Sayings：
Today's article is a self-report, from a "Northeast only daughter".
We've seen this label a lot lately. In the current popular narrative, "the only daughter in the Northeast" is a kind of "reincarnation top match".
They were born under the "family planning" policy, "monopolized" the love and resources of their parents, and all of them were "big heroines" who dared to fight hard.
Rich, loving, and strong.
We are curious, is this the case with the real Northeast only child? How did they grow up? So, we found @ Ni Jun who was born in Heilongjiang in 1987.
As a typical only child in the Northeast, she was indeed lucky, and she thought she was lucky - her parents did their best to support her through college, graduate school, and after retirement, bought a house near the city where she worked.
But after talking about it, the more I listened, the more familiar it became, and the more I listened, the more sad it became. I heard about the general plight of a generation of only children – we were asked to be a "son" in our careers and a "daughter" in marriage and at the same time.
And now, having lived to be 37 years old, a marital crisis, a hidden dilemma has erupted. She suddenly realizes that she is just a substitute for satisfying her parents' regrets. The real "she" is not allowed to exist.
The following is Ni Jun's account:
01
"My girl is better than a boy"
My name is Ni Jun, and I am an only child in Northeast China.
I was born in a small county town in Heilongjiang. It's very cold in our hometown, but the women are all hot-tempered. My house is in an alley, and the bungalows are very close to each other, and you can always hear the voice of the woman scolding her husband and children.
Northeast men don't like to worry, women are strong, many families are headed by women, and our family is more extreme. My mother not only has the absolute right to speak at home, but is also responsible for making money to support the family.
My parents used to be in a state-owned factory. After being laid off, my mom went to work in a small business, and my dad took me at home, doing laundry and cooking.
My dad's parenting style was "free-range". In summer, the little girl in the alley wears long braids and small skirts; I had a small flat head, the back of my hair was pushed short by clippers, my sideburns were not over my ears, and I was running around in a tank top and shorts.
I'm a special Taoer. Pile sand in front of the neighbor's house and blow up the corridor - use three cannon sticks together, insert an incense stick in the middle, and put it in front of the neighbor's house, and when the incense is finished, the corridor will "bang".
My parents don't scold me, they never say anything like "no girl".
Once, I was playing marbles with a little boy from my neighborhood. I didn't have one, he lent me one. After a day of playing, I won him with more than a hundred marbles.
My dad went out to show off, "Ni Jun didn't buy one, and won a pocket home." He was very proud, "My girl is better than a boy".
I like to compete with boys and compete for the first place.
When I was seven or eight years old, I raced with boys on bicycles. Riding and riding, my bicycle tires were flat, but I reverted my legs, reversed my legs, poured my legs so hard that my legs were sore, and finally took the first place.
In the third grade of elementary school, it is popular to play parallel bars in schools. Every day after school at noon, others come home for dinner, and I throw parallel bars hard at school. Later, he played better than all the boys in the class, and he was in the limelight for a while.
02
"You have to have a good education and a good career"
When I was in elementary school, my mom was busy with business and didn't care about me. She rented a small stall at the market and sold fishing gear.
My dad sometimes went to help, and after watching the stalls, he slipped away and went fishing. But my mom has been guarding that little stall and working diligently. She has no hobbies, no friends, and the fishing tackle stand is her whole world.
Because of this small stall, our family was the first to buy a house and moved from the hutong to the building. Earlier than those who became teachers and worked in police stations.
My mom is a very authoritative person with a lot of rules. When I was a child, I forgot to close the door when I entered the house.
Once, when she saw it, she scolded me, "You go to the city gate," and slapped me with her arm. Wow, my nose was bleeding, blood was dripping on my white shirt, and I was crying.
"Don't cry," my mom said, "hold back your tears." She never made me cry and didn't allow me to be vulnerable. She rarely cries herself.
When I was in junior high school, I became "someone else's child." Because of the first and second places in the old exams, my dad often spoke at parent-teacher conferences. When my classmates' parents saw me, they would point at me and say, "This kid has very good grades", and my parents felt that they had a good face.
At that time, our family's economy was also well-off, and my mother's attention shifted from making money to doing my studies.
I don't have to work. When I finished eating, my mother put the washed and cut fruit in front of me; Before going to bed, get me plenty of water to wash my feet.
I didn't know how to do laundry until I was in college, so I called my mom and asked, "Do you wash the outside or the inside first?" "My mom was so happy to hear it.
The only thing to do is to learn. Once, a friend came to play with me, "Ni Jun is not at home", and my mother came as soon as she opened her mouth. I was sitting in the room.
In high school, I liked liberal arts, but she didn't let me study science. I was very bad at math, not good at chemistry, bad at physics, and got into a science class, and my ranking dropped badly. I'm competitive and heavy, and it pains me.
But I'm just trying to catch up with my grades. In front of my mother, I rarely resisted and was used to obedience.
When I applied for the college entrance examination, I applied for psychology. My mother forced me to change to "communication engineering", saying that it would be good to get a job in the future. I didn't want to, so she "squeaked" in my ear every day, making me uneasy until I compromised.
After graduating from college, my mother asked me to go to graduate school again.
For my daughter, my dad doesn't have any high expectations - get a junior college or three books, and find a stable job in the future, but my mom doesn't. She expects me to have a good degree and a good career.
03
"You're looking for a good partner"
I did become what my mom was expecting.
After graduating from graduate school, I worked for a company in Beijing. Ka Ka was promoted five levels in five years in a row and was promoted to the director.
We are ruthless in our profession and always travel on business. The longest time was when I was out of town for more than a month, and I only went back to Beijing on weekends to catch my breath. Overtime is a daily routine, and at two o'clock in the morning, the customer will @ you in the group, "Five minutes later, let's have a meeting". At one or two o'clock in the middle of the night, the leader will call and call you to change the plan.
I'm fighting. In the first few years of work, no matter what time I was approached, I responded, picked up the computer, and started working.
When I became a leader, I also asked my subordinates to reply to the information in seconds, no matter what time it was. If you don't reply, I'll get angry, "If the customer can't find you for a minute, it's all lost", just like the kind of "female devil" in workplace dramas.
Every time I got a promotion and a raise, my mom was so happy that she showed her relatives, "This kid never let me worry about it."
But soon, she began to look forward to me again: to find a good partner.
When I was 30 years old, I had my first relationship. Four years later, we got married.
My husband used to be a colleague of mine, tall and big, with thick palms, which made people feel very secure. He has a gentle personality and is very tolerant of me, I will do whatever I say, I will eat whatever I say, and I will have the final say on everything.
He's also an only child, but he's different from me. He doesn't take anything to heart, he is very open-minded, and he doesn't have a strong need for recognition and affirmation.
Initially, this appealed to me. But over time, it has become a big conflict between us. After several employees under him changed jobs, their positions were higher than him, and he was not in a hurry.
Do you have any ideas for the future? I asked him. He said, "No." This upsets me. The other half I look forward to is a self-motivated, responsible, and man I can rely on.
I asked him to write a career plan. He sent me a Word document. Looking at it now, it's a little incredible. I told a girlfriend about this, and she said, are you two in love, or are you leaders and subordinates?
After being with me, he did achieve a 0 to 1 breakthrough in many ways. Initially, he wouldn't even buy a movie ticket. I taught him how to buy movie tickets, deliver flowers, order food, cook, and do housework......
I also help him with his work problems. One of his subordinates was leaving, and I rushed over to talk to someone and left someone behind.
After getting married, what is lacking in the family, I will handle it; Housework, he won't take the initiative. "I sweep the floor, you mop the floor", I dragged him like this. In our relationship, it was always me who dragged this man forward. It's tiring.
At that time, my concept was still that a man was a breadwinner, and he asked him to give me part of his salary every month to pay for rent and household expenses, but he only worked for two months and then stopped working, and I spent most of the actual household expenses.
In this way, after more than a year of marriage, I found out that he was cheating.
The first reaction was not injury, but anger – "I've done so much for you, how can you do this to me?" ”
04
"Is your family patriarchal?"
I felt abandoned. There's also a sense of humiliation of being compared, and losing. I couldn't help but fantasize about him laughing at me with that woman.
I didn't shed a single tear, and I went to and from work as usual, like a nobody. But the heart is broken. I went for counselling.
I kept thinking about what went wrong with our relationship, how I "lost".
Is there a problem with my expectations?
"I want you to be like a mountain of mine", I once said to my husband. But many times, I find that I am being pushed to the front.
When I was holding the wedding, I was still immersed in the plot of the idol drama and expected him to arrange a wedding for me. But the "domineering president" didn't appear, and the real male protagonist was irritable throughout the whole process, complaining to me non-stop, "You don't care about anything, right?" ”
I'm not happy. This is still his mother's main Zhang Luo, he is only responsible for part of it, and he can't bear it. If you want to leave it to me, you can knock it down anyway. In the end, the video played at the wedding was still connected with the editor.
But then I thought, does he understand my expectations?
When I first fell in love, every time I ate, I took the initiative to AA, but in my heart I actually expected him to pay for it, so that I felt that I was the one who was pampered and taken care of. But I can't tell.
When I feel like I'm "weak" when I say it.
I expect him to take the initiative. He doesn't do. I'm all kinds of yin and yang. "Oh, today, I saw a couple buying fruit at a fruit stall, and the man said to the woman, whatever you want to eat." He doesn't understand it, and he probably does, but he just doesn't want to do it.
I can't figure it out, it's too wry.
I went to a counselor and found out that there was more to it than that.
I want him to be better than me, but as soon as he gets paid more than me, I want to overtake him quickly. There is a hidden competition in our relationship. It was only when I was taller than him that I felt safe.
I can't seem to tolerate being "weak".
Until one time, the counselor suddenly asked me, "Is your family patriarchal?" ”
"No," those two words immediately popped into my head. My parents have always valued me, and a few years ago, they also bought a house in Langfang and moved to me from the northeast.
But before I could say it, I suddenly remembered that my mother had been calling me "son" all along.
I suddenly felt like I had been woken up by something. Faintly, something makes sense.
However, the moment I figured it out, I felt a sharp pain.
05
"Win like a boy"
I realized that I was very repulsed by my femininity at one point.
As a child, I was a "tomboy". I love marbles, cars and guns. At school, I also run around with boys all day long and don't play with girls.
The school held an event, and the teacher asked me to dance, but I didn't "die" to go. At that stage, I didn't seem to dare to act like a girl in front of people, I felt too weak and ashamed.
In the fifth grade of elementary school, when I entered puberty, my body began to develop, and I always pressed my chest with my hands. So did my mom. Until I was in high school, she would buy me a big tank top to cover my stomach and not a bra.
When I was five or six years old, I heard my dad say that when my mom was just pregnant, a neighbor looked at my mom's belly and said, "This must be a boy," but when she was born, she looked like a girl. They stuffed me directly into the bedside table next to the kang.
Before junior high school, I always felt like my mom didn't like to take care of me. In my memory, there is no picture of her kissing and hugging me, and my mother rarely has her own child. When the child wakes up, he doesn't always like to look for his mother, but when I need her, she is always away.
When I was 5 years old, I asked my mom to buy me a ham sausage, and she ignored me and knitted sweaters there all the time. I knelt down and kowtowed, saying, Please. My mom still ignored me. She didn't seem to see me. After that, I didn't ask for it again.
At my grandfather's house in the countryside, I am also a "little transparent". Grandpa hid canned food in his cupboard, and he only gave it to his grandson, never gave it to me, and ignored me. Only when I follow the boy to drill the haystack and go to the house, the adults will notice me and say, "Ni Jun is really Taoer".
In the process of counselling, I looked back on my past and found that the environment had been suggesting that I was "like a boy".
Once, I was playing with my cousin's doll, and I thought it was flying in the sky as a Transformer, and the adults saw it and said in amazement, "This kid is playing with dolls like this", and at that moment, I felt that I was unique. I was seen and valued.
My cousin was two years older than me, with long braids, a white dress, and a pair of leather sandals, looking noble. In front of her, I always felt a head shorter. I had a small flat head and wore plastic sandals with burning feet, like a "stupid son" from a poor family.
I especially wanted to have a pair of leather sandals that my cousin wore. But my parents wouldn't buy it for me. Although the economic conditions of my family are no worse than that of my cousin's family.
My desire to love beauty was always ignored and suppressed by my parents. At the age of 12, it was popular for girls to cut their hair with knives. I also want to keep my hair long, so I can put my sideburns behind my ears. But my dad secretly told the barber every time to cut her short. There are all kinds of reasons why parents don't let long hair, what hair absorbs nutrients, girls with long hair will become stupid, etc.
It wasn't until I was in college and left home that I wore a skirt, high heels, long hair, and curly hair. Until now, I also like pink and some bright colors, as if the depressed girlish heart can finally be released.
06
What happens if you do have a son?
After the incident, my husband "fled", did not live at home, and did not return to WeChat.
When he was still in love, he often lost contact, and he couldn't find anyone for most of the day, asking, just sleeping. Back in the time of the proposal, I was vaguely uneasy, "Can this person do it?" "I was pushed into marriage more by my parents and the social clock.
When I was 34 years old, my parents said, let's have a baby quickly, they are old and their health is not good.
How many women in our industry have children, working for ten years, I have only seen a female colleague preparing for pregnancy, but the company always arranged for her to go on a business trip, and in the end, she resigned and is now a mother. But I'm used to satisfying them and being a good daughter.
Looking back now, many of my mother's requirements for me are completely a kind of "both want and want" logic, which is very naïve.
When I was in school, I wasn't allowed to fall in love; After graduating from graduate school at the age of 25, I want to fall in love immediately, the kind that can get married as soon as I talk about it; At the age of 34, he got married and hurried to have a child. But you must not be a housewife, you must go out to work immediately. Who brings the child? That's a good question.
There is often more than one thing that breaks people.
Last year, my dad was diagnosed with lymphoma. I called my husband and cried. After hanging up the phone, he lost contact again.
I was so isolated. My partner doesn't help me, I don't have any siblings, and my mom's memory suddenly deteriorates, and she can't even find a takeout. I have to carry everything alone. I have to build a family.
Fortunately, my dad's chemotherapy work was not bad. I went to the hospital to pick him up, and the head nurse said, "This one daughter is ten people."
"You (this) old man, it's nothing", when I was a child, I always heard my mother scold my dad, I didn't have the ability to do things, I didn't do anything.
My mom expects my dad to support a family. After getting married, I also looked forward to my husband.
But when I decided to divorce, I realized that we had been expecting someone we had never met before, someone we had imagined.
Real men are fundamentally different from our growth paths. The first time I went to my husband's house, I thought I was a guest and the focus would be on me, but no one cared about me at all. Instead, his grandmother said in Northeast Chinese: "My great treasure grandson, Zhen (zen) Jun (zun)".
Men have a halo at the moment of birth and win, and women spend their whole lives chasing and winning.
I thought, if my mother really had a son, what would she be like?
Not long ago, I called my mom and asked, "Are you patriarchal?" ”
I'm so angry and aggrieved. It turned out that for so many years I was treated as another person, an unborn "son". The real me is not allowed to exist.
"No," she said.
"Why do you call me son?"
"I probably thought you would be born a son," she said, after a moment's thought.
"I'm a daughter," I solemnly told her to stop calling me "son". But she can't seem to call "girl" or "big girl", like my dad called me. After a while, she said, "I'll call you "Ni Jun" from now on.
Sometimes, I wonder if I have a daughter in the future, how do I raise her? She can wear a skirt or shorts. Don't fight for the first, it's best not to slip in the middle. If she loves to be the first, follow her. It is up to her whether she gets married or not. I want her to live a life of choice.
Written by: Zhen Zhen
Editor-in-charge: Liang Ke
Maybe I'm not going to be 'famous' or great, but I'm going to keep taking risks, keep changing, broaden my horizons, and refuse to be trampled on, to be conformist. The important thing is to free yourself and find your room without limitations
- Woolf