Hey Steven, I just re-read your short story with the knowledge that you were beaten as a child. If your experiences were even remotely similar to what’s described there, I feel horrified. I imagine you feeling incredibly isolated, scared, and angry… My dad used to slap me with his bare hands, so I can relate to the anticipatory anxiety. But I feel very, very scared thinking how much a belt would hurt, and about the damage it might do to my undeveloped skin, blood vessels and muscles. My dad was beaten with a belt by his dad, so I feel like I dodged a bullet in that respect. I’m so sorry if this is what happened to you, … :’-(

You say “it was his biggest fear to just be like them”—that resonates a lot with me. I think this is why I felt very depressed in my teenage years… I feared I was doomed to grow up to become like my parents. I felt totally stuck in the trap of determinism. Ironically, feeling suicidal was also the way out eventually, because once I really felt I had nothing to lose anymore, I realized I could do stuff despite social anxiety, so I might just as well try to do new stuff — things that my parents would never dream of doing. I feel curious how you worked with the fear that you could become like your parents.

The sentence “It was almost as if he felt his father was doing this not because he had to, but because he wanted to” struck a nerve with me. My dad used to throw stuff on the floor, like plates, or stuff at us, like food. I remember thinking that he was consciously choosing which item he was going to pick up and throw—that this was not an uncontrollable fit of rage, or that he felt compelled in any way. The suspicion was that there was glee, that he wanted this! This is what angers and saddens me the most in hindsight, the thought that he’s a sadist, a man who taught himself to enjoy the pain of others.

“He knew that in order to escape his parents’ treachery he would have to be smarter next time he tried to stand up for himself. Life doesn’t like it when you try and stand up. But, if you take the beatings, and let the bruises heal from purple to yellow, it’s in those moments that you are weakest and the most helpless that you must remain the most optimistic. Do it for the boy, do it for your dreams, you can’t hide from the belt of life underneath a blanket.”

When you say “he would have to be smarter next time”, I feel curious whether and how you developed that strategy. For me, I became very non-confrontational, withdrawn, and avoidant—while cultivating my self assertiveness as an internal dialogue, I would angrily talk back my parents only in my mind, and be mostly mute and confused in my observable behavior.

You say “do it for the boy, do it for your dreams”—that’s all a kid has, right, his future, which he creates through dreaming and later through acting upon those dreams… To me cultivating dreams was really helpful survival strategy. I used to fantasize that I had superpowers, I’d try to pick a different one every night (usually it was flying though). And I would just keep imagining things that I’d do in the future until I fell asleep. As a little kid I thought that I would just be up fantasizing all night, but then one day I started noticing my bedside lamp wasn’t burning in the morning, meaning that there must have been a time during the night where I wasn’t aware of someone switching it off.

Thanks for sharing this short story. I don’t know how much of it is autobiographical, but I’m assuming a lot. The boy you describe sounds incredibly intelligent, resourceful and creative to me. I feel a lot of compassion and hope reading that... It sure seems like you did an amazing job surviving, my brother (I hope you’re ok with me using that word). Thank you for this piece, I hope you’ll share more of your stories in the future.