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Mother and daughter who become "sick friends": see each other and redeem each other

In 2020, the 56-year-old Su Min made up her mind to live for herself once, and she drove away from her original life, which was nearly two years.

Du Xiaoyang, 34, is Su Min's only daughter. She didn't know much about her mother. She was born into a traditional family full of quarrels, and the parents were expressive. In the impression of Du Xiaoyang in her childhood, Su Min was always sullen and unhappy, and she was also infected with this unhappiness, and even blamed her mother's unhappiness in her heart.

It wasn't until Du Xiaoyang became the mother of twin boys that she slowly began to understand Su Min. A few years ago, Su Min and Du Xiaoyang were diagnosed with depression, and the mother and daughter who became "patient friends" saw each other and redeemed each other.

When her mother was away from home, Du Xiaoyang, who was raising children at home full-time, became her agent, responsible for editing short videos of her mother's outings. Protruding from the daily trivialities to admire the poems taken by his mother and the distant places, Du Xiaoyang had a wonderful connection in his heart. She sat on her mother's former bed and pulled the picture frame by frame, and saw a woman named "Su Min" who had removed the identities of her mother and wife.

Du Xiaoyang told the Beijing News reporter that his mother's journey will continue, "her other world is in the vast world." ”

Photo of 2-year-old Du Xiaoyang and his mother Su Min. Courtesy of respondents

The following is Du Xiaoyang's dictation:

"Superficially normal family"

Before I was four years old, my family lived in the fertilizer factory staff dormitory in Fugou County, Zhoukou. I remembered it as rows of brick bungalows, a family of three crammed into a cubicle. My mother worked in a fertilizer factory, my aunt and grandmother helped me take me for a short time, my father was almost not involved in child-rearing, and the heavy responsibility of going to work with the baby was on my mother.

Mom was busy and rarely sat down. In winter, she always squatted in the narrow bathroom, scrubbing the family's clothes, her hands were frozen red, I argued with my mother for food, put my face on my mother's back, felt her warm back, and sometimes I slept like this.

For as long as I can remember, the home has always been full of "wars". A few days of a small quarrel, a month of a big quarrel, the reason for the quarrel is nothing more than "money", the mother said that the father spent money indiscriminately, the father felt that the mother managed more. Our family is more special, has always been the AA system, from childhood to adulthood, my daily expenses, tuition fees are about 70% or 80% of my mother's burden. It was hard for me to get money from my dad, and he could hide as long as he could.

My mother had no income when she was pregnant with me, and it was difficult to reach out to my father for money. Since then, she has never used her father's money again. After she was laid off, she set up dumpling stalls, swept the streets, sold newspapers, and did a lot of odd jobs. I used to go to her dumpling stall after school to eat dumplings and help her sell newspapers, and she has always been very capable and strong, and she has never shouted a hard work.

Around the third grade of my elementary school, relatives at home introduced my father to a job as a worker in Zhengzhou, he first went to Zhengzhou, and a year later, my mother and I also moved to Zhengzhou. As long as Dad is at home, Mom is careful when talking, walking, and doing things. She can't decide anything in the family. Even watching TV, she had to wait for her father to sleep before she sat down on the couch and picked up the remote control.

When there was no quarrel, our house seemed normal on the surface. On my birthday when I was about seven or eight years old, my parents took me to the park to play, and the family could sit peacefully together for a meal, which was one of the few warm moments I remembered.

A pair of daughters of our neighbors were about the same age as me and often invited me to their house for dinner, and their parents were very gentle, and their faces were always smiling, and I was sad to shed tears, and the normal family was like this.

My mother never divorced for me. She was afraid that people would laugh at me for being a divorced child of my parents, afraid that I would not be able to find a boyfriend when I grew up, that I would be looked down upon, and that I would not be able to lift my head in front of my classmates and friends.

My grandmother always advised her that she could almost get by. Grandma and Grandpa also played and played when they were young, and now they are making it up. When I was a child, I didn't know anything, I didn't know that my father was abusing me, I could call the police, and I didn't know how to persuade my mother to divorce, and my only feeling was that my mother was always depressed and always sighing. In fact, parents are unhappy, children will also be infected with this unhappiness, I would even blame my mother's unhappiness in my heart at that time.

At the beginning of the third year of junior high school, I lived in school, and the whole adolescence was slow and leisurely, and my academic performance was not very good, but I got rid of the shackles of my family and gained freedom. My mother should know that she did not break it, but she was not enlightened, but life was strictly pressing on her, and she really had no time to take care of others.

Our family is a very traditional Chinese family, and there is almost no heart-to-heart communication between parents and children. I don't know my mother, the media has reported many stories about her, and I have heard it for the first time, and perhaps the only person who knows her best is herself.

Du Xiaoyang's childhood photo with his mother and grandmother. Courtesy of respondents

"How did it bleed so much?"

After graduating, I went to work as a clerk at a company. When I was in love, my mother never urged me to get married, and she didn't talk to me about my father, and we maintained this tacit understanding very well.

The biggest influence of such a family on me is that I am easily attracted to mild-tempered men. My husband and I were introduced by friends, he was smiling and squinting, he seemed to have a good personality, and we naturally fell in love and got married.

On my marital issues, my mother rarely interfered. The first time I took my husband home, my mother said that (my husband) was okay looking and had a good personality. She was also very concerned about my husband's character.

On the day of the wedding, I sat on the wedding car and caught a glimpse of my mother, her eyes were red, as if she was going to cry out in the next second, but maybe there were too many people around, and she was so noisy that she held back her tears. In fact, I don't have too much feeling, and it is not that the daughter of the ancients cannot return to her mother's house when she gets married, and my mother is sometimes very emotional.

The process of my pregnancy was not easy, I kept running to the hospital to do various tests, and when I was five months pregnant, I couldn't walk and simply quit my job. On the day of the cesarean section, Mom and Dad and My Husband both came. After the operation, I heard my mother nervously say to my husband, "How did you bleed so much?" ”

I gave birth to a pair of twin sons, initially the mother-in-law and the sister-in-law to help take care of, the mother-in-law is not in good health, and can not come with the sister-in-law, did a few days and then went back. I could only ask my mother to come, she cooked at my house, washed this and that, and waited for my husband to come back from work at five o'clock to change shifts, so that she could rest.

My dad came to stay at my house later. One is because he doesn't have a mother cooking for him at home, and the other is that he likes my son very much and is willing to come over and take the handle.

My parents had been separated for many years, and when they came to my house, they simply bought a bunk bed to sleep in, but dad's arguments with mom still didn't stop. Once, when her mother fainted while caring for her child, she was taken to the hospital and found that there was insufficient blood supply to her brain, and the doctor suggested that she go to the psychiatric department again, and she was diagnosed with moderate depression.

After giving birth, I was with my child 24 hours a day, without my own life, without hobbies, without socializing, as if everything had been cut off before, and such a day would not be a day or two, but would last for three years. During that time, my mood became unusually low and irritable, because with the precedent of my mother being diagnosed, my husband also asked me to check it out, and sure enough, I found postpartum depression, fortunately, it was only mild.

My mother and I suddenly became "patient friends", we tried to enlighten each other, I told my mother, after two years, it will be good, wait for the child to go to kindergarten, then you can play how you want to play, my mother's reply is only faint.

Mom has no friends, and her hobbies are brushing short videos and reading cross-over novels. She signed up for an account to edit short videos before she drove off, and she learned by herself, using these software to be more profitable than me.

Only gao Chinese's mother has always been very strong in self-study, and I remember when I was in college, she worked in my uncle's factory and learned EXCEL watchmaking by herself. Mom still likes to drive, she took the driver's license two years before me, when the family had a van, but mom always had to look at dad's face when she drove, so she borrowed money to buy a small POLO.

Du Xiaoyang and her twin sons. Courtesy of respondents

"Runaway from home" mom

One day in 2019, my mom brushed up on a self-driving blogger who told me she wanted to go too, and I thought she was just talking about playing. Later, once, the two of us took the children to play in the park near the house, and she told me that she wanted to travel by car, and my mother showed me a female blogger on her mobile phone, who had been out playing for several years after several years of divorce, and she said that a person was safe and could drive to wherever she lived.

From what I know about my mother, I have no doubt about her determination to set off, but this is not a small matter, and I have no idea whether it can be done or not.

There are more couriers at home, and tents, tableware, and outdoor goods are piled up into hills. Dad teased, "I'll be back in a few days." "After the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020, the time for the child to go to kindergarten was postponed, and the father said happily that this could not go out. But all this still did not stop my mother from going out.

I still remember the day my mother left, my father went to play table tennis in the morning, I sent my child to kindergarten and came home, my mother finished packing up her things and told me that I was gone, everything was still light. I watched my mother drive away, and at first I was worried about her, she had never been far away in her life, and we had to make several phone calls a day.

After Mom was gone, nothing changed in Dad's life. He has his own circle of golfers and still happily plays every day. Only once did he ask me, where has your mother gone? I said that when I arrived in Xinjiang, he did not answer the phone again.

Mom's shooting equipment along the way is constantly upgrading. When she set out, she only took a domestic mobile phone, and when she arrived in Chengdu, she met her old classmate, whose son sold her an action camera cheaply, and later she bought an upgraded version. Now with her on the road there are laptops, action cameras, selfie sticks, handheld gimbals, tripods, drones, a lot of things that young people don't play very well, and she has a full meeting.

At the beginning, my mother's video was edited by herself, after the fire, we also cooperated with MCN (Net Red Economic Operation Company), but like we do self-media, we all know that working with the team is to be squeezed to work for others, and the money made is theirs, so later my mother's videos are edited by me, and the income is on my mother's account. The family would not be so clearly divided, and my mother did not ask me for a penny when I took the child.

Now I am my mother's agent, in addition to taking the child in my life is to cut films for my mother, I have to look at every piece of material she sends, I am the most familiar with her every move.

I like the most of my mother to Guilin that issue, before I only knew that Guilin has mountains and water, seeing my mother's photograph, I know how amazing the beauty of Guilin landscape is. In the midst of daily chores, I sat in the bed where my mother had slept before, and watched her walk all over the mountains and rivers, and it was a wonderful feeling, as if we were swimming with mother and daughter, and we had never had such a moment before.

As mom became popular, the story of our family became well known, and many comments blamed my dad, but it had no impact on his life, and dad didn't watch mom's videos or the reports and comments. Dad's friends would tell him about what his mother had told him, and he would always smile and go round.

Dad is such a person, he is very decent and thoughtful in front of outsiders, leaving the bad side to the family. Now Dad is back at home living alone, cooking his own meals, going out to play ball, and living comfortably.

Du Xiaoyang's childhood photo with his mother and grandmother. Courtesy of respondents

Mom, please live for yourself

Mom "ran away" for nearly two years, she traveled to more than 100 cities, changed a motorhome, and published a book.

It turned out that the POLO car she drove was written in my name, and this caravan was different, it belonged to her mother. Mom took a fancy look at it at a glance, the car dealer gave a discount, and Mom took a loan to take it.

Mom also published a book, which she dictated and wrote by someone else. The publisher approached me and wanted to write a letter to my mother from my daughter's point of view, which was included in the book, entitled "Mom, Please Live for Yourself."

Growing up, I wrote essays like "my mom", but I wasn't very impressed. In a family like ours, there is almost no emotional expression. I don't seem to have given my mother a Mother's Day, let alone a family reunion day such as the Mid-Autumn Festival and the Spring Festival, and there has been no sense of existence in our family.

Only when I became a mother did I understand my mother better, and the burden of sweetness and pressure was multiplied on my mother; the road I walked, my mother walked, and it was even more difficult to walk.

In the spring of 2022, Su Min bought a motorhome and started driving in a motorhome. Courtesy of respondents

After her mother became an "Internet celebrity", she had several fan groups, saying that she was a fan, and many of them also became friends, all of whom were aunts of similar age to her, who shared their travel and self-driving experiences in the group, and also poured out the bitterness in marriage and comforted each other.

Mom hadn't been home in the last two years, and I had only seen her three times. One time was after the Spring Festival in 2021, and the other was before the Spring Festival this year, when my husband and I took our children to Hainan to see her. Another time, a company came to shoot a documentary for us, and I took my two children to Wuhan to meet her, and we got along briefly for two days.

In the videos presented by her mother, she is Su Min, and when we meet her, the strong inertia pulls her back to the role of "mother", she handles everything, cooks, takes care of the children, in fact, I am quite conflicted inside.

But I still saw a huge change in my mother. In the past, her personality was relatively weak, but now the whole person is radiant, and her body exudes a state of relaxation and confidence. I watched her spend all day taking pictures of this and that, camping and chatting with friends, and I finally captured my mother's happiness.

Journeys are not always full of poetry and distance, but also have setbacks and difficulties. I remember once my mother's car tires broke, there was no way but to call me and my husband how to fix it, ask where our nearest service station is, but even if she encountered a big trouble, she did not want to back down.

Although her mother now has her own world, she has not thought of completely severing her marriage relationship with her father.

When I became an adult, I had a discussion with my mother about divorce. She is a very traditional woman, and she has no intention of doing so until now. She always said that there was no difference between being inseparable, she was afraid of divorce trouble, worried that if my father was sick, the burden of caring for my father would all fall on me. My dad also didn't mention divorce, and every time he only verbally gambled "away from it", there would be no action.

As a result, the parents reached a balance in this state. Dad has her own life, Mom has been on the road, I told her before, when you want to come back at any time, but I will not persuade her to come back, and see her current state has no intention of going home. Mom really loves to travel, and I think if it weren't for the pandemic, maybe she would have traveled abroad to travel the world.

My mother's step was very touching to me, and she had a valuable courage and strength in her. This does not mean that I will drive the country alone like her in the future, nor does it mean that I fully identify with the lifestyle of promoting my mother, I just see my mother's self outside of my mother's and wife's identity, and in addition to these labels, she is first and foremost a person.

Both seeing and being seen are important.

As for the future, according to her mother's personality, she should not want to buy a suite to live alone, so she can escape from the cement box and live back. Mom's other world is in the vast world.

Beijing News reporter Li Zhao, editor Chen Xiaoshu, proofread by Wu Xingfa

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