The Thrashing

I sprained my ankle out of my dread for my father. He was abused as a child; and now in his old age, he is unleashing the last ounce of his strength to crush his daughter with the most ferocious abusive language. I wasn't crushed but it takes a lot of effort to see where I was walking or to realize I was already treading uneven ground. Under the Child Protection Act, child abuse comes in many forms. Neglect is considered a form of child abuse. Father suffered neglect as a child. As early as nine years old, he was made to work in the farm, which made his teachers exclaimed, "Why, where is the boy's father?!" They were so considerate, they spared him from all the hard work in school and took time to visit the farm where he worked somewhere in Binugao, which they described as "parang Luzon," for they came from a farming community in Ilocos and was transported only in Mindanao after the war. But midway through highschool, the boy that was my father was made to drop out of school to work full time in the farm and send three or four of his siblings to school. I need another language to describe how hard his life was at the farm. I'm still trying to understand what has turned him into a tyrant even as I try to recover from a sprained ankle.