Why My Parents Tried To Kill Me | Minutes With

my mom was there, my sister-in-law was there and they started beating me and this was a different kind of beating, it was almost like they were determined to

kill

me and my whole life they had threatened to bury us. under these floorboards and I really believed they would do it and before long they broke my jaw, they broke my arm and it hurt a lot, so my

parents

are originally from Punjab in northern India, they came in the 1960 and I always say that they pushed their cultural beliefs a lot and unfortunately for me that meant that girls were not wanted or wanted but boys were so they considered me to be an evil entity, almost like a witch or a possessed child, so that no one would touch me. or welcome me or hug me because they felt I was carrying bad spirits you were the only girl in your house so I am the youngest of three I have two older brothers and I am the only girl born in my immediate family but also the only girl in my extended family, my father was one of the Seven Brothers.

My normality was such that I was kept in my room when I was six years old. My room was not like a child's, a child's room, with nice furniture and stuffed toys. The brick walls were very bare, the only time I was allowed to leave my room was to go to school or my mother would call me to cook or I would be called to do another task like wash dishes or dishes or clothes because I couldn't we did it. I don't have washing machines and I had no interaction with my family. I didn't make eye contact.

Girls are told to look down all the time and I still have a little problem making eye contact with people mainly because we get hit if we make eye contact, we get yelled at so it wasn't viable because I wouldn't engage in conversation with my family. I had to not speak. I used to press my ear against a very rough wooden door and listen to TV shows and pretend. I was sitting with my family, but my friend at school would walk me to school and sing me all the top pop songs and that's how I got to know a lot of music.

I had fun with books. I still love books. I used to take out as many books from school as I could because they were my friends, I would name them and I really believed in fairy tales and that I was Rapunzel and then one day it would save me from my room what was your relationship with your

parents

like I was very afraid of my mother and father and many people do not understand that women play an important role in my community as much as other communities that are like mine and the cultures that illuminate mine, so the person who would call me Outside my room would be my mother the person who was seeing a lot of my abuse was my mother and she herself was very angry all the time just because of my existence I wanted to please my father I would go out of my way to do things to make my mother happy father and by that I mean he would cook food as fast as he could and most kids have a toy they remember from their childhood but I remember he brought me a blue box that had bottles in it and I turned it over. downstairs, which meant that when I was six, seven years old, I could get to everything much faster in the kitchen and I thought maybe that was also an extension of his love for me.

I mean, you mentioned being able to go to school, what school was like for you, so school should have been an escape and it was to some extent because of the books and the teachers were pretty nice, but I was the only one. person of color at my school with my brother, so you would hear the word junk and people running and it was because they were crowding me and hitting me or it was my brother that was being hit, they pulled my hair, they spit on me and every day it was a battle in a different way. literally a couple of friends because no one wanted to be my friend because they would get picked on too, but the ones I had were very loyal and very loving and they wouldn't let me go to the lunch box and my first experience with Cham sandwich jam sandwiches was because my A friend offered me one of hers knowing I wasn't going to get any food at lunchtime and you know, I remember making a little jam sandwich all lunchtime so I could be part of the sit-down lunchtime community. inside instead of sitting. on a bench waiting for my father, from the age of seven onwards, to bring back a group of his friends and I knew them all and in my culture you don't say names, you call anyone older than you uncle or aunt and they would come and eat and drink and my father owned a lot of pubs so my father was the place to go because he had alcohol and you know he would come back from the pub and my mother was the one who would wake me up and tell me to come down, she I would go back to bed and I would cook rice, chapatis, chicken and some vegetables and carry them on a tray and then sit at the foot of our big wooden staircase waiting for them. to finish because my father didn't like the mess and when I arrived at 2 pm my mother woke me up and I instinctively had this horrible feeling.

I remember taking the food and waiting and I remember thinking I don't want to go pick up. The plates were up because they are exceptionally loud. They had started bringing bottles outside. My dad used to put the empty bottles outside and there were bottles of Johnny Walker all lined up and then when I got the call I walked in with the big tray we had was a big white tray, probably bigger than me and he grabbed my wrist and The tray fell and he was the first person to throw me on the table and rape me.

I didn't know what was happening. Too young I closed my eyes but I lived without the ability to see so I knew the sound of every person, who it was, almost the touch of every person and it was a very horrible attack by seven or eight men on me and I was thrown from the person . The person hit me They bit me and in the end I must have fainted and when I came to my senses it was because my mother opened and closed the door and woke me up and I remember that I didn't have the bottom of my clothes on and I was literally lying in a bathroom in my own blood and the first thing I thought was that there was food everywhere on the walls and on the floor and that I was going to be in so much trouble that I didn't really give it any consideration because I thought I was It's worthless because that's what they had given me taught from birth to believe that you mentioned your mother, so how did she respond immediately after this attack?

Well my mother was the one who woke me up when I said she opened and closed the door several times and she was angry, you know, it's all about perception. Sometimes I look back and say, could she have done something? Did she show any act of kindness? And I know that she was the one who gave me new pajamas, that was an act. of kindness or she was just doing that, I don't know, but at some point she could have come to see me and straighten my hair or give me some comfort, but she was just angry and she almost made me feel like it was my fault that.

She had asked for it, I was the one who instigated the whole attack. I was so naive that I didn't understand what happened. You know, we don't have conversations about periods, sex, or relationships in my culture or cultures. It's a taboo. to even think about it so I knew it was wrong but I didn't go to school back then she didn't teach us these things um and all I knew was that it was wrong and I didn't feel like myself anymore, she let me take a shower and I was never allowed to shower, my brothers used to make me bathe with a bucket, which meant you have a bucket and you fill it and then use a jug to wash yourself, but at that moment she told me to have a shower and again I thought maybe I was being nice, but the shower hurt a lot, so where I had been bitten, where I had open wounds, it stung really bad and I wished I had showered with a bucket, but after that I just asked him.

If only she could go to sleep because I was in such agony, I had a lot of internal pain, naturally, but the mental pain was almost as great. I felt broken, I just felt like that was it, my end and here we are. Living in fear that something might happen again, I used to walk in with that tray with my legs shaking from that day on, so every Friday or Saturday, when my dad brought his friends over, I was visibly shaking and scared because I was I'm sure they would try to do it. doing something again and then not knowing it's torture, there's no other word to describe it, but it was always in me to go face them every weekend and give them this food.

I turned 15 and I realized I was pregnant and I told my mom that she no longer had periods and I didn't know I was pregnant, but she told me that she had spoiled me. They called my dad immediately he came and they both sent me to my room and they were yelling at each other and before he met her. I was in the car and I had never been in my dad's car and I remember it being a blue humberceptor and I was sitting in the back looking at the trees and the clouds and wondering where I was going and they took me somewhere in the West Midlands to a clinic and I remember being I arrived at the clinic and there were many women.

I remember the entire procedure and this was the clinic where I was going to have an abortion. What I always talk about is the act of kindness of this whole experience of this abortion because it was the first time that someone had really given me love and it was in the form of a lady where after the procedure they make everyone sit on a edge of lawn and I had my clinical gown on and she brought me a cup of tea, but it wasn't the tea she handed me, it wasn't the fact that she handed me the tea, it was the fact that she reached out and touched my hair and she caressed me in a very motherly way and I think that no matter how old you are, we all crave love and in that moment I realized that I really craved some love from another human being and I also realized that maybe It wasn't so bad because she didn't catch anything. by touching me and my whole life I was told and I believed it that if someone touched me they would catch this evil that I was containing um and when we got home on the way home my parents were really upset saying what are we going to do with her it's a big problem , no one will marry her because to get an arranged marriage you have to be a virgin and I was not a virgin and I blamed myself, so my father was very anxious for a while after the abortion saying: what are we going to do?

How are we going to do this? What are we going to do with the owner? There was talk that I would be sent to India, where I would be married to an old man or

kill

ed. One of the people who had raped me came forward. She was the person who bit me and came forward and said she would take me, she wanted to have me in her house so she could have me as a sex slave and his wife could have a servant but his son was dating a white Englishman. . girl in our culture that is not allowed but it is very common and they were going to marry me with the son so that the community would think that the sun was good it was a sham wedding I was very groomed I was very young but my father and he began to negotiate, make a trade for me.

They put a silk scarf on my head and made me sit down. I have some photos and I look at those photos and think about what was going through your head. You look so scared because I thought that when I go to his house, he will call his friends, I will be a victim of gang rape again. I didn't know what to expect and um, my father and him argued about gold and money and finally they came to an agreement and everyone. I was happy and I kept hearing this word happy happy happy and I didn't know what happy was.

I was 16 years old and I was married and when I entered the marital home the first thing I noticed was how small I was and they took me to a room and told me: This is your room downstairs, we slept upstairs but you didn't and the room was like a makeshift closet with a small bed and an open space for clothes. They took all the gold I was wearing for the wedding ceremony, they took all my belongings and they gave me old things and told me I should get a job. I never really spoke to the person I was married to he was living his life he was happy I don't think people understand that in cultures like mine in-laws play a huge role in mental and physical abuse and often in Sexual abuse is not talked about because there is a taboo, it is a stigma to say anything other than how much mental abuse a girlfriend or girl experiences from her in-laws is actually destroying that person.

They told me that I would cook everything and there was no door for my father-in-law to access me, who would come in, rape me and attack me. threaten me, he had a real longing for control and to scare me, which he did, there was something in the '90s called The Burning Bride, which meant that there were a lot of brides being burned in the area where I lived and what I mean by that The thing is that they were giving girls to their husbands so that the women of the community and the mothers-in-law and the fathers-in-law would blame the bride and pour gasoline on the girl and set her on fire and the police would appear and she would disappear thinking it was suicide and they said no.

They knew what to do, they didn't want to get involved in it, so I literally avoided my father-in-law because on the weekends he would tie metal hangers around my ankles and the metal would dig into my skin and he would undress me so I couldn't move. He would sit me there and get me dirty because he couldn't use the bathroom and he was very afraid. I was afraid of everything. I was very thin because I had an eating disorder. Every time I put some food on the plate after finishing preparing a meal, my mother-in-law would throw it in the trash can and tell me that she told me to eat.of the bite because she said it's not your fault and you just don't deserve to eat like one of them and at first I was trying to get food out of the trash because I was hungry but then I just gave it to her.up, are you ready to move on?

Thanks, you mentioned you had a job, how did it feel to have that sense of independence? Finally, I started to discover myself at work, I started to discover who I was, I got this job and I started to notice a different culture and I quite liked taking some control of my own life in the workplace, but I also wanted to do well because I thought if I made more money for them maybe they would leave me alone and I did make some friends. which were very important in my journey, I guess in my second job, which was selling kitchens over the phone, which I loved because it meant I was constantly on the phone talking to people.

I met an Indian girl who had a Nigerian boyfriend and we connected because we were both Indians, but she would notice things and say to me: Why are your ankles bleeding? Do you know why you have bruises? And I felt like I could trust her, so I started telling her things about her and she didn't judge. Don't judge me or make me feel stupid or stupid, she was just listening to me and then one day she said you know my parents weren't very understanding but now they are because I'm older, why don't you go back to your parents' house?

If you are so scared and so unhappy and I started dreaming about things again because I was a Daydreamer. I started to almost visualize this fairy tale of walking into my parents' house and them hugging me tightly and telling me that they loved me and that they were proud of me because I think that's how every person wants their parents to be to give them that love, like that. that one day I went to work and never came back. I got on a bus to my parents' house and I sat on the bus and not, you know, an acquaintance, unknowingly celebrating to myself that I'm coming home.

I'm, it's something I'm familiar with. You know it's my house and I'll be able to see my dog ​​and I'll be able to. talk to my mom without even thinking that you never talked to your mom life was never so good at home what happened when you got home? I wasn't afraid for the first time. I was a little excited to see my family. I had seen them for four years and my father opened the doors a little surprised to be home because it was daylight, it was mid-afternoon and he immediately pulled me by my ponytail and dragged me inside and I thought I had just made the biggest mistake. big time of my life took me to the same room where they raped me my brother was there my older brother my mom was there my sister-in-law was there and they started hitting me and this was different from hitting him it was almost like they were determined to kill me and all my life they had threatened to bury you under these floorboards and I truly believed they would do it.

I remember my dog ​​barking in the other room, they had locked her in. I was in the other room so she couldn't get close to me and I desperately wanted to get out but I didn't know how to get there. My father is a former professional wrestler. My brother is six feet tall and I was that small and very skinny. I was 21 years old and in Shortly after, my jaw had been broken, my arm had been broken, and I was in a lot of pain. I was literally bouncing off the walls like a little ragdoll and fell to the floor.

You will never forget what people do. They say and as they say it and they told me that it was a disappointment that they knew that this would happen because I was a girl and they did not want that girl, they should have killed me since I was born and what they meant by that is when I was born, many girls were put in plastic bags, suffocated and buried in the garden and I know this because people would come to my mother's house and give birth to a girl and not report the birth so no one knew about the pregnancy so I was always told that I was very lucky to be alive and I was very afraid of dying um my brother started kicking me and my father started stomping on me and they displaced my hip and there was probably no part of my skin that wasn't cut or covered in bruises or blood came a moment when my father put his foot on my throat and I felt at that moment that he left my body and I remember looking at myself and thinking this is this is this is everything now for you but I heard something that sounds strange but it is what I believe and I know that happened and something told me it's not your time yet and I remember coming back to the body and not feeling anything, I was numb, I knew they were still kicking. and punching and, you know, stomping on me, but I didn't feel anything, all I did was watch the blood literally drip from my head to my nose and onto the carpet and they continued.

I remember looking feverishly at my mother and sister. my brother in law maybe in a way of asking for help and I remember them standing with their arms crossed and they were very, very angry and before I knew it my other brother came in he yelled not here and they all just disappeared very quickly and I remember passing I walked out and came back and I fainted and the door opened and someone said that they are going to take you to India, ask for help, it's security and I thought what a stupid thing to say to me because if I have my brother on one side and my father on the other, I'm not going. to ask for help and I thought to myself I'm ready to add I don't want to live anymore but then this little voice said no I don't want to die and I

tried

to get up but I couldn't.

I

tried

. I like it almost like a baby crawling and I couldn't, so I started talking to myself and said, "If you can get to the door and reach for the handle." you just have to get to the kitchen if you can get to the kitchen you just have to get to the Back Garden if you can get to the Back Garden you will be free I didn't even know what free meant or where I was I would go but I knew I had to get out of there and um, It sounds very fictitious, I know, and I know I literally look like something out of a horror movie, but I started moving and my body was stiff because I had been lying in it in the same position for days and I was dirty and it smelled bad and like I said I was covered in blood everywhere, but I did it.

I started using this part of my arm and I crawled forward and fell. I was crying internally because I was too scared to make a noise. I knew I had a very small window of opportunity before this angry family knew I was trying to escape, but I did it and I got to the door and then I got to the kitchen and when I got to the My dad's garden had a six foot high wall and I thought I wasn't going to be able to do this and I literally sat there and thought I couldn't do it and my dog ​​came over and she was the loudest person I ever barked at so I did it. toward.

Noisily the neighbors were complaining and I remember touching his wet nose and almost begging him not to say anything and I really believe that sometimes in life we ​​have really come to a crossroads where we just need one person to say: you have this in whatever form they come. and I believe in angels and I felt like she was this messenger or an angel telling me go because she looked up and she looked at me and somehow I managed to climb up this fence and then I fell. on the other side and quite loudly thinking they could hear me but I literally crawled to a small park in front of my house and passed out in the bushes and they never found me and when I woke up it was early in the morning.

I have no idea what time it was but the birds were singing and somehow I managed to get to a taxi rank that wasn't too far away and when I got there I had no money, I could barely stand and the person who came to see me was a white British man and he was very nice and said who's after you, what happened and I said my parents tried to kill me and he put me in the back of his taxi and covered me with a blanket and said, 'Where am I going to take you?' from the hospital to the police and I said no, can you take me to my friends please?

And he did it. He took me to a place called Market Harborough, which is in Leicestershire, where my friends lived, but no one answered the door, but he wouldn't let me. He stayed. with me and finally they took me to the police station and I remember I collapsed at the police station and I remember the police said what happened, what happened, they started taking pictures and I told him it was an attempted honor killing. He almost seemed disappointed and uncomfortable and like he didn't know what to do and he said the best thing you can do is go to a hospital and before I knew it I was alone in a hospital lying in this bed no one visited me no one asked me who the nurses were They came and made their observations and disappeared without looking at me as if I were there.

I looked at the people in each bed and their families and I knew he would come at what time, but I also knew no one would come for me. Did you have any communication with your family since since you left my brother came looking for me 15 years after I moved because he had attacked his partner at the time with a hammer and the police had put him in some kind of program whereby no He wouldn't have to go to jail if he fixed what he had done in his life and told them openly that he had attacked me in an attempted honor killing and I was afraid because I was still afraid of my brother and he asked me. asking for forgiveness and I said I forgave them all a long time ago but I can't forget people and I don't understand why I forgave them but I forgave them the moment they did something wrong because that's the kind of person I was.

He talks to my parents now. They've continually threatened me and chased me and told me they'll behead me, so I get 30 to 40 death threats every month, not just from them but from people I don't even know, especially from the Middle East. and the way they see it is that if you leave an arranged marriage, they have to kill you to keep that honor and I understand the importance of speaking out regardless of the stigma and shame because they will continue to do these things over and over again so whoever it is . is that you are protecting the first and only person you should protect is yourself.

I do not speak out of hatred for my culture or to disrespect Indians, Sikhs or Punjabis, whoever you are, it is not for that reason, it is to say that as humans we must value life whether that child is born a girl or a boy. They are a precious life and he got very violent pushing me a lot pushing me down the stairs pushing me against the wall grabbing my hair and pushing it to the passenger side if he was driving and I didn't know I was in a violent situation until things got very serious and when I was pregnant with my third child and I was seven and a half months pregnant and he pushed me down the stairs, okay, I fell, he left and I remember not feeling my baby move.

You looked young. He did look young, but it was after marriage that I found out that he was twice my age, so I was 15 and he was 30. I knew I knew him. he was going to rape me and that's what happened and he became like every day