温柔 [1]
Pain [2]
[1]
Today at lunch, my dad told me women should be 温柔.
Pronounced 'win row', or 'vin row' depending on what part of China you come from, it means 'tender' according to Google Translate, which is pretty accurate. Apparently, a 温柔 woman leads to a more cohesive household.
He also told me there's a saying that translates to, "Women should be like rivers and men should be like mountains".
You should've seen the hand motions he made. It looked like a busty woman and a giant, erect phallus.
Haha, jk.
But yeah, tackling one issue at a time, I'd first like to clear things up by saying that I'm all for feminism, but female supremacy is a little too far. I think that people should be judged based on a mix between their ability to succeed and personality. I'll judge. Another invention of mine. Woohoo.
All jokes aside - I swear it was funny - I think that all people are born equal and prove themselves through their actions and ability to face trial after tribulation. Wait... this is turning into a racial equality tangent.
Getting back to 温柔. I get that you men and your testosterone want to find a pretty damsel in distress to save and live happily ever after with, but fewer and fewer women today write 'damsel in distress' on their future goals worksheet. They're writing things like doctor, lawyer, and little, kindergarten me with '10 children'. Yes, I was a problem solver way back when. I had so many good names for my future children, I was like, "Why pick one when I can just use them all?"
These stories are why my posts are so long.
However, I no longer desire 10 children, partially because the prospect of childbirth scared me away and partially because I realized there are things I want to do. In retaliation, my dad brought up Margaret Thatcher who was known as the "Iron Lady", but a kind and loving mother (Although my Google Search says that she wishes she saw more of her children). I think that he fails to realize something: However different one's work personality and home personality may be, they are not mutually exclusive.
Moving on to cohesive households, my mom brought up a good point. I feel like this is a good time to say that my parents have a full blown argument most days of the week and especially weekends. When I was younger, I thought that if they didn't like each other, then they should divorce, but now I understand that they have their reasons for staying together. Whether love is one of those reasons is between the two of them.
Anyways, my mom actually agreed with my dad that households are usually 'better' with 温柔 women, which is the weirdest thing in the world because she almost never agrees with him. But she also said that it's because there's one person making the decisions. I think that the Utopian household would be where the father and mother both hold one end of the tug-of-war rope and stare at each other with loving eyes. My family is more like my parents both pulling at the rope with all their strength and now it's unraveling from the tension. My dad's ideal household would be where the man pulls the rope and his 温柔 wife trails along obediently.
Which brings me to the comparison of women to rivers and men to mountains. I'm pretty sure that it's some kind of sexist Confucian words of 'wisdom' where manly men command their docile wives and horde of children. The only possible interpretations I have of it are if women are rivers, then men are the high and mighty mountains that guide the water as it desires. Or women are the malleable rivers channeled by farmers as they please and men are the frightening and unconquerable or exotic and resource rich mountains of which poems and songs are written.
Really, who writes poems about rivers? Now think of all the people that have written about mountains.
I know that I've neglected a conclusion, but it's because I didn't think this through and didn't know how to tie it in so here it is. Basically, I think that if women are rivers, then men should also be rivers. I'll admit that men will probably be white water rapids and women will be a babbling brook, but if a women wants to be the Amazon river, then she should be able to without all the other rivers being like, "Ooooh, scandalous". Likewise if a man wants to be some sort of quiet stream, then he shouldn't be bulling by all the jocks and called gay. (There's a whole other post in that.)
Since I've included so much Chinese in this, I'll end with a racist joke.
What do you name a retarded Asian?
Som Ting Wong
[2]
If you don't want to read through 2,000 words of pure crap, then just remember that even if somebody is annoying or weird, it's no reason to hate them. If you don't want to hang out with them, then be a little distant with them and gently make up a reason to be somewhere else. If they're very insistent on being your friend, give them a few chances. What's the worst that could happen? And what's the best?
“Where did you and dad go on
Monday?” Or was it Tuesday?
My mom looks in the rear-view mirror
questioningly.
“Tuesday,” I correct myself. “Where’d
you guy go on Tuesday?” Today is Thursday. Time has a way of blurring together.
It slows down and speeds up at its own leisure without a regard for how many
tests I need to study for or how much homework I still have to do.
“I… I don’t know if I should tell
you.”
“Tell me,” I insist. What’s the
worst it could be? They’re getting divorced?
“I don’t know…” She shakes her head,
“it’s bad… so, so bad…”
My heart skips a beat. Is it a loan
shark? Did my grandparents die? “Is it debt?” I don’t want to think about the
other option.
“Dead?” my mother tries to clarify,
the enunciation lost in the hum of the engine and roar of the wind. We’re late,
so my mom drives a little faster than generally accepted, and a lot faster than
strictly allowed.
“Debt.” I repeat, emphasizing the
‘t’ sound.
“Noo,” she replies immediately,
drawing it out like she always does when I say something ridiculous. “We in
good shape, financially.” Her answer is one I’ve heard often; everything from
the lack of a helping verb to her misplaced intonation is familiar. I know
she’s very meticulous about managing money - whether it’s because she’s Chinese
or because she’s an accountant still escapes me - but sometimes I worry my
brother’s expensive tuition is taking its toll.
“Then what is it?” I press.
“We…” my mom pauses, still hesitant,
“we went to a funeral.”
“Whose?” I lean forward, though to
be entirely honest, I’m more curious than sad. Somebody told me that a kid got
ran over by a bus down the street from our school, but I think they said he
lived. Maybe it’s some cousin I’ve never heard of or one of her friends. I pity
my mom. It must be terrible to lose somebody.
I barely catch the name.
Alex… Do I know an Alex? The name
rules out the possibility of an unknown cousin or a Chinese friend. God, I feel
terrible. Somebody died and I don’t even remember them.
Then it clicks, and terrible doesn’t
even begin to describe how I feel.
I sink back into my seat, hitting
the back with a thump. “Don’t cry. Don’t
cry. For god’s sake, you have an orthodontist appointment in ten minutes, don’t
cry!”
My mom lets me stare at the ceiling
of the car as silent tears trail down my face. “He shot himself,” she tells me,
but I already had a feeling it was suicide.
“Why?”
“I think… it was pressure from
school…”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
How can I explain this feeling? It
feels like he’ll be okay as long as I wish hard enough. As long as I keep
remembering his laugh and his smile and his baggy T-shirt and his nerdy, black
glasses the entire afternoon will have been a lie. It’s a dream and I’ll wake
up.
It would be false to claim I knew Alex well. You could say that I’ve known him for six years or you could say
that I played cards and board games with him twice a year – New Year’s and
Chinese New Year’s. I could’ve gone until December without even thinking about
him. I can imagine myself asking his younger brother, “how’s Alex?” over a
paper plate of noodles and fish.
Clearly, I’m not sad because a giant
chunk of my life has recently been lowered six feet into the ground. I’m sad
because I felt a connection with him. It wasn’t a sort of creeper connection, I
simply thought that we’re both awkward and he’s always friendly to me even
though I can be shy, annoyingly loud, and shy again in the span of thirty
seconds.
The last time I saw him, only two
months ago for Chinese New Year’s, he gave me a ride home. Was there something
I could have said that would have changed his mind?
A year and two weeks ago, I
attempted suicide. I skipped school on Friday and did the deed, before
confessing to my parents with tearstained cheeks and spending the weekend in
the hospital. I went to school the following Monday.
I regret it, but I don’t always wish
that I lived. If I had died, would he have realized that ending things for
yourself won’t end the pain for others? If I had died, would he be the one
attempting to string together a couple thousand words to fill a giant,
inexplicable void?
If I died, I could have avoided that
glaring contradiction. I felt selfish while eating aspirin after aspirin. I
knew, somewhere inside myself, that my parents would be sad if I died, but I
didn’t care. I was just really scared
of getting a B in geometry, which I ended up getting a few months later.
It hurt when I hit my mouth and the
headboard of my parents’ bed and my front tooth turned grey. It hurt when I burnt
my arm while pointing to a piece of pizza at Double Dave’s and got a scar that
didn’t disappear for almost ten years. It hurt when I fell out of a tree and had
a splinter in my arm for a week.
But those were the kinds of pain
that later turned into badges I wore proudly. This is the kind of pain that’s
eating at me from the inside.
I blame school.
A year and two weeks ago, my grades
were nothing to be proud of. Suicide is the 3rd leading cause of
death among people aged 15-24. That’s the ages from the start of high school to
around the end of graduate school. I’m sure somebody shares my sentiments.
I don’t hate school – it’s basically
the only time I talk to somebody besides for my parents. Ironically enough,
it’s also basically the only time I talk about something not related to school.
I think that the education system has too many faults. I don’t have an
alternative that has a better balance of effectiveness and efficiency. I just
want to say that the current school system both puts an incredible amount of
pressure on anybody who wants, or is pushed, to be competitive and is easy to
cheat. Test banks, pictures, word of mouth. Heck, some people walk out of
classrooms with the test itself.
Or are we just the weak ones? Is
this the twenty-first century version of survival of the fittest: who can find
the best compromise between cheating and studying? Who is the most shameless
about asking for and copying answers? I’ve had people I barely know ask me
for answers. Some people only talk to me if I’ve taken the test they’re taking
next period. Of course, I’m a pushover and actually answer them.
There are all kinds of people at my
school. There are the people who legitimately do their homework, study, and get
the grades they deserve. There are the people who BS their homework and school
in general, but still get good grades because they’re smart. There are the
people who BS their homework and school in general, and think they get good grades, but really don’t. There are the people
who try to cheat, but don’t realize that not everybody who claims to be smart
is actually smart. And then there are
the people who BS half their homework, copy the other half, and make good
grades through a mix of cheating and cramming.
I seem to be surrounded by the last
kind of person. Sure, I BS my homework, but if I don’t do it, I take a zero for
it. Yeah, I discuss my answers, but only after I’ve taken the test, and with
people who have taken the test. That’s where the discussing part comes in.
The last kind of person isn’t
stupid, in fact, they’re usually pretty smart. They often brag about being lazy
and never studying, but still getting good grades. The most frustrating part
about it is that they do get good grades. People give them their homework to
copy. People tell them the answer to #19. People tell them what to study and
what to ignore. People laugh and talk and joke with them.
I find them annoying. I carry out
really nice conversations with some of those people. No joke – today at lunch
we had a deep conversation about Santa Claus and religion. I used to be that
kind of person. But somewhere along the way, probably around the time I
realized that I really hate myself, I stopped.
Why is it that those kinds of people
are so popular? They’re not all terrible
people, but everybody seems to be thoroughly enamored with them. I thought Alex was a great person. He was seven years older than me, and for all I
know, he cheated and was the exact kind of person I’ve been ranting about for
five hundred words, but I really and truly think that he was an honest person.
When I first met him, I was still in
elementary school. I thought he was pretty intimidating at first because he was
tall and a high schooler, but he was nice and watched TV with me even though
all the other guys left to go do guy things like Halo or Gears of War. I told
my brother that I thought Alex was cool, but my brother made this face like,
‘ehh…’.
That’s the thing I really don’t
understand. It could be a little awkward to make conversation with Alex at times, but he was friendly and a nice guy. They say nice guys finish last, but
they don’t – they finish first and leave the rest of us to organize their
funerals. I see this all the time – people ignore the ‘nice guys (and girls)’
in favor of their friends. They antagonize that one kid who doesn’t realize
he’s been going on a little too long on a certain topic. They call him names
and laugh at him. They don’t let him into their games or let him sit with them
on school trips.
You might think, ‘that only happens
in movies,’ or, ‘only little kids do that,’ but you’re wrong. I watch it
happen. And I watch a zealous freshman who just wants to make friends walk off
feeling left out. All I do is watch.
I’ve been guilty of leaving people
out. I once had an ensemble member who everybody thought was strange and
annoying. At first, I also tried to push her away, but, long story short, we
became pretty close friends. Sometimes it’s hard to talk with her, half because
I’m not good at conversation and half because I don’t understand what she’s
going through very well, but she’s a good, caring friend. If only people took
the time to realize that.
I don’t want all the popular kids to
start making friends with loners. It’d just be nice to see them included and
let them feel like they’re a part of something. We call our orchestra a
‘family’, but there are kids that don’t feel like they’re a part of it.
Man, I’ve veered pretty far off
topic, but the idea is that Alex shouldn’t have died. He was about to graduate from nursing school. I remember hearing that his grades weren’t that
great, but people have graduated with worse grades and still made it through.
Maybe I wouldn’t have spent my entire afternoon writing this piece of crap that
makes no sense whatsoever and is based completely off speculation if I’d done something
just a little different or if somebody
had done something a little different.
But he seemed so happy.
Moral of story: some people feel sad
and lonely inside even though they laugh and smile a lot. I think that you
could brighten someone’s day if you’d just give them a chance, and maybe
they’ll brighten yours too.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is a true story, though Alex isn't his real name, and my true beliefs. You can bash it all you want because I realize that it's probably full of holes. But please let me feel sad and please let me continue to write nonsensical musings.
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