Psychological Self-Flagellation

     Going back forty-five years is not an easy task to complete because I can’t remember some of the finer details of my childhood. I know I was born on a hot August afternoon in Birth Year at Place Of Birth in City ands State. My mother was just twenty-two at the time and was already the mother of two, I was her third child. My father was twenty-one and already a workaholic, I know because my mother would constantly remind me not to be like that. My mother and father were good parents and they tried to give us the best upbringing they could. My father was the kind of person that believed he should provide and protect his family, and he did a very good job of doing that.

Imagine coming home from middle school to your grandmother house on your mother’s side to find it unusually quiet and everyone with tears in their eyes. Imagine being told your father had a routine surgery but nothing was routine about the results. Imagine having thanksgiving dinner with your family and the phone rings then you hear a loud scream and feet running towards you to let you know your father has died. Imagine going to school the following weeks and hearing jokes that your dad died because “the turkey was dry”, “He choked on a chicken bone”, and “He wanted to leave your mom”. I did not have to imagine because it became my reality at the age of 13.

And then, the day I had feared of most, finally arrived. We lost our father, the only figure I truly felt safe with. After months of mourning and painful transformations, our mother fell sick. In those terrible days, days during which I was locked in the basement most of the time, for my safety and even more: for the safety of my family, I was incapable of helping. To this, I regret even today.

My mother gave me this book to write in before I left my entire family behind in Chiapas, Mexico. She told me not to be afraid and to write whenever I am feeling upset, anxious, or angry. I haven’t wanted to write this stuff down, but I do not want to say it out loud either. I moved to America last year to stay with my aunt, uncle, and cousins in Brooklyn, New York; I was twelve then and perhaps very naive about what my life would be like in America. I didn’t know any English, but my parents told me that coming to America would help me become smarter. Better even. Unfortunately, America is not what I thought it would be and in recent times, the President is even threatening to make us leave. In Mexico, I felt that I had such an amazing life, where I was able to run around and be free. But here, I am stuck between four walls in a small one bed-room apartment. In the land of opportunity, I feel that I have none.

We had just celebrated the new year, a sign of new beginnings. The past fall my mother and I had a fight and were only communicating on a need to know. I had a boyfriend at the time, we had been dating for almost two years. I loved him and he loved me and I felt like nothing could ever go wrong, boy was I wrong. It was a cold morning, I woke up feeling strange but I could not quite figure out why. Jacob, my boyfriend, was the one who put the idea in my head. A couple hours later my life had went from just a normal nineteen year old, to being a nineteen year old facing being a mother. I was pregnant and there was nothing I could do to change that. Telling my parents, especially my mother was nearly impossible, “[a]nd after seeing my mother’s disappointed face once again, something inside of me began to die” (Tan 321).

All I wanted was moments with my mom when I was nine; I did not get it. What about age ten, eleven, and twelve? My whole childhood was snatched out from under me, and I had to grow up way to fast. Don’t worry, I did not blame you. I blamed myself until I was fifteen. It was my fault my mother tried to drown my sisters and me. I saw signs and clues. I could tell she was not acting herself, but I said nothing. I didn’t go and ask another grownup for help. I put my sisters’ lives in danger, because I didn’t protect them.

“To a man utterly without a sense of belonging, mere life is all that matters. It is the only reality in an eternity of nothingness, and he clings to it with shameless despair.”

Being the oldest of three children to a single mother brought forth plenty of hurdles. Growing up I yearned for a father figure, sadly that void remained for years. The lack of a father figure hindered my academic progress and personal life. The sense of abandonment cast me on an island all by myself, contributing to a lot of my troubles at home and school. I honestly didn’t believe anyone would ever be able to relate to me, but I was soon proven

The unfortunate event began a completely new and terrifyingly dreadful life experience in which all my previous hard endeavors of securing the structurally sound habit of dedication, commitment, and studying I exercised extensively during my senior year, with the inner weapon of possessing powerful agency to absorb material with an extreme passion and letting my heart beat madly on long-distance runs whenever possible were indeed losing their color at a quickening pace. Suddenly I began to doubt my worth and the world’s lessons soon disappeared from my unawakened consciousness. The delicate networks of improvement and inner faith were becoming swept into a tide wayward, far out to sea where the light of my touch couldn’t embrace it.

We all have one goal in life—to live. As I was growing up, that was not always the case for me. Looking back to my teenage years, I struggled. I struggled to live because I felt that life was not fair—I was forced to be at home, while all my friends were out enjoying their teenage years. I did not begin to find a purpose in life until I met my husband. But now, as a wife and mother of three, I have discovered my purpose and I could see where my parents have been coming from. Though my views may not be as strict as theirs, I see what their purpose was—to keep me safe from the dangers of the world. The few stories that I have read so far in the anthology, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2014, edited by Daniel Handler,

As a teenager, my purpose changes day to day. Sometimes I just want to fit in, or to get good grades, or to impress others with my speech, but these are not sustainable purposes. There comes a time in everyone’s life when they begin to accept “the conquistadors of the useless”, but rarely do we ever really accept it. We just fight it and avoid it with an even more sustainable purpose, one that can never truly be fulfilled. And there is not a thing wrong with that.

I glanced around at the groups of individuals and saw how they were all taking a gander at me, I looked down at the ground in shame. Most of my days I wish I could be off various shading as I believe that life would be so considerably simpler and I myself would not be disgraced upon. At the present time my compensation is gradually going down because of the bank and the joblessness rate in America. The unemployment is awful in light of the fact that it's going down, yet the dread of losing my job is even more nerve wracking as I get told every day that I am pointless for society which makes me significantly more anxious for what the future holds. I stopped with my daydream when I looked up at the building that was standing in front of me, the only place that offered me a job them all so long four months ago. I took a deep breath and walked into the factory, I looked to my left at how many people worked here and noticed that even more people were gone. I shivered in fright of the thought of losing my job and quickly put the dirty apron on that said my name and went to the back, the place where I

A common person who has yet to find a purpose feels like a lost soul who is drowned by social isolation, lost in a sea of faces, and unable to make a difference. Sometimes, these people adapt to mind-numbing and time-wasting hobbies, such as days of watching television, playing video games, or anything else to distract them from their real life. They watch commercials where people are attractive and have an excess of money, and they want to be that person, because they believe that 's what they were meant to be. Then they work, and work, and keep working jobs they do not fully enjoy. They receive money, but

Many people consider their lives to be a quest for purpose. They search through vocations, relationships, hobbies, and religions to find meaning. Some find it in power. Others find it in money. Some think that they have found it when, in reality, it could not be further from them.

Individuals must now confront the meaning of their lives without the assured aid of transcendent purpose and direction, while the daily effort to make "both ends meet" condemns most to a life of "repetition," a la Kierkegaard, under the rule of habit and social conformity. The more we struggle to achieve individuality, the more desperate the effort to liberate ourself from the sway of social conformity and ritual, and the more poignant our inevitable confrontation with death.