"it's the shy, quiet ones that end up doing the worst things" is what they said about me to my face growing up because I was not a talkative child. Somehow this made me a bad person. Perhaps it is the quiet, shy ones who need more attention from parents and teachers because they go through things in silence.
My teachers were also given permission to beat me up. I don't know of anyone else whose parents gave teachers a 'go ahead' to beat them up. At one time in Std 4 (6th grade & yes I am that old), Ms Nkukhu held me by the collar of my shirt and pulled my face so close to hers and said the most despicable things to me in front of the whole class.
She then promised to smack me across the face if the tears welling up in my eyes were to fall. I wasn't to wipe them off either. It was the same teacher who felt compelled to move me from my seat next to Teyeye (one of my childhood friends) to sit at the back, with cigarette-smoking 20 year olds. To this day I hate the smell of dagga and cigarettes.
The year before in the 5th grade (Std 3), Miss Mothlomi (my mom's cousin) had made a spectacle of me and beat me up so bad that my parents had to write her a letter, whilst I was at home recuperating from the incident. She read the letter in class and translated it to my classmates, it was then passed around the school and all the teachers had fun mocking it. {Mkhulu Maqili would prepare herbs for me to use to reduce the swelling and stinging. I had to learn ukuqguma nokuthoba. I always appreciated the role of my grandparents in my formative years}. She's the same teacher who had me take off my bandages and sent me from class to class to show my burn wounds to all the other teachers.
Teacher Manquza was a sociopathic drunk but he never targetted me, never singled me out. He was cruel and mean to everybody, especially the defenseless. He's not likely to get his own post from me.
People get on my nerve defending cruelty to children as discipline. They even quote the Bible doing it.
As an adult, someone spiritual took one look at me and said that I have the spirit of rejection. When he told me what it means to have such a spirit, it matched my life perfectly. It certainly explains why I was treated a particular way by different people through out my life.
It certainly doesn't excuse what was done or make it right but I now know that there is a reason for it. I doesn't make sense I know. 🤷
Nothing could ever reverse or erase my experiences. I write about them as catharsis. A necessary step in my healing.
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