I remember an incident from my childhood. My parents forbade us to eat outside of the kitchen. But one day I was very hungry, so I decided to take some cake from the kitchen and eat it in my bedroom. I knew my parents were not gonna be happy about this and were probably gonna SCREAM and HIT me if they found out, so to not have them find out, I hid the dirty plate in my closet. Well, my dad found the dirty plate in my closet and he FLIPPED OUT. He accused me of not being normal, that no normal and sane person would put dirty plates in the closet. He told me that I was a disappointment, that I was crazy and mentally deranged for coming up with such things and that there was zero hope for me in life.

He then called my aunt to tell her about this and said to her “WHAT THE FUCK AM I GONNA DO??! I have a fucked up, mentally deranged daughter who cannot act normally and does weird things like put dirty plates in the closet!!! No normal person does that!!! What did I do to deserve such an awful, horrible, mentally abnormal and dysfunctional kid??? I am in TOTAL DESPAIR!!!!!”

It never occurred to him that the reason I had to do such things was because of the atmosphere of terror and fear my dad created in the house. That if I weren’t so terrified and scared for my life, that I would not have had to resort to doing things like hiding my plate in the closet. If my parents had been NORMAL PARENTS, I would have been able to act normally too. But they weren’t, so I was forced to adapt and adopt dysfunctional and bizarre behaviours to survive them.

I can now see that my reaction of putting my plate in the closet was a normal and understandable reaction to living in such a toxic and fearful climate. That there was nothing wrong with me for reacting like this. That I was scared and terrified for very good reasons, and I acted out accordingly.