When the close relatives are the perpetrators, where should people stay?
After school, Ayan (pseudonym) went home as usual with her schoolbag on her back.
Passing through the corridor, various sounds came from different units.
Mrs. Chen was teaching her son to do homework. Mrs. Huang said that she had just bought her husband's favorite roast duck and came back to add food. The excited shouts of the children were especially loud in the corridor of the old-style public housing.
However, when Ayan opened the door of her house, there was an empty silence waiting for her.
The door of the parents-in-law's room was closed, and the father was sitting on the sofa reading the classics of horses. Even when the daughter came home, he didn't look at her sideways.
When her mother saw her coming back, she immediately asked, "How much is the sun-seeking test?" A-
Yan lowered her head and didn't answer, her mother coldly dropped a sentence: "Waste wood."
This is how A-Yan remembered her childhood.
Written by: Chen Xiaohai (Tonglushe Case Worker (ASWO)), Editor: Li Kairong (Tonglushe Staff)
Ayan is 48 years old this year. She used to live on the streets for about ten years. Now she is temporarily staying in a hotel arranged by Tonglushe.
(Photo provided by Tonglushe)
Ayan is 48 years old this year. She used to live on the streets for about ten years. Now she is temporarily staying in a hotel arranged by Tonglushe.
When we visited her, we always saw her wrapping the bed with large pieces of fabric, locking herself firmly in the sealed world.
She doesn't usually go out, and stays in the hotel all day.
She was already thin because of long inactivity, her feet gradually became poor.
When she talks about her past, she sometimes looks into the distance, as if she was telling someone else's story.
How could she realize that childhood trauma could have a lifelong impact?
Her father ignores world affairs except indulging in gambling, and her mother's cold words to her wear away the happiness that Ayan should have in her childhood.
In fact, since she can remember, there has been no normal communication at home.
And my mother has an almost morbid obsession with Ayan's study, even if Ayan is injured, she has to go to school.
"At that time, everyone was wearing a tanning belt." A Yan was talking about the fact that she was accidentally scalded by hot water at home when she was in elementary school, and her face was injured.
After the family bandaged her, they did not send her to the hospital for medical treatment, but took her to the school.
Although her injuries were not minor, her mother insisted that she go to school.
At that time, Ayan was very stunned and felt that this was unreasonable.
It wasn't until she made a fuss at the school gate that she could go home and rest after a while.
But the mother's unreasonable discipline to her was more than that.
Ayan, who entered adolescence, became obsessed with dressing up.
Makeup and short skirts are just a sign of youth in the eyes of the public, but not in the eyes of mothers.
Seeing Ayan's change, her mother only casts contemptuous glances and speaks unpleasantly.
The words "slutty", "non-professional" and "ditch boy" kept appearing.
Verbal violence, or not like a fist, leaves visible bruises on the body, but the damage is equally astonishing.
In the eyes of her mother, Ayan is a daughter who has accomplished nothing; in the eyes of the school teachers, Ayan is just an ordinary student, and the people around her have never noticed her pain.
The mother in Ayan's mouth is mean and authoritarian, invincible.
But then we slowly learned that my mother's past was also full of pain.
(file picture)
Mother's mean and authoritarian character also comes from the painful past
The mother in Ayan's mouth is mean and authoritarian, invincible.
But then we slowly learned that my mother's past was also full of pain.
The grandfather died early, and the grandmother raised the children independently.
As the eldest daughter, her mother had to take care of her younger siblings and was forced to give up her studies.
Seeing other younger siblings getting ahead, but not being able to show their strengths, became her big regret, so she projected her own expectations on Ayan, but did not realize that the method of teaching her daughter was wrong.
So it seems that Ayan's world is indeed like the home she used to be when she was a child.
At the age of 13, Ayan left the house on a whim and never went back.
She dropped out of junior high school and entered the workplace, and all kinds of pressures were overwhelming.
She met her second boyfriend through time and again, and Ayan began to be under the influence of drugs. She herself has been imprisoned and detoxified several times for possession and trafficking of drugs.
Drugs can indeed make her temporarily forget the pain of life, but chaos and excitement are only a moment, and one day she will wake up.
European study: if the support systems around you fail one after another or make irrational decisions
Later, her boyfriend was arrested, and Ayan, who lost her financial support, was penniless, so she lived on the streets, and it took ten years to float and sink.
In fact, according to research by the European Homeless Organization, people react differently to trauma.
Everyone's resilience or resilience is different and affected by the resources available to them.
If the support system around him fails one after another, and his family, school, and society treat him with disdain, the negative emotions will not find an outlet and will continue to accumulate.
Even the smallest things can be the straw that breaks the camel's back and breaks people down.
Under various influences, he may make irrational decisions, rely on drugs and alcohol to survive, and escape the pain of the past, but he does not realize that he has stepped into the abyss.
Multiple violence circulates continuously among the four generations, forming a closed loop.
Whether the mother-in-law, mother, Ayan, or Ayan's daughter were forced to go through a similar predicament, this may be because the trauma was not handled properly.
It turns out that some wounds take a lifetime to treat, but they may not heal in the end.
(schematic)
Unconsciously passing on the pain to the next generation
After many interviews, we gradually understood that Ayan's family background is quite complicated, and the trauma has affected four generations.
Grandpa died early in the war, so all the burden of raising children and supporting the family fell on Grandma.
The grandmother, who had been under great pressure, unconsciously transferred the pain to Ayan's mother.
And Ayan's mother experienced the loss of her father in her early years and the failure of her marriage. She had nowhere to vent her stress, and her emotions went awry.
Ayan became her mother's air bag and lived in pain since she was a child.
Ayan gave birth to a daughter when she was young, but because she was unable to raise her, she had to be taken care of by a social welfare agency. Later, Ayan's mother took her granddaughter back, but the relationship between the three was still bad.
So generation after generation, in the end, Ayan's daughter could not escape this fate, and tried to commit suicide when she was in high school.
In recent years, society has begun to understand intergenerational poverty and think about ways to break the situation. However, how much do we know and understand about intergenerational trauma?
In addition to blaming the victims, what kind of soil and support has our society provided for these struggling survivors to help them break through the repeated trauma and recover?
Multiple violence circulates continuously among the four generations, forming a closed loop.
Whether the mother-in-law, mother, Ayan, or Ayan's daughter were forced to go through a similar predicament, this may be because the trauma was not handled properly.
It turns out that some wounds take a lifetime to treat, but they may not heal in the end.
Similar traumas, different outcomes
Homelessness is just a state, and there are many reasons behind it.
In daily life, I believe you and I have faced similar pain.
In recent years, as Hong Kong people have experienced incidents such as schoolchildren's suicide, the anti-revision movement, and the new pneumonia epidemic, the society has also learned more about trauma.
In fact, when a person is faced with a sudden and unusual event or change, and the body reacts to the event more than he can handle, there is an opportunity for trauma.
The causes of trauma are complex, and subsequent reactions can be delayed for many years before they appear suddenly.
Homelessness is just a state, and there are many reasons behind it.
(file picture)
Injury can trigger numbness in survivors' self-defense mechanisms
Pain can also trigger the survivor's self-defense mechanisms, numbing them and no longer experience or feel any kind of event.
Or we should be thankful that there are still multiple safe havens around us, enough for the scarred us to hide in to heal.
As time passes, the wounds scorch into scars, become a part of us, and can start again.
But when the close relatives are the perpetrators, where should people stay?
We always have choices, but choices may lead people down different paths.
The space for everyone to choose is not the same for everyone.
Casting discriminatory or accusatory glances at others not only fails to solve the problem, but also pushes people to a point of no return.
The above is Ayan's story, and it may be yours or mine.
Or we are often only a thin line from homelessness.
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