I started this blog in 2011. Since then it has been interrupted twice and rebuilt twice, and through all of it I kept making the same mistake. I overlooked a basic problem: what happens to some people cannot be fully understood—sometimes cannot be understood at all—by those who have never lived through it or seen it. When I write about personal experience, I tell myself not to try to make others understand. But I still want it.
I have written about my own life and about a small number of people in my family. The material was large, so I serialized it. At first I labeled those posts “Stories,” meaning firsthand experiences of myself and a few family members. Some readers told me they thought I was writing fiction or making things up. A while ago I thought about this again. I remembered Story Club, a magazine that published both true stories and invented ones. I wondered whether “Stories” gave the same impression. So I changed the category to “Record.” It says plainly that what I write is real. From now on I won’t spend energy explaining that.
For events in the past, I do not rule out errors in my memory of details. When I find one, I correct it. Some things I don’t remember myself; I put them together from relatives’ and friends’ recollections. Each recollection is a fragment, and I link them to keep the timeline as coherent as possible. When there is a gap, I try to learn and verify; if I cannot collect the information, I skip it rather than making a reasonable guess. I am not writing a historical romance; I am recording history. I try to preserve the key causes and effects and the background as completely as I can.
The experiences that have affected me most are those from growing up. They happened mainly in my family, then in other social relationships. They shaped my self-evaluation, my relationships, my emotional management, my personality growth, and many other things. They affected my later life seriously and even led to depression. According to a psychological diagnosis, the main cause came from my family, but social experience cannot be ignored. It took me more than a year to ease. During that time I did not work; I prepared for an exam and failed. In that situation I could not work; numbing myself with work would only make the illness worse.
Are there people with experiences similar to mine? Yes, quite a few. But “some people” do not easily notice them, for three main reasons. First, most people with experiences like mine cannot make their voices heard. Second, “some people” have never been through it. Third, emotionally they believe no one could be worse off than they are. Around me, people with similar experiences are still hurting themselves and the people closest to them. One has already died by suicide because of depression. Another, because of psychological problems caused by family experience and a weak sense of right and wrong, caused consequences and went to prison for more than nine years.
Writing down my experience does not mean I live in the past, cannot get out, or am “stuck on it.” I want to make the whole cause-and-effect clear, review how things developed, find the roots of the problems, and then deal with the consequences in a targeted way. A doctor treating a patient analyzes the cause and treats the disease accordingly. But if the problem is not physical but psychological, it cannot be covered up by your not mentioning it—or by others forbidding you to mention it.
The song “We Are Different” has a line: “Too many hardships have worn down the years and our tempers.” Worn down does not mean we can stop mentioning them. Some people would rather not mention them, as if not mentioning such things is the mark of so-called maturity. But these things are like time bombs, one after another. They may explode at any time, wounding both yourself and the people close to you. This happens too often; some people just do not want to believe it. Cover your eyes—does it disappear? Cover your ears—does it become silent?
Chai Jing, a former CCTV host, wrote in Seeing: “Only someone who has also gone through the same boundless darkness has the right to say, I understand you.” Of course, even without the same boundless darkness, a partial similar experience can at least let someone understand a little. That is precious and rare for us.
The blog is the last place that is mine alone. Here I can write about things I cannot tell my family or friends, and by recording my experience I can ease some of the pressure and pain inside. Here I can also record happy and beautiful memories. Comedians have a higher rate of depression than other people; they leave happiness to others and keep pain for themselves. Because they are comedians, that identity makes it impossible for them to express their pain in speech or writing, and in the end it leads to depression. I do not write to please readers. I cannot always be “singing and dancing” on the blog. I am not deliberately building positive energy, nor deliberately building negative energy. I do not need to wear a mask in this last place that is mine alone, and I certainly do not need to put an electric-shock collar around my own neck here.
Also, for some things, I do not want other people to have the same or similar experiences. If you have not been through them, I am happy for you.