LePichu

My Privacy was Stabbed in Cold-Blood

7th February 2024

11.5 Minutes

LePichu

Buy me a Coffee!

inhales while taking deep breaths Oh well, this will be a tiny one (spoiler alert: it ended up being long) but a fucking vengeful one for sure. I really do not know where to start with this one, but I guess a tiny bit of history about me will be a nice start. I was 3 years old when I managed to unlock my father's laptop while asking him to put up the movie "3 Idiots" (side yapping: good bit, do watch if you want), that was the start of my journey with tech in a way, and before I know it, I was on the net the next year, downloading games, waiting for my father to come home everyday, plugging into the net to browse these 2 very specific games websites full of arcane lost indie games no one probably knows about, avid Firefox user back; I just hate it now. But that's enough of rambling, how about we fast forward a decade? I turned 14, have been more active on the internet for a good while since age of 10, spliting spritesheets for animation, talking to people, wanting to be a game dev, so much more. My online presence grew as time went on, so did my concerns about having a personal space and setting boundaries. This is a story about how my privacy was slowly murdered in cold-blood, by the people I loved.

I am 14, and this is deep.

I was 14, avid browser of Reddit and Discord at the time, and also as of recent, GitHub and a lot of Medium (for reading tech stuff; specifically Electron and Web Dev). I think it was at this point in time I really wanted to isolate my internet space from real life, because I don't want anyone, anyone who is not me, to be able to pretend that they are me or look into my talks with other folks on the web. But of course, I am in an Indian family, can't afford one fucking bit of having privacy or a safe space, stuff was relatively tame at this point in time, didn't really need to """hide""" anything per say, maybe my chats but that's kinda obvious, why does someone else not me need to look at what I was talking about to another person? What happened to letting people mind their own business? My 14 year brain was relatively fine because no one bothered to check on me, nor did I usually hide anything, I was fairly front and blunt about everything, who my online friends were, who @SambhavArora was, and if the internet really was a second home to me after all. Even since an early age, I didn't really have to hide anything, even answer sheets if I got a bad grade. So naturally growing up, I was more or so "okay" with not being that much of a privacy freak as I am now.

Boundaries and Boomers

Generally speaking, old people, or at least our last 2 generations in India, do not know anything about personal space or setting boundaries, there's some relevance even in our current generations but I digress (maybe not), besides the point really. Honestly, a lot of my issues with boundaries or not having privacy have existed around the time before my father's passing away, I was coping whilst he was bedridden, naturally drowning myself in ways like playing CoDM for a good hour or two with Sambhav daily, Blackout was new at the time so we were going considerably ham. On January 24th, my father passed away, and eventually, by August, a plan was put forward by my sister to move me and my mother to Bihar to my Maternal Grandparents' for support and my final 2 years of school, spoiler alert, horrible idea, I have suffered way too much here. My mom was still coping and in after shock, I was... distant in a way too.

It was around December or late 11th grade when she really started acting up in a way. I had just found a friend at school who I could trust and be true to, often spending good chunks of my time on the phone talking to her. My mom eventually, for god knows why, started checking my phone and relaying information to my sister, this not only infuriated me back then, but also disgusted me in a way, I already have trust issues when it comes to people from things happening at my previous school, it felt far worse to see it happen again and with a loved one doing it. I decided to put up app lock and other security methods that I usually wouldn't employ while being at home, and this threw her into a fit of rage. Over the next few days we both were at edge, I wasn't really going to school for reasons, but pulled an all nighter one day, my mom woke up and saw me reading shit on my iPad, I vividly remember reading Andrew Kelly's article on how they created zig cc, very good read. My mom told me to shut it off in a very loud and rude manner, and I replied with "in a bit", now, I don't know how, but old people can NOT perceive time properly, it wasn't even half a minute in before she told me to do that, next thing I know she hit me very hard on the arm and I just decided to shut my iPad off and decided to dip for the floor above to get something to eat while being completely non-verbal (I go non-verbal in terrible moods, something both my mom and my sister would have realized by this point in time). Still can remember her shouting me down, and the whole colony was probably listening in on it, didn't really help she was on bad terms with my grandma already mostly because my grandma has been the polar opposite of what she was to us before my father passed away. Few minutes pass, I return, got fucking assaulted and while defending apparently me just grabbing her arm to prevent me from hitting caused it to twist a bit and cause her "immense pain", couldn't care less anymore, all I was doing was protecting myself, never hit her back, just blocked everything. Ended up going to bed that morning while she screamed, next thing I remember is her crying on the phone while talking to my sister. Things get resolved, but this wasn't the end.

Fast forward a year and a bit more later, my grandpa passed a while ago (on 01/02/2024) battling it out in the hospital. Naturally, my house is still in a depressive state coping with the lose, I however at least can forget shit faster because I am already desensitised after the death of my father and as of recently, the passing of my close friends grandma, said close friend being a literal clone of me in all honesty. But anywho, on the 05/02/2024, I had my chemistry practical exam, this was the final day where everyone would meet regardless of specific elective subjects, so we decided to make it count, ended up covering each other's lab coats in text from each other, I don't have my own lab coat, so I asked everyone to write stuff down on my shirt itself. There's way too much shit to cover but we did write a lot of deranged stuff, and took a lot, and a lot of photos, about 90~ and we were going to take more but a teacher told us to scram. A few hours ago while writing this (on 06/02; I'm writing this at 5:51 AM of 07/02, been writing for over an hour now), my sister wanted to look over some of pictures, reluctant at first, I agreed, she scrolled through them, there were a lot, questions were tossed out and everything was fine. Until she asked me to unlock my Instragram for her stating she "wants to look into profiles of my friends" to which I said "they don't post anything; only I do.", she still wanted to look into it, and I did say "just use your Instagram account" which was met with "I don't wanna appear online right now.", seems fine till now, right? This is where it all goes downhill. I denied, she tried to get our mom involved stating I am trying to hide something, which I really, do not, I just don't want anyone looking at my chats with my friends, is this really hard to understand? I went non-verbal and into the other room for a bit, came back to my mom barraging me with, and I shit you not, this sentence translated from Hindi:

"What are you doing? What are you trying to hide? Don't you trust us? What nefarious things are you upto that you are unwilling to let her in, we have our stuff open and free for you to read through, why don't you do the same, huh?"

Just because I "trust" you, doesn't mean you get to trip over my private space, the only thing you're doing is trying to say "HEY, WHY DO YOU HAVE YOUR OWN PHONE LOCKED AROUND ME? DO YOU NOT TRUST ME?". Trust is built on belief that the information you exchange with said person will stay with them, having privacy or autonomy is completely different. Why would I let anyone, family member or not, go through my texts without my permission and well after the fact that supposed trust has already been tainted?

What still pissed me off a bit was my sister trying to guilt-trip me by saying "I thought you trusted me, yet you cannot let me go through your Instragram?" NO FUCKING SHIT SHERLOCK I AM ALMOST A FULLY GROWN UP ADULT WHO NEEDS MY OWN SPACE, HOW FUCKING DENSE ARE YOU TO OVERLOOK THAT? YOU KNOW WHAT? HOW ABOUT YOU GO ON THE ROAD AFTER STRIPPING YOURSELF NAKED, WOULD YOU NOT FEEL VIOLATED???

Learning to say "No"

Inhales Well, guess this is a slightly harder one, I do not know what's up with Indian People but generally from what I've seen and many others have observed that people feel pressurized by their elders into not being able to deny a request and just, do anything, whether it's cosigning loans, or anything more basic, people just get deprived of their ability of denying requests or any free will. Maybe I lucked out in a way that consequences up to now have not been major for now denying any requests, or saying "no" to somethings. Honestly, I do see where people are coming from, when you look upto someone or some people, it's hard denying any orders of sorts. It just doesn't feel natural, no matter how wrong it might be at times. But you know what, that's ok, people eventually snap out of it, in the end, never have I felt so violated but today, I have yet to record what happened on the night of 5th here at my house, but that paired with what happened yesterday really broke the immersion I have people with me, I don't have anyone and I have firmly accepted that. God, I wish I would just tell a lot more stories like but I digress, not worth looking back onto the bad memories. I need to get past those, not fall behind, move forward. I am just fueled by way too much hatred and spite, and I think I will leave it at that. It does sadden me a lot seeing myself in a place where others often can not be, but maybe that's just how life is—Eternal Suffering. Nothing more, nothing less, just mountains of pain with no end anywhere.

Should I kill myself?

... Is what I would have asked myself if I was a lot, and I mean, a lot younger, the last 2 years have made me... bitter to say the least. But honestly, a the recent events have done only one thing, fuel my vengeance and hatred, I do not think I really have any family left, and maybe it's a bit too late to make amends. Honestly, it doesn't matter now, life always finds a way, and I'm hoping it does that soon again. This was a tangent I didn't really expect to go over some day, but here we are. I don't care if a family members discovers this, they can't really do shit about it. The truth is truth, out for everyone to look at now. You did this to yourself. Maybe I should have grown a spine a long time ago, instead of waiting it out, thinking I still had someone who had my back for me. You have proven to me that I cannot bestow anything onto you, let alone even talk sanely to. And I know some god forsaken human being will be out there being like "But Pichu, isn't this about privacy and respecting boundaries???" dog, the moment you trespass my space or violate my right to having one you also give up yours, fucking cope and seethe about that. I also know someone out there also thinks that I'm overreacting, can't blame someone who thinks being beaten everyday while being brought up is normal but okay buddy, you do you, keep justifying wrong actions and keep coping. But you know what? I don't need to rant more, I don't need to give this more time that it should have, I am going to end it off here, I have better stuff cooking in the kitchen for this blog at the moment and those will be spicy, but till then, cya~!