I have a talent, it’s called: Connecting the dots. It’s a special talent that Steve Jobs once delivered in his speech.

You cannot connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust the dots will somehow connect in the future. Believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart.

Steve Jobs

In the department of dreaming, believing, and following the heart, I’m the champion. Most of the time it’s good, I live with no regrets. Some other times like this times, It’s not so good because my illusional mind steer me away from the naked truth.

My brain has a special way to store information and then arrange it all together until it makes sense. Camel rarely opened up about himself to me, a lot of what I wrote is the information I collected during our talk. Bits of information that I collected over the years, stories of father, mother, brother and then aligned them all in a timeline the best possible way that I can imagine. A lot of it comes from assumption, I never met his family, I never had the chance to observe how the family interact with each other, but I think I got it quite right.

It took me the whole 5 hour writing non-stop yesterday to finish. I think it’s the executive summary of our lives and relationships. I never write about Camel in depth, so I’d like to take sometime to discuss further into the details of who this man is.

The Mother

I don’t have the detailed information about his mother, so most of the thing that I wrote here is just pure assumption. My guess is Camel’s mother is the victim of the patriarchal system. It may have come from her father, which ended up with her choosing her husband – same familiar sufferings. Camel’s mother brought with her the pains that her father caused her, which intensify by living under the the patriarchal system where women is not valued (especially in the North of Vietnam). I imagine Camel’s father is a dominant figure, who is severely destroyed by the wars and loss. He brought with him to the family a lot of emotional baggage on his shoulder. She might have had to sacrificed her job to take care of the kids, perhaps her health, I don’t know.

What I know for sure is she’s hurt. Through Camel, I can see that his mother is “consumed by the Mother archetype”, she only lives through the function of being a mother. Her personal values now all depends on her sons whether he’s good nor bad. That’s why it’s utterly important to maintain the connection between the two of them.

Camel told me her mother was so worried that she call him back home, signing over the deed of the lands to him. On the surface, it seems like it’s a legitimate thing to do since she’s sick and she don’t know when she is parting way with the world. My feelings is, the underlying cause of the events is her ways of reminding him that he needed to be back with her because the time is limited.

The attention, the nurturing, the call every day that she offered him, I think, might be the result of her dependence on him. He’s her doll, helping her to fight with her loneliness and anxiety. This child is everything to him because she doesn’t have her private life.

Camel subsequently, is also the victim of the patriarchal system. By giving a model of a “strong man, cold, disciplined”, his emotions is being suppressed to the point that it’s very difficult to bring it up whenever needed. He’s not allowed to feel, to be a human.

The Controller

Camel who’s heart is so fragile, soft and tender is trapped in between emotions. He was once a happy, out going child that applaud with life wonders, but ever since a child, he’s already has the vague feelings, 2 sided when he’s being beaten, hurt. On one hand, he hated his farther for treating him so cruelly, but he cannot express it because he’s afraid that he cannot be loved by this father. Therefore, the hatred is buried deep into the darkest corner of his heart.

My feelings is Camel – like me, has lost is naiveté from a very early age. He’s forced to lose himself completely, he’s not allowed to be a child, he’s not allowed to be himself. A rounds of barricades is added around the heart after each time he’s hurt by his parents. He needs to grow up fast, he need to adapt to the situation. Because Camel is smart and sensitive, he adapted very well. Perhaps too well that he completely killed his own ego.

I have a theory about the reason why Camel needs a lot of protocol, timeline to follow. No one can intervene these protocols, every single thing needs to be planned. It’s almost impossible to change these plans unless it’s the matter of life and death. I think it’s because through these steps and procedure, he felt like he’s taking control of his life. It give him the fault feelings of he’s the one in charge. Because besides these details information, he has no control over his destiny. It’s already decided by someone else – His Mother.

Imagine in a video game, Camel was sitting in front of the tivi, he’s the main player holding the controller. But the controller is not paired with the machine. The actual controller is sitting with his Mom from a far, wirelessly control his game of life.

He develops a skill to adapt to the other’s needs, hidden under that is the fear of abandonment, fear of not worthy of love. He became a person with the utmost resilient, he can overcome any hardship better than anyone because of his suppressing of all the emotions interaction.

I might be wrong about the reason, may it be the perfectionism, the overprotective, the violence, all of it I think comes down to only one thing: Guilt – the sentenced of ungratefulness given by the parents, and the feeling of guilt in Camel. Camel must have felt that he has the responsibility to make his mother happy. He feel that he doesn’t deserve happiness while his mother sacrifice so much for him, and especially when his mother shows her disappointment. His mother sighs stops him from being separated from his mother. It’s rooted so deeply in his mind that his mom cannot live without him.

The symbolic marriage

Camel told me awhile ago that marriage is a social contract, and I thought that was such a smart term to describe the relationship. The term I used yesterday was “incest” , I’d like to change it to a better one – the symbolic marriage. It’s quite common for the kid to prefer the opposite sex parent to be their first lover, because this is the first person in life that give him/her love.

Little girl will idolize their father, and wishing to one day marry one just like hers, so will the boy. This is the necessary development stage and naturally it will phase out once the child turns puberty.

For me, it was because the idolized father I had in my mind lives far away, so I continue to bring him with me in my mind. My father is also trying to keep distance with me as I grow older. In an essay I wrote during English class around Junior highschool, I wrote that I never wish to marry my father because he’s pretty dominant and I don’t like dominant male. The one event that mark my forever vow with my father was when I asked him if I can move out at 21 year old, when I earn enough money to live alone. He cried, I’ve never seen him cried my entire life, and on that day he cried. Through his broken voice he said: Mình sợ nó lấy chồng nên mình bây giờ phải tranh thủ về thường xuyên, mà giờ nó nói là nó sẽ dọn đi. From that point forward, seeing my father got his heart broken, I vowed to never move away as long as he’s alive. And I did. It was only until he’s dead that I started regaining my freedom, or I dare to fight for my freedom.

For him, it was the constant connection that his mother needed from him. She depended on him to feel worthy of love. It’s harder to separate the relationship between the mother and son because the society also taught us that Mother can love their child forever. It’s harder to get divorced from the symbolic marriage because in the social contract that signed has said: ” Never part way” . This term, signed with blood will forever keep his heart chained and locked through times.

Social relationship

He once told me that: you don’t know who’s my friend is beside Ray and Alok. You don’t know their names, and what they do. I was surprised by that question, because I thought he has no friend. He never introduce or tell me about any other friends of his. He never mention name, it usually goes like this : “ông anh, bà chị, đứa em … ” Something very blurred with no details information. He reminded me of the Meursault in “Kẻ Ngoại Cuộc”, in which the second part of the book is only defined by ” ông biện lý, vị thẩm phán”. I think somehow he’s similar to Meursault, someone who’s standing outside of his life and watching it flowed by.

My observation of Camel’s life is that the relationship between him and the others are very fragile. He lives a lonely, discreet life. He’s the kindest man on earth, but his heart is forever closed. He secretly wished for someone to come close, heal his pains with open arms, but he also doesn’t let anyone come to close because that also means there’s a chance that pains will come. Logically, he put a lot of iron bars to stop the understanding, the love. He felt uncomfortable when someone came to close to love him while in the deepest corner of his heart is wishing that this person is patient enough to pierce through all of the barricaded and break his heart free.

To be continued ….