You never told me any story about your mother. Why? 

That was a random question my partner asked me a long long while ago. I didn’t really have an answer at that time, nor have I thought about it that way before. 

Since then, I always thought of his question whenever I told a story about familiar experiences. It was an excellent question. I never thought of this before. 

My mother and my sister never exist in any story that I told, my father was the only one in my story. It is as if, I deliberately deny their existence in my bias life story. I didn’t have any conscious intention to remove them out of my story. But it seems like, my unconscious mind has removed them a long time ago. It feels to me that I only considered my father as the one and only family. My mind doesn’t register the other 2 characters in the same unit. 

In Contrast, instead of registering my mother as part of the family, I demonize her. When we demonize people, we become fearful of them, as we assign a sense of their presence. As per perceive danger, our defenses come up. During the last session with my therapist, he asked me to make a story with my mother, my immediate instinct was to picture her as a witch, not a good kind, the kind in Snow White movie. The therapist then asked me to rewrite the story to find a way for the witch to become a friend. I did try. Really hard! I took 3 full days to think about how I can rewrite the story with the same fact. I CAN’T. I don’t see how I’m gonna write this story another way.

You kept saying that you miss your father everyday, why can’t you see that your sister and your mother are also your family?

That’s another question my partner asked me awhile ago. This was a different time from the previous question. The question stuck with me. I know it make total sense. I understand the logics of it. I just can’t feel it.

My mother would say: Dad has passed away, so now there’s only 3 of us stay together as a family.

Sadly, I see that it’s only me and the world.

When my mother speaks like this, I want to feel for her. I understand that she feels the same pain as me, maybe more than me. But I just can’t feel empathy for her. It almost like, I was looking at an object while she was talking and speaking. No emotions can pierce through my mind. I just want the talk to finish so I can leave.

I know, these word sounds very ungrateful. It’s totally unacceptable for a child to speak about her mother like this. My mother, she’s not bad. She took care of me, made me food, paid for my school, raised me. I turned out to be quite a good person with good manner.

My partner, who has a really strong sense of duty and also has a very close relationship with his mother. That’s why he immediately notice that I never speak about my mother. It’s totally understandable that from the perspective of my partner, I must come back and be close with my mother and my sister. It feels like in his view, I have “a mental illness”. If we find the right pills for my illness, I will come back and be close and live just fine with my mother.

In his reality, a child must perform the duty with the parents, and also love the parents unconditionally. Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with this way of thinking. In fact, it is one of the basic societal assumptions.

It’s just not my reality.

I started having nightmares again, now that I’m gonna go back to Vietnam in 2 weeks. The reason is there’s a high chance that I have to live under my mother’s roof and consequently, nearby all of the aunt’s and uncle’s home. I don’t know how I can find a reason to live outside, except living in another city. Last night, I had a very horrible one. It was the entire family in a plot, where they are all killers. I was forced to live in the house, not to say anything, but just to see. Lots of bodies parts was hang around, my uncles killed his estranged daughter and then try to split her into 8 parts. There were a lot of blood. I want to escape so bad, I want to leave so bad but for unknown reason I still have to stay. I wasn’t scared for my life, but I felt uncomfortable because of the cruelty, and the blood.

I always started having these nightmares whenever I need to come to Saigon to live. The idea frightens me so much. I know that no matter how hard I tried to explain my position, my reality will never match my partner’s reality. Beside the societal obligations that I always carry with me on my shoulder, I now also have the obligation to explain myself with my partner. I feel tired.

I don’t know if I will change in the future. For now, as best I could do is “Fake it till I make it“.