This post will get ugly. And uncomfortable.

I'm writing this because I'm sort of a little bit worried about myself.

Just admitting that has made me feel slightly better, already.

Something is wrong with me, and particularly in the way that I approach my problems. I have always been somebody who tries not to attract attention, who tries to be 'stoic' about things (I put that in inverted commas, because I think no truly sane person can really be stoic about things). A certain amount of pragmatism is obviously necessary for continued survival.

People so often slip blithely into the Oppression Olympics, because they are trying to balance the good, old-fashioned need to vent with an enlightened awareness of the greater suffering of others. I think this is stupid, on reflection. Provided that you don't just moan on about how hard you have it all the time, without any acknowledgement of those facing bigger problems elsewhere, you're not betraying anyone. It's one of the things I find the most silly amongst feminists and left-wingers. A sense of injustice is (provided it's not obsessive) healthy. 'Liberal guilt' is not, because guilt isn't really healthy. Small doses of it enable us to become better human beings, but the complex that so often constitutes 'liberal guilt' can't really be called small.

I'm sure I've said that before...

Anyway, because I find myself falling prey to this same stupid mindset that I've just condemned, I try not to moan. I've had things easier than my parents' generation when it comes to race, and it's not like I was around in the nineteenth century - or even the 1950s - when things were a lot worse for women, and particularly Asian women. The stories about marriage that I've heard - even within our apparently fairly 'modern' family - are pretty appalling, and thankfully I can say confidently that that sort of thing WOULDN'T happen today to the best of my knowledge. Not in our family.

Still, I am lying. In the desire to not be another fucking cliché - another urban liberal Asian female talking about how she was so oppressed and suffered so much OMG - I have become another fucking cliché. God, irony is so neat.

I did not want, and could not see, myself alongside Jasvinder Sanghera, or any of the other women who have written about their experiences within their families. I was never locked up by my parents, or forced into a marriage. My person had received no notable harm. What right did I have to complain?

Repeating this like a mantra, I would keep spurring myself onwards to Be A Success! Act Like A Success! Think Like A Success! An evil little voice mocked my endeavours. It never occurred to me until very recently that the voice that told me to just KEEP GOING and the voice that told me to FUCKING QUIT could be related. Strange that I never spotted the relation, because every now and again, the compartments fused, dividing walls crumbling. Then, the voice that told me to fucking quit was on form. It rambled like an alcoholic, horrifyingly unstoppable, about how I was trying to run from my fundamental emptiness. How everything I did was a pathetic search for validation and meaning of the most primitive kind.

I effectively watched lies evaporate, whenever this happened when I was talking to somebody dear to me. Be it my ex-boyfriend, The Libertarian or someone else, it was like I could hear the stimulus withering in my voice. Feel the sudden absence of balance and optimism, as if against my own ears. Note the sudden loss of language and expression. Those who've ever had to deal with it have said that it is not what I say, but my silence, that scares them. I crack apart into jaws, and the tongue of beast reaches out through them.

I will NOT be taken, though. I am not going to be pulled underwater until I drown. I have tried to suffocate the grief. It simply imploded, resulting in me putting myself in danger, or wanting to. Telling loved ones about the way my family behaved was, I thought, a way of fighting their order to (essentially) not tell the truth. I tend to hate psychobabble, but one word is OH SO USEFUL. Internalised. I had internalised my parents' values to some extent, and seen them heavily reinforced by British society. Keep your feelings private. Mind your own business. Don't air your dirty laundry.

I knew I was never going to be on Jeremy Kyle, and I probably wasn't going to write and publish a book, even though I like writing and it's one thing I seem to do fairly well. So I cursed myself. I was the (sort-of) middle child, the eldest of the two younger children. I was the one who tried on the whole to be responsible, whilst my brother could be bad. Yet I also demanded equal treatment. I could never brook the fact that he was somehow better than me by virtue of his sex, and that paradoxically I was expected to behave better because of MY sex.

I took crap from my sisters when they needed to take out their feelings on somebody, and was tossed into the ring to control my brother 'because you're his age-group.' This despite the fact that he was very aware of his superior male status and only afraid of one person - my second-eldest sister. She barely controlled him, whilst my mother continually undermined both my elder sisters' authority. In a household full of competing personalities with similar interests, I shut my mouth. And I died.

When I was little, I was confident, friendly and assertive. Everyone thought I was cute. My aunt once mistook me for a doll. When I got a fair bit older, I realised that there was a time and a place for unconditional love. It was certainly over by the age of about 11. By that point, I was most definitely different. It had begun around age 7, when I became a bookworm and stopped being good at maths.

My family fell neatly into little units: my sisters, my parents, my mum and brother, my second-eldest sister and brother... The two 'units' I was supposed to be part of, were myself and my eldest sister and myself and my brother. Both were deeply flawed by the lack of equal status: she was a second father, 10 years my senior. My brother, increasingly aware of his privilege as both the youngest and the only male, was supposed to be below me in the hierarchy but knew the reality.

I read, greedily. I was inquisitive and sensitive. I wanted to be good at maths and science, but I was better at English. I had originally wanted to be an artist. Aged about 6, I revealed this to my mother; she laughed and said I would be penniless. That dream crashed to pieces pretty much there and then.

As I grew more and more different from my family, it became more visible to them. The thing that could always unite them, was me. My sisters worked hard to make sure that I would not have any more freedom than they did. Being not particularly aggressive in nature, I went along with most things. I always protested to some extent, but what was the point? My parents, perhaps feeling guilty at their lack of presence in our lives, always bowed to pressure from my sisters. Not that their own conservative values helped much. My mother was very reluctant to let me pierce my ears at 11, and had to be persuaded by my sister.

My brother, as spoilt children do, tested the boundaries as much as I did, and emerged victorious far more frequently. Something I like to tell those close to me occasionally, sums up the difference in our power and importance within the family. For my 18th birthday, I received £20. For his, he received a Nintendo Wii. His laziness, arrogance and obstinacy often allowed him to endure my sisters' attempts to treat him as they did me. Resultantly, he escaped having housework/money-based guilt rained upon him all the time. My mother also kept him somewhat separate from us because boys were a separate and sacred species. He never had to share a room with either of my sisters; nor did he, on the whole, have to put up with their PMT.

My sisters weren't fairer than my parents though. They spoiled him at times too - my eldest sister being worse - and every time I was thrown into the ring with him, they did not want to know. Even if he started fights, it didn't matter. They didn't want to know. I hated him - really hated him. It wasn't a stereotypical, murderous hatred - more a corrosive and grudging loathing. I relished hurting him. I have no shame about that, even now.

And that is because my mother, like my sisters, refused to see my brother's unbelievably spiteful side. When I was being told off, he was allowed to join in with completely superfluous bitchy comments, only being told to butt out when I protested repeatedly. If I was criticised - as I was repeatedly - he somehow had full license to join in, despite my apparently being older. He delighted in calling me 'fat' and 'stupid,' and when I was with my ex, Internet-stalked me, looking for proof to reveal to my parents. He also loved stirring, making completely false allegations about me for no discernible reason other than he enjoyed it. When I came back late from a friend's party, my coat smelling of smoke thanks to her parents in the conservatory, he kept trying to accuse me of smoking.

I'm not done with my anger. For a long time now, I have tried to forgive and leave all this in the past. However, until I document what happened - the major incidents, if not everything - I will not find any peace at all. Now that everyone's older and my sisters married and moved out, everything has been magically forgotten. Swept under the carpet. I disclosed slices of my grimy little history to a number of people. Many of them, I fear, found it slightly ludicrous and unbelievable. Just as many, if not more, made the common mistake of trying to provide solutions rather than just LISTEN.

Part of the reason that there have only been about 2 or 3 people in my life who I can really trust with this, is because it sounds so preposterous at times, like a Goodness Gracious Me sketch. My best friend, who actually heard for herself the transition between my sister's 'outside world' and 'home' personalities. My cousins, who are also 'in the family.' However, it is a history that needs rescuing and confiding not to one at a time, but to this. My patch, my home, my blog.

Partially revenge, but much more closure - I will save my soul. I spoke earlier of the curse, which I transferred to myself. The curse, in effect, of my mother. The woman who would condemn me to a life like hers - or worse - through a lack of faith. She doesn't know it, of course, but I internalised the curse. Like Rosemary's baby, it became something else altogether inside of me. I told you guilt was unhealthy, didn't I? How can I be so bloody sure about it, eh? you ask. I'm not a psychologist, or a psychiatrist.

I know that guilt is unhealthy, because like all noted hypocrites, I suffer it myself. However, I absolve myself somewhat in telling you that it is not liberal guilt - but existence-based guilt that I feel. It is just unacceptable. I do not deserve it, and I'm not going to take it.

Continued, when I have the time/will/inclination...