As a child, you never really know that you are different. No matter how obvious it may seem in hindsight, you do not wake up one morning and arrive at that conclusion. You are too busy being a child, running, laughing, playing, inventing games, believing that your experience of the world is roughly the same as everyone else’s. Then, somewhere along the way, your classmates begin to make jokes about your difference. Sometimes it is a class teacher making one or two remarks, unconsciously. Sometimes nobody intends harm. Children are playful. Adults are careless. Yet some comments linger long after they are spoken. They settle quietly in the corners of your mind, and you do not even understand why.
Then you keep growing, and when you get into your teens, certain thoughts start creeping into your mind, but you cannot make sense of them. There is a feeling you cannot explain, a question you cannot fully ask. You don’t want to jump to conclusions, because what if it turns out not to be true? What if you are the one looking at it wrongly? Then you visit friends and see a different pattern in their families. You see how they relate to one another, how they talk, how they show up for each other. You come back home and compare situations, and that’s when you begin to realize that something is missing in yours. But even then, you remind yourself that every family is different, and just because something happens in your friend’s family and not in yours does not automatically mean yours is lacking. Every family has its own way of living life.
But patterns have a way of revealing themselves. Occasionally the difference is tied to health, appearance, or parental influence. Other times, it is family orientation, family dynamics, unspoken preferences, or invisible hierarchies that nobody acknowledges but everybody obeys. Whatever its source, you slowly begin to notice that within your family, among your own siblings, you are different. Different within the walls of your own home. Then one day it finally clicks. You are not imagining it. There is a long-standing pattern to affirm that.
The Recognition
There is a consistent storyline that gives your difference away. The problem is that realizing it changes nothing. What do you do? Who do you talk to? Where do you go? You have no answers. You cannot feed yourself. You cannot accommodate yourself. You cannot simply walk away. You still need emotional support, financial support, guidance, and stability. Even when those things are not being offered in the way you need them, you are still dependent on the people around you. You are a child. You do not know what the outside world is saying. You do not know whom to trust. You do not even know if anyone will believe you. So you stay. You endure. You learn endurance before you learn independence. You become observant, cautious, and self-reliant in ways children should never have to be. You learn to live inside the dysfunction because you have nowhere else to go.
Adulthood Stops Nothing
I just got back from the cinema after watching the movie Michael. You know everybody loves Michael Jackson, so the moment I heard there was a movie called Michael based on his life, I was instantly interested. And honestly, the storyline is one of the most beautiful I have seen in a long time.
While other children were outside playing football and chatting away joyfully, enjoying childhood, Michael was always on the road to make music with his brothers. He was always working, always performing, and never allowed to be a child or act his age. He was whipped when he fell short of expectations and was forced to kill his childhood for Jackson 5 to thrive.
Adulthood, on the other hand, didn’t stop Joe Jackson from becoming a terror in Michael’s life. Michael became an independent singer and wanted to create his own path, his own legacy, and his own destiny, but Joe was always in the way. His father, Joe, was always interrupting his plans, second-guessing his decisions, and agonizing over every move Michael made so he could remain in charge. This phase can become the longest phase of your life. You are an adult, yet you cannot make adult decisions for yourself because fear has kept you trapped for so long. In adulthood, the abuse becomes sharper with each passing year. Every stage of your life seems to unlock a new level of it. With every milestone, every achievement, and every year that passes, the abuse takes on a different form. The abuse of this year is worse than the abuse of the last. It never stays the same. Somehow, it always finds a way to intensify.
Michael repeatedly told him, “I’m no longer a child. I’m an adult now. I want to create my own path.” But his father wouldn’t let him. He was always standing in the way, usually under the guise of, “This is our family. You don’t do that. You won’t break the unity of our family. You won’t do this. You won’t do that.”
The Sacrifices
Every time he used that argument, it hit Michael hard because, deep down, family was everything to him. Afraid of losing them, he would cave and go back to following his father’s lead, even as a grown man.
As I watched the movie in the cinema, something clicked in me and resonated deeply with this particular article that I had been writing before going to the cinema. You know, there comes a point where you grow up and begin to recognize the abuse, where you recognize that you are different, but you still cannot do anything about it. It is like they have a hold on you. It is like an invisible grip that never loosens no matter how much you struggle against it. You cannot leave, and unfortunately, you love your abuser. You try to end that love, but it never seems to disappear. You do things to make them see you. You keep trying to win their heart. You do something for them. You suppress yourself. You make yourself smaller. You make yourself less visible. You bend, adjust, and reshape yourself in countless ways, hoping they will finally see you positively. You love them. You buy gifts. You offer understanding, patience, loyalty, and grace, yet none of it changes anything because they simply do not want you. You submit to things and compromise parts of yourself so that they can see that you are in line with whatever they are trying to make of you, but it does not work. It still does not make them see you. It does not change anything for them. No matter what you do, no matter how much of yourself you sacrifice, and even if you were to die for them, you are still different in their eyes, and they still do not like your gut.
Ready, Set, Go
One day, one fateful day, dearest reader, they do the same thing they have always done, but the difference is that this time, you are ready. Something inside you finally snaps. You think, “No.” Enough is enough, and damn all the consequences.
Michael fired his father as his manager and announced in one of his tours that it was a farewell tour from Jackson 5 without consulting anyone.
You broke off contact. You realize that the quality of your life is really bad, your emotional health is at zero, and that you need to do something about it. This time around, they come with the same old tricks and the same behavior they have always used to keep you in line, and you finally say, ” You know what?” I am done. You begin making adult decisions for yourself. You tell yourself, ” No, I am taking charge of my life. At that point, you go to therapy. You read books. You join communities. You search for answers. Most importantly, you begin making decisions for yourself without constantly looking back for permission or approval.
The fear never really goes away, though.