Raised by Fire

There is just something about life in the village. It moves on its own accord. The idea of time is almost non-existent because you just tend to lose track of it. Time is wrapped in maze or a bubble of some sort. You either have a lot to do or none at all. Sometimes time stands still and sometimes there is insane work or crazy neighbourhood drama to carry the day. Whatever the case, your mind just tends to wander to distant horizons than it probably would in the hustle and bustle of urban areas. Whether it is fantasy or just some crazy nonsensical idea, this place gives you enough moments to think about your life or just the meaning of life in general.

In one of those still moments, my mind drifted to the post I did two weeks ago regarding Friends with Benefits. I was just wondering why some of us choose to have these good-time-person kinds of relationships. I was wondering why we are so afraid to invest in our feelings. Why we’d rather give that person a part of us but not really get this thing called feelings involved. My thoughts took me back to when we were kids or rather our lives during those formative years. Something about us, something about this generation I am in and how we were raised just hit me.

Some, if not most of us were raised with threats. We were told not to question things. If then we did wrong, we were grilled as to why we never asked to be guided in the first place. There was minimal kindness in the voices of our guardians. There was only words spewed with anger and spiced with tones of disappointment. They say kids forget. They really don’t. 

Most of us as adults remember those harsh words we were told. We remember how we felt when those words cut deep. Those words remained engraved in our hearts and minds. If we didn’t cry when beaten, we were told we were rude. If we cried, we were told to grow up because big children do not cry. I mean, we didn’t really know what our caregivers wanted with us most of the times. We were made to be afraid of the wrath of God and the damnation of hell. It was all Old Testament. We were raised by fire and with fire. We lived on the sidelines observing life, social interactions and the human connections associated from a point of view laced with fear.

That tough kind of love broke most of us. That kind of tough love bruised and hurt many us. We make fun of it all sometimes but the truth is that it affected us in a big way. We grew up an army of broken hearted people. We are so unsure of ourselves. We grew up an angry lot. We grew up as beings who are easily triggered. We do not know ourselves really because backing every decision as an adult, are the voices of our caregivers screaming at us. Those voices at the back of our heads paralyze us with fear. We do not own the choices we make because of what the adults in our lives might think of us even if they they are not a part of our lives. We are kids trapped in adult bodies. Looking back then, I realized we were never taught so many things;

We were not taught how to love or what this feeling called love really is. The kind of love we saw or that was presented to us was faulty. We were not taught how to embrace love. It was made to look as if it was all about tolerating pain and at times we were made to feel guilty when we felt it. It was as if it were wrong to have that feeling. Love equalled fear. We were not taught that it is soft. That love is just love. 

My friend the other day told me his mother threatened to burn him if she heard word that he had befriended a girl. Ergo, he was afraid to approach girls or even make conversations with a girl for a very long time. Us, ladies on the other hand after we started our menses were told that contact with boys might get us pregnant. Because we were young, and interpreting things did not come in a flash, contact meant a lot of things including handshakes and hugs. So we avoided boys at all costs. 

We were not taught about interacting and being attracted to the opposite sex and to know when it is genuine attraction or just downright manipulation. Most of us were left to walk that path and discover things alone. We got bruised some more and we dealt with the pain the best way we could alone. We shelved the pain because we did not know who turn to or talk to because growing up, we were bashed for trying to say what is was that we felt. We grew up not knowing a basic life hack which is communication.

We were not taught how to apologize or just say sorry or how important and healthy it is to be accountable for our mistakes. Because many a times we were falsely blamed or because throughout our lives the devil was the scapegoat, it has become easier for us to blame others for the mistakes we do instead of owning up. We’d rather burn the bridges we’ve built instead of forgive. We’d rather flourish in anger instead of finding the healing that comes with saying sorry. We’d rather hold on to grudges than deal with whatever the conflict was. We’d rather just bottle everything because when we were young our voices did not matter.

We were not taught when to let go and go. Some of us have seen our mothers bend their backs and tolerate a man who did not treat her right. We saw our mothers afraid to speak their thoughts. In a way we grew up having this twisted view of love. We grew up with this notion that we have to sacrifice so much at the expense of our happiness. Some of the men have seen their fathers make their mothers or the female figures in their lives suffer. They saw their mothers stay in terrible relationships and in a way this made these men entitled to women and their bodies. They think they can control another person. These kinds of men can’t stand a woman speaking out or rejecting them. All in all we were not taught what to stand for and what not to stand.

This is all just sad if you really look at it. The cumulative effect of all these things we were not taught made us have trust issues. We really feel clueless when it comes to relationships. When we find someone we really like, our first instinct is to imagine the kind of pain this person might cause us. We already see doom instead of bloom because of the fear we grew up with. We are so scared to be vulnerable. We do not want to deal with the intricacies of relationships.

Unknowingly or knowingly in denial, we carry all these pain and trauma. Because of this, some of us have always found ourselves in dysfunctional relationships while some have chosen to seek these temporary pleasures that comes with being the good time person. We yearn to be deeply loved with all our flaws but because of this overwhelming burden we shoulder, we run every time someone tries to get close or we have the friend with benefits kind of arrangement. That way, we do not have to get hurt. We do not get to feel pain. We get to be comfortable with superficiality. We always have one foot in and one foot out. We choose to avoid getting feelings involved. We have chosen to be numb to it all because to us it feels safe.

Damn, there are only a few words left to speak about this generation because this generation has been through a lot.
We need to find the underlying trauma.
We need to unravel.
We need to unlearn some if not all the things we learnt.
We need to find peace with our choices.
We just need to heal.

I really wish you well my dears.❤