It has been 7 years since I have celebrated Tet at home. To be honest, I don’t have a home either, my parents divorced 25 years ago, and my grandparents have all passed away. I do not live with my father or mother, they all have their own families and now I am alone in the old house in the middle of the old town left by my grandmother.
Before she died, she told me to sell the house and buy a big apartment to live in. Although the house has only 40 square meters, the location is right near Sword Lake, so the price is sky high. As long as I advertise, I will earn huge profits anyway, enjoy until the end of my life without working anymore.
But money doesn’t mean much to me. I make money to live as I want, but I don’t have the desire to be rich or the ambition to be a man or a woman. People say I’m weird, almost 30 years old with no one close to me.
Whenever Tet is near, I clean the house, burn incense to my grandparents, then carry my suitcase to travel. I fear the feeling of shame and jealousy when I see families together. Fear of dating old friends, meeting certain classes, having a year-end party and then having to face prying private life questions. I don’t want anyone to know anything regarding me. Because the truth is that my world is inherently lonely.
According to others, I was abandoned by my mother when I was 2 years old. Apparently, when I was 1 year old, my mother left once, but then I don’t know why she came back and tried to live with my father for another year before getting a divorce. When I was just in middle school, my father married another woman, they moved out and left me to live with my grandparents.
My grandparents are not poor, the old townhouse is old, so the family is wealthy. But the family is anchored, the eldest and the youngest have long settled abroad. After the remarriage, my father almost considered me and my grandparents non-existent. The last time my father and I saw each other at my grandmother’s funeral, it was probably 6 years ago.
In the past, I heard my grandparents told me that my father still sent me money to feed me, but my grandparents didn’t take it. Grandparents have enough assets to support 10 grandchildren, my father behaves badly, so they give up. I don’t know why my father’s relationship with his grandparents was so strained. Only when his grandparents died did his father dare to return to burn incense.
I know my dad has a child of his own and has no intention of making up for it. He once asked relatives to buy me a luxury scooter, but I sold it and sent money to the orphanage. I hate this man so much that I don’t want to utter my father’s voice.
But the person I hate the most is my mother.
Grandma kept a few pictures of my mother holding me when I was born. It’s ironic how I have the exact same face as my mother. From childhood to adulthood, I heard many people talk regarding my mother with bad words, such as “evil woman”, “wealthy and poor”, “leaving home for a boy”… In short, I was young at that time. I don’t know anything, gathering old information, it seems that my mother left for some unknown reason.
My grandparents advised me not to try to understand the past. What’s gone, leave it behind, because when I dig it up, I’m the one that hurts the most. I listened to my grandparents, so I never asked, but the feeling of hatred mixed with self-pity kept swirling in my heart day following day. I really wanted to find my mother to ask why she had the heart to abandon her baby before weaning. No parent treats their flesh and blood like water. Wanting to give up is to turn your back and never look back!
Until the 29th of the last New Year, right before leaving for Thailand, I knew the answer that I longed for. While sorting through the things in the warehouse, I discovered my grandmother’s diary among the old books. When she was alive, she loved to write poetry, so just looking at the cover page I might recognize the familiar handwriting. She kept the habit of keeping a diary since she adopted me, reading each confession every night that brought tears to my eyes.
Turns out I hated the wrong person. My mother was the poor victim of a marriage full of deception. My father constantly betrayed my mother before I was born. The mother was gentle, so she might only ignore it, but once caught her father bringing his mistress home to do stupid things that broke her heart. Mother cried and fainted in her grandmother’s arms, her confused mind plus postpartum depression pushed her into a deep pit. Luckily Grandpa found his mother before something bad happened. And my harsh cry for milk woke her up.
Grandparents did not protect their son, so they forced my father to live more responsibly. She clearly recorded every line of emotions at that time, both painful and embarrassed when her daughter-in-law and grandson suffered. Because of family pressure, my father was temporarily quiet for a short time. By the time I was 2 years old, the family was completely broken, no one might mend my mother’s despair.
My mother left me to my grandparents to adopt because I had no money and no house, afraid that I would have to live in poverty for the rest of my life. Grandma broke down in tears when she saw her obedient daughter-in-law bowing down, begging her grandparents to accept me so that I might have a fuller life. She gave her mother some gold coins, but she refused to take them. Mom told her not to tell anything, even if I hate it, just let me think she’s bad.
True to my mother’s prediction, following knowing all the facts regarding my family, I was in so much pain that I mightn’t breathe anymore. I don’t understand why my resentment has not subsided yet. Can someone tell me why mom is so selfish? Mom ran away from a life of indignation, she took me out to justify her act of unburdening her children, she said she loved me but never appeared in my life!
Only grandparents love me, but they are all gone…
