unfortunately, I had to go through the traditional Asian upbringing. Getting hit by a cane.

I stayed with my grandparents until I was seven, then moved in with my mother. She was a single parent and had to always work late. Therefore I was sent to a day care/music centre.

I was never considered a problem child until i went there. I was somehow forced to learn the cello and by age 7 and I had to practice 2 hours a day there. My first mistake was putting sweets in my locker. Mind you, I was only 7 years old. I ended up having ants all over my clothes and told the teacher. It happened a few times and all of those times I was beaten the living daylights out of me, by the teacher, and also my mother.

The physcial abuse continued every single day. Every single day there was a new reason for them to hit me. Some for my own mistakes, some for the mistakes that I didn't even do. When I denied it, I got beaten even more. My mother had already broken dozens of ratan canes because of hitting me. It wasn't just on my palms or my butt, most of the time my mother flicked the cane randomly and my scars can be seen through my school uniform. It made me stop denying anything at all. I end up accepting all the complains, whether or not I did it. I end up staying quiet, I never answered their questions because there was no point. My mother was going to hit me anyways.

I lived in fear every single day. I didn't even realise something was wrong with my life and the people around me. I was too afraid that I ended up being a really mean and fierce child which scared other children around me. I glared at other people a lot, I scolded other people a lot and most importantly, I hated physical touch with a seething passion.

When I was eleven, I had finished my Grade 8 cello exam, which was the highest graded exam before taking the performance diploma. Only then I left the problematic day care, and my mother stopped hitting me.

Slowly at that time, I started realising how different was my upbringing compared to other children. As I paid more attention to my friends in school, everything just dawned on me that my life was horrible. Even though the physical abuse has stopped, my personality just became worse. I became more bitter about everything, I started giving people death threats and I started thinking a lot about suicide. At that point, although I was only 11, I had migraines and insomnia everynight. It was hell.

I started cutting my arm actively when I was 12, then started cutting my thighs at 13. My relationship with my mother sucked. We never talked about anything. She always has a bad temper and so do I, so even though she knew about it, she couldn't do anything about it. There was often blood seeping through my white uniform because I had to refrain myself from strangling someone so I took it onto myself.

I had to cut everytime before my cello class, just so I can get through it. My new teacher never really scolded me, but it hurt me to disappoint him. To avoid crying in class, I had to cut, I had to feel pain to cancel out my emotional pain.

Then anxiety attacks happen when I was 13. It happens when noises are too loud or when there it too many peoole. It was most probably because I was always scolded or screamed at publicly. It never happened after that, but everytime too many people talked at the same time, I couldn't breathe, I couldn't function. I felt cold. Sometimes it even happens during orchestra rehearsals, and it was troublesome to pretend it was not happening.

By 14 I lost all will to live. I overdose my medicines, cut deeper than I should, never looked left or right when I crossed the road.

I was too young to experience all this pain, but I survived through it and recovered from it. I'm only 16 now, but I can never fit in with my classmates because my world was too different.

I hope this story of mine gave at least some awareness of what excessive physical abuse can do to a child. If you would also like to share, please comment down below :)