Part four in the story of my life: painful memories
I was ten years when we moved to Zutphen. At first I didn’t liked it very much. There was this new school we had to go, nearby our house. The kids in the class already were together for several years and thought it was all strange me coming from the ‘big city’ to Zutphen in their class. At first I got bullied a lot because I had a big mouth when it came to unfair behavior towards me, and they didn’t liked it. So at the beginning I didn’t had many friends and I also had difficulties with the teachers (which hunted me the rest of my school life). When we just lived an half a year in Zutphen I came back from school on Monday and when I came home my parents were sad. The told us that my grandfather (from my mothers side) passed away. I was devastated cause he was such a kind and loving man. My grandmother wasn’t half he was when it came to being a real grandfather. I often thought that we have lost our grandfather way to early if I saw my friends with their grandparents. I think I have missed the kind advise and his warmth a lot.
In our family things weren’t like in other families. My parents, although I turned out fine, had a other way of raising and bringing over morals and values. Don’t get me wrong, in the end they were right but the way of bringing it was quite different. Only if I look at the language that was used at home, there was cursing, rude to us when they were mad and not all that interested in us as I am now with my own kids. Of course, everyone is different but I have learned (much later) that cause of things that happened in my youth I developed an defense system which I have used for years and in a very wrong way.
When I got to middle school I had a friend, he turned out to become my best friend ever. We did a lot of things together, watch movies, listen to music, ride our moped’s together. Because of that we were together almost every day my mother couldn’t deal with the bond we had (I think) and often, usually when she was under the influence of Alcohol, she called us painful names like “faget”, “Gay’s” etc. Not the things you want to hear from your parent. (of course no offense to gay people because I respect each and every person). When I was at my friends house I saw that in other families things go so different as the way it should be. I remember thinking a lot like “I want a normal family life like that” and “Why does my mother treat us like that”. Of course there was a lot to point at her alcohol abuse, but that wasn’t a good reason for me. Mothers of my friends also drank a glass of wine every now and then but not in the manner my mother did.
The whole alcohol thing has played the biggest part of our life. Every now and then, when things got really out of hand, she promised to better herself and to stay of alcohol, but she really never did managed. It is an addiction with big consequences.
At school things were going average, I had still a big mouth in class and tended to behave like a lower class guy. I didn’t enjoy school, hated the teachers (for no reason) and tried to got suspended (which luckily didn’t work). At one time I had to bring a notebook to every class where teachers had to write down how I behaved in class. If it was a negative rating I had to go to the principal. That worked quite well because I started to behave 😊
I often tried to escape home by spending loads of time at friends and feeling ashamed when I had to bring friends home because I didn’t knew in which kind of state we would see my mother. That was quite hard and confronting and scared because you never know if someone is going to talk about it at school. At that time my best friend was the only friend I really could talk about my problems.
We’ll I wil go on with my story tomorrow….. have to ease a little with memories…
I write down this story to share my thought and experience with you all, perhaps it will support something, It supports me to give things a place in life
