In the face of continuous "exploitation" of the family, why are girls willing to obey? Unfortunately, it is not because of love, but just kidnapped by the so-called "affection".
Story time: 1990-2019
Story location: a city in Fujian
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There was one thing my mom had been nagging about for decades, and she still used it as a perfect proof of my dad's absurd whereabouts. She said that my father once said that he was going out to buy salt, and it took many months to come home. Of course, I came home without salt.
"Escape" was the theme of my father's life. For the past 29 years of my life, my father was a man who was ready to escape.
It is said that he grew up like this. At that time, he jumped out of the window of the classroom where he was attending class, did not take his school bag, fled the school, and interrupted his studies.
After starting a family, he continued to flee. Escape from the role of husband, escape from becoming a father. The school had a parent-teacher conference, and he promised me to do it. I lay on the balcony and watched him go downstairs. But the next day, the teacher would still ask me why my parents didn't come again. I asked him, and he said that he hadn't gone there temporarily.
There are two main reasons why my dad "disappeared.". One is greedy play, and the other is good gambling. When he was young, he was mainly playful, and he went to many places alone, leaving ironclad evidence in my family's photo album.
But soon, good gambling replaced greed, becoming the main reason for his "disappearance". In gambling, my father was really an unintelligent person, and even if the good cards were in hand, he always ended up in fiasco. You can never reason with a gambler. In fact, my dad lived a very frugal life, but the feeling of being desperate as an outlaw was addictive to him.
At first, he disappeared from the eyes of his creditors, hurried home, and like a cat who had made a mistake, resolutely and softly shrunk under my brother's desk, he called me to seal the exit with a chair, and told me to say that he was not there no matter who came.
At that time, I just felt frightened, and I had a little shallow sympathy for my father for a six- or seven-year-old child, helping him cover up the past. When I grew up, I suddenly remembered this scene, realized how embarrassed he was, and since then the reverence for the role of "father" has disappeared.
Later, my father simply disappeared from home. Irregular disappearances, irregular returns home. As short as a few days, as long as a few months. My mother said coldly to the creditors who came to collect the debt: "I also want to know where he has gone, and if you find it, tell me." ”
To be honest, when I was a child, I didn't have too much sense of loss about my father's disappearance. As long as he was there, the house was always filled with the quarrels between him and his mother. So most of the time, he wasn't home, and I was at peace. Moreover, at that time, he often brought me the gifts he had collected when he was "wandering" outside. I've been given small yellow tops, chubby pens with five different color refills.
Once, he brought me back a doll, which was a very fashionable doll at the time, and a pair of beautiful eyes would automatically close when lying down. I envied my cousin's foreign English name for her doll, and Dong Shi gave my doll a four-different English name "Siri".
Ciri stayed with me for a long time. From kindergarten to high school, I made her clothes, tied her hair, told her stories every night, and carried her to sleep. There was a time when I stopped using the refrigerator at home to save electricity bills, so I built a home for Siri in the discarded refrigerator. In order to keep Siri healthy, I even coated the refrigerator with medicine, so that when the refrigerator was put back into use, my mother had to wash it hard to let the strong smell of medicine dissipate.
Ciri is so important to me. She was the ironclad proof that my dad loved me—my dad hardly brought me a gift after elementary school—and I could trust that my dad loved me just by looking at her.
Until high school, my mother, out of the generosity of a bored adult, insisted on giving Ciri to her cousin. The first time my mom said her decision, I stopped her with tears in my eyes. My mom was so humiliated and angry that she couldn't accept that her daughter was still obsessed with "toys" in high school, so when my cousin came to my house for the second time, my mom shoved Ciri into her arms on the spot, despite my objections.
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As a child, creditors made our family uneasy.
After the demolition of the old house, we moved into the idle house of my aunt's family. After that, my father went to Chengdu to work. The creditors would still come to the door, and my mother would let me lie with my brother that they were divorced, and neither of us knew where My father was. No, my mother sent them away with money ranging from twenty to fifty.
Inevitably, my brother had a period of petty theft, and then "gloriously" inherited his father's business and became the second man in our family who often disappeared. Inevitably, the mother becomes a sensitive, grumpy, self-pitying middle-aged woman.
I never heard a word of praise from my mother in my father's mouth. The two men in the family were always absent, and she viciously accused them of not being, and then started to get angry at me.
Once, my cousin came to my house for dinner and joked that your family had eaten too lightly, and it used to be big fish and meat. Perhaps it was the contrast between the present and the past that stimulated her mother, who suddenly dropped the bowl in her hand and expelled her cousin from the door. My cousin felt incredible, and looked at me with sympathetic eyes.
Until now I didn't know much about how to get along with my mother, but I understood all the unreasonableness in her eyes from outsiders.
At that time, my mother was busy making money, working overtime in the factory until late at night every day, my brother was outside every day, and I was basically in a "solitary" state at home. In order to get a little love, I always deliberately slept on the couch, and when my mother came back from the night shift, she complained and carried me back to the bed in the room. A few steps from the living room to the room, it was my most intimate moment with my mother.
I miss my father in Chengdu, write to him, and keep writing with a vision of my father's image, and the letters are all irrelevant nonsense, such as I am very well-behaved, I have good academic performance, and so on. My father never replied, and he called home from time to time to say he had received it.
Then one day, my father's unit called and said that my father was missing again. A few days later, my father showed up at home without a suitcase. This time, he owed a gambling debt in Chengdu and fled in a hurry. His mother borrowed a sum of money for him to take back to Chengdu to pay off his debts. She couldn't forgive him for leaving all his clothes and bedding in that place.
Author Figure | As an adult, the author went to Chengdu to play, and then went to Kangding
This time, my father stayed at home for a few days. One day at noon, my mother washed my father's clothes on the way to "escape", took a stack of letters from her pocket, and threw them on the table. I thought happily that this must have been the reply that my father had written to me over the years, and I couldn't wait to open it. As soon as I opened it, I was stunned, with strange handwriting on it, sandwiched between a few photographs, faces I didn't recognize—a middle-aged woman and a girl older than me. On the letter, the girl called him "Daddy", and the handwriting was clear and smooth—I must say here, perhaps I exaggerated the beauty of the letter in my memory, but at that time I immediately felt groundless at the thought of my crooked, frivolous letter.
The shame of contrast strikes first. Subsequently, I suddenly realized that my father was carrying not my letters at the moment of emergency "escape", but some bullshit daughter letters and photos that I did not know. It was a symbolic moment of destruction for me, and I understood thoroughly that I was not that important in his life.
At that time, I was still a little girl full of fantasies, and I tried to regain my father's love in just a few days. After school, I couldn't wait to run home and use my contrived and shy voice to recite the texts assigned by the teacher to my father. He wasn't listening. Or rather, he vividly interprets "left ear in and right ear out". He picked up his pen and signed the textbook at will, as if it were a routine for civil servants in government agencies.
Since then, I've noticed the absent-minded look on my father's face. He was right in front of me, within reach, but I felt like he was far away. His soul was sucked somewhere far away, and I still don't know what sucked him away. But this absent-minded expression grew on his face and never dissipated again.
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When my father disappeared from his unit in Chengdu again, we had moved into a new home that was compensated after the demolition.
Because there was no money to renovate, the new house did not even change the light bulb, using the inferior yellow bulb left by the builder, flickering and dimming. That dim tone, along with the uneven walls, cast a strong sense of decay in my heart, and this sense of decay still lingers in my heart. I never invited any of my classmates to the house, and my mom wouldn't allow it—she was ashamed and wouldn't allow me to bring it.
My brother continued to stir up trouble. He became a famous bully in our school. The flag is raised every Monday, and my brother is always named for the one who criticizes. He often quarreled with my mother, began to imitate my father to play missing, and took my mother's money, and spent all day in the Internet café. Sometimes, he would block me on his way to school in the early morning and ask for my meager pocket money.
Once, the school organized us to participate in social practice at the technical school in the next town for a week. Just before leaving, I learned that my father was missing again.
When I came home that night, my aunt and aunt were at my house. My mom obviously cried. Seeing me coming, the adults tried to pretend to be calm. But who I am, I have been trained from a young age to be too sensitive to nerves. I could piece together the message from their words and expressions: this time, my father was addicted to gambling in Chengdu, owed money, seemed to have been beaten up, and disappeared overnight.
During the whole social practice, I was restless, and I thought I was going to lose him completely. A week later, I came home and saw that my father had come home. He hunched over in front of the battered, little box-like television, watching the news program absently.
Supposedly, I should have been very excited and ran up to hug my "lost and regained" father warmly. But I didn't, I just smiled and said to him, Dad, you're back.
This time my father never returned to Chengdu, after that, he and my mother went to work in different cities around their hometown, and my brother resolutely refused to go back to school and went to work with my father. I was fostered in a relative's house and lived carefully.
When I went to high school, they all came back somehow. Father is still "on the run", mentally. As soon as he was at home, he turned on the radio, turned up the volume, lay down in a recliner, closed his eyes, and pretended to be asleep. When the meal is served, it automatically wakes up again.
Because it had been so long since my family of four had lived together, I didn't know much how to get along with my family who suddenly appeared. I used to wake up at 3 a.m. by the noise of arguing at home, so I turned on the radio, put on my headphones, turned up the volume, imitated my dad's method, and fled the here and now.
The three years of high school were the most painful three years of my life so far. My personality became very eccentric, and almost no one in the class paid attention to me. My mother and I had a few very serious arguments. One of them, I wanted to die when I was in a fight. My family lives on the 8th floor, and the roof is on the top floor, and I rushed toward the door, intending to jump on the roof. My mom pulled my hair into the house. Desperate, I called my dad, and I couldn't stop crying, begging him to hurry home and save me. My dad hung up the phone.
It wasn't until nightfall, when I calmed down and locked myself in my room, that my dad came back. He didn't knock on my door or wonder what was going on. Instead, my mother couldn't stand me shut in the room, slamming the door hard and scolding me at a volume that could be heard on at least three floors.
I think my father may have been tired of all this. I also knew that I would never count on him. I hated my hysterical look, my desperate search for love from someone who didn't love me. I decided to leave here as soon as I had the chance.
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After work, I helped my father pay off his gambling debts. The huge sums of money that I thought of as a child have long since become worthless in the course of time.
But things didn't get better. In those years, my father came down from the gambling table and was once again hooked on the lottery. He asked me for money a few times. On the phone, he sounded like he was going to cry, he begged me lowly, told me how others threatened him, I was distraught, looked down on him and worried about him, and did not know how to refuse. Finally, I transferred the money to him and warned him not to do so again.
I never cried in front of my father. Every time I hung up my father's phone, I would desperately call a good friend of mine. As soon as he picked up the phone I started crying until I hung up and he didn't know what was going on. For a long time, I lived a very frugal life because I was afraid that I would have to fill the pit at any time. I use the cheapest shampoo and shower gel, hardly buy clothes, use creams for no more than 50 bucks, and no skin care or makeup other than that. More than ten dollars of dishes, enough for me to eat at least 3 days.
Until I was truly relieved, I never told anyone about my family. In fact, I feel like I'm covering up very well. Many colleagues think that I am a well-behaved girl who has been well-educated since I was a child - this is a big misunderstanding. They don't know that everything that I have hidden under the calm of the wind and waves is so unbearable.
And my warning to my father was clearly ineffective.
One year when I came home during the Mid-Autumn Festival, I received a call from my mother while I was still on the train, asking me to go to my aunt's house after the station. As I stepped into my aunt's house, the familiar feeling of suffocation reappeared. With no fortune in his life, he once again owed a bunch of debts and disappeared.
In the WeChat family group, everyone except me was scolding him, including my brother. They all said they hoped he would actually die this time — it wasn't a joke, they were serious.
I couldn't understand it. How can one person want another person to die? No matter how serious a mistake he makes, who has the right to despise life and hope that death will happen to another person? I said in the group, that's my dad, please don't say that. No one paid any attention to me.
In the middle of the night, an uncle who was not related by blood called me and taught me in the tone of an elder that I should stay in my hometown, deal with family problems, and not live outside so selfishly. I leaned back on my cousin and began to tremble, and the tears that had been held during the day finally couldn't help but fall down, and I said why I had to solve everything, I would be tired, why from childhood to adulthood, I couldn't get any comfort. After hanging up the phone, my cousin hugged me.
The next day, my mom thought about it and let me go home. In the early years of the South, the neighborhood was equipped with a storage room, usually located on the lowest floor, a small one, used to store bicycles and sundries. That night, my mom found my dad in the pantry. He lay scruffily on the abandoned couch, silent in the darkness.
When he was carried upstairs by my mother, he started to drop things, TV sets, remote controls, tables and chairs, and my mother began to scream, and my brother told him to roll. He hid in my arms and couldn't stop crying, saying that he could only rely on me for the rest of his life. I held him, and he was thinner than I could remember, and I couldn't help but worry that he would fall apart at any moment.
It was the closest I could ever remember from my dad, and we were in each other's arms, and we've been swapping identities ever since.
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My dad's most recent accident was when he took someone else's ID card to open a credit card, until the limit was empty and the bank contacted the other party, and he couldn't hide it. When I heard the news, I was writing in the library, and when I received a call from home, my heart fell like a scale, sinking down. I packed up my things and walked along the way back to the rental house, crying as I walked.
Because I helped pay off my debts and help my family renovate the house, I didn't have much savings. At the behest of my parents, I gave them all the money in my bank card. I told them that I really couldn't do anything about the rest, and begged them not to look for me for this kind of thing in the future.
Later, my father took my money to pay off his credit card, borrowed some more from elsewhere, and repaid the borrowed money himself every month. At present, it seems that the bottomless pit is finally filled.
I was still afraid at any time, lest the accident come again. I've been at the bottom of the lake, unable to go ashore, controlled by the feeling of suffocation — whenever I want to embrace happiness like a normal person, my family can immediately pull me back to the bottom of the lake with the touch of a finger. Doom is like a time bomb strapped to me, ready to detonate at any time.
I see a tragic side in myself. No matter how hard I tried to fight for independence, I was still kidnapped by the so-called "family affection", and when it came to the family, I unconsciously became a supporter of patriarchy that I did not agree with at all.
This year's Spring Festival, I accompanied my father to play in the Jiangnan area. One day when we were tired of walking at noon, we both entered the restaurant, ordered two bowls of wontons, and ate each other face to face. The hot soup was in the stomach, the sun was strong, and both people were sweating.
Author Figure | Traveled to Gangnam with his father
At some point I looked up at my father through the glare of the sun, and suddenly felt that the person in front of me was very strange, and we were like two strangers who had just come together by chance. He was thinner than I could remember, and when he ate hard, his face wrinkled up, and a few gullies emerged, cutting the face to pieces.
I suddenly realized that I had never figured out what my father looked like, and this "strangeness" terrified me.
I have to admit that I never knew my father. On the surface, at this moment we "abandoned" our mother and happily traveled together, but in the process of playing, I did not feel the slightest happiness, like an exhausted old donkey, looking down at the road, not interested in enjoying the scenery, and unable to really relax. The reason why I was willing to come out to play was to use this as an excuse to return to Beijing as soon as possible.
I had to leave, and leaving was my only way to save myself and the oxygen I relied on to survive. I admit that most of the time, I don't settle things out of love, but out of fear of getting caught up in trouble.
I don't get close to my family and I'm not very good at dealing with intimacy. All my relationships are very short. I was extremely insecure, but I never asked for security from anyone else. In fact, as soon as I realized that the other person might intend to be with me forever, I immediately fled like a spring. Once an uncle who was more than twenty years older than me confessed to me, and when he said, "I'll be as good to you as your dad," I almost threw up. Although I just pretended to be calm and said, "Hey, you'd better know what my dad did to me." ”
Many girls who lack their father's love will grow up to desperately find help, but I don't seem to have any plans, and I firmly believe that I can't get married in this life. To be honest, I don't hate my father. But because there is no hatred, I feel very afraid. Because I always feel that hate is born of love. So I'd rather hate him myself, and hate him with my teeth like my brother did. I don't want to admit that the love in my heart is pitifully small.
- END -
The author is Fang Xiaoye, a freelance writer
Edit | Wen Lihong
This article is created by the author of the Tree Project [@True Story Project], and is exclusively published in today's headlines, and may not be reproduced without authorization.