Sunday, February 11, 2018

Family... and I'm sure it will get to Love again:

My mom left China when I was 2, she left me to be shared on a month-to-month basis between my dad and my maternal grandparents.

I don't remember my time at my dad's, I've been told I cried before going there but I don't know if my memories are my imagination of a story or actual memories of an experience.

So the story goes, he either came to pick me up or to drop me off, I'm assuming pick me up because I was told I didn't want to go, and he raised his hand to hit me as my grandma stopped him and she smelled alcohol on his breath.

The following day he dropped all my stuff off, minus a vest he bought me. This is my grandma's version.

I then spent my time with my grandma and grandpa. They were like light and day. My grandma always talked trash about her family, while my grandpa would do anything for his. Both of them had really shitty siblings, so it was an interesting thing to observe.

My grandpa, taught me how to love. His ways were his own. He would put jasmine flowers by my pillow so I could wake up to the smell of those flowers.

He would hoard my favorite food for me, and sometimes he bought me inexpensive trinkets that reminded him of me. It was never about the gift, it was his way of showing he was thinking of me.

The way he looked at me, it never changed, even after I did something bad.

He was so frugal with himself. He cared about the planet by recycling water. He had a bucket in the sink he would wash his hands with and use the water to pour into the toilet instead of flushing. He would use napkins as toilet paper. But he was endlessly generous with his family. The one time I ask him for money to buy my mom a purse she wanted, his response, "how much?". He didn't even ask what I wanted to buy.

He way he would always make my favorite foods, he loved me with every meal he made me. He did the same for my grandma too.

But they fought like crazy. My grandma played herself to be the victim, but as I got older I realized it was all her. It's so sad the crap my grandma fed him the years prior to his death. She was so controlling she wouldn't let him have anything. I will never forgive her for how she treated him when he couldn't take care of himself. She failed. He spent his whole life taking care of her and she ended up treating him like crap, like a burden. I hope she dies alone for that.

My grandma was was abusive, verbally, emotionally, and physically.

My grandma told me I looked like a whore when I was 9yrs old over a fucking pair of clip on earrings.

I few years ago, I was filming a video under a waterfall and all of the sudden it brought back memories of my grandma and I. We didn't have hot running water growing up. Showers had to be taken cold, with boiled water or at a public bath house.

At the public bathhouse is where I remember looking at a teenage girl and thinking to myself, "I love her boobs." I can't wait to get older and grow boobs.

I also remember my grandma washing my hair, she would pull me so close to her stomach I couldn't breathe and I just hated going to the shower house with her because I didn't want her to wash my hair. Till this day, I have a very unstable relationship with water. Rain, showers, baths, pools, beaches. I like dancing in the rain, singing in the shower, soaking in the bath, swimming in the pool, laying at the beach. But other times I cry when it rains. I'm afraid to take showers/bathe, and I refuse to go in the pool/beach.

I still wonder if it was intentional because it was the only place she could hurt me without my grandpa trying to protect me.

She had this broom stick in her closet that she used to beat me with, and it got to the point where just her walking to the closet, I would run to the bathroom and hide.

The day I went home after my grandpa passed, that's the first place I ran to so I could break down and cry. I guess that was were I felt safe.

My grandma once told me she had a miscarriage before my mom, and my mom had an abortion before me. She constantly wonders what would happen if she never had the miscarriage, or my mom never had an abortion.

My mom: My mom is a scientist and does not understand my creative side. She too was abusive.

There were times she would say, "I'm too tired to hit you, hit yourself." and I would.

My mom made me hit myself. It's difficult to admit that.

I didn't do it very hard because that's stupid but that's a low thing to do to a kid who is 9 or 10 years old. I try to block this out but I sometimes wonder if that's why I tolerate maybe even like abuse from non-family because I was told that it was love.

"Hitting is affection, scolding is love." That is the translation of a very well known Chinese saying used by my grandma and mom.

Other times she would just ignore my presence for days, weeks or months at a time. She would feed me and take me to school but she wouldn't speak or even look at me. She made me feel like a burden.

In my darkest hours, I needed my mom to tell me everything will be ok and she said, "I can't because I don't know." I realized she's not capable of comfort, nor unconditional love.

Last March, she expressed a desire to kill herself, which considering her response to other people's threat, is "just do it". It was really sickening to hear her voice in my head saying "just do it" as a response to her own threat. How vile.

I'm still sick every time I hear her threat, then her own voice in my head say "just do it" because that's what she said in regards to suicide threats prior when they were not coming out of her mouth.

(My mom's friend's daughter, who is younger than me died from suicide. I promised my mom I would never do that to her.)

It put me in this funk like "Fuck, she doesn't respect me enough to stay alive, what's the point of me living now." The promise I made my mom, kept me from exploring those dark corners of my mind.

But hearing her not care about me. I said fuck it.

Based on a hand written journal entry in July, I lost my motivation.

I lost my drive. I started to ask myself, "What is the point to living". "What drives people to get up and want to keep living?", "Why are there not death clinics where people can just say, "Ok, peace. *deuces*". "We did not choose to live, so why can't we choose to die?".

This didn't mean that I too was contemplating the action of killing myself. Though, I admit there were times, I had to actively fight my thoughts to keep myself from going there.

I was trying to question the meaning of our existence. "What makes us fundamentally want to survive?" I mean there's so many people on this Earth, "Why are we all trying to keep living?".

My mom reached out and asked me to visit in October. This time she told me she wished I was never born, how we no longer have to see each other, and make sure I get everything. Again calling me a selfish little bitch but I couldn't help but point out to her, that's how I was raised I was an only child She said I was just like my grandma and again I was like, "uh my grandma raised me". She compared me to my cousins, and I had to point out, "they had different parents, and they had each other." I was done.

My uncle didn't feel the need to read any of my text messages regarding his sister because he empathizes with my mom and not me.

Without the fear of my family's judgement. I was starting to feel a sense of freedom, like a huge burden off of me. The pressure of living up to their standards as an only child. My fear of shaming my family is what kept me from embracing my choice of job/living. Not having that family to worry about made me feel fearless. Like I had nothing to lose.

I started to consider what I want out of my own life now that they are not in it. Like, "What do you want for yourself.". Knowing I don't have my family to fall back on financially, I started to consider all the different ways to make money. It was from dancing that I realized I never learned to say, "no".

I decided to chase furiously after my dreams because my family were the ones that kept me grounded/realistic/pessimistic. In reality, life is a mix of everything. We need them to keep grounded, to be optimistic, while realistic. It is the impossible: what we ask of our parents, seriously. 

I know I'm an adult when I see my parent's flaws, and I no longer idolize her as my Wonder Woman. I just see her as weak for not being able to pick herself up. I see her as cold for not being able to love the way I want her to love. I see her as fragile and unstable, and because of that, she terrifies me.

I started having this desire to love, I wanted to love unconditionally the way my mom was not capable of. For the first time in my life, I truly wanted to have kids of my own. Not just adopt or give my eggs to others, or hire a surrogate but actually birth them myself.

I keep thinking what if I have a kid and she repeats the words my grandma said to me. My grandma has threatened suicide and told me she wished my mom and I were never born. My mom is saying the same thing. My fear of becoming like them, I simultaneously pushed away those that I already care about because I was afraid they would leave me too. Oh the irony right?

In this last year, I didn't just lose my mom, I lost my idol and pushed away my friends.

  • I want to actively live in the moment, be in the present, focus, aware of my surroundings, thoughts, and actions. 
  • I want to keep my goals in sight so that I am always striving towards them. 
  • I want to open myself to love by trying to consider another person's perspective, and when in doubt, to ask instead of assume that I know how they feel because I probably don't. 
  • I want to strengthen the relationships I have in my life, and share my victories with people who support them.  

I looked at this post, and I'm saddened by how evident it is that my brain remembers the bad more than the good. But I am trying desperately to retrain my brain, as well as keep the memories of my grandpa alive, to reach out and love like he did.



No comments:

Post a Comment