My Childhood Story: Growing Up in a Broken Family

When people ask where a story begins, the answer is often childhood. For me, my childhood was not simple or peaceful. It was beginning of many emotions I did not understand at that time.

I came from a broken family. When I was five yeras old, my parents separated. My father worked oversea as a sailor, so he was rarely home even when I was very young. Most of my memories of him are distant.

One memory is still very clear in my mind. Shortly after my fifth birthday, my parents had a serious fight at home. As a small child, I watched them argue without understanding what was really happening. I remember seeing my father injured during the conflict. The next day, he was gone and from that moment on, I grew up without him in my life.

From then on, it was my mother, my sister and me.

My mother worked very hard to support our family. She worked at a car service company and often had to carry the full responsibility of rasing us alone. Sometime she brought me with her to work because there was no one else to look after me. I would sit quietly and watch her work long hours. Even as a child, I could see how difficult life was for her.

When I was around seven years old, I moved to live with my grandparents on my mother’s side.

My grandfather had served in the military and he believed in strict discipline. He raised me with very strict rules. I had to wake up early every morning, follow orders and behave with absolute obedience. He also believed that friends were not important and that I should learn to be alone.

Because of this, I grew up without friends.

If I was ever seen playing with other children, I would be punished when I returned home. As a child, those punishments made me afraid of people outside my family. I began to sit alone most of the time, watching the world quietly from a distance.

But deep inside, I wanted something very simple.

I wanted a friend.

I wanted someone my age to laugh with, to play with and to share the small happiness of childhood. Yet fear stopped me from speaking to strangers or forming friendships.

As I grew older, I began hearing painful stories about my parents’ separation. I was told that my father had left because of another woman. These stories were repeated often, and they shaped how I understood my family.

Sometimes my father tried to see me. Occasionally I was allowed to visit him but those visits were not welcomed by my grandparents. When I returned home, I often felt that I was treated differently, as if I had done something wrong simply by seeing him.

Those years carried a lot of emotional pain.

As a teenager, I also faced experiences that were deeply confusing and frightening for someone so young. I tried to tell the adults around me what was happening but my words were not believed. When you are a child and your voice is not heard, it creates a kind of silence inside you.

Eventually, I stopped speaking about it.

I carried everything inside.

When I was about twelve years old, the weight of everything became too heavy for me. I remember feeling completely lost and alone. At that time, I had thoughts about ending my life because I did not know how to escape the pain I was feeling.

But life continued.

Even in the middle of those difficult years, I kept moving forward with my education. There were many expectations placed on me. I was told I needed to be among the best students in my class and success in school became something tied to punishment and reward.

At times it felt like love and approval were something I had to earn.

Eventually my mother made a decision that changed my life again. She sent me to a girls’ boarding school. I was around twelve years old when I began living there.

For the first time, I was away from the environment that had shaped so much of my childhood.

At the school, I tried to build a new life. I wanted to make friends and experience the normal teenage moments I had missed when I was younger. But making friends was not easy for me. Years of growing up in fear had made me quiet and cautious around others.

Sometimes I believed that in order to keep friends, I had to give them something in return. I thought I had to share everything I had or treat people in order to be accepted.

Even though those teenage years were complicated, they were also the beginning of something new.

They were the beginning of my journey to understand myself.

Looking back now, I see that the little girl who sat alone, afraid to speak, was simply trying to survive the world she was born into. She carried pain, fear and loneliness but she also carried strength.

And that strength is what allowed me to continue moving forward.

This was the beginning of my childhood story.

In the next chapter, I will share how fear slowly became a part of my world as I grew up.

→ Continue reading: Growing Up Afraid of the World