"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."
- George Orwell, 1984.
Growing up in the economic depression was tough for many children of the decade 1990 in Finland.
If only some of the parents would have made some different choices with either how to do things to prevent their own personal economical troubles, like considering taking a loan, or how to mentally deal with the money-troubles they got themselves into, so that they could handle it and let their children have a safe home to live in - poor or not.
I'm sure there are many stories, and my story is not even close to the worst ones. I believe the worst stories contain a parent who decided that not only he or she would take his own life, but also the whole family's lives as well.
But you cannot know for sure, if your own parents are that kind of people or not. You'll just have to wait and see.
I was born into a family with four children, one working parent and both of the parents had built the home we lived for the first eleven years of my life. Those eleven years might have been good for the first few years but quite soon one salary wasn't enough to pay for the bank loan, and my mother didn't seem to get any permanent jobs. The last few years were filled with fighting parents and interesting surprises like unpaid bills that led for instance to one occasion, when the water-company cut the water off, and we had to get snow outside to boil on the stove, so we could have something to drink. Finally the day came, when me and my other siblings got into the car with all of our possessions and were taken to a three room apartment. Six people, three rooms. One of them was the living room, or at that time it was living room/bedroom. It was crowded for sure, and we pretty much lived in the middle of a mess most of the time. Us kids always tried our best to have happy lives and have fun. Children are - after all - quite resilient.
But our parents didn't make our lives easy for us. They fought a lot and they didn't care if we were around to see it or not. We had to tip-toe through it all. Trying not to make things worse. Not to anger them.
My mother was a hysterical and short-tempered woman, who used her tears to manipulate her children. It was said, that she might have been bipolar from her teens, I cannot for the life of mine remember who said that to me, but she was sick through our childhood without anyone knowing it.
My father was a menacing, angry figure, who got angry easily at almost anything. You never could know what would anger him.
Our older brother was taken to another city far away to live with our aunt and her family. There was only me, and two of my younger siblings left with sick parents. It was a ticking time bomb, that finally came to its end on one violent night, which I won't write anything here. It's not something I feel comfortable writing about on a blog.
I have to admit, that the following years are a bit hazy, I cannot remember exactly what happened and when, I might have wanted to forget, but my mother moved away, and at some point she was taken into a mental hospital for treatment for her bipolar disorder. She was away for many years, as far as I could remember.
There was only me and my siblings with our angry violent father. He never laid a hand on us children, but since I was the older child, I felt at this certain point on, that I was responsible for my siblings. I couldn't do much for them, but I swore to myself, that if our father would try to hurt us, I would kill him. It was as simple as that.
He was bigger than me, and of course stronger, but I never knew what he might do. I had no reason to trust him. It didn't matter that he was our father. To me he was nothing more than a violent, angry person, who I was afraid of, and I often wondered if he was going to kill us all some day. I really did. I was as sane as any person at that time, but when you're a young kid who's been left alone with a person you really do not know, you cannot trust this violent angry man, you fear him, and you fear every loud noises, and your whole body goes stiff, the hair in the back of your neck sticks out when he walks behind you, it's not a normal, sane environment to grow up in.
One day, our mother came back to live with us again, but she was more of a stranger then. Some kind of a shell of a human, who spent her days sleeping. After that day, I also lost a mother. Part of the process of losing both father and mother was my deep hate towards them, but also their own attitude. My mother was away for quite some time. Physically and mentally away.
And I felt no affection from my father, nor did I give him any of my time nor effort. If he gave a kind word, it would soon be followed with anger at something, and I decided not to give him any more chances. If he hated me, or just didn't care, I wouldn't try to change that, since it wasn't for me to change. And till today, things have remained unchanged between us. When he someday passes away, I wouldn't grieve for him, like I wouldn't grieve for any stranger.
After my mothers sickness the second one to get sick was my little sister. That's a story, I won't write about. All I will say is, that at first I didn't react to her sickness. I think it was some kind of denial I was going through at that time. I had so much to process, that it was difficult to confront her pain. And when I did confront it, it was overwhelming. I felt like I had let my little sister down, that I failed to protect her.
That's why today I am very happy that she has overcome all the hell she had gone through, and she seems to be more stable and happy than before.
After my sister was well enough to live home again, it was my younger brothers turn to get sick.
And now it is my turn to face what the years left me with. There was no other adults, no psychologist, no social workers there when our lives went to hell. Our relatives were more interested supporting our parents than us, the kids. No one came to help us, to make us food, clean the house - nothing.
Having messed up parents who I do not know nor have any loving relations with, having siblings who got sick and having to watch their suffering without any way to help them, living poor's life in the measurements of Finnish poverty - which is something that I feel I need to mention and point out, though no kid thinks themselves that there are people far worse in the world.
Although, I do not know what some of the Finnish people think poverty was and is. Yet we didn't have cellphones, we had to use our cousins old clothes, we were always being the objects of our relative's charity, which I started to loath when it started to seem, that it meant to be willing to listen anything they say, even if it's insulting.
There's a lot of other examples of poverty in my home-country. I won't start listing them here. All I can say is that my childgood and teen years were quite different from - example - my friends. I didn't have much, I couldn't have any hobbies and all that has made me get used to being poor. There's some bitterness and resentment inside me towards some of the modern day kids, that seem to live without a care in the world. Usually if I get to know those people, or any people with loving parents and good, average income, I feel glad, that they got to live their life without any struggling. It's something that some people do not even think about. And they should think about it. They should think about poverty like it is death; you will never know when it comes for you. When you make a wrong choice. Some day it might be you. And before it is your turn, you should acknowledge people who already live in poverty. You shouldn't look at them with pity or despise, you should make decision that will benefit those people. Vote the kind of people, who might do something for them. Give away old clothes and things for charity. There's a lot everyone can do for their countrymen.
(Copyrights belongs to me)
"Omnes relinquite spes, o vos intrantes"
- Dante "La divina commedia
(Copyrights belongs to me)
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I wrote some time ago, that I will leave politics and the sorts to other bloggers, and that I will continue to do. I just wanted to tell my story about poverty and mental illness.
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