RazingRuth

The 49 Character Qualities of Ruth

  • Chxlive

    I just finished installment #11, describing the food torture Ruth’s awful father inflicted just because he could and because it was yet another way he could make her squirm. Why are so many parents so antagonistic toward their children? Do YOU eat things you don’t like? Why should your child? With so many options available, why turn something pleasant like eating into yet another nasty punishment? How damaging it is for children when they can’t even count on getting their basic needs met. Imagine if you were in a wheelchair and couldn’t make meals for yourself. What would you think of your caregiver if s/he insisted on preparing *only* what you hated, and then, if you didn’t eat it to his/her satisfaction, saved the remains and served them to you the next day? This is just plain meanness – if you hated something when it was fresh, you aren’t going to like it day old. But that’s not the point, is it? The point is to make the children understand that they have no rights, nobody cares about them, that their parents don’t have any qualms about harming them, and that there is *nothing* they can do about it. Sick, sick, sick!
    I offer new foods to my children with the suggestion that they try one bite. If they don’t like it, they are under no obligation to finish. They don’t even have to take the one bite! I ask them nicely :) And if they decide they didn’t like it, I thank them for trying. I take them to the grocery store with me and invite them to choose what they’d like to eat and make suggestions about what I am going to make for meals. With their friends, I sit the friends down and make a list of what foods they like and don’t like, and then I make food for them all accordingly. Isn’t this the way people treat people they like? What is the motivation for being cruel to the powerless, aside from simply enjoying having the power to be as cruel as one likes and get away with it? My mother did that sort of mealtime manipulation, beating us if we weren’t at the dinner table precisely at 5:30 (because family meals were sooooo important, don’tcha know), and one time, serving me a bowl of breadcrusts while everyone else had regular food – just because I didn’t like breadcrusts. That was all consistent with the spectrum of her hatefulness and her abuse and her Christianity. I never forgave her for taking advantage of us being small and helpless to get away with the kind of abuse that would have landed her in prison if she’d tried it with an adult, and I was glad when she died. Think about that next time you are considering having a mealtime battle with a child who doesn’t happen to like broccoli, or when you decide to force a child to comply by hurting that child. People seem to think that children are somehow obligated to “forgive” their parents and “understand” – and then perpetuate that abuse onto their own children. Not all children grow up willing to sugar-coat or excuse clear, hateful abuse. Are you willing to risk lifelong estrangement from your own children just for the thrill of being cruel? Is being cruel that important to you? Food for thought.

  • Chxlive

    Hi, me again. Ruth, I just wanted to comment on that portion of Episode 23, the scene in the room – just you and your parents and the court-appointed mediator, where the mediator asks if there was any way you would return home:

    “The mediator asked him if any harm would come to me by returning home and he said, “Not at my hands.”, smugly.”

    All I could think of was that he was planning on whipping you or beating you with a big stick or maybe a crowbar as soon as he got you home. Then he could smugly pat himself on the back because his “hand” hadn’t actually *touched* you. Or perhaps he was planning on introducing a new hell to your poor family, by forcing your siblings or even your poor mother (!) to beat you to his satisfaction! Again, he could congratulate himself on his honesty, his truthfulness, and his righteousness in not telling a lie. Technically. And still getting to see you squirm, and still get to beat you into submission, however vicariously. >>shudder<<

    "Mrs. Kline worked and my father would use their childlessness as an example of how worldliness “deprived a woman of her Godly appointment”. As I came to discover, Mrs. Kline was infertile."

    And your father's judgmental disdain of Mrs. Kline, who was childless due to infertility and no fault of her own, betrays his whole supposed "confidence" that "god" would "open and close" a woman's womb. There your father was, condemning Mrs. Kline – when what he was actually doing was criticizing and disdaining his "god"'s supposed "plan"! Nice hypocrisy – no surprise, though.

    I must admit, I have followed the entire saga so far – it was a page-turner! – and I am so in awe of your personal strength and courage, in the face of that destructive indoctrination, that you were able to leave! A great many people, upon realizing how crippled their "Christian home education" had left them, how they had reached adulthood unable to move on without first going back and taking two full years to learn everything that had been deliberately withheld, might have just given up at that point, but not you! I do hope you will write some more installments. I wish you every happiness, and if I were there, I'd be cheering you on from the sidelines!

  • Bugg

    I took the “not by his hand” remark to indicate that he couldn’t speak for what ADAM would do, most likely with his blessing.

    I am so glad you broke free Ruth, and I hope you will keep us updated as your life progresses with YOU at the helm.