The demons of my childhood

If 20 years ago they had asked me how my childhood passed? Surely I would have said that I had a happy childhood, that my parents took care of giving me everything and that I never lack anything. That my carnivals, holy weeks, and Christmas seasons were always festive and my parents took me to food fairs, circuses, the beach and we visited as many stores as possible to buy me the best clothes and the greatest gifts.

My family was always a poor family, my father was dedicated to agriculture and my mother to commerce. My four siblings could see hunger and misery up close, but all that changed when I was born, I was born in a time of bonanza in my home. My father, despite being a farmer and having little academic training, was always very good with numbers and also with words, in the 90s he joined a political movement and later became treasurer of the municipal mayor's office.

From that moment everything began to be different in our home and later I was born. In spite of everything, I was always a very simple girl, more inclined towards the masculine side because of the way I dress in button-down shirts, press sleeves, and my hair down my shoulders. I always wanted to be like my father and for him to take me everywhere, but all that changed when I grew up and found my own sexual orientation.

While I was growing up I lived happily surrounded by my family without so many deficiencies, but very soon the first demons began to arrive in our home. My father after four years of bonanzas began to go out with other women, he came home in a bad mood and fighting with everyone. My mother at that time was the most unfortunate, it didn't take long when he hit her and he did hit her, I remember seeing her a couple of times on the ground being beaten and she only made signals to us to move away, to go out fleeing at that very moment from that place. It is not easy to describe the details of the scene, firstly because she was a little girl of 5 years old, and secondly because I lived adoring my father. Although I feel that I spent many years ignoring all these facts, despite the fact that our family lived through domestic violence until my adolescence.

The first demon was added a second, alcohol. My father came home very drunk and it was no longer enough for him to beat our mother, my other three sisters were also victims of all those events and were beaten, they were already young adolescents and tried to protect our mother. My brother and I were beaten very little, we were the smallest and most defenseless so we always tried to flee from that place. Little by little our home became hell, we were lucky enough to live close to our maternal grandmother, she and one of my aunts always came to our rescue, although on several occasions my father also hit our aunt. For major illnesses, my father began to drink alcoholic beverages almost every day.

My older sisters, watching all of our torment, managed to deal with our father when he was drunk. Then they accompanied him when he got drunk, they went with him to the streets, they accompanied him to the bars and then they held him until he returned home drunk, they took off his clothes and bathed him, then they put him to bed to rest and dad slept until the other day without hitting anyone else. They already had a plan to be executed when our father came home. But, one day my father went out with some friends, that day my sister could not attend that place and at night a third demon appeared in our home, the most chilling demon that we could observe in our lives and the one that ended up marking us forever "the ax."

Dad came home with anger higher than before, he wanted to destroy everything. So he took out the ax that he kept behind the door, and with great force began to destroy all the objects that were in the kitchen, all our furniture, and even our toys. I remember that my brothers and I would not stop screaming, my mother sheltered us in one of the rooms and I waited for him to neglect himself. Then we all fled from what had been our home before, the image was terrifying and chilling.

The most unfortunate thing was not that the next day my father woke up apologizing, claiming not to have remembered anything from the previous day and buying all the appliances, furniture, and appliances for our home again, the most unfortunate thing was that we lived many years under that routine of destruction in our home produced by the ax and the purchase of artifacts again because our family believed in the change of potato.

One day my father under the influence of alcohol and perhaps under the influence of any other drug broke a mirror in his room, and my younger brother and I encountered the demon of the blood. Despite all the family violence we have experienced, we have never seen blood spilled in our home. But that day Dad called us to his room, we were like good brothers holding hands, terrified, but without turning back, and then he took us both very hard by the wrists, he showed us his hand, all broken and bathed in blood, and making sure that we would be his doctors, he asked us to suture the wounds. How being children, and without any medical knowledge can a wound be sutured? I do not know how, but we looked for all the implements and began to insert the needles into the broken skin of the potato, we thought we had finished but our father threw us to the ground and began to suture it, when he finished he asked us if we had understood, we responded with a resounding yes, and then he cut off his hand again so we could start over.

Many people made fun of us, we were at that sad time the make me laugh of an entire town, at school they saw us as the weakest and most naive beings, the unprotected, despite the fact that all my brothers and I were the people at that time toughest in the world. We look closely at death and destruction, the death of sentient beings, of children who had to grow up to cope with the situation that was entrusted to them, and we grew, we all grew, we became good men and women and we came out of that bad moment. I still observe my shaking hands, I am nervous with some signs of claustrophobia. I know very well that these are traces of the past, some people are marked in one way or another I simply try to be a better person. I did not want to remember, but in my 30s I realize that I would not be who I am today if I had not overcome the past. I do not feel anger for anyone, forgiveness makes you strong and gives you freedom.

So I thank God that I can close my eyes, and in all that darkness I look at my beloved son, and I also look at his eyes, those deep and big dark eyes that shine, shine for me equally and I tell myself that I am not willing to see him suffer or to see him cry as I have cried, I want him to be a mentally stable man like his father, with a childhood not loaded with material things, but full of love. I have by my side the two most valuable people in my world, my husband and my son. They are not only the way, they are my means of transportation for happiness. And happiness is here right now, later he will call me with a strong voice, Mom, and I will answer him and tell him that his heart will grow to love and respect others.