07 My First Experience of Hate
Hate is not born in us—it is taught. It takes root in helplessness. When injustice has no outlet, no resolution, it breeds that helplessness. And when it repeats, again and again, hate begins to grow.
I was seven years old on the day my baby brother Siegfried was born. My mother was in the hospital, and I was left at home with my father and my two younger brothers—Nigg, six, and Hans, five. I remember quietly hoping that once the baby came home, they might let me stay with Grandpa. He was so lonely now. Ever since Lella died, he spent most of his time alone in his study. I always had to ask for permission to visit him. My mother constantly argued with him, and Grandpa never liked my father. He often told her she would be better off without him. Everything had changed after Lella was gone.
One Saturday night, I heard Grandpa come home from the Gasthaus. He went straight to the kitchen—though now, incredibly, he had to ask permission to use it. It was his house, his kitchen, yet somehow that no longer mattered. Moments later, shouting erupted in the hallway—my father screaming, Grandpa yelling back—then a loud crash. I leapt out of bed and ran to the stairs. Grandpa was lying on the floor. I stood paralyzed as my father beat and kicked him. Grandpa cried out, his voice a mixture of pain and defiance:
“This is my house! You will leave tomorrow, or I’ll call the police!”
I didn’t know how to help him. I only wished the police would come and take my father away forever.
The next morning, I knocked on Grandpa’s door, but he didn’t answer. A few days later, he returned with some men to gather his things. I wasn’t allowed to speak to him. I watched silently from the kitchen window as they carried out his bed, then his beloved desk. When the desk went, I knew he would never come back. I wanted to cry, but my father was nearby. If he saw tears, I knew he would beat me. So I swallowed them—just like I swallowed everything else in that house.
After Grandpa left the house for good, I missed my grandmother more than ever. Until the day she died, Grandpa had carried me up the steps to school each morning because my legs were too weak to climb hills or stairs on my own. I knew she couldn’t have protected him from my father, but with her around, the house had felt safer—warmer, somehow. And at least we wouldn’t have been forced to eat the disgusting rice soup my father made for dinner. It made me physically ill, but he didn’t care.
He stood over us with a bamboo stick in hand, barking orders like a soldier commanding a battlefield.
“This is how you learn discipline and order!” “Hurry up, I don’t have all day.”
When I couldn’t eat anymore, he hit me on the head with the stick. Nigg tried to comfort me, saying it didn’t matter what we ate as long as we weren’t beaten. But he didn’t know the soup made me violently ill. My father—the old man, as we came to call him—paced like a guard in front of our small table, watching every bite. I couldn’t even swap my full plate with Nigg’s empty one. I forced down every spoonful, tears burning my eyes.
When I finally reached the bottom of the bowl, I vomited. Right there, into my plate. My father hit me again and yelled, “You think throwing up gets you out of this? Watch and see.” He picked up the pot, ladled more rice soup onto the mess, stirred it, and said coldly, “Eat.”
I prayed silently: Dear Lord, please let me die. Somehow, I finished. I ran to the laundry room and vomited again. Thank God he didn’t see.
There was nothing I could do. Nothing any of us could do. I was a child—powerless against a man who ruled through terror. And so, helplessness took root in my bones. And from it, resentment began to grow.
Even now, all these years later, I still find myself asking: How could my own father be so cruel? So heartless? So utterly despicable?
Evaluation:
This passage reveals the narrator’s profound experience of childhood trauma, shaped by physical vulnerability, emotional neglect, and exposure to domestic violence. The absence of protective figures—first her grandmother, then her grandfather—left her feeling abandoned and powerless in the face of her father’s authoritarian cruelty. Her physical limitations heightened her dependency, while her father’s punitive control over basic needs, like food, created an environment of fear and chronic anxiety. The bamboo stick, the forced consumption of food that made her ill, and the emotional void following the departure of her caretakers likely contributed to complex trauma symptoms, including learned helplessness, suppressed emotional expression, and deep-seated resentment. Her longing for safety and nurturing, once provided by her grandparents, underscores the psychological damage inflicted by the loss of secure attachments during critical developmental years.