Remembrance: 二

(quran = bible equivalent, written and read in arabi)

(sheikh = Muslim leader, similar to scholars, very smart people)

(interval = break time)

My name is Joseph. I don't like my last name, because for one, it's too long, and two, it constantly reminds me of... him. I have an ordinary relationship with him, who you would have already assumed to be my father.

My relationship with my family is rather normal, and doesn't justify my unusual amount of hate towards them, but then every single time I look at them, I feel repulsed. I find the sudden urge to not even look at them. What's worse is the fact that whenever I try looking away, I always see them from the corner of my eye, and I hate it. They pollute my vision.

Then, there are my cousins. My relationships with them are unusual, in the sense that I am closer to them than most people are with theirs, but I can attribute it to us living and growing up together (before eventually moving out to our own homes). We weren't born in an orphanage or anything, we all had both parents from birth.

My parents were renovating our grandparents' old house, which was over a decade old. While we were waiting for renovations, we stayed in our grandparents' house. My aunt and her children lived upstairs, on the second floor of their house. My cousin was very manipulative, even as a child, and her sister found it hard to learn anything. She was a year older than her sister.

As for me, I had two siblings. One older, and one younger. My older brother and I used to get along, but that was a really really long time ago. I used to love my sister, and unfortunately, I can still remember it to this day. Fortunately, I opened my eyes after around six or so years later. And when I think about it from that perspective, I really do feel like a fool. After I stopped caring for my sister, it went from 1v2 to 3v1. My mother, brother and sister against me.

My father worked outside the district, but rather close to home. Unfortunately, he was a few boat rides and a seaplane away from us, and didn't usually get the breaks to visit often.

I remember my father's side grandmother very well, and not just because I visit her once a week. I remember this one time, when I was around five, I visited her, and she told me that bad children are thrown down the well. She had a well in her jungle of a backyard. Ever since, I forcibly swallowed down whatever food I normally wouldn't eat. Because I ate very little, she thought I had a small stomach, and the opposite for my brother. My grandmother from my mother's side thinks the exact opposite of my father's side grandmother.

We also, at one point, went to learn quran at this one woman's house. She and another woman, who I assumed was her daughter were the teachers. Everyone was aged between five and twelve years. My family and I, when we studied there, weren't even on the spectrum. She told us if we didn't read properly, she would throw us into the forest.

Worst part is, she actually had a mini forest behind her house. It was spread across the entire block, with no exits, other than the door she threatened to throw us in from. The perimeter of her mini forest was surrounded by a bakery at the back, with no doors leading into it, and a very aged stone wall with moss growing over it. We lived in an urban area, but suburban seemed more accurate, in my eyes.

The old stone walls weren't an odd sight, either. It was like diseased trees — a very common sight. Honestly, finding a healthy tree would be almost impossible. It would definitely be among feats worth recording.

Anyways, other than the woman, her daughter was there, too. It kind of reminds me of good cop bad cop play, since her daughter is always really nice, and she isn't. And one day, some girl started crying, and the woman dragged the girl through a door, into a rustic cement room, with a door frame leading out. After a while, the girl stopped crying, but only the woman came out.

A few weeks later, it was one of those days where her daughter wasn't there. All of us, whenever we are tested to see how much we know, we go to her daughter. That day, she called me, and when I couldn't read properly, she started shouting at me, and threatened to throw me into the forest. I, being a scared four year old, started crying. She yelled at me to stop, and when I didn't, she dragged me by the hand, into the cement room. Inside it, there was a single beach ball, and nothing else. The door leading outside, was only a door frame. The door wasn't there.

She told me that unless I stopped crying, she would throw me into the forest. I was then reminded of the girl that never came out, and immediately stopped crying. Fortunately, she dragged me back into the room, and let me sit down. I was still sniffling, but she thankfully ignored it. The other kids didn't mock me nor make fun of me, because crying and sobbing wasn't anything odd. It was the same with pissing your pants.

Then, there comes preschool. It was named after a sheikh, sheikh Hussain Rahaa. My time in sheikh Hussain Rahaa preschool (SHR preschool, for short), was rather normal. This one time, my mother bought a pink indomilk packet for me to drink at interval. I opened the packet, and it smelled like barf. I told the teacher I didn't want to drink it, and she forced me to drink it. I never touched pink indomilk packets after that.

On the first day of preschool, we were told to make a flag of any country we wanted, but with paper machete. The only problem was, we were all working on the same flag. It was essentially a big group work. The teachers gave us a reference, as well as the right coloured paper and glue, but everyone else was doing it so horribly, and I was just really pissed off, because I wanted to do it right. Some of them made the pieces of paper too big, others made it too small, and eventually, the horrible paper flag was pasted on the wall.

Skipping a few years, we go to grade four. I was eight, at the time, and loved school (don't ask why). I thought the world was all sunshine and rainbows, and I for some reason, hated my only ally, in the years to come.

Around that time, I was being bullied. But even though I say 'bullied', I really just mean mental harassment, name calling and whatnot. Nothing physical whatsoever. I became the little snitch I was for a while, and the teacher said it might have been a mistake. Of course, this was partially my fault, since I had no evidence to show for it. A few years later, I found out the superiority of mental bullying — it left no evidence; if there is no evidence, there was no crime.

After one year, I encountered another bully. He was a mix of mental bullying and physical bullying, which only went to the point of constantly drawing on my arm, and forcing me get stuff for him, but not at the extreme of what you'd expect. This time, I didn't snitch, because I knew much much better. The teacher wouldn't believe me, since they don't know how to identify mental bullying, and with no therapists and psychologists within the entire southern region, which is where we lived, I had no way to prove an existing mental scars.

Luckily, around the end of the year, my seating was changed, and I met an old acquaintance. Well, a very old acquaintance, and an old acquaintance. In key stage one, we were once asked to write down words like 'understand', which could be split into multiple words, like 'under' and 'stand'. I wrote cartoon. The teacher said toons weren't a thing, but my old acquaintance said they were. Unfortunately, the teacher didn't agree with them, and cartoon didn't count. Still, my brief encounter with her was nice.

As for the very old acquaintance, she was my crush from a really long time ago. I still remembered her, and luckily, she did not remember me. The three of us got along pretty well, until the end of the year.

Even in the next grade, the three of us were in the same class, and relatively close to each other, except this time, I had two friends even closer to me. Both in a literal and figurative sense.

We did almost everything together, and I annoyed my old friends with them. Still, I remember another story in KS 1, where one of my new friends drew all over my bag, and I cried, because I didn't know what to say. Still we got along very well. I laughed about that with him, but he didn't remember that.

The next year, all of us, except my old friend (not the very old one), were separated. At this point, all of us drifted very far apart, and got our own cliques. Me, ending up with a close friend since grade four. And when I think about it, I had a lot of female friends in grade four, but I lost contact with all of them.

Now, I skip a lot more of my uneventful life, and end up at the point where I have to choose a stream. I always said I wanted to do science, but at that point, I opted for business, and chose all business related subjects. My mother was very against it, because she thought I wanted to be in the same class as my only ally. Of course, she was wrong. I never included her (the ally) in my equation when I chose the streams.

My mother kept saying, 'but you always wanted to do science.', and I hated that, because I never wanted to do it. Well, I did, but a year can change a person. I just hated how she thought she knew everything about me, which she didn't. The only times she knew I was sick, was when I had a fever above 100°F. Otherwise, I'd guzzle down some pills and get better the next day, without her knowing a thing.

In the end, I chose science, being the coward I was, and on my first important test, I got a C. For some people, this might be okay, but I was an A or A* student, with an average of B+ and A. It was an awful result, looking at my previous results.

My mother thought I did it on purpose, because I wanted to get back at her, so she signed me up for around four tuitions. On the next test, I got a B average, which was ok, but she wasn't satisfied, since the average was only high, because I got A's and A*'s in the subjects that carried on to grade nine.

A year later, and my results didn't improve, at all. No matter how many tuitions I went to, I never scored high on the elective subjects. But even then, she still thought that I was faking my results, saying I could do it if I tried, which clearly wasn't the case.

In the end, I got a U grade. At this point, I thought enough was enough, and decided to murder my entire family. My life was basically over, anyways, so I killed everyone, and handed myself in. Not because I felt guilty, but because I wanted everyone to know what happened.

In the end, I was tested for any psychological problems, and was freed, because I was apparently insane, or not in my right mind, at the time. Afterwards, I was brought to a foreign psych ward.