The reason I am excessively self-conscious is apparently because my
mother hammered in my childhood how I should look and behave.
Appearance is the most essential thing in my mother’s life. She
always puts face-saving first among other things. That inevitably leads
to her daughter’s reputation. For it, she doesn’t care how her daughter
feels or what she wants. People’s opinions are everything to her.
When I was in junior high school, the local public transportation bus
I took everyday to school slammed on the brakes suddenly one day and
threw me out of the multiple seat at the back. I hit my shin against a
metal bar. After I got off the bus at the nearest bus stop from my home,
I did my usual 15-minute walk to my house limping. My parents happened
to pass by in their car on that particular day. I thought how lucky I
was to get a ride when I had a sore leg of all occasions. As soon as I
got in the car, my mother bawled me out for limping without asking what
had happened to me. “You’re walking like a vagabond. How embarrassing!”,
she scolded. She ignored my say that I had a small accident on the bus
and my leg hurt as if it wasn’t the point at all. She kept lashing out
with her mantra, “How would others think if they saw!?” It must have
been so shocking to her that she had grabbed every chance to bring up
the way of my walking and nagged at me about that one-time-only limping
for years. Now, the sight of my limping has haunted her strongly enough
for her to believe I have a slight limp by nature.
Walk while eating used to be regarded as bad manners in Japanese
society. My mother made me go to the cram school to prepare for an
entrance exam of a renowned junior high when I was an elementary school
pupil. The classes were three days a week after regular school hours and
the cram school was far from home, which it took 40 minutes by train.
It was usually close to 7 p.m. when the class was over, and we were all
hungry. My fellow students would buy chocolate and eat at the platform
while waiting for the train home. I had never done that as I didn’t have
extra money and was forbidden to eat standing in public by my mother.
One of them gave me a piece one evening. I stashed it to have it back
home. But I became very hungry in that particular evening when I
transferred to another train at the terminal station. I had put a piece
of chocolate in my mouth when I arrived at the nearest station from my
house. My mother happened to be there to pick me up for once. She almost
screamed, “You’re chewing gum in public!” She ignored my say that I had
never done this before and the thing was chocolate not gum. She kept
wailing, “You chew gum in public! How embarrassing! How would others
think if they saw!?” To this day, when she meets me, she still nags at
me about how disappointed she was when she saw me chewing gum that
evening.
Those instances could go on endlessly. She didn’t allow me to go to
the school nurse's room no matter how sick I felt at school because it
looked bad in front of other kids. When we had our house robbed, she
stopped me from calling the police because it looked bad to our
neighbors. She made me wear the class president pin wherever I went
during my term for show. I was raised by a lump of vanity like my mother
and have become a vain person myself who cares too much about looks and
behavior unconsciously.
My family took a trip by train early in my teens and I missed a step
of the stairs at the station with my new unaccustomed high-heeled boots.
I fell and rolled down the stairs over a dozen steps. I stood up at the
bottom of the stairs despite pain. My mother walked down the stairs
calmly and indifferently instead of rushing over to help me, and said,
“I didn’t think it was you. I thought it was a stranger.” Not one ‘Are
you all right?’ came out of her mouth that day. After we checked in a
hotel, I saw my body in the bathroom. The half side of my body was
covered with dark bruises. I imagine how wonderful it would be that
someday the bruises on my mind finally healed and disappeared along with
my massive self-consciousness...
Saturday, February 9, 2019
Bruises hr615
Labels:
behavior,
bruises,
bus,
Childhood,
daughter,
Japan,
Japanese,
junior high school,
Kyoto,
looks,
mother,
self-consciousness,
unconscious