The past

THIS WAS THE PAST

This was just the baseline of the underlying problem I had to face:  the inability of my father, after migration (and perhaps before) to differentiate me from himself. There was another level to it, apart from the inability of my father to discern that I was a different person from him. He was also reversing the parent-child relationship, so that I was responsible for him, for his failures, his moody outbursts and so on. At times, he was a two year old yelling his hostilities at a figure he took to be his mother.

Then there were also the problems brought on by cultural shock, loss of identity and stress — all factors of migration. I was not behaving like a right-wing female, as my father had anticipated I ought to be doing. This seemed like a betrayal to him — although one expressed in angry, aggressive attitudes, rather than words.

Then there was the fact that the rest of my family were rather right wing — and religious to differing degrees. They bought into my father’s cover-up story that I was an unpleasant person who required heavy berating and control to set me on the right path.

So, there were many layers of difficulty for me, brought on by my father’s very strange early relationship with his mother.

And, people didn’t believe me that there was anything odd about my father. They inevitably bought his patriarchal line that fathers are good and caring -- and upheld a view that there was something wrong with me.

And when I was bullied at work, this appeared like confirmation to my father that there was something wrong with me that required ever more severe correction.