Am I psychopathic?

Beyond good and evil: on being a monster

Trigger Warning: NOT suitable for sensitive people.

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I used to be a frightening child.

When my therapist heard the first story, she had no parallels in her experience to comfort me with.

One of my favourite pastimes at the age of 6 was to kill toads by crushing them with a rock.

The wide-eyed excitement as they tried to hop away, then the inevitable mort, was soul stirring. They were born to die at my hands. I so enjoyed breaking apart each leg, and watch in morbid fascination as the life drained out of their feeble limbs…counting down the seconds until the climax as the eyelids shut…forever.

I relished the sight of the stillness that followed their earthly departure; a sort of breathtaking beauty in its perfection. What once moved, but is no longer. There’s a very precise moment when you can tell the soul has left the body.

Grandfather’s farm had an abundance of them, and the slow summer days were spent hunting for these unsightly monsters.

My record was 21 within two hours; a fact I gleefully shared with my mother, who gave me a look of bottomless terror that casted shadows still visible every time her eyes catch mine.

Kneeling down, gently prodding the dismembered remains of the carcass, she said softly, “they want to live too…it’s not good to do that to them.” This admonition was followed by a nervous pause as she traced my facial expression for any sign of remorse.

I just felt like I broke the rules, and that mom was displeased with me.

Despite the mental cognition of having done a very bad thing, there was no visceral reaction like hers. At the time, I recall feeling surprised at the outburst. The way she recoiled has left a permanent imprint in my mind, not unlike a nuclear blast. Such an emotional display discouraged me from continuing to wage war on the toads, out of fear of upsetting her further.

“I have birthed a monster,” goes the unspoken thought, like a wraith that hovers nearby, chilling the air. Mother couldn’t hide what her energy conveyed.

An unbridgeable gap opened between us.

She comforted me years later saying that I was under a lot of stress as a child, due to the tumultuous marriage, but I knew she still feared me, the part that can’t be understood.

The mere mention of the toad incident was unwelcome, as indicated by the tense body language. A resurfacing of a hideous memory she wished to forget, written plainly on her side profile, glaringly obvious really.

If only she knew what I did to the dragonflies.

A dragonfly has 4 wings. Losing the first one hurts, but it’s tolerable; with each successive mutilation, the pain compounds, agony etched on its contorted body, building to a crescendo; 9 times out of 10, having the last wing ripped out is a death sentence. Some died faster than others, but none of them could escape my innocent rampage.

There wasn’t anything else to do on that big, empty farm. I was bored.

Catching these kaleidoscope insects wasn’t enough for me, I had to torture them too. In a twisted way, I loved them, but it also gave me joy to see their mortality dwindle in such predictable ways, so fragile…and easily destroyed.

For many, knowing you’re a monster comes later in life, but for me, I began mine with that knowledge.

Everywhere I turned, the same scornful energy met my gaze, to a lesser extent than the hidden hatred in my mother’s eyes, but still.

My classmates broke me on two occasions:

These stories below I procrastinated on writing for two weeks, because the thought of reliving them in my mind was unbearable. It’s only with the help of vodka shots that I was able to get the feelings onto paper.

The first cut

It was like any other Grade 1 afternoon.

The teacher had to step outside for an errand, and before leaving, she turned to me and placed the responsibility of keeping order on my little shoulders.

Standing in front the class with 23 pairs of pigtails and eyes staring at me intently was nerve wracking. With a grave air, I announced to the class my vision of perfect order and tranquility. The ocean of tiny heads all bobbed in unison as if following orders like obedient soldiers. Or so I thought.

Then someone started talking, another joined, and before you knew it, what was once peaceful descended into chaos. I tried shouting to no avail. They couldn’t hear me above the building uproar of voices.

Was I incapable of this tiny task? Doubt and confusion swirled into each other in a dervish dance. Never had I felt so helpless, as the crowd continued its defiance. A lone figure gripped the podium, clinging onto a physical reminder of its authority.

Then a boy stepped forth, one of the tallest in the class, sensing my destabilization with skill. He walked confidently to the front of the class in slow-motion. We might be the same age, but in that moment, he was like God. In a few words he managed to subdue the beast. They all looked at him. They all paid attention.

And I was just standing there, forgotten.

A lost package stuck in customs limbo.

At that moment, the teacher came back and congratulated him on keeping the class so quietly on-task. I was mortified, and slunk back to my seat with the defeated airs of Napoleon at Waterloo. Thus marked the watershed moment of my innocent foray into leadership, something I was loathe to pursue again.

To add insult to injury, the teacher blamed me in front of everybody, emphasizing my inferiority complex that I was a failure who couldn’t even keep a group of children quiet for 10 minutes. Even though I was one too, and a short one at that. The public scolding stung with the force of a thousand nettle leaves, not quite as painful as poison ivy, but more everlasting in my mind.

The second cut

This is the worst memory of my elementary school experience in the CCP.

I would go home for lunch and come back in time for the next bell. But this time, something was missing. An extra empty space in my pencil case, my eraser was nowhere to be found.

A sip of vodka…

Snickering behind my back, growing louder even as my rising blood pressure self-soothed in vain; there’s just no way, I must’ve misplaced them. But as the voices and whispers grew in volume, I couldn’t deny the reality of the matter—they were stolen.

My panic slowly turned into rage. I boiled in anticipation of the volcanic eruption, darting from face to face, looking for any trace of guilt, a lighthouse to focus my energies on. But there was none. The culprit was hidden in plain sight, and my emotional undercurrent made it even harder to discern the true villain. I yelled myself hoarse, and they just kept laughing.

The sound of derisive mockery filled my eardrums, echoing off each other; unstoppable momentum coupled with the joy of a mob in full Bastille.

As if taking my eraser was the funniest thing they’ve ever experienced in their short, miserable lives.

Someone had the audacity to claim “I did it!” with visible enjoyment of my anguish. It was my most beloved piece of stationery, after all.

The fool.

I spun around with alarming speed. Within a split second, the mirth died from his eyes as a hand reached forward and grasped his red necktie, the symbol of allegiance to the communist party. His eyes pleaded fearfully, fully aware of my reputation for non-orthodox methods, but I didn’t care.

“Say it again…I dare you.” The threat came as a calm in the storm. Face to face, close enough to kiss, electricity pulsing between us.

A pinwheel of options flashed through his mind, but fear won. He squeaked, “it’s it’s…in my table.”

Crossing my arms and without removing my eyes from the scoundrel, I watched frantic paws opening the drawer to fetch my prized possession, then deliver them back to its rightful owner.

“Here you go!” He entreated with feigned sincerity. A cowardly move. I was disgusted.

My fist met his cheek with a clean slap like an August lightning strike, clean and without hesitation. Holding onto the affected area like a limping deer, he dared to protest briefly in pretend hurt, and then averted his gaze from the flames of retribution to nurse the wound in hiding.

My eraser back where it belongs, I turned back to my readings and breathed a sigh of relief; a checkmark on the frog of the day.

There were more things I wanted to do to him, but he was smart enough to assuage my revenge by doing the right thing before it was too late.

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The stories above were memories from my childhood. I have recounted in faithful detail to the best of my abilities, but it’s up to you to discern how much of it is fiction and how much is reality. They say that memory morphs every time we run the slideshow, and perhaps there’s a gem of truth in that.

The past holds us captive until we learn to let them go, and this is me doing exactly that.

Vodka has been a great liberator in this endeavour, while I’m not one to drink often, it does serve a purpose when something is too difficult to face alone.

When I look back at my schooling journey, it’s evident my classmates did not like me. I have asked myself “why” many, many times. If they were unaware of my dark tendencies, unlike my mother, then why did they hold me in such disdain? Why was my presence only tolerated, not included? It hurt me to know that unlike my grades, social acceptance couldn’t be manufactured, that it was outside of my control.

I say this with tears in my eyes, because I still don’t understand it.

The most comforting answer I can think of is that I’m too autistic for their taste. They say that time heals all wounds but that presumes the source of the wound is finite. And yet…every time I look at my mom, I’m reminded of the darkness that she tried not to acknowledge, and one which my classmates were all too happy to remind me of.

After I finished writing this, I cried for awhile, tears that should’ve been let out a decade ago…a guttural wailing reverberating between the walls.

Why does it always have to resort to this, to violence?

A snot-stained handkerchief, the last sip of vodka, as my sadness faded away.

This was written on the last day of the Year of the Snake, starting tomorrow, the gloves are coming off. This was the final safety pin.

Perhaps you think I’m a monster too, that’s okay. You should run away before you get too wrapped up in the madness.

This is your last warning.

~Yueyue

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