Editor’s note: In “My Feminism,” a series planned in honor of Ilda’s 10th anniversary, diverse individuals document feminism through their experiences and share the meaning and social effects of these experiences with readers. Nina, the third author in the series, is a doctoral student in English literature and is currently considering how feminism will affect the direction of her research in the future. The “My Feminism” series is supported by the Korea Foundation for Women’s Funding for Gender-Equal Society.

 

My constantly-drunk mom asks, “Do you know what my life is like?”

 

It was a dazzling day. The unforgiving light allowed no possibility of denying that it was daytime at that moment. On that day, at that time, my mother was, as always, drunk. I couldn’t understand why my mother had to be drunk on such a bright day. When I came near her I could smell the alcohol, as well as the perfume she desperately applied to try to hide it. My memories have grown vague as time has passed, but my mother’s behavior at that time seems exaggerated.

 

I stopped her when she tried to go out to drink more. Her brain was so drenched in alcohol that there was no space for more, and I couldn’t guess how much drunker she wanted to get. I had to ask her to stop. That was all I said to her. Please stop drinking. As I said it, my mother suddenly starting acting strangely. Her behavior was the very definition of “strange.” I couldn’t understand it for the life of me.  Why was she like that?

 

“Do you know what my life is like?” she asked me.

 

Of course, I said that I didn’t know. The question of whether I did or didn’t wasn’t really important. What was important right then was getting her to stop drinking, not what her life was like, what she felt about it, or whatever else. All that mattered was her not drinking any more that day and not fighting with my father.

 

“Day after day I wait for your dad to get home, come to greet him like a puppy, take the clothes that he takes off, saying ‘yes’ and ‘uh-huh’ while I hang them up. That’s all I do.”

 

As she said this, my mother bent as far forward as she could and imitated a palace eunuch serving the king. She must have been unaware of how strange, unsightly, and grotesque this looked. I was repulsed. I had always believed that my mother wanted to exaggerate problems and manufacture tragedy. Her behavior that day seemed like nothing more than the pitiful gestures of a woman wringing every last drop of tragedy out of her situation.

 

▲ I was young, and I couldn’t understand her strange behavior. [출처: Pixabay / daunbaru]

Her claim, “I can’t speak”

 

To me, my mother was a person who was always shouting. I doubt she knows even now how scared I felt when she would raise her voice. In any case, in my head, her shouting was an attribute that she had to have, and that I practically equated with her. Mom had to shout, she had always shouted, and I couldn’t imagine her not shouting—but it really scared me.

 

When my mother drank, there was one thing she would say without fail: “Your dad doesn’t let me speak.” Again and again, she said she couldn’t speak because of my father and that it was frustrating and unfair. But I thought my constantly-shrieking mother saying that she wasn’t allowed to talk as she pleased was ironic. I couldn’t understand how she couldn’t speak though she was yelling all the time. My mother’s hysterical voice was always resounding in my ears and frightening me, so how could she say she couldn’t speak?  

 

It took me a long time to understand what she meant. I didn’t know at first that “he doesn’t let me speak” didn’t mean that he didn’t let her talk, didn’t let her make a sound, but was an expression that symbolized the violence that she had endured and the context of her life. To understand that one sentence, I needed a lot of context, discussion with others, history, and perspectives.

 

Opening different eyes to understand Mom

 

I didn’t understand my mother’s life and wouldn’t have been able to even if I had tried. It wasn’t until after I started studying feminism in university that I began to understand it as an endless series of struggles that she has never given up on. Through cultural studies, seminars, and older students in activist groups, feminism, which I had stumbled on by chance, made me understand many things in this world differently.

 

I realized that I would need to reevaluate my mother’s exaggerated behavior, contradictory claims, drinking habit, and refusal to avoid doing something even though she knew it would cause my father hit her.

 

The important thing about her getting drunk in the bright daytime and bending to a strange degree to imitate a servant was not that she was “bending to a strange degree to imitate a servant.” It was that she was aware that her role for the twenty years since marrying had been merely to serve my father. And she seemed to want to express how her confidence as a person and her humanity has been lost in that process.

 

Her saying, “He doesn’t let me speak,” was not a claim that he never let her make sounds or let words pass her lips, but that in their relationship, my mother’s opinion was never considered valid. Also, the fact that, even though she clearly knew that when she drank he would hit her, or when she left for a few days he would bring her back and hit her, she didn’t stop doing those things, meant that she had never given up a struggle out of fear of being hit.

 

In this way, comprehending my mother’s story required a totally different perspective, and understanding of her life. And those are the things that feminism has given me. Of course, feminism didn’t have all the answers about my mother. But it sufficiently explained parts of the life of this woman who had been exploited in several ways and through that alone, feminism greatly changed the way that I look at her life.

 

However, if feminism had only gone that far, had just given me a temporary awareness of a problem and then disappeared, its meaning would have been lost as time passed. It’s true that being able to understand what my mother was saying and read into the hidden context of her life was a huge accomplishment, but I think that feminism has given me something even more valuable.

 

Someone who should be respected, instead of someone who needs to be saved

 

I doubt she knows this, but for a long time, I thought of my mother’s pain as my own.  That’s not to say that I’ve suffered as much as she has, struggling on her own for so long. It’s that I didn’t think of her as separate from me, and I considered our existences mutually dependent. I seemed like a person who couldn’t do anything without her, and I thought of her as just a person who couldn’t do anything without me—or more specifically, without children, or family.

 

“Your mother is stronger than you think.”

 

This is what an older student told me, when my father’s violence become worse after I entered university, and watching my mother suffering from his beatings was causing me to suffer too. She (the older student) had had similar experiences and was also involved in feminist activism, and after listening quietly to my story, that’s what she said. At first, I thought it meant she was telling me to sit by and watch as my mother was abused, and I didn’t really understand. She also said, “You need to see yourself and your mother as separate individuals,” and I didn’t understand that at first, either. 

 

She explained: “From what you say, your mother doesn’t sound like such a weak person. If she has endured all that time, she seems to be strong enough. Right now, you think that getting her away from your father would be best, but not divorcing him is your mother’s choice, for better or worse. Of course we can’t say that that choice is entirely free, but still, I can’t understand your total disregard for your mother’s will. Your mother could do alright without you. She’s not someone who needs to be saved by you.”

 

She was right—I had always thought of my mother as a suffering victim, as not having the will or strength to overcome the situation alone, as someone who had no choice and absolutely needed my help. My friend’s words were quite correct.

 

Believing I knew everything after reading a few introductory books on feminism, I thought that I needed to get my mother away from this “wife beating” by whatever means necessary, and I never considered my mother’s will as a person in that process. I thought that feminism was about saving female victims of violence. But those thoughts were completely wrong, and I became ashamed that I had considered myself so righteous.

 

Since then, I’ve tried to remember that though I can support or encourage my mother’s choices, I can’t control them. At her core, my mother is not “my mother,” but an individual like me, and I shouldn’t forget that her personal choices and decisions must be respected.

 

This realization that my mother deserves respect as a separate individual is the most valuable thing that feminism has given to me. To be sure, through feminism, I have learned and realized countless things since then and will continue to change in the future, but the ability to see my mother as a person to support and believe in instead of someone I need to rescue has made me the most touched and thankful.

 

Feminism learned from women’s lives

 

This has been the story of why I have become unable to think of feminism and my mother separately. Of course, I know that dwelling on one’s relationship with one’s mother or emphasizing sisterhood can seem outdated. But despite that, I learned a lot from my mother and her life, and I’m proud of that. I sometimes think that in some ways, my mother has been a greater feminist activist than I, who studied feminism from books.

 

When I look at her in that way, I think that feminism is not something that is learned from books, but that can be learned from women’s lives.

 

To be honest, at the time of this writing, my mother has not been home in a while.  She hasn’t answered her phone in a couple of days. She has been rebelling against my father’s violence through short-term absences like this for a long time. At this moment, I feel no resentment towards her. I’m too old to ask her why she abandoned her family and left, holding her responsible. I only hope that if she doesn’t come back, that decision is one made for her sake.  What makes me the saddest is when she leaves and then feels scared—of many things—and come back dejected. I really want to tell her that I support her, and that even if she leaves our family, she has certainly not made the wrong decision.

 

So Mom, answer the phone. 

 

*Original article: http://ildaro.com/6267 Published: February 4, 2013 [Translated by Marilyn Hook]

 

◆ To see more English-language articles from Ilda, visit our English blog(https://ildaro.blogspot.com).

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