Monday, October 2
If you could have the change one incident or one thing in your life, what would it be and why?It happened just over 2 years ago, but I can still vividly remember it just like it happened yesterday.
It was just like any other Saturday. The drizzle showered lightly over the Seletar Hills area, just the way I liked it. It was my friend’s birthday party and I was extremely excited to be invited. She was ‘cool’ you see, and I was always just but the nerd, the wallflower Audrey that no one really cared about.
Just as I was about to leave, I heard shrills coming from downstairs. Probably just my mother again, I thought. My mother was known as a fierce woman, not to be messed with. In fact, she terrorized everyone – the neighbors, our relatives, Ah ma, Dad, my sisters and of course, me.
I knew that she was having a spat with her sister at that time, something about her sister influencing Dad to gamble his fortune away, but nothing could prepare me for the unfortunate events that followed.
As shrills turned into shrieks and the shrieks gave way to roars, I peeked my head from the balcony, curious to as what the racket was about.
Lo and behold, the sight of my aunt holding a kitchen cleaver, together with my two uncles, both shirtless, haughtily exhibiting their dragon/tiger/phoenix tattoos all over Singapore, JB and some say Batam. And then there was my mother, yielding a frying pan, yelling in Hokkien what sounded like she was going to sever all ties with my auntie and then call the press to earn a free handphone as well.
Tears just flowed from my eyes as the realization of the severity of the situation dawned on me. My first thought was to get away. Get as far away as possible from this devastation as possible. I peeled my face away from that wretched balcony and I turned around only to face my 2 younger sisters.
The big sister syndrome kicked in and I instinctively picked them up from the floor, hugged them and told the older one, “Stay here. Don’t leave the room. Mummy’s having a little argument. Just don’t leave the room okay?”
And then I fled.
I fled as fast as I ever imagined possible. To where, I didn’t know. My limbs moved like clockwork and my eyes leaked like a crack in a dam. Something else took over me, a state of hatred, a state of anger, a state of pure repulsion and detest for these revolting things I called family.
For once no one, not even Daddy dearest could feel the way I did on that fateful day. It drove me to hate my family, to not want to be a part of it, even to the point of being ashamed of it. I didn’t like them, and I didn’t want anything to do with them. Just the thought of that day makes me nauseated with absolute disgust at the type of person that would hold a knife at the neck of the flesh and blood that they shared, threatening to slaughter them like common pigs.
If only I could just click, and delete that instance from my memory. It was an awful, awful experience that I believe should never ever happen to anyone.
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