Text | Mi Li's mother
Husbands and wives who grow old together are not necessarily in love, but may also be enemies and rivals.
Mi Li's mother saw a video of an interview with an 80-year-old grandmother whose wife had recently died.
The old grandmother did not feel the slightest sadness, not only was she not sad, she did not even shed a single tear.
My husband has a very bad temper, likes cold violence, and ignores people at every turn.
The longest time, often I didn't say a word to her for almost a year.
Moreover, before his wife left, he was sick in bed for several years, and his grandmother took care of him day and night, and now that he is finally gone, he can breathe a sigh of relief.
At this point, she couldn't even help but laugh out loud.
Grandma said that when she was young, she thought about not getting married, and she was still single at the age of 30. But then her mother persuaded her: If you don't get married, you won't even have someone to talk to when you're old.
She listened to this, so she met her husband under the introduction of others, and finally got married in her 30s, which is not considered early marriage even now.
But what she didn't expect was that no one spoke when she was married and old, and she had to hold her anger aggrievedly.
Looking back on that year, my grandmother regretted it:
He's a teacher, and I want to be a teacher, at least reasonable, right? I don't ask for anything else, his salary wasn't as high as mine at that time.
After getting married, I found out that I had stepped on a big thunder: my temper was stuffy and bad, and the two couldn't get along at all.
At this time, my grandmother came back to her senses: my wife has three sisters at home, who are the habitual babies of the whole family, and they are used to listening to him, so they can't communicate, they can't be reasonable, and they don't pay attention to people when they encounter problems.
Although the two lived a miserable life together, they never divorced.
The grandmother felt that as long as he was still a family of two, he still had the obligation to take care of him, so she kept suppressing disgust and helplessness until she sent her wife away.
Mi Li's mother listened to the grandmother's story, and there was infinite sadness and regret in her heart.
The wife has passed away, and it is difficult to judge the right and wrong, but it is a fact that the two have spent decades awkwardly.
Especially grandma, in the face of people who are not suitable and do not love, she has endured humiliation for so long, consumed a lifetime of time and happiness, and the sunk cost is huge.
And the origin of all this is that I took the wrong look before marriage.
Because I was confused by the professional aura of "teacher", I mistakenly thought that the other party had a kind personality and was easy to communicate;
Because of the lack of understanding of the other party's background, ignoring the stubborn "inferiority" caused by the original family;
It is also because of the conservative idea of "starting from the beginning to the end", mistakes will be wrong, and regrets when you are old.
Mi Li's mother has an elder who is in a similar situation. When he was young, he got married in a hurry in order to get married.
The other party is a civil servant, with a good family condition, a stable job and a solid family, so she didn't expect anything wrong.
However, when I got married, I realized how strange the other party was.
He was big on himself, but he picked and searched his wife and children, and the whole person was super negative, when she was only 28 years old, her husband hit her: You are married, children have been born, you are old, what are you still dressing!
Once the child woke up her husband by crying, and he slapped her with his backhand.
However, she always felt that her husband's job and conditions were good, and she couldn't find a better one after divorce, and she had children, so she still lived until now.
Mi Li's mother feels more and more that a cooling-off period should be set for marriage, and divorce should be cut through the mess quickly.
The so-called calmness is to disenchant the hardware aura of the other party's appearance, occupation, education, etc., and clearly realize that these things have nothing to do with you, character, personality, three views, family, these invisible and intangible software, these determine whether you marry a human or a ghost.
Once you find that there is a flaw in the software, don't be coerced by some conditions, face, or outside eyes that seem to be important but are not important.
Life is too short to waste. Live well for yourself, don't make senseless sacrifices, that just moved yourself.
Mi Li's mother remembered a case in "Dream Remodeler" before, which can be called Chinese-style horror.
The client, Xiao Sheng, appealed to help his half-dead father renovate his hometown hut so that he could enjoy his old age in peace.
At first glance, this is a very heartwarming and touching story, but as you dig it down, you realize how wrong it is.
Sheng's father was a middle school student who divorced when his child was 10 years old.
Here's how the show describes this:
Tired of the mundane and trivial life, he chose to leave and go in search of new happiness.
Isn't this "abandoning your family and children after cheating", it's really a basin with gold edges.
After Sheng's father divorced, he never had any obligation to support the child, and for so many years, Xiao Sheng lived with his mother and grandmother.
However, in 2019, the disappeared father suddenly and miraculously appeared:
Not because of the discovery of conscience, but because he was hemiplegic, half paralyzed, and needed to be taken care of. Not only does it need to be taken care of, but it's not a fuel-efficient lamp.
Send it to a nursing home, if you are a little uncomfortable, you will lose your temper and make the chickens and dogs restless;
Take it home to live, and I think the nanny is not serving well, so I changed 4 aunts in two months.
At first, it was grandma and Xiao Sheng who took care of Sheng's father together, but a year later, when grandma died, Xiao Sheng was a little powerless.
At this time, Xiao Sheng's mother, that is, Sheng's father's ex-wife, decided that she could take care of her ex-husband.
It's not that I miss the old love, but I feel sorry for my son's hard work every day, and I'm afraid that Sheng's father will become a burden and affect his son's marriage in the future.
I don't understand it here:
Sheng's father never took care of their mother and son after the divorce, and now that he is old and sick, he is very shameful.
If the son has the obligation to support him, there is no way, then why should his ex-wife still be a nanny for him?
Sheng Mu is not idle, on the contrary, her retirement life was originally very rich.
In particular, she loves table tennis, and after retirement, she often goes to training, and also runs competitions all over the world, which is very fulfilling.
However, the appearance of her ex-husband awakened the "soul of motherhood" in Sheng's mother's heart again, and the sense of responsibility of "wordless dedication" drove her to let go of herself again and continue to burn for this "family".
What's even more terrifying is that Xiao Sheng didn't feel sorry for her mother at all, and she didn't feel how cruel it was to let her mother clean up the mess for a man who had betrayed her, so she happily accepted it.
He even said that it was like going back to the warm times when the family was together... This family is indeed suffocating with the same three views.
The horror story isn't over yet.
The house was eventually transformed into a two-story small building with a yard, with his father occupying the first floor and Xiao Sheng and his mother on the second floor.
After the completion of the house, the father sat in a wheelchair and inspected the room surrounded by the child's mother, Xiao Sheng kept introducing:
Look, this is your yard, this is your room, this is your tea bar...
In this house, my father has the largest and brightest luxurious bedroom, and he can see the rockery in the yard from his bed.
If this son is not the heart of the Holy Mother, then I can only secretly speculate whether Father Sheng really has thousands of family fortunes to inherit.
Because compared with Sheng's father's "old luxury suite", Sheng's mother lives in the nanny room.
The space is cramped, as simple as a guest room, and I can't talk to my father in all aspects.
In addition to the regular furniture, there is also a washing machine and a dryer stuffed in the small toilet, which is beautifully named: convenient for mom to wash clothes.
What's even more ironic is the son's ulterior motives:
The bedside table is designed in the shape of a ping-pong racket, and a decorative painting made of ping-pong balls hangs above the toilet.
My son and the designer were very happy with these two designs: Look, we have taken into account my mother's hobbies!
But it seems to me that instead of engaging in these flashy things, I always remind my mother that "hobbies are dead, and they can only be hung on the wall."
On the commemoration", it is better to set up a table at home and let the mother really play.
This home can accommodate my father's chess and card table, tea table, and customized movable dining table, but it can't accommodate a mother's table.
What else does Mother have? A spice table that can be raised, a stove with automatic temperature control, so that she can be on call and don't have to worry about the kitchen fire not being turned off.
But what suffocates me even more than these is that Sheng's mother herself doesn't seem to be dissatisfied with this arrangement.
It can be seen that she is indeed willingly playing a victim and is satisfied with it.
When asked if she still hates her ex-husband, she replied:
I didn't hate it before, and it was a relief for me not to hate.
Although the words are good, but when she decided to be a full-time nanny for her ex-husband, I have to wonder whether this kind of non-hatred is really relieved, or is it domesticated to self-consistency by the moral requirement of "mother should sacrifice and dedication"?
Some people may say that this is Sheng's mother's own choice and her freedom.
But I want to say that having to be trapped in motherhood for the sake of my son, giving up self-growth, and making some senseless sacrifices and abandonments is not freedom, just as downward freedom is not freedom.
If such freedom is connived, there will only be more and more women who are exploited and domesticated without knowing it, and will only silently accept and endure, giving up their lives and values.
Mi Li's mother has always felt that whether a woman is doing well or not, what family she was born in, and what era she was born in, but the more critical factor is the degree of her awakening and the direction she chooses.
Mi Li's mother previously wrote about Su Min, a 58-year-old who ran away from her family by car, and a 72-year-old grandmother who robbed her marriage certificate to divorce despite the strong opposition of her children, they are all telling us with personal experience:
No matter what age or circumstance, as long as you break the lock in your heart and have the courage to pursue happiness, you still have the strength to change.
Two days ago, Mi Li's mother saw a plus version of Su Min's story.
Her name is Li Dongju, 66 years old, she has experienced divorce and depression, and she has ridden 12 countries in 8 years with a pension of 3,000 yuan per month.
Li Dongju was calm in the first half of her life, she was an ordinary female worker in Henan, and she retired to become a housewife at the age of 44.
However, her husband, who has been married for more than 20 years, cheated on her and abandoned her, throwing her into the boundless darkness.
For a long time, Li Dongju relied on playing games to distract her attention, trying to get out of her painful memories.
Later, her son took her to the hospital, only to find out that she had suffered from severe depression and mild Alzheimer's disease.
The turning point came in 2013.
Li Dongju was fascinated by a group of speeding riders, and she also began to try cycling, using a 1,000 mountain bike sponsored by her son to travel all over Zhengzhou.
Li Dongju was surprised to find that as long as her legs kicked up, her heart would fly far, far away, forgetting all her sorrows, and gradually stopped taking antidepressants.
Although she can only speak four sentences of English, she travels from Zhengzhou to Henan, from Southeast Asia to Australia, New Zealand, Monaco and France.
On the way, she was deceived and encountered obscene drivers;
She didn't have much money, slept in cemeteries, gas stations, rubbed on strangers' sofas, carried a solar panel with her to solve electricity problems, and bought discounted expiring food with local old ladies.
Even, she needs to save money while working to have the money to continue riding.
But even so, she is still like an addiction and never wants to go back:
"I pushed into my car like a bird flying out of its cage, and I was happy. Every day you see new scenery, new people, and nothing trivial to worry about. ”
When riding on an uninhabited road in Australia, she became a hot search figure on Facebook at that time and a local hero because she found a wildfire and found someone to put it out in time.
This was the first time she felt that in addition to being a wife and mother, she could also be recognized and praised as herself.
From a full-time housewife who relies on her husband and son, to a car and a dog, "riding alone for thousands of miles";
has changed from a chattering "Xianglin sister-in-law" type of unmarried woman to a lone wolf who doesn't talk much.
Li Dongju experienced divorce, depression, and suffered a layer of skin, only in exchange for a precious awakening, and realized the value of life, in the final analysis, it is to live the way you want, not to burn for others and extinguish for others.
Whether it is Su Min, Li Dongju, or the 72-year-old divorced grandmother, after living for most of her life, she finally understands:
In the sea of life, only sobriety, action and firm self are the life jackets for crossing the sea.
In turn, they took what should have belonged to them from the times and life, collided with the times, and then reconciled with life.
Although women have been pursuing freedom and emancipation for more than 100 years, spiritual evolution has always lagged behind real change.
Nowadays, many rich, educated, and capable women are still trapped by rotten marriages, and they will waste years entangled with rotten people, and even willingly self-objectify, sacrificing, suffering, and self-satisfaction.
However, no matter what kind of life choice a woman makes, Mi Li's mother doesn't want to be criticized and antagonized, I can only feel regret and regret.
Even if the "Holy Mother", "Wife", and "Female Competition" are disdainful and criticized by the public, they are just latecomers of the times, and what they need is time and patience to grow.
After all, isn't the road that the predecessors used blood to get out of just so that the later sisters can keep up more steadily and better?
In the previous generation of women, some people woke up and finally let go of their obsessions in the second half of their lives and lived for themselves.
About the author: @米粒妈爱分享 (welcome to pay attention), American returnee, Haidian parent, Dangdang new book list No. 1 "Parent-child English books that affect children's lives" author. Focus on the scientific upbringing, learning and enlightenment of 0-5 year old babies, as well as the world's novelty and good things recommendation, welcome to pay attention! (5-12 years old mother, please pay attention: @米粒妈频道)