Make It Stop!

I don't know what it means to be a grown-up. Does it mean I have to do my laundry, pay water and electricity bills? Does it mean I can stay out late and party without worrying about my parents scolding me? Does it mean I start to realise that the beautiful world I lived in was an illusion?

I think that being a grown up means learning to stand on your own feet and that you have finally grown into the shoes made especially for you.

Naturally, when you stand on your feet for too long, they will start to hurt and eventually, you may even get blisters. Again, only because now, you've grown up and because you are no longer carried around, you will start to experience pain.

Pain, not present during childhood if some of us are lucky. Pain should only be reserved for grown ups because we know how to deal with pain. Yes, pain should only be reserved for grown ups.

But now that I am a grown up, I've come to learn that many of my own friends knew only pain as children. Womanising fathers, verbally abusive mothers, physically abusive fathers, molesting teachers...the list can go on. Did they deserve this? No. 

But they've learnt their own special way of dealing with it. A friend of mine told me that at times her father abused her mother, she'd start a conversation with God, "Hey God, mommy and daddy are only playing right? They're just showing me the wrong way to behave."

There shouldn't be a reason to show this to your child at such a young age. Someone told me that once you become a parent, saving yourself becomes secondary. All you should do is worry about your children and leave the second he raises his hand. No one, should allow their child to spend a second in an environment like that.

But what if I leave and he changes for the better? What will I tell my son if he asks me why I left his father? Why should I leave my children father-less only because he hurts me? It's not like he's hurting them.

He is hurting them. He is hurting their little innocent hearts. He is damaging their soul and they will grow up injured. What's worse? They don't even know it. Hurting them like this will affect them in school, career and future relationships. How can they trust anyone when they don't even know what trust is?

Certain laws don't allow divorce while a woman is pregnant in fear of her living as a single mother. But what happens if the husband is abusing his pregnant wife? What do you do then? Would you stay and endanger yourself and your unborn child?  

I understand that as a grown-up, life suddenly becomes different shades of grey. But when it comes to harming another person, I believe that there is only black or white. 

We're not living in Afghanistan or Iraq. We have a choice of whether we want to live in the warzone, they don't. We can choose to stay or we can choose to go.

Make it stop. Now that you are a grown up, take a stand. 

Don't do it for you, do it for them.