I overhead the livingroom conversation and its annoying af.
“Why are you so fat, lose some weight. This is why get no girls”
“Why are you working such a shitty job, didn’t you go to college for 5 years? Did you ever get a diploma or are you this stupid?” (referring to the fact that the internship requirements weren’t fullfilled so no diploma was issued at first)
“You need to [爭氣]¹, stop being such a loser”
(¹爭氣 Antonym of 不爭氣 meaning: disappointing; failing to live up to expectations; so basically something like: “strive for more in life?”)
These are directed at my older brother, so then he gets insecure and starts be like: what about [him]? (he’s referring to me) so then he starts insulting me…
like dude wtf I didn’t yell at you, the fuck you targeting me for?
Then here’s the kicker: later my mom would also go say a lot of similar stuff, but directed at me instead and when my older brother is not listening to it, and from my older brother’s pov, he views himself as if he’s being unfairly mistreated and so he’s then hates me because of that, even thought I don’t exactly get any special treatment, I’m 5 years younger btw.
So like both my mom and brother would say a lot of shit to me and like bruhhh…
So… just your average Asian American household… 🙃
I feel like one of these days we’re gonna end up murdering each other then she’s gonna end up childless lmao… wonder if she’ll even feel shame for getting her children to murder each other. (okay kidding, don’t think murder is happening yet, but it does feel quite scary when the yellings erupt)
I know a lot of westerners here are gonna be like “go no contact”, but like honestly if Asians all followed the western standards, I bet like 80% of “boomer” Asian parents are gonna have estranged kids, this is just the norm.
Do you think like because the “overtion window” of parenting is different, that maybe sometimes you just have to accept that this shit happens, or should I just like embrace western culture and beome a “banana” (Asian on the outside, Westernized on the inside)?
Sorry if my thoughts make no sense, kinda just thinking aloud.
Pretty much, yeah. Our society is built to work like a meat grinder so people tear each other down to try and feed others into the teeth first.
Not always in families like yours, but often enough. It’s common enough that there is a wide variety of tells when a person had deeply abusive family.
Some people have just made hazing their culture and lean into it. Like, it becomes formative to their identity so they keep it going to try and “toughen” others up. They think the hazing motivates people to become exceptional which they believe should be a requirement for survival. Reading your story about your brother in the most gracious way, that’s probably what’s happening there but it’s still abuse.
Incidentally, something that is unique to western culture regarding this though is we tend to just abandon our elderly once we’re adults. They only live with us if we can’t afford to put them in a nursing home, so we all pursue the financial independence to avoid ever having to live with our families. Makes pretty motivated little worker bees for the economy out of us, gives our culture a profit inventive to be as vicious to our loved ones as possible.
But I hate it here so I’m probably not being very charitable.