9th April, 2022
I had long thought of writing a book on various topics. It could be about science, history, or anything of my interest. After various experiences, I think I will write about my own experience, as a child, or daughter, who happened to live through family abuse, probably in diary form.
On keeping a diary
My mom had never really let me keep a diary. I’d had a few of them before, but one of them she had read it. She was always so strongly opposed to me for keeping one, and acted as if not keeping a diary or blog was a great achievement of the human race, possibly even greater than inventing COVID-19 vaccines. She kept pulling that face as she told me times and times again.
My uncle, to whom I really admired, turned out to be the same type of person as my mom that I found out one day. They refers to keeping a diary or any private things as some sort of infectious disease.
As I found out later, they don’t live impressing lives. If I could describe theirs in a word, that would be mediocre. They made the wrong decisions that made their lives miserable, then complain about it, and pretend like they’re not doing that. I do understand and sympathize for the fact that they were not as privileged as I am now, and that they had limited choices for their careers. But if you really understand yourself, and allow yourself to pause along the way, your course of life, and the decisions you make, could have been very different. Doing things because society pressure you to do was never a good way to live life. It was never about what you do, but how you do it. Accept or fight, then move on.
And it’s not entirely society’s fault. You always have the choice on how to react to what life brings, you just never realize that.
Keeping a diary helps you connect to yourself and live mindfully. What is the point of saving time if you spend the time you saved on shitty activities that doesn’t add any value to your life? And if you don’t like keeping one, then respect others who chose to have one, is it that hard?
Mom
I had perplexed feelings and reactions about my mom. Her reasons are valid and not valid at the same time. The environmental factors make sense, but she doesn’t realize she had choices on how to react. I agree that she had a stressful job, a crappy husband with outdated perspectives on life, raising children and hygiene, pressures coming from the society and her extended family. But using those reasons as “my sources of stress” and rationalize your toxic reactions to your children is wrong. There is no bargaining about it.
I and my sibling was never her daughters, but someone who “should go die yourself” and should “fuck off” this place (I’m not exaggerating.) And she would regrets giving birth to us, those useless pile of shits, burdens, and other lovely names in her collection that she gave to us in those moments. You could forget it, but we couldn’t. If you haven’t lived through toxic family, a living hell, you would never understand what it’s really like. So don’t say that we’re selfish, could you survive mentally if you happen to live in our lives?
Mom, if you are not capable of raising children, then why choose to get married in the first place? And if the person you dated alreay showed red flags before you got married, then choosing to continue, or to turn a blind eye, is also your fault.
A perfectionist she is, how she long to finish everything as quick and as perfect as possible. There is no other way, there is only one way. I must admit that my mom can manage tasks very well and finish them with the utmost quality. But the irony lays in the negative space. What’re you going to do with that saved time, after that much effort of finishing everything?
There is no time for mistake, dear. As she will shout at the very sight of you about to do a thing that she judged as nonsense. The only rational way to do or to exist is to do it quick, without contemplating of the consequences. Just get it done.
This does not stop at doing chores, working, but also generalize to the way she live her life. She wanted to get married fast because that’s how you’re supposed to live, and that’s how you can escape from society’s watchy eye for living outside of the mold.
If everytime my mom told me to be a normal human being I got a dollar, then I must have been richer than Elon Musk now. Do what you’re told, play it safe, and so on. Do not be different, be like us, live like us, play it safe, and live miserable lives, then complain to each others like we did.
Swimming against the current is not idiotic if the waters are racing toward a waterfall.
Thanks Nicolás Gómez Dávila. You can’t go far if you keep wearing that binoculars with your ridiculous tunnel vision.
Dad
I spent a lot of time thinking about how different my mom’s life could be if he had not met my dad. Although she’s toxic now, I believe we had a very similar starting point. She and I were very good at literature and other emotional things. Without all these stress she seems to be more human. The problem is you cannot know how her interaction with him changed her for better or for worse. It became impossible to separate her past self – the pristine one that haven’t lived through life’s toughest moments – and her present self – the toxic version that I happen to deal with on a daily basis. They’re intertwined.
My dad’s misogyny and sexism probably dated back to my grandparents’ time. I can’t forget times where he would sit and video call with his so-called relatives for hours on that damn sofa, when me and my mom do chores. Look at how he call my academic achivements bullshit, how I lack morals for “always being busy studying” and “not helping your mom.” What are you doing when we were busy with chores? You’re on that couch, laughing with your relatives, your nephews, and telling them sweet words that your wife and children have never had the chance to hear. Not even a thank you or sorry.
But what sucks the most in this misogyny series is probably how my grandparent and him demands my mom to give birth to a boy at the age of 47. My dad and his relatives probably had never learnt about probability and biology. The chance of getting a child with Down syndrome is higher than the chance of getting a boy, provided that you only have less than 10% of XY sperm count in your damn balls. And all the stress you caused her.
And he would scold the fuck off me for forgetting to invite him to the dinner table, that he had not bought or cooked anything in it. Well, that’s what girls are supposed to be doing, not his job. And I am the one who makes money so I can scare them off by saying how I'm not paying for their tuition. That's how you punish children that don't live up to your expectations. My achievements and financial dependence on him are what he used to pressure me.
If my mom is good at inventing mean names for us, then my dad is a genius at coming up with examples to illustrate his moral lessons for us. Wars and politics are used! And how brightly he sketched my future where I would be miserable for living my own life.
There’re people who always go “You have to look at yourself and your wrongdoings.” but never see how the problem start with them.
Parents
What tied these two contrasting personalities is what they have in common. There is a saying in Vietnamese that goes “A foe’s foe is a friend.” and I think it’s particularly true in our case.
What mom and dad have in common are their unrealistic expectations about us. You cannot demand your child to be a top student at school, to help you with chores, and to always be happy doing the two. Choose one, or two and be content about that. Isn’t it ridiculous to see how my dad would compare me to children from lower income family and say that they’re better than me because they have good morals and love their parents?
How can you love parents that beated you, called you names and treated you liked dirt? Don’t use “that’s how we teach kids” as an excuse, it’s all bullshit to us. No, thanks. Mental health and privacy are invented, fictional, abstract things that don’t exist to them.
This broken family
In the two world wars, Charles de Gaulle, the former president of France, had a famous quote.
France has no friends, only interests.
It’s the same to my family. No one really trusts anyone. My mom could be found badmouthing behind my back with my dad, and when her allies shift, she would do the same to me and my sister, stabbing dad from behind. How she made fun of my problems, and blamed me for “not telling her my problems ealier.” Doing such things need trust, how can you build it with this state of affairs and gossiping going on?
Remains
I’d been indicisive about writing and keeping posts like this. Many of my previous posts on different platforms were deleted because I didn’t want others to know about my problems. However, now that my perspective changed, I think stories like this deserve to be shared and sympathized. I hope you find debris of your life in this post, and if you don’t, you can hopefully be more understanding towards other. Everyone’s got their own shit, so don’t assume your problems is the most unique out there. We all suffer in different ways. Respect others’ pains and allow yourself to feel your own pain. We will heal again, it’s a continuous and beautiful process.
In spite of everything, I hope to understand my parents and where their weird ways of living came from. Although I don’t allow them to hurt me in any possible way, I hope I will understand them one day and make peace with myself. Whether they change or not, I don’t care. I don’t even know if I will continue to keep them in my life. When this relationship is beyond repair, I and them will part. There is no going back, undos, or Ctrl-Zs about this.
If you’re someone who know me and happen to read this post, I hope you can understand and respect my past, current and future decisions, even when you don't find them favorable to you.
Thank you.
Comentarios