Now is not the time to be sad. 
Bây giờ không phải là lúc để buồn.
นี่ไม่ใช่เวลาที่จะเศร้า

Con lớn rồi không được khóc nữa.  
You are already grownup, crying is not an option 

Là con trai phải mạnh mẽ không được khóc 
To become a strong boy, you cannot cry 

Con hư quá, tại sao lớn rồi còn khóc nhè. 
You are so spoiled, you are not a child anymore, why are you still crying 

Em đã lớn rồi, không phải con nít 10 tuổi nữa mà mỗi lần có chuyện lại khóc đòi vỗ về. 
You have already grown up, you are not a 10-year-old child anymore. It’s not right to ask for comfort. 

And so many, many more statements that our parents has portrayed this image of being “an adult”. Being an adult, according to the societal definition, is being able to “immuned” to the sadness, the sorrow, the anger.

Firstly, the said above emotions is labelled with the title “ Negative Emotions”. Most of us are taught that those emotions are unnecessary and not useful. It’s okay to be sad, and it’s okay to cry when we were kids, since we are still learning how to “control the emotions”. A lot of us believed that similar to learning how to hold you bladder, we should learn and the eventually master at “holding our negative emotions”. 

Secondly, our minds are squeamish by Nature, rigorously shut out unfortunate negative emotions and going to at state what psychologist called “Denial”. We may as a results, burying our feelings, developed a number of symptoms. We can’t sleep, we don’t want to eat, bits of our body start to twitch …

Or there’s another option, we become extremely jolly not happy as such. But brittle and insistent in the fake kind of upbeatness, the sort of happiness that can’t tolerate any kind of sadness.

I was and probably still am was in this “other option”. My childhood though was perfect from the beginning. At the age of 7, turned to a darker page, my Father started going to work far away from home. All the way to Long Khánh, where he started his farm. He came back home once a month, stayed for like 4 days and then left. My mother, who suddenly became alone, stressed out with 2 kids at home, and probably doesn’t know how to express her feelings in the proper way started lashing out on me. Not on the 2 of us children, but particularly on me, because I’m the older child or maybe because I resemble the image of my Father, I really don’t know. My mother will keep on yelling at me, there was a lot of non-stop yelling. There was a lot of hitting by “roi mây” the sort of small flexible wooden sticks that is so painful when it touch the skin.

Gradually, I develop resistance for both of the 2 kinds: Emotionally and physically.

On the physical side, one morning, inspired by my friend, I decided that I will not cry when my mother hit me anymore. I decided that no matter how hurt it is, how scared I am, I will not make a sound. I’d probably around 9 or 10 at this time. And I did, I remember the first time I decided to stop crying. My mother told me to lie down on the floor, I lay down. The first whip is difficult, it was very painful. With the strong determination in my mind, I stayed still without making any tiny bit of movement, not even squeamish. The second whip gets easier, then I stopped counting, it’s probably did not last that long. After my mother is done, I sat up, turned on the TV, and act like nothing has happened. My mother stopped hitting me from then on.

The emotional side, it lasted much longer, I particular remembered that one afternoon. When I was 8 years old, I was walking or more like “escaping” from my mother’s yelling to Nana’s house. At the corner turning to Nana’s home, I stopped.

I was crying while walking, and suddenly a thought came to my mind. “Nếu mà bây giờ mình khóc thì cũng không ai thương xót mình. Mình đã bị la và vẫn sẽ bị la như thường. Mình khóc hay mình cười thì cũng sẽ không thay đổi kết quả một chút nào hết. Vậy thì khóc làm gì cho mệt, mình cứ cười thôi” . Rough translation would be : ” Either if I cry or I smile, nobody care. The result is the same, might as well smile”.

8-year-old Mai

That was it, at 8 year old, I decided to shield myself from all the negative emotions so I can no longer be hurt by my Mother. From there on, I hardly never cry up until I became a full grown adult. I never cry. I recalled being proud of my capability, back then I was proud that I’m always happy. I would have said to myself, I cannot remember the last time that I cry was when, maybe 2 or 3 years ago? I watched really really sad movies, and not feeling a thing.

Probably around the period from 9 to 13 year old, I was thinking of dying, creating my own death. In the traditional bathroom in a Vietnamese home, we took shower in with a bucket of water. When I was in the bathroom, I looked at the bucket of water and thought to myself what if I drowned myself inside this bucket of water. I bet she will regret after I’m gone. I wanted revenge. I did try, I put my head inside the bucket and hold in there for as long as I could. Obviously, I didn’t succeed, and I never tried again. I have an analytical mind, and I know trying to do so it just stupid and ineffective.

Beside what’s happening in my head, I’m still a happy child. I was still cycling around the neighborhood, I was playing hide and seek with my friends everyday. And I enjoyed all of them. But at 9 year old, death was on my mind.

This thought of death follows me through adulthood up until now. I’m still particularly interested in Death. I researched about the way to suicide, just to know, not to execute. I have come up to the conclusion that in order to take a life, it will be either a slow and probably less painful death or one quick really painful thing and it’s all gone. Drinking lots of sleeping pills won’t work, our body will absorb all the chemicals and went into shock, we will die from internal bleeding. Hanging, jumping off the bridge won’t work because at the very moment of lack of oxygen, our instinct will kick in and we will wish for air. Shooting on the head seems to be the easiest, but it will take an enormous courage to pull the trigger. Long story shorts, the thought about Death lingers around my head on a monthly basis.

I recently read a fiction called ” The Graveyard” by Neil Gaiman. In the book, Neil has portrayed Death as a woman. A woman in white riding a horse, with a very very soft voice. She said : Even in Death, we have mercy. Everybody will have a chance to ride her beautiful white horse, once. You don’t have to wish for it, everybody will have their turn, their one-way ticket. I thought that was such a refreshing idea about Death. In contrast with the traditional thinking, Death is this scary creature – someone who’s wearing Dark clothes with a very scary face. Neil decided to portray death as something soft and gentle.

For a long time, during my childhood years, I have the one question: ” How does it feel to be dead? “. It was pure curiosity. One day, the answer pop-up in my head, when I woke up, being dead is almost exactly like being asleep, except, we won’t wake up the next morning. I still agree with my smaller self. From that moment, I am no longer afraid of Death.

It seems like I went astray from the original context of this journal. I tend to get emotional pretty quickly whenever I mentioned the struggle in my childhood. It is as if my mind was clouded, and I couldn’t I will continue to write on this topic in the next posts.