Ungrateful!
I recently posted a yearly update of what I’ve been doing to all the people on my China list. It included some of the bad things that happened in the fall, and explained that things have been better this semester. Then my mom sent me an e-mail including this:
Your annual message to all your friends was interesting –
how come you never think to tell us all those traumatic events that
happened since you got to Shanghai??Don’t you think we’d be interested?
I’m irritated by this. I don’t know if she’s serious or not. I didn’t mention the Japanese guy getting run over, or someone in my neighborhood committing suicide, because I thought she’d just get all upset about it. Plus, what could she do about it? Nothing. So I didn’t tell her about it at the time. I guess I forgot about her reading this when she got the e-mail.
Nobody can make you feel horrible and insane like your family can. Lately I have this big quandry about whether to go home or not (I think not, because I want to earn more money), and whether my mom should visit me here (I’m thinking yes). Anyway, the whole thing has been a drain and I feel like it all takes a lot of thought and planning, and is hard to coordinate because I don’t know what I’m doing for the summer yet, and because my brother sent me an e-mail that contains the subtext (if I’m not being paranoid) that I’m a selfish bitch for staying away from home. Then again, according to my mom, when my brother comes visits (which is no big deal for him, since he lives a mile away, not on the other side of the planet), he just eats dinner, does his laundry, and lays around on the couch.