There are several developmental stages in a person’s life (Thompson, 2006), and at some point, specific people contribute to the totality of the personality. I have only a handful of people in my entire life who I can consider as having had a significant contribution in my life.
One is my mother, and the other, my math teacher in elementary. I was born on the [insert date of birth] unto [insert name of parents] in China. My parents both owned a small store in [insert town/city in China where you lived], which they both manned themselves, not wanting to hire any ‘outsiders’ they could not trust.I remember that my mother used to cradle me on her lap as we watched my father entertain the men who brought in the supplies which we sold to our neighbors. My father was always the one who talked to these men, and my mother merely the cashier; my father did not want her speaking to any of the men. I had a single doll, which I named [insert doll’s name].
This doll was the only toy I owned, and I guess the closest thing to a bestfriend that I had— my mother rarely let me outside the house, telling me that it was dangerous, that one of our business ‘enemies’ would go and kidnap me the moment I stepped out the street.I guess you could say that I had an isolated childhood; I had no friends in spite the fact that there were several children who lived in our street. When time came that I had to go to school, I never talked to anyone else, and brought [name of the doll] with me, so I would not feel so alone. My father always fetched me from school on his bike, and we would ride through the streets in silence.
Some people would call out to him and he would stop to chat with them for a while, never introducing me unless one of his friends noticed me first.They would tell me that I was ‘cute’ [please insert Chinese word for this], and my father would go on and rant about the bad things I did at home, like how I did not help them at the store, or how I ate messily and let my mother take care of everything. I was only about six years old, and had no notion of resentment. I loved my father; he was like a god to me. The lord of the house, dictating what me and my mother could and could not do.
My mother was my mother, and a friend. Only mothers can’t exactly be friends.But she has always been with me, and I believe that if it were not for her, I would not be who I am now. Anyway, when I was eight, I had already made some friends, making a bit of progress in the aspect of socializing, but I still brought my doll with me. I played with this doll during boring subjects like math, making her walk on my desk with her stiff legs. Then one day, during a rather dull math class, my math teacher snatched my doll from my hands without warning and told me to listen to her lecture, otherwise she would not give me the doll back.
Of course, I tried to take it from her, going as far as pulling at her skirt and scratching her stockinged legs. What I did shocks me until now; I was not the type to get into trouble, but she had taken my doll, the one doll I ever owned. And I lost it because I would not listen to my teacher. What she did was pull [insert doll’s name] ‘s head from her body, then threw it out the window into the mud. It had been raining, and I remember running outside to get it.
My teacher had tried to stop me, gripping my arm really hard but I scratched at her hand and she let go of me.Needless to say, my parents got called by the principal of the school, and I was suspended for two days. We went home together in silence. My mother, however, took my mangled doll from me and threw it out into the side of the street. I just cried, and she told me that if I was a big girl now and didn’t need any dolls.
My father was so ashamed and enraged by what I had done, saying that it was a disgraceful thing, and bad for business, and I deserved punishment. He then took out his belt, and tried to lash out at me buckle-first, but my mother went in front of me just as the belt went down and she got hit.It may sound really dramatic, but it did happen. My mother’s neck got hit, and it bled. The shock of it all made my father stop, and he never spoke to me again. My mother was sobbing with the pain, and I, not knowing what to do, simply left her.
I regret having done this because my mother, as I said, has always been with me no matter what. Since this incident, I have never spoken to the math teacher, and refused to participate in class. I looked at her direction without really seeing anything, hearing anything. I closed my mind to her, and hated the subject she thought.I sucked at it, but my mother helped me with the homeworks, and that’s how I got through elementary math. Even today, every time I see simple math symbols on paper I remember that day that I lost [insert doll’s name], and saw the evil in my father’s eyes.
It was all downhill from then. I don’t know if my father was a bad man; I have no other father figure to compare him with. It’s like he is the truth I know about fathers, and I cannot bring myself to hate him. But I heard that he had an affair with some women, and by the time I was nine, he was no longer sleeping in the same room as my mother.Before I turned ten, they had gotten a divorce. I can no longer the exact events of this part of my life, I guess I have been trying to forget about them.
I wasn’t through with elementary yet and we were already a broken family. My mother and I left our house and my father, and we moved in with my aunt, her sister, who was a woman who had a job somewhere quite far (about an hour from where she lived); she would not live anywhere else because she thought it was a waste of money to have two houses.My mother and I were usually alone then in the mornings and afternoons until my aunt came home from work late in the evening. Leaving my father was not a painful experience. I never really cultivated any fondness for the man, and it was simply like changing clothing. I had more freedom then, compared to when we still lived with my father.
As my mother looked for a job of her own, eventually finding one as a cashier at a nearby grocery store, I could go out to play without hindrance, but some of the children would not come near me.I heard from one of them that their mothers had forbidden them to come near me, the daughter of a broken family, a harbinger of misfortune. This one was a classic; I never would have thought I would spur the creation of a superstition. But there were friendly modern families, too, and they accepted me as their daughters’ playmate, and since then I have had a comparatively normal childhood. These experiences, however, have left some scars I guess.
I am a very insecure person, and I never truly trusted any of my friends.In high school, whenever there were class plays I could not participate in the limelight; I preferred being one of the backstage assistants, the one who helped the actors and actresses with their costumes and props, who lifted the curtains and cleaned up the mess afterward. I was in a sense alienated from everyone else, even my own mother and aunt who both came home late at night, not that I minded that much. I learned to be independent in this way, for a child yet to enter puberty. A lot of things kind of changed when I came to that point though.I reached puberty when I was [insert age when you had your first period], and my insecurities became greater when my skin became sallow and pimply during the days of my period, and my male classmates would taunt me.
Boys do mature slower than girls—even at thirteen they still pulled at my hair or pushed me on the streets then run away as I started crying in silence. My mother was the one person who did not treat me badly, although she would remark every now and then how untidy I looked, which she said was probably the reason why my classmates teased me. On her days off she started spending more time with me.She helped me groom myself, cutting my hair with her own hands and lending me one of her earrings. I don’t know how these minute changes could have brought about colossal changes, but changes they did bring: my classmates stopped teasing me, pulling at my hair whatsoever, and I would notice boys glancing my way twice as we passed by each other.
One even went as far as giving me a [insert common Chinese flower], but I was too timid and insecure still, and did not know how to proceed. He did not become my boyfriend then, although a year later, due to his persistence, we started dating each other.Ultimately, my mother and I became closer as the days of my adolescence passed by. I guess she thought I was grown-up enough to hear about her personal travails, and she listened to my stories also about school late through the night after her work. But there was nothing really remarkable about me and school. I could not stand the thought that I was tethered to one guy, and I had asked him for a ‘break’.
He had said that he would wait until I was ready once again to try it out, but seven months later, I was still not ready.Though he had already hooked up with someone else two months after I left him, so no problem with that. My mother, on the other hand, was making progress with her personal life. She had started seeing other men a year after she and dad separated. My father had already remarried when I was fourteen, and my mother was still in her search for her real soul mate.
[Warning: the following segment is close to your current life, so please edit as you see fit. ] And then he did come. He was a friend of my aunt’s, a work colleague actually, and he had been invited to a party at our house.He and my mother hit it off at once, and they got married after a year. My stepfather was good to me, and comparing him to my father then, I guess he is better. After a few years, my stepfather was assigned to the USA, and so he had to move there.
My mother and I could not move with him immediately because several arrangements had to be made. I was twenty-one by the time everything was arranged and we moved to California. My mother and I have been through much, and she does not only appear as a salient figure at specific periods in my life—she is in every one.One can say that she is my life; we have stuck through all the good and bad times together. My mother is my sister, my bestfriend. She gave me strength, and talked me through times when I felt that I could not do anything.
I really resent that Math teacher though. I like to think that it was because of her that all the bad things started happening, like a bowling ball hitting the pins one by one. But then again, if it were not for her, we would not be where we are now. More importantly, I would not be who I am now.
