Friday, October 21, 2016

Why I cannot ask for Help even when I need it

Our table had a lot more than this picture

_{We were a large family of 5 children before my parents got
divorced. My baby sister, Gizelle, was
only 4 years old. I was 10 years older
than her. We were a staunch Roman
Catholic family and went to Mass every Sunday, confession every Saturday
afternoon and Catechism lessons on Friday afternoons. One day, when I was about 13 years old, we
asked our father to please buy us an icecream at the Lounge Tearoom (the only
place open on a Sunday) before going home.
To our amazement, he drove to the Lounge Tearoom and told us to come
inside with him. My mom stayed in the
vehicle. He ordered two 10 litre tubs of
icecream and asked each one of us what sweets we would like. We each chose a sweet and then he went to
where the sweets were and took another 11 packets, making them 12 packets for
each child. We were deliriously
happy. These kinds of things just did
not happen in our family. Then he filled his arms full of biscuits and baked
jam tarts and paid for it all. You can’t
imagine the excitement in that van;
children at the back with all this food, and mother in front.}

_{When we got home, he put all the icecream and sweets on the dining
room table and gave us each a spoon and plate.
There was no place at our table to fit another thing on it. It was a layer of sweets and buckets of
icecream. And then … he turned. “You will not leave this table until every
single thing has been eaten, and you will also eat your lunch. I want to see if you ever ask for sweets and
icecream again”. Can you imagine the
pile of sweet food that we had to consume before lunch – giving us 40 minutes
to eat it all? We started eating, and eating,
getting more satiated as the minutes went by.
He was standing there watching us. What a cynical sadistic look he had
on his face. “Hurry up, eat – you have
30 minutes left”. What a sad and sick
way to treat children who were not used to abundance in anything, let alone in
sweets and icecream. But this satisfied
the devil within him and he did not fight or beat my mom that day. We were all sick and vomiting for the rest of
the day, while my father laughed, telling us not to ask for things because you
never would know what you were going to get. Maybe this
the reason why I ask for nothing from anyone now that I am old and actually
needing help?}