My collateral sister committed suicide due to depression

This afternoon, I received a message from my mother, she told me that my collateral sister committed suicide by jumping into the Qiantang River in January this year.

I was stunned for 3 seconds when I heard the news, because my impression of this sister was too vague. Although she is related to me by blood, in fact, the number of times we have met in our lifetimes can be counted on one hand.

Therefore, whenever someone asks me if there are any siblings in my family, I only have the four sisters from my mother's family in my mind, and the brothers and sisters from my father's family basically don't have much memory. If my mother didn't tell me about this My sister's memory block will probably stay in my brain for a lifetime.

So why is my relationship with my collateral sister so indifferent, I need to explain the background to you first.

When my dad was a teenager, he came from a place called Huanghu Town near Hangzhou. According to what he once said to me, he had a very strong obsession to escape from the mountains, escape from his parents, and go to the city to work. . As he wished, he got the identity of Hangzhou and settled in Hangzhou, and his brothers and sisters stayed there.

Why does my dad fear and hate his family of origin?

My father's biological father fled to Taiwan with Jiang Jun after the war of liberation due to his sensitive identity in the Kuomintang in his early years, so his mother remarried and gave birth to his younger siblings. However, the way his stepfather treated him was extremely violent, often beating him to pieces, and his mother was always watching from the sidelines, injecting emotion into the other two children. So much so that his father, as the eldest brother in the family, grew up in the shadow of his step-parents and biological parents, and this violent character also seriously affected his own personality.

Although I don't want to blame these "sins" on the original family, this kind of educational psychology and method will be "inherited" to future generations , so my childhood also grew up under the "stick" and "strike education" .

I can't rely on a person with the psychology of a little girl, and often choose to carry it by myself. One is that it is difficult to trust others; the other is the fear of being laughed at by others. This psychological state is automatically substituted into the "intimacy" of adulthood.

Before, I talked about my handling of "intimacy" on the public account (Fan Misuo), which almost completely followed my father's education model for me, habitually "cold violence" and "strike mode" to my partner. If I hadn't met an ex with a professional background in psychology, he taught me a little bit how to communicate and express, trying to get me out of the influence of my "family of origin", maybe now my "intimate relationship" handling, Still bad.

So, is the influence of the family of origin really irreversible?

In the past, I always blamed my "family of origin" for my problems, but after reading a lot of books on psychology, philosophy, humanities and social sciences, I learned that a person has the ability to rescue himself, provided that You have to have a strong obsession to tell yourself that the family of origin can only have an impact on your life at a certain stage, but when you get out of that environment, you can shape and build your own “education system”.

I believe many people have read the book "Educated" (You should be like a bird flying to your mountain) , the author of this book is a mountain girl who never stepped into a classroom before the age of seventeen, and now she has a head above her head. With the bright academic cap of Harvard, Cambridge, Master of Philosophy, and Doctor of History, her autobiography has become a leader in the global bestseller list, ranking TOP1, and was even named "Influential Person of the Year" by Time Magazine. .

She mentioned in her self-report: My childhood was made of scrap copper and rotten iron in the junkyard, where there was no sound of reading, only the roar of cranes. Not going to school, not seeking medical treatment, is the loyalty and truth that my father wants us to uphold. Father does not allow us to have our own voice, our freedom has always been the devil in his eyes. I've been cowardly, broken, self-doubt, something rotten inside me, and it stinks. Until I escape from the mountains and open another world. That is the new world that education gave me, that is the infinite possibility of my life

So books are sometimes really an antidote in a chaotic world. I am grateful to the authors who wrote such books, and to my ex who led me knocking on that door, so that I now have more empathy than the average person to understand my father , understand myself, and even build my own education system, not only to educate myself, but also to try to convey these ideas to more people.

Going back to this matter, since my father had a tense relationship with his own family since he was a child, he rarely had contact with his siblings after he settled in the city.

However, I visited my dad's hometown a few times as a kid.

The younger sister who committed suicide was the daughter of my father’s half-sister. The reason for her suicide was that she learned that her parents were divorced, and that she herself had depression, so she jumped into the river.

Her father was the principal of a school in the local town, and her mother was in the clothing store business. When she was just born, the couple was already in a divorce, so they gave the child to my grandmother to raise, and they hardly cared about it.

My impression of her only stays in her background, elementary school and high school.

The year she was born, it was my summer vacation, and my parents were busy with work and sent me to my grandma's house. So my grandma asked me to take care of the baby girl, but I was only 5 or 6 years old at the time, and I only remembered that she was crying when I was holding her, so that my grandma heard the cry and gave me a hard lesson.

At that time, I hated her very much, after all, I had to be scolded by my grandma for taking care of her. Plus, my grandma doesn't like me, she prefers my granddaughter. I remember some details deeply, but I don't want to talk about it. After all, things have passed, but this kind of shadow will still accompany a person's life.

In a word, my relationship with the elders is very bad. My grandmother doesn't like me either. She prefers her granddaughter. When I was called to visit my grandparents, I was extremely resistant and distressed.

If a child has such a strong resistance, sometimes parents should also ask "why"? Why doesn't this kid like her grandmother, instead of coming up with a didactic accusation "Why are you so ignorant?"

When she was in elementary school, I went to my grandmother's house to meet her again. At that time, I found a thick stack of romance novels hidden on her desk. At that time, I was past the age of reading romance books, so I took a few out of curiosity and read them. When she saw it, she told me embarrassedly, "Don't tell grandma."

I smiled at her knowingly and told her that I would keep it a secret. So that evening, grandma prepared dinner for us in the house, and she and I climbed up to the roof of grandma's house. The two of us sat on the roof tiles, blowing the cool summer breeze and overlooking the scenery of the village. Chatting there and forgetting anything.

This younger sister is extremely introverted, shy, and very shy. Even every time she talks to me, she will drop her eyes, always looking at the concrete floor, answering questions, and rarely looking up at me. When eating, he also kept silent, left the table after a quick meal, and went to the yard to play with my grandma's dog.

The last time I saw her was around my freshman year, eight or nine years ago.

She told me that in two years she was going to go to college in Hangzhou. I asked her, have you thought about your major? She said she was going to study as a kindergarten teacher. I vaguely remember that when she talked about going to Hangzhou, she couldn't hide the slight excitement and excitement in her tone.

I said, "Okay, remember to come to me when you come to Hangzhou. If you need help, let me know."

She said softly to me: "Okay, thank you sister".

However, the equipment at that time was not as developed as it is now, she didn't have a phone, and I couldn't ask her for her phone number.

In my memory, she didn't call me "sister" very much, and I didn't call her sister. We are more not like sisters, but like an aunt and a child. She may be in awe of me, or she may be in awe of all the adults around.

After that, the two of us cut off contact completely.

The girl died in January this year and was missing for six days until she was found by a fishing boat and called the police. In the days when she disappeared, her family did not know about her condition. The family did not know the news until the police completed the autopsy and contacted the family after checking her identity.

My father only got the news in April. As for me, I just got the news today.

According to my mother, the girl's biological mother said that she was going to adopt a 12-year-old boy, while her biological father was busy preparing for the wedding and found a teacher at the school.

When I heard the news, I was really angry and helpless. A living life is gone. And as her own parents, she could look at her daughter's death in such an indifferent way, and even look for a replacement.

All of the above aside, I am saddened and regretted that it is not just a 23-year-old girl whose living life has been lost in this world, and that it is not just her biological parents who responded so indifferently to her death.

Even more ironically, as the daughter of a principal, she committed suicide in January of this year due to depression, while the principal was busy planning her own wedding. I don't even want to call him uncle, this principal, as an educator, is really blind to your title.

Finally, I feel even more saddened and ironic that I have written so many words about "personal growth", "way of thinking", "intimacy", "family of origin" and so on, and maybe none of these words Reach out to my sister.

I have friends around me who are dedicated to depression research, and have a doctor of medicine with a background in psychology. As a result, my words, thoughts, and resources were unable to save my sister. This is the reason why it hit me strongly.

If she could read these words, even just one, perhaps she would not so easily choose to use "death" to express her emotions and pain.

Maybe she doesn't know where that sister from many years ago is now, or she may even think I'm still in Hangzhou, or maybe because of her introverted personality, she didn't choose to find me for help in time.

But I can fully imagine what kind of shadows and pains a child who came out of the mountains, a child who was tortured by his original family, bears on his body. If the environment she is in and the information around her cannot give her enough resources and help, then she will fall into complete "helplessness and despair".

I said at the beginning that "individual tragedies are never unique" , I believe that friends who have the ability to think should have a deeper understanding when they see this. Although I also hope that if the information can reach her, maybe she will not choose "death", but sometimes it is very difficult for a person to really understand a "word", an article, a thing. thing.

Behind all these tragedies, there may be different forms, but how can we dare to speak out about individual solutions without being aware of the structural dilemma? To individualize the problem is precisely the cultural hegemony built by the systematic perpetrators to disguise structural evil.

Some people have been in the countryside all their lives, and some people may have left the countryside and entered the city, trapped in the bottom of the city. Not only is the injustice of resource allocation visible to the naked eye, but also the inclination of information is directly related to the individual's educational background and resources. When "people" become tools of capital and bear the cost of backward education, their consciousness can be deprived in an instant. This is why the makers of rules and hegemony often have higher education backgrounds, and these individuals who fall at the bottom have little choice in their fate.

Just like "Hunger Platform", the food that the people at the bottom can finally eat is only the leftovers that the people at the top have eaten. The people at the top can make rules and decide what the bottom can eat. The same is true of information. Even if the "information" is really transmitted to the bottom, how many people can really understand it?

The movie "The Hunger Platform"

It is not a single problem, nor a cold-blooded analysis, but the bloody real pain of life in every individual. All suffering is by no means individual, but public.

Finally, the reason for writing this article is that my sister's death is inseparable, but I don't want to convey my sadness and helplessness here. I think that some words are almost enough for everyone to think about.

The only thing that can be done now is to hope that everyone can pay attention to the psychological conditions of their relatives and friends and treat those around them kindly. "Depression" is not a venomous beast. Everyone may suffer from "depression". In severe cases, like my sister, they will completely break down their inner defenses and choose to "suicide" to bid farewell to this world.

TED - Depression, our shared secret

As I mentioned earlier, I have a psychiatrist and entrepreneur specializing in depression around me, but I have no way to help my sister, because first of all, the information cannot be reached. I believe that there must be many patients in this world who are in a similar state like my sister. They may not be able to find any information channels to obtain treatment resources and assistance. They may even be ashamed to tell others that they have "depression". I hope more people Being able to pay attention to this matter can reduce the occurrence of tragedies.

If you want to know more about "depression" and "how to help yourself with depression", please pay attention to the content of two friends who specialize in the field of depression research:

Microblogging: @ Doctor Zhan

Public number: Depression Institute

Douban: Notes on Self-help from Depression

https://www.douban.com/doubanapp/dispatch?uri=/gallery/topic/53178/&dt_dapp=1