11.4.2026
15:34
The setup
Your father is unemployed, recently bankrupted out of a restaurant he borrowed money he could never earn by himself and lost it all.
You are in a 95m2 apartment that he didn’t bought, everything from grandfather.
There is this desk, blue and yellow that he took from his failed restaurant, it was a desk that held the computer and stuff from a football gambling company, Еврофутбол. A loser can only gamble.
The desk was so wide that it could fit you and your brother, sitting next to each other, doing homework.
In the apartment there are 4 people, you, your brother, failed father and his girlfriend(which he will ruin her life also, if not already, don’t worry, it’s a trend.)
You are 10-11 years old boy about to be 4th grade.
You have Math as a subject on 4 days out of 5 - Mon, Tue, Thu, Fri.
The way math was taught in that small public school is as follows: One textbook, one unit covers 2 pages, at the end of the unit, there are exercises. With math, each exercise was progressively harder but at that class, we always only did =<50% of exercises, so just the easy stuff. If the class didn’t reach half the exercises, then the rest was given for homework. But the exercises that were after the the 50%, the difficult ones were never taught or given as homework.
the new school year has just began, everything seemed “normal”, until one day…
The act
You come back from school, start doing homework as usual
You open the math textbook, and suddenly he comes, standing behind you like a lighthouse.
You do your homework, which is the easy section of exercises and then you close your textbook.
He asks, what about the rest?
you say, the rest is not for homework
he goes, do them.
and you, I don’t know how…
silence…
You have no choice but to continue, knowing nothing.
you sit there, stare at the book, he slowly gets irritated.
He gives you a hint through yelling, you write it down, but still can’t figure anything out.
The second hint comes with a slap on the back of your head, you can’t see it, you can’t predict it, a hard slap.
Third hint, slap. You still know nothing, have done nothing, you just eat slaps and wish you could at least knew when the slaps were coming…
Slaps will be the least of your problems, he goes out, takes a slipper, comes back, hits you in the head with it, next few hints are given.
By the time the math exercise is solved by him, he pulls you out of the chair holds you by the hand or clothing and beats you… cursing you in Vietnamese.
And that is one exercise, you have 3 left, each one progressively harder and harder.. I will spare you the details
And still, maybe one day was enough, but it happens every day except Saturday, for a whole school year.
Every day you come from school, you look at the apartment building where you live and you have no choice but to enter, knowing what exactly will happen and without any anomaly, it does, every day, every week, every month.
You try to delay it by staying outside a little longer, playing PC games in your friends house(Hi, Bobby). But you still gotta go “home” and go through the “session”.
Every day, after the session is finished, you are laying in bed in a fetal position, hugging your legs, in a state of shock, your head and where he hit you are pulsating.
The TV is on, he went to take a shower. He comes out with the red and white bathrobe and goes into your room and just starts pacing around the room, back and forth, talking to himself or something.
He has bonded with you, that’s how he bonds with violence. Not because he is your father and you are his son, but because he spend all that time beating you, you gave him a good workout, he appreciates that.
During all that beating, your brother was sitting next to you and one Wednesday (when math isn’t on the school schedule) he decided to go and check on your brother instead, to see if he can do the same treatment, he does, now it’s your brother’s turn you think…
But after each session of beating, your brother has a nasty stomachache, caused by the stress of being beaten and so your father backs down… He has compassion or something… so he returns back to you soon.
His girlfriend does occasionally comes and saves the day, ending the session early. But she is tired out of her ass, trying to make ends meet because the failure just went bankrupt and doesn’t want to work again, if she wasn’t there we might as well die of hunger. She can’t be a hero and a provider, she even doesn’t have to be there with him, but because she is a good person, a tired one but still a good one…
During all that helplessness, you look at the mountain nearby and wonder, can run away from my house and go live there?
Unfortunately you don’t commit to that plan..
A dream you had while you were sleeping at that time, was you being surrounded by copies of him and them constantly hitting you while you crouch with nothing else to do but to endure.
And that dream you didn’t forget after waking up, every time you go to bed, laying in a fetal position, hugging your legs, you think about that dream.
And this is ladies and gentleman is how you learned helplessness
Footnotes
while trying to do this, I noticed myself avoiding doing so, despite wanting to complete it, watching stuff, pacing around, everything to just avoid doing it.
I have a guess that my subconscious is really trying to avoid thinking or going into that topic.
Earlier that day I saw a pic of someone who got an engagement ring on their hand and was expressing feelings of excitement, I didn’t think or feel anything at that time
But then it come all at once, oh my god, people around me are excited for getting engaged and stuff and look what I’m doing… unbelievable…
Despite me hating the “comparison game”, at that time it just felt like having a perspective, not comparing myself to others for what they have or what I have, just perspective.
And I realized that my past still haunts me, not only for what happened, but the fact that there is no justice for it, no karma, no nothing, he is living like a king now while I grind my ass off?
feelings:
for what happened: sad
for no justice: anger
a common cocktail mix for me.
Makes you wonder whether or not this little boy will lose his smile if he knew what will happen to him
