I’m a 14 y/o so it’s been 2 years since my PSLE year but i still can’t seem to forgive and forget my mum’s actions. I can admit that during PSLE, i was not the most cooperative kid nor a studious one and i would like to thank my mum for pushing me to perform to the best of my abilities. Nevertheless, her way of getting me to listen and study was rather… aggressive, i would say at least.
My mum hits me, which is not unexpected in a Singaporean household, but she likes to throw things at me too. I was studying and i have a short attention span, so i got distracted easily. My mum would catch me not doing my work and she would hit me with a hanger to get me to focus. But after a while, once me losing focus “got too much” for her, she would just get really angry and take my textbook, which is really thick, probably weighing around 1kg, and throw it at me like headshot or if not she would hit me on the head with it. This was a regular occurrence.
I was terrified by her hitting me cos it would hurt like hell but my mum would just force me to shut up and stop crying and continue doing my work. Eventually, i got sick of it and decided to fight back. She hit me and then i would hit her back, like punch her, which of course led to worser punishment. Still, whenever she hit me or was going to hit me, i would try to fight back or hit her back as a way to release this pent up anger and hate inside of me from her.
Amidst all this, my escape was drawing. I LOVE ART so i would often doodle on my practice papers and my mum was upset with that cos i sometimes did that when she was making me do timed practices. Once, I was arguing with her about something and she won it by force and i retaliated by drawing and completely ignoring her. She pushed me by my head and told me to stop but i still continued. She then said, “Why do you even draw, it’s so bad anyways” and art being the only thing that i was proud of, i was deeply hurt. So i screamed at her, “IM SO SICK OF YOUR SH!T” and ran off to my room and slammed the door. Slamming the door displays ‘attitude’ and ‘disrespect’ to her so she started banging on my locked door, demanding me to open it. Eventually, I had to open it before i got an even worser punishment. Honestly, i think this is one of the lesser intense things my mum has done but i wanted to include it anyway because this was where i completely lost trust in my mum and kind of like despised her.
This is probably my one of my worse memory of her. I was having a mental breakdown at night, probably around midnight. I can’t exactly remember what was the reason, but i think my mum had confiscated all the things that had ‘distracted’ me which was my entire collection of expensive art materials and a slime which she just dumped into a plastic bag. My mum eventually returned it back to me because something had made a hole in the plastic bag and slime started flowing out and destroying the carpet it was on. because of the slime that had spilt out, around half of my art stationery (e.g. markers and colour pencils) was completely destroyed. They were all very high-grade, expensive materials that i have collected over the years as birthday presents. I remember that night I was crying hysterically, because this was the only thing that brought me joy in this painful period of time. Probably after around an hour of cyring, my mum stormed into my room asking me to shut up and stop overreacting. She said i was crying as if someone had died and it was the middle of the night and that my crying was making her feel bad and making it harder for her to sleep. She said that in a shout, so i shouted back at her and tried to tell her that my reaction to the loss of my art materials is valid. She refused to listen. After around 30 mins, both of us calmed down (i was still crying but like quietly sobbing), and my mum was like “come here” and like openning her hands for a hug to ‘comfort’ me so i would shut up. for context, we were sitting on my bed, so like she was on one end and i was on the opposite side. i shifted further away from her, shaking my head. she repeated 3 more times and i still refused. my mum got sick of my behaviour and just grabbed my by hair and dragged by my hair into her embrace to which i fought back and punched her to make her let go off me. i then ran out of my room and huddled myself into a corner of the sofa and used a pillow to use as a barrier between myself and my mum. At this point, i started crying hysterically again. My mum is like pushing me down on the sofa and she manages to grab my pillow and tried to suffocate me with the pillow by putting it on my face and forcely pushing it down to muffle my cries. Luckily my dad saw my mum, and removed her from me, to which i ran into the toilet and locked the door. My mum was banging on the door and my dad was trying to stop her. I dont really remember much when i was in the toilet other than i was crying and pulling my hair, while my mum was scream-ranting about me to my dad and how i was stubborn. i stayed there until i heard my parents went back into their room and returned to mine.
Last year, an event happened (it’s a really long story) which force lead me to explaining to my mum that i felt traumatised by her actions of that time she tried to suffocate me. My mum was upset that i “held a grudge” against over that and that she’s my mum so i should immediately forgive an forget all her actions towards me that have hurt me. She told me i shouldn’t have been such a disobedient child and she was doing it in the name of love. I mean, i get it, those closest to us can hurt the most but is it to the point of losing trust and having hatred towards them? i feel so deeply upset by her because she also states “i was the one that broke the trust first and that i need to work with her to rebuild the trust and that i need to take the first step and intiate this” literally just recalling this makes so mad, i genuinely wish i could do everything that she has done that has hurt me both physically and physcologially unto her, like i feel if she finally experienced her own actions, only would then she finally be able to accept how i feel. i know parenting isn’t easy and it isn’t a straight path, but at this point, i just want a new mum who at least wouldn’t beat me 
