Why can't I move out?

[lishesquex]

My mother was 12 when the cultural revolution started. She was the youngest of five children in a fairly wealthy family.  My grandmother was a professor of English at the university, and my grandfather was a doctor. Just before the revolution, my grandfather wrote something about the government that had him almost imprisoned and lost him his job. A poster was nailed to the 3 story house they lived in, labelling all who lived within as bourgeoisie traitors. People spat on them in the streets. My grandmother had to support the whole family with just her income.

During the revolution, my mother's four older siblings were all sent to different parts of the country, to work in the countryside. My mother was allowed to stay at home because she was the youngest, but she had to drop out of school to help with the household duties. Sometimes soldiers would rap at the door in the middle of the night and demand entrance. They would search the house, often looting and trashing as they went, while yelling insults and threats. To this day, my mother gets nervous and tense whenever she hears someone loudly knocking at the door.

Years later, when the revolution had ended, the family was still scattered across the country. Two of the siblings were in different parts of the Canton province, and two others were still gods-knows-where. My mother was still living with her parents in Shanghai and the government which at the time assigned jobs to people, placed my mother in a low paying factory (something like 1 chinese yuan - 20 cents - a day) where she worked for much of her 20s. There, her back/neck pain started giving her problems. After going to night school for several years, she learned enough English and was able to transfer to a better job where she worked as a tour guide for Western tourists. She loved this job and still talks about it wistfully sometimes.

At 30, she married and had me. 8 months later, my father left for Australia to try and make his fortune and to give us a better life. My mother and I lived for 5 years in my grandparent's house, where I was raised with my cousin Yu Yuan, whom I called brother. He was 1 year older than me, and we did everything together. I missed him the most when I left China.

Just as I turned 5, my father sent a letter saying that he had bought a house and that we could now move to Australia. As much as I hate him sometimes, I still can't help but admire how my father came to this country with nothing but a few badly pronounced sentences of English and yet managed to own a house and half a restaurant (he was in a partnership) in less than five years. My mother quit the job that she loved and we moved to Australia. For several years my mother cleaned people's houses and worked in a factory while looking after me, tutoring me, and pushing me to excel in school. When I was 7, she asked if I wanted a little brother or sister, because she saw that I was lonely. I said yes, and that's how Rianna came into existence.

So, 12 years later here I am. Mum is old and tired and caring as ever, but she has no life outside of organising /our/ lives. She has no social life, no hobbies, no days where she just relaxes and does something she likes.  Despite her constant back pain, very single day she's either working, or doing housework, or driving Rianna to school, or swimming, or piano lessons, or Saturday and Sunday school (yes, Rianna goes to school 7 days a week). And this is why I can't just move out, as several people have suggested. This is why I can't ignore my mum when she pushes me to do something I really don't want to do, like trying to learn Chinese again after I'd thought I was finally done with it after VCE. This is why I can't just tell her to shut up when her nagging and criticisms gets on my last nerves and makes me want to cry.  This is why I can't come out and tell her that I can never be the person she wants me to be.  Because I'm the reason why she left her family and the job she loved, and why she moved to a country where people looked down on her and badmouthed her like they did in the revolution.  I'm the reason she had Rianna - it was for me that she spent her 40s exhausted, trying to raise 2 kids while working and stressed out while my father went on idiotic business venture after idiotic business venture which never worked out.  It was for me that she's going to spend her 50s working so she can send Rianna to a private school because she wants her children to have the best opportunities in life, when, really, she should be resting, and enjoying life, and thinking of retirement.

She spent 20 years of her life trying to improve mine.  The least I can do is to listen to my mother when she asks something of me and to acquiesce to her wishes if I can. To do otherwise would be like slapping her in the face.