Cursed Children

 It’s 2007. A maniac points a gun at three children – a 10-year-old, a 7-year-old and a 5-year-old. Don’t get too stoked though – the barrels of the gun are empty. Their father had watched way too many movies and just got a little too dramatic.  So while the gun was a new gimmick for the children, they were mostly used to his drama. 

 

It was an exciting night, like most nights. The kids would spend most of the day like other children, with the exception of nights where their father, under the influence of alcohol, would play his sick twisted games with them and their mother. 

 

It’s almost beautiful how the human brain can adapt to everything – love, hatred, violence, just like that. I read somewhere that kids growing up with violence around them learn to embrace it and begin to find a home in the chaos. Which, for the most part, is good, but they never get used to normal surroundings, normal relationships, the normal status of life. 

 

The father is hardly to blame here either. Youngest of five children, by the time he came into existence, his parents were more interested in pilgrimages and traveling than giving a shit about what their kids were up to. Denied the love, care, and a good upbringing, you can’t really blame them for acting out when the same parents who couldn’t be bothered with him a while ago suddenly decided that it was time for him to get married. It’s not like there’s a parenting manual lying around the house that he could refer to, to raise his own offsprings. So he did it the only way he knew. 

 

Is this a hate story – no. There’s going to be a lot to hate and be repelled from – but no. I do not come from a place of hate. Everyone gets put through shit, but it doesn’t have to mean that you have to become shit. I would rather be defined by the good, the care, and the love than the hate. Isn’t that usually the way of the world? 

 

But again, the world loves hate. Violence. Destruction. These emotions, when fuelled, can motivate people more than love ever can. Take me for example. I love watching romantic comedies and movies that leave me feeling happy, loved. But when I really want to have a good time, I turn to true crime documentaries. Reading and watching murderous psychopaths making people suffer thrills me, gives me goosebumps. Take you, for example. I click-baited you into reading this with a simple sentence depicting violence.

 

We are the children of the apocalypse. Not one caused by politics, wars, or the denigration of humanity, but the apocalypses we put each other through. We see the good and the bad and our brain adapts it to our life’s screenplay. We see, we feel, we love, we hate – influenced by these tiny apocalypses of charred dreams and marred experiences. And in our own dark, twisted ways, we exist, we evolve.