Growing Up in South Africa (0 – 13 years Old)

Before I actually start I just want to state that I am a big believer in the Nature vs Nurture debate. I see it in similar context to the saying ´you can´t choose your family but you can choose your friends´ where family is nature and friends are nurture. It is obvious that the way you are brought up by your parents has an effect on how you turn out as an adult but I also believe that the people you surround yourself will also have an impact.

As alluded to in my first post I spent the first 20 years of my life in South Africa after the family moved there when I was just 6 weeks old. In all honesty I can´t really comment on the first few years apart from a few snippets that I remember and anecdotes and stories from my parents and siblings.

We were a family of 5, my mother, father, sister, brother and me. My mom had me quite late at the age of 38 and as a result of that there was an 8 year age gap between me and my brother and a 9 year age gap between me and my sister. These age gaps between me and my siblings will be important as I delve into my past and how it has affected my Mental Health. To say that my siblings and I were the result of a loveless marriage would be a grotesque understatement. My parents barely tolerated one another and I don’t recall any time that my parents actually showed one another any sort of affection. The bickering and arguing that went on was incessant and once one argument or fight was over another one started up again. Why they never divorced only they know but it was not exactly a great environment to grow up in. I never recall a time where my parents told me that they loved me or my siblings and care and affection was in very short supply. Now I was generally a happy child but even the smallest slights or wrongdoing was criticised and met with raised voices. It has since become clear to me that my Introvertism was as a result of this constant criticism and being shouted at for nothing forcing me to close up, avoid conflict where I can and also to emotionally bottle everything up and show very few outward signs of emotion which is still very much the case today.

I want to mention at this point that money was always an issue but we never lived badly. There was always food on the table and clothes on our backs but what really annoyed me then and still grates me now is that our parents would hold what something cost over our heads regularly, which became a massive issue for me once I moved to High School and beyond. We never went on any family holidays and when on the rare occasion there was some form of holiday then it would only be one of the parents that went with maybe only one child. I think this was a major reason for my decision to leave South Africa when I did so I could see more of the world. I never really understood why my friends got so excited at the prospect of School Holidays as I knew I would most likely be spending the time at home not doing very much.

My parents never physically abused me that I can remember, and this has been confirmed by my sister, but my siblings weren’t as lucky as my parents both had serious drinking problems. My mother gave up around the time I was born but that had nothing to do with being a better mother it was to do with the fact that the doctor told her to. My father kept on drinking to excess regularly until he made a sudden decision to stop. When exactly that was I am not sure as I don’t remember much from that time. I just remember there were nights where the siblings would have to sleep in the same room with bags packed in case my father came home too drunk and my mother would make the decision that we needed to leave the house. I never actually remember leaving the house during one of these episodes but then again I was very young. Once my father stopped drinking he became more tolerable but personality wise it never really changed him and he was still the same person he was while he was drinking the only difference being he was saving his liver. My parents were also chronic smokers which was passed onto my sister and my brother but not me.

My father was very apathetic and he tolerated us children and, as mentioned above, he despised my mother (that feeling was clearly mutual from her side as well). He constantly criticised our behaviours and nothing ever seemed good enough for him. My mother was manipulative and mentally abusive. Our family has always been stocky and we aren’t made to be skinny however that never stopped my mother criticising out weight. It got to the point where was put onto WeighLess (similar to Weight Watchers and Slimming World for those of you not from SA) at the age of 9 or 10 to help with my weight even though the Doctor advised against it as I was a healthy and active child who regularly took part in Sport at school. This was a direct cause of my constant body image issues that I have had since, with sustainable weight loss proving very difficult and binge eating being a very common occurrence whenever certain triggers were and are activated. I am slowly working on this together with everything else and I am making small, incremental improvements on the weight front although I am well aware there is a long way to go and that I am extremely vulnerable to issues that can make me go back to the binge eating.

My sister, who is 9 years my senior, did occasionally bully me when it suited her but as I grew older she used to try and protect me from my brother, 8 years my senior, who for want of a better way of putting it would beat the living shit out of me. When this happened my sister would seek retribution on my behalf which generally meant she would get hurt as well. It only occurred to me recently that my brother was allowed to get away with this behaviour more often than not and it was only when there were outward signs of injury to me that he would be disciplined. I remember one particularly incident where my brother tried to force me to smoke a cigarette at age 6 or 7 and when I refused he and a friend started beating me up to the point where I ended up with two black eyes and numerous bruises. The punishment he received for that was that he got grounded for a few weeks yet the following week he had the same friend over and it was at that point that they used me for BB Gun Target practice, some of the scars of which are still visible. Again nothing was really done. At the time I didn’t resent that nothing was done because I thought it was normal but as I grew older I realised that for all the problems my brother caused throughout his teenage and early adult years he some how was still treated as the Golden Child of the 3. He got away with loads and one particular incident that will always stick in my mind was I had a money saving tin that I put the occasional bit of pocket money in and any gift money I received for about 2 years, bearing in mind I was about 7 at the time, when it came to opening the tin because I couldn’t get anything more into it I opened the tin and all the money had been removed and replace, by my brother, with nuts and bolts to simulate the weight. Everybody knew it was him and all he was told was to give me the money back which he obviously couldn’t because he had spent it already and I never saw anything of that again. At this point I want to say that I resent the fact that my parents clearly didn’t do a great job raising us but particularly my brother but the fact that he caused so many issues- They clearly didn’t believe in treating all their children the same way  and I think that at the age of 12 I stole some money from my mother’s purse as a result of wanting some more attention, like they gave my brother. This didn’t work out as the punishment given to me by both the school and my parents was properly enforced and at no point was I allowed to have the time I was grounded shortened like they did with my brother. This incident led to me pulling even more into myself which ultimately affected my social life when I moved to High School and still does to this day. Even to this day I still have to hear about how well my brother is doing and its always Markus this and Markus that, when I speak to my Dad and when I spoke to my Mom when she was still alive.

I attended Aloe Ridge Primary School in Walkerville, for the full seven years, which meant I was the only one of the 3 kids to not have been moved around during those 7 years of schooling (In SA you start Primary School at around age 6 for 7 years after which you then head to High School for five years). My parents weren’t really present although they did attend the odd School Play and Sports Match. I think they only did this so it looked like they cared as Walkerville was a small, fairly close knit community where everybody knew everybody else and they talked. I firmly believe that my parents only attended what they did to save some face but the irony was they never attended together. It was only ever one or the other. They also never took part in Parent Events or volunteering during events and I was often asked where my parents were. I did very well at Primary School, regularly finishing in the top 5% of classes in my year and doing well at the annual academic awards ceremonies, which surprise, surprise my parents never attended either. The few times my parents did attend any sort of event was also likely because it was close to home so they wouldn’t have to travel very far. As I got older I realised that this wasn’t right when I saw other parents making the effort to be present. I was not one of the popular kids at school but because of my nature and personality I tended to get on with everyone regardless of their ´Status` at school. I had a few good friends who would occasionally come and stay over at my house but after one or two times they always suggested I go over to their house more and more often. I never had any birthday celebrations and those that technically could be classed as such were nothing more than a few friends being allowed to stay over on a Saturday night with nothing special planned. Again to me this all seemed normal until I started spending more and more time at friends’ houses and seeing how they were treated by their parents. Towards the end of Primary School, you obviously have to start making decisions about where you will be going for High School. At this point my parents said they wanted to send me to a better High School than my siblings attended which I appreciated. This obviously meant that it would cost significantly more but my parents insisted so I thought nothing of it. I was delighted that I was accepted at King Edward VII School in Houghton although I did know that this meant I would be separated from the friend group that I had been a part of at Primary School but that is a part of growing up and so it was that at age 13 I attended one of the top Schools in South Africa for which I will always be thankful even though there was some manipulation on the part of my parents during the High School years but I will cover this in the next installment.

Until then…..

H