The therapists and nurses have planned many activities to keep the patients entertained or provide healing opportunities for them. One of these activities was baking cakes, which I did, but with little enthusiasm. However, I eagerly went to play badminton. When I entered the gym, people were already busy hitting the ball back and forth. I joined them. The game was going well, I was having fun, but then… ohhhh….. a fierce storm hit.
In that very moment, I felt the immense masculine energy I was up against. Yeah… I saw the other team of men vigorously hitting the ball and competing to winn. I saw them and recognized monsters in them instead seeing them as people. Monsters who had distorted my childhood and this is why I am now being treated in this clinic, where the psychiatrists call my condition Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
I threw the racket down and stormed out of the game.
– This is too much already! – I told the coach and sat down on the floor in the corner with a water bottle in my hand.
– Everything is fine, – I also lied when the coach asked how I was doing.
In reality, I was suffocating from the black force. I couldn’t dare to cry, although I really wanted to. My body was paralyzed and I would have gladly lain down, but I pulled myself together, there were other patients around and I was embarrassed. But at that moment a tear or two fell by itself, reminding me of my greatest fear. The fear of men. “Once a cat scared me very much as a child”, I used to say when explaining my cat phobia to people. Now I can also say “Once a man scared me very much”.
Father – a monster who had his own strategies for instilling fear: loud roars, killer stares, squeezing a small child’s arm to demonstrate his strength, endless demagoguery that clearly included assessments and reminders that you are nothing. Should I continue? I think this is enough to list…
Uncle 1 – the second monster, who played the role of a boogeyman to scare me into arranging the papers on the table. I had to arrange those papers on which I drew with my small hands or solved math equations. Otherwise, he would shout – they told me. And he did shout. He even yelled if I slipped while cutting butter. His list is long too… This second monster was a man whose visit caused me to tremble. I hid in the room so that no one would notice me.
Uncle 2 – this uncle’s list is short but no less disturbing. I experienced his sexual touches and caresses at 13 years old. I stood there frozen and unable to move. How did he deceive me? By offering emotional support. He said, your father is very strict, he’s no good, and I will give you the warmth he doesn’t give you. A little too much
warmth for a 13-year-old child…
Grandfather – a yelling or completely silent tree and stone…
Grandfather (on the other side) – a quiet, non-defending, passive man in the family…
I have seen no other man. This list of men made me see men as beings who invoke transcendent fear and oppression, and today I still walk around with this “gift”. So, whenever a person shows me their masculinity, I either run away or prepare ten swords to chop them down.
At the clinic, they need to help me with this fear. Let’s see what comes out of it…
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