A back and forth between present and past

It was the creaking of the cafe's door that brought you back to the present, you take a sigh, you feel grateful that the lingering thoughts were gone, but you keep wondering: why are they popping up?

Why is it that every time you feel like you are having the greatest time of your life, there is something in the back of your mind that drags you back to a part of your past, a past where you felt trapped, controlled, moulded and miserable. You keep searching through your memories hoping that the joys overshadow whatever you were feeling, but it never does.

But why did you feel all those things, you, who was raised in a loving family should not be feeling all these things. Of course your family isn't perfect but you know they weren't the reason why you felt like that. Could it be something you experienced? A sadistic / demeaning teacher? A bully? But those were minor incidents that you laugh with your friends about now. So what was it? You try digging deeper in to your cerebral cortex hoping to find an answer at the end of the rabbit hole.

And then it hits you, ( not a slap ) but the thought that it wasn't something that happened to you specifically, it was a series of repetitive images of horrors you witnessed as a child, you saw teachers displacing their anger towards students in the form of slaps, kicks, sticks or worse: insults. You saw how bullying was the norm, you saw how the authorities laugh when someone went to report the abuses, you saw how the teachers part of discipline committees were more interested in making the lives of children miserable than teaching their respective curriculum, you saw teachers skipping important sex education in the reproduction chapters but then blaming a teen if she gets pregnant, you saw how accessing the internet was considered a taboo, you saw how the only solution to ever improving a child's future was to beat the future out of them. You felt trapped, controlled, moulded and miserable.

And after all that, you are told by your peers, who themselves have suffered all these incidents, some in much worse way that they are grateful for the organisation, that they feel a sense of unity, that inspite of the organisation letting all these happen right under their nose, they still love them. If only there was a word for it, guess what? There is, its called Stockholm Syndrome and you my friend, are Monica Gaztambide of Money Heist but unlike the show, The professor didn't offer you freedom, instead they stole it.

Author's note: This is purely fiction and whatever written above has not happened in real life, or has it?