A Desperate Call for Help
Tags: Help, Family, Depression

Mom has been saying she doesn’t want to live for I don’t know how many times. Each time that she says it chips away a part of me that’s still clinging to live, too. Now I wish to die fully, for her death wish has become mine. So I guess if this is a will, I should say here why I make this decision.

Everything broke apart in the summer of 2016, when I graduated from high school, the same time my abusive father, who was losing in the bond business, finally squandered all the money he and mother made, together with the house in which we had lived for 6 years. Mon had a mental breakdown for the whole summer, lamenting the loss, and hating dad, while she was also suffering from the chemotherapy that was to treat her breast cancer. Dad was not sorry(if he ever was). He said all he had done was wanting to make the family better financially. He had been stubbornly staring at the computer for 6 years, during which he ignored his real business, selling iron, from which all of his income came, beat mom and sister and me every time his stock dropped and accused us of not empathizing with him. Now I guess he’s a total loser.

Mom hated him ever since.

The next three years after 2016 was relatively modest, though not without many vicious twists and turns. We rent a new home, a much smaller one; Mom’s cancer was under control; Dad had a new job as a truck driver; sister became faculty at my college, and I was doing well at school studying English. Mom was stable, and her relationship with Dad seemed to have less hatred. But I knew it would not last. It wouldn’t be long before they started to hurt each other verbally, as they had done countless times. Sister was trying to break free from the family, which was mostly why she got a job and a boyfriend in another city. And I wanted to stay in college forever. Every time I went home there was this negativity threatening in the air, then I knew the friendly faces were a mere illusion to make me feel better. And that was when my suicidal thoughts sprouted.

In 2019 I graduated from my technical college. Though mildly depressed, I decided to go get my undergraduate degree. My family was supportive but they were struggling to make ends meet, let alone afford the expensive tuition my new university demanded. So they borrowed for me to go to university, which made everything worse. Mon was born troubled by her innate sense of insecurity, and when there was debt, and sister(she started her family at another city) and I was away her insecurity increased. I admitted I wasn’t always a good son, my father never a good husband, my sister not always a good daughter, at least that was what Mom’s insecurity tricked her into thinking. We’ve ignored her contribution as a housewife to the family for way too long to start appreciating her again. For that I hate myself.

In the last couple of weeks, because of the coronavirus, my father wasn’t able to get work since there was little for every truck driver. Dad and mom had another fight in which dad beat her for buying a new sink for the balcony. Things spiraled out of control. Dad left; mom is alone in her house, too broken to go to work. I have been calling her every now and then to check her mental state when mine is also hanging on the cliff. So when she texted me today saying that if it weren’t for me, she would have had chosen to die, she was not the only one. I’m too pathetic to share this with anyone I know. Dad is away and did not want to hear from me; sister has a career and a new-born daughter, and is therefore too busy to pay attention to mother; I have few friends on account of my pessimism. So I think this is the only place to find someone to stop me from thinking of suicide.

I want to live a life of freedom. I never wanted my mom to live for anyone else but herself. I want to get her talking to a therapist, but her role as a traditional housewife in China forbids her, for she would become an overt crazy person. But she is, no sane person would hallucinate people, even those close to her, biting and choking and smothering her. I want to stop having nightmares. I want to work my ass off pursuing my postgraduate degree studying literature at a top university in Beijing. I want so many things that I don’t know if I’ll ever get. But still, I want to live for myself…