I used to top my class term after term, year after year, but not even once did my dad say ‘well done!’ Instead, every time I took my report card to him on closing day he would carefully scrutinize it, rant at me calling me names of all animals in the animal kingdom for scoring some ‘silly’ marks, and finally chasing me out of his sight at the end of it all…simply stated, nothing I could would impress the old man!
And, oh, one more thing, hardly the sun would set without him seriously administering ‘discipline’ on us, his children…and he would never say sorry even àfter beating crap out of you and later discovering you actually were innocent…how?..we were always at fault!!!
Plus, going out to play (more so football and swimming in a local stream!) was an abomination that called for serious spanking!
Not to mention that he never bought anybody any present!
Impact on me? I never felt like he loved us. In fact my brother and I seriuosly contemplated running away from home and becoming chokosh because the daily spanking had become unbearable.
I wanted to become nothing like him when I’m all grown with my own kids.
Sweet-sad story, itabidi nichekelee kisha nimpe pole zangu baadaye…he must have been in great pain after the first beating kwanza akikumbuka vile action plan yake ilikuwa smart design ya grandiose, halafu buda apana tambua!
I would ‘steal’ his treasured transistor radio (of course with my mum’s permission) to listen to beat time and sundowner on KBC and woe unto me if he caught me in the act.He would terrorize me and tell me to wait till I got employed and buy my own radio.
Which I did after my 1st year in employment, bought a Sony Ghetto blaster and a car battery and blasted the whole village for a full week before returning to my hustles.
He couldn’t bare face me but only complained about the noise to my mum.
Sweet-sad story, itabidi nichekelee kisha nimpe pole zangu baadaye…he must have been in great pain after the first beating kwanza akikumbuka vile action plan yake ilikuwa smart design ya grandiose, halafu buda apana tambua!
Too many to detail for me. Having many candid discussions with him especially about our studies, him throwing us out of the Country at an early age, he knew we would swim, him arguing with Mum about her beating us, him taking us to Catholic schools, him telling all my uncles and others he will never sell his daughters ruracio time…he maintained ‘it is a ceremony so ruta kiria winakio’, all my bro in laws loved and respected him. He said if you ever beat my daughter…hehehehehehe I will come for you. Njokeria.
But perhaps for me @GeorginaMakena it is him telling Mum not to beat us back in the day and also him giving us all a bath and cooking for us when Mum was v ill. Lastly him spelling out his will in his last days. He loved us equally.
My dad is not big on the affection shit but the guy can really whip up a good meal in the kitchen. He even knows how to use the spices and shit . Anyway that’s the only thing I got from him, I am not afraid of sufurias. He even usually corrected my mum unaware she hated that stuff especially from him
My dad never said well done ever either I think the only time I remember him being proud of me is when I won a science award and I was in the papers and his friends started calling him to ask him if it was his daughter they were seeing in the papers though he didnt say it, he says such things by buying you something because the only emotion he’s well versed with expressing as a quintessential vaite is anger and he could beat, the house was like a Baracks. The only thing was that with him it wasnt about what you had done but what mood he was in. So you could do a big mistake and not even get a word from him or do nothing and bcz he has erupted be beat half to death in the middle of the night for him overhearing you spelling some word the wrong way. He was like a volcano or tornado when he’d get mad, the only reprieve was that if you locked yourself in a room by the time he broke down the door,half the energy would be gone so the beating would be bearable. He was very violent when he was in a rage. But to his credit, he never sided with any teacher or anyone including my mom against you , he always told me I was brilliant and I could make it to do anything and he always always defended me vehemently so teachers knew not to call him when I was naughty because they knew he will stand up for me. He taught me to be strong and resilient and never let people push me around or intimidate me. I think sometimes when you have a very tough dad,inabidi ukuwe mstrong from when you’re a kid. And it helps you realise very early that even authority figures are really just as human as you no one is super human and so nobody should is superior and theres nobody’s approval you should value over your own hapiness and perceptions because their validation of you is not superior to your own. You can also disapprove of them, they dont have a monopoly of validation. You can devalue their approval and validation in your life if it adds no value. With the way he taught me that teachers and even my mother(authority figures) should not be my reference point about what my capacity is and what my value and intellect is. The first reference point must be myself. I think this is why it never bothered me even when inspite of being top 5 always he wouldnt say anything, its because he had already told me you dont need a teacher to tell you you’re smart, if you’re smart you should know it. The fact that your own mother who birthed you forgot your birthday doesnt mean that its not important and even if you’re the only one who remembers make a fuss about it for yourself because its not other people . Its not other people who dictate your worth, its you who knows your worth best ( he once told my headmistress who told him, I never study am too busy reading novels so will fail that she knows nothing about me , he has lived with me since I was a child and I always read novels and it never stopped me from excelling she should just just shut it and he went back with the calender he had brought for her ) .That means that if Ive lived with myself my whole life why does the opinion of people I meet in a 2 hr interview hold more weight than my perspective about myself, how can they know me better than I know myself? Or some man I met 2 minutes ago who is trying to redpill me or harass me at work? And because of this my life was about me from way back. I was always living life onmy own terms. I got to high school I decided I wont wear shoes and socks like everyone,I prefer sandals because my feet are too lovely to be confined in socks and I embarked on a plan to get that and I did, everything in life Ive wanted Ive gotten and I have done because I learnt from my dads weaknesses never ever to make another human being my frame of reference . I can delegate power but the ultimate say and power over my life is me not my folks,my husband,my boss,my pastor. Many people have for example discouraged me frm pursuing a PhD one of them is my dad, but I will be damned if I shelf my dreams because someone is telling me that I dont need a PhD because I have it made. I need it for me and that it the only justification I need to do anything. Parents are human and theyre flawed dont internalise their shortfalls or use THEIR issues as a crutch to not be everything you want to be. Out of the violent nature of my dad , I took bravery ,fearlessness and resilience. Even my Thesis supervisor once told me he’d never met an iron willed woman with an I can do attitude like me. Its because I learnt earlier on in life thru my dad’s not so great side that life is what you will make it. When he’d be in his bad moods Id get lost in my world of books and find hapiness there. They say moms teach us how to live with ourselves and dads how to live in the world. When life gives lemons make lemonade.
I can identify with your case to a large extend, especially the part about you growing up to be strongly selfdirected and ruthlessly “rebellous” to many an established social “norms”…
You’ve made me laugh so hard by describing your house as a “military barracks”, and that your dad could erupt in the middle of the night and “beat you half dead”…you captured my own situation much better than I could myself!
For my dad, though, he would never defend you if you were ever reported to him as having erred; YOU were always at fault!
Unfortunately he passed on in my early teens and just when I had started to rise against his tyranny. I always wonder what kind of a relationship my dad and I would have had had he lived to see me as an adult. Would we, for example, be able to share a joke and/or laugh together?
Well I have the benefit of mine being alive, so I will share the benefit of my experience. They mellow with age but they may not change all that much. Its good to manage expectations. Sometimes I think its easier when a parent is one way or the other , its more conflicting as a child when your parent is really really great amazing person but also a really terrible person. It makes you as a child ambivalent, love-hate. Ofcourse the longing for an ideal parent never dies even when they die are no more. As a child I had a very poor relationship with my mom, I think because I was very spirited and rebellious. And because my dad spoilt me by letting me not do what she asked me to.She then also would favour my younger sis openly. I substituted her with my paternal grandma. And guess what? The heart doesnt care. All it needs is unconditonal love. Take it wereva you can find it. It was very difficult because I could not go to her with women problems unlike my peers who were very tight with their moms - even my mom was so close with the mom that theyd talk all night when she’d visit . So when I substituted and my needs for a mother’s unconditional love were being met, my expectations of my right to receive it from my mom ended there. And guess what? When I was no longer expecting anything from her, our relationship improved a great deal. And though its still not my ideal, Im taking what I can get and Im getting what I cant get from her elsewhere. This is a really important priniciple to learn in life because life has alot of disappointments and nothing is customised to fully meet your needs. Diversify how your needs met.Even your need for parental love. I have had wonderful relationships with older people both men and women that have gone along way to help me in my journey of healing and forgiveness. I have an American male friend who is abit older than my dad, I call him my American Dad, he has been the softer ,more tender version of a dad that I couldnt find in my dad. Its been very carthartic . Prayer helps a great deal too. And grieving the childhood losses of the ideal parent you desired. Its ok to feel terrible about it. My American dad told me once that hard things you go through in life especially as a child can be God’s way of preparing you to live your purpose in life. 10% of life is what happens to you and 90% is how you react to it and what you take out of it. The world is full of timeless icons who took great adversity as a stepping stone rather than as a stumbling block. I love that you decided to be the change you wanted to see in your dad. Thats awesome. Another thing that helps build unconditional acceptance and love for parents hurtful actions is learning about their life, their childhood,their parents, their grandparents, walking a mile in their shoes. Looking at the family tree to see if theres generational patterns that look like him/her because sometimes it really is in the bloodline and some people dont or cant overcome those generational inclinations. Your parents are a part of you so for you to find wholeness you must make peace with the parental shortcomings. Which is very hard bcz things that happen when you’re a kid like being beaten for something you dint do and never getting that apology even after your parent discovers they wrongly punished you,can stay with you till you’re 100. You must make a conscious effort to both grieve and forgive. And better before you yourself become a parent and pass on your pain to your kids.