She never meant it. 妈妈 said them because she knew nothing better to say to me and now I’m left damaged. And she said those words because she thought they would help me but they did not. She was just repeating words that she had heard herself too many years back to count. Those days when she grew up in China, and that was the norm. Back when she was a girl and was fed those barbed spikes. Her friends were fed those barbed spikes. No one could really escape. She could not really escape when her own 妈妈 fed those words to her. Now, she does not see the damage she made when she said those words back to me because she’s just hiding behind her own pain, cowering from the very words Grandma said to her. The spikes that blinded her back in the day. She could not hide from then, and she cannot escape now. Slowly, everything said by her 妈妈 became her norm. They became the rules she followed when she had her own daughter.

No words could enter the veil she wore, one that was tinged with unbeknownst shame and silent sadness. She does not see, no matter all that’s changed in her world.

You know, she still does not see, remaining blind.

See, the thing is, unlike 妈妈, I am not blind. I lifted up the veil and realized that that’s the irony of it all. What I mean to say is that when 妈妈 slashed me here and there with the knives she held on to, passed down from Grandma, I knew to brace the wounds. Most of all, I knew to never do it to anyone else. You can’t call me blind because I see the spikes. It’s like the circle of life, the circle of generations. Grandma is still Mom’s 妈妈 even though there’s scars. She is still my 妈妈 even though she brought the damage.

妈妈 (mom)