How Emotional Abuse Looks Like

Today was our Singapore reunion dinner.

Since young, our reunion dinner was one with our Malaysian family and relatives. My father would drive us back on the day of reunion dinner itself. Our loved ones in Malaysia would wait for us, even as late as past 8pm one year, before they started the dinner. 

The Singapore one first started when my mother wanted a reunion dinner of our own, when we were unable to return to Malaysia for our usual reunion dinner.

Since then, we would have one of our own before going back to Malaysia. After my father passed, my siblings are not keen on having reunion dinner with our Malaysian family, I am not sure why. They would go back on the first day of Chinese New Year (CNY) for a visit and come out to Singapore again on the second day of CNY. As someone without a car of my own, I did not have a choice but to follow what they did. But deep within me, I felt uneasy about giving up the tradition that my father had set.

Last year, I told them that I would join my Malaysian family for the reunion dinner instead. My 4th sister drove out from Malaysia to pick me up so that I could have that pleasure.

This year, surprisingly, almost all of them would like to have the reunion dinner with our Malaysian family so we had the Singapore one early today.

I asked Baby to join us. I even told her the Court Order states that she lives with me from Thursday to Sunday so she gets to have dinner on Saturday with me.

As expected, she cooked up some lame excuses not to come.

She told her cousin that she was sure that we would be speaking badly about her father and she didn't want to hear it.

I took a video of us busy eating and told her nobody could bother speaking about her father.

Clearly, William has been speaking badly about me and my family. It's a reflection. The fact that Baby refuses to come live with me is a clear testimony of how much he has been speaking badly about me.

Baby doesn't know she's being manipulated. 

Baby doesn't know she's being emotionally abused.

She thinks she voluntarily distances herself from everybody else.

She said that she doesn't like to go out anyway. She's alienating herself, under the influence of the NPD.

This is how abuse looks like.

I have stepped away from it. So I can see it.

When you are abused, you don't know you are abused.

If someone hadn't pointed it out to me and told me that I was abused, I wouldn't have known either. And I am an adult with lots of life experiences.

We can recognise abuse when it's physical abuse.

But few can recognise emotional abuse. 

The damage done by emotional abuse is often far greater and farther reaching than physical abuse.

Each time I named my child, it was often a reflection of my state of mind, which was invariably linked to my marriage.

Coco's name means:

a beautiful smile

I was very uncertain, fearful and unhappy. I wished my child to always be happy and to face life's hardships with strength and a smile.

For Baby, I told her her name means:

宁为玉碎，不为瓦全

not to put up with misery and wrongful acts like how her mother did, but to be strong and principled.

It took me 16 years to walk out. It was arduous, very misunderstood, exhausting, but I did it anyway. 

I hope one day, the truth will set Baby free.