Cruel memories

I'll begin this post with an image I have in my mind - of a neighbor who accidentally got the wrong letter in his mail box. It was a beautiful postcard - gorgeous handwriting - a bevy of pretty stamps. He looked at it for a second - in a flicker of a nano second - he knew it was for his neighbor upstairs. A love message full of radiant hope. But like an error message flowing thru this rigid mindset and getting rejected - he tore the postcard up.

Its not mine. That's all he thought. Not mine. A cruel, indifference - like a disease that grew as a child in his brain and heart and festered and blossomed bearing cruel acts such as these - big and small. Every week he would attend church with his family. Sing Christian songs of love and profess for all to see what a wonderful Christian man he was.

The above may or may not have happened. Just a story that has crept into my mind today.

What I find unfathomable is when people who are suppose to love you behave abominably cruel, even brutal. My mother and father - God fearing Christians - never miss a Sunday service ... my salient memories of them like photos on a wall are marked with the ones where they beat me, said cruel things to me, treated me like shit unnecessarily so. I can be kind to you but I won't - why should I? I forgive them but I can't forget them.

A random thought went through my head - a story my sister reminded me of. When were were children our family had to cross an overhead bridge to go to a hawker food centre. My father was working as an engineer for a top company. We were very affluent. And there was a man sitting on the overhead bridge - he had been involved in some terrible accident. He was blind and he was missing his limbs. We walked over him like he was a piece of shit. Isn't that cruel? Awful even? It wouldn't have cost my dad anything to have given him something for his next meal - but he didn't. He hated beggars.

There is this void, this gulf between us - my father is long dead - but my mother is still alive. I talk to her now and its like talking to a stranger. She hates the things I usually like. I try and find some common ground though and that brings me some joy - but she never looks me in the eye when she compliments something I've done well or bought.

I think she's suffering from some mental disease - probably bi-polar which explains her mood swings. But there is no excuse for her pedantic behavior.

What irritates me is when people I consider my friends laugh about it - and say she's being eccentric in a condescending tone. A rage builds up inside me and I feel like yelling out, "NO SHE'S FUCKING NOT! SHE'S FUCKING INSANE. CAN'T YOU FUCKING SEE THAT!!!!!?????"

I don't like getting angry. Like a incoming tide in a polluted sea- it brings in trash onto the beach.

I try and shrug it off - I don't know how to deal with her. I've got more luck bringing down Jesus from Heaven than trying to take her to see a psychiatrist or mental health counselor.

There were signs of her mental disorder when we were children and I blame my father for not doing more to address it - but smart as he was - he was probably blind to such matters.

I think about my grandfather and father who both made incredible fortunes and largely didn't enjoy them - squandered away much later by insane relatives - or maybe they did - if it is possible to love money for the sake of it - those two Christian stalwarts would be dead guilty.

I smile though - what's the point? This sort of wealth is no better than those childish internet games.