2 years ago, my dad beat me up and tried to strangle me as an adult over a petty argument over my neighbor’s guest. In the process, he also punched my sister, who was trying to break up the fight. After 25 years of him being physically and mentally abusive to my siblings, my mom and grandma and I (basically everyone living in the same house), I decided I had enough of this garbage and went to make a police report. This is how it went.
Continue reading “My experience reporting my abusive dad to the police in Malaysia”Category: Hoarding
Top 10 list of how my father physically and mentally abused me
I’m experimenting with “top X lists” as a prelude/index to the stories I’d like to cover. With a massive list of interconnected topics I plan to write about, I’ve been working here and there on different stories, but extensive cross-referencing makes it hard deciding which piece to finish first because I feel they all have to be published at once for you, the reader to get the full picture. Let’s start with how my dad abused me as a kid well into my 20’s.
Continue reading “Top 10 list of how my father physically and mentally abused me”Homecooked meals? Can’t relate as a child of a hoarder
Every vacation back to Malaysia, one of the things so many my friends, both local and abroad, like to say is “must be nice seeing your family again and enjoying their homecooked meals” As a person who grew up in a house run by a hoarder (my physically and mentally abusive father frequently proclaims himself as “the king of the house”) with living conditions that are deteriorating rapidly with time (the house has never been renovated, at all, in the past 30 years), I cannot relate to this statement. I’m nice enough to reply with a smile but the truth is I have been unable to enjoy a true, fully homecooked meal for the past 5 years, if not more. Here’s why.
Continue reading “Homecooked meals? Can’t relate as a child of a hoarder”A typical modern day living in the abusive hoarder house and narcissist parents
It is 1:30am and I am writing this from the discomforts of a table (the only one I can find without any clutter on it and isn’t buried in junk) that is far too high for any of the low quality, crap-grade chairs in the house. I would normally be in bed by this time, except I’ve just been woken up by light filling the room. In a sleepy and ranty murmur, I instinctively mumble “what the hell is going on”. At this point, it should’ve been a rhetorical question and there’s no point in asking: I’m spending another day living in the shithole hoarder house when I should have booked an Airbnb for my vacation.
Continue reading “A typical modern day living in the abusive hoarder house and narcissist parents”How it’s like to live with an abusive hoarder, Malaysian edition
I grew up in a hoarder household all my life. I could never put a finger on what was wrong living in this house, nor did I actually realize it was a problem until I started living on my own at 18 and experiencing how my friends lived. In fact, I only discovered the term “hoarder” and what it meant a decade ago while living in the US… and later, how prevalent the issue is in South East Asia (I can speak for Malaysia and Singapore) but how little it’s discussed, or even acknowledged as an issue. Let me tell you what it’s like living in a house with 1+2 hoarders and how hellish of an living situation it is.
Continue reading “How it’s like to live with an abusive hoarder, Malaysian edition”Hoarder doesn’t know what the word “cleaning” means
There he goes again – “cleaning” the house. At least once a year, usually more in recent years now that he’s retired, my dad tries to clean the family home in which I grew up. He’s been doing this for at least the past 20 years.
Continue reading “Hoarder doesn’t know what the word “cleaning” means”