What is it like to have a mentally ill person in the family?
My sister-in-law was born in ’75 and is 41 years old.
She has been crazy for over 20 years.
Grandma had six children, five daughters and one son.
My mom is the oldest and this aunt is the youngest.
Perhaps, to Grandma’s family, the sister-in-law is a disgrace to the whole family.
My sister-in-law did not do anything to corrupt the family, only for a decent family, her madness is a permanent dark side.
Of Grandma’s six children, all but my sister-in-law did well.
The only son is my uncle is the richest man in Grandma’s village, the year before last, the village built a shrine uncle donated 300,000 at one time; the two sister-in-laws are also considered to be squeezed into the rural affluent class.
My sister-in-law went crazy as a teenager.
I remember when I was in elementary school, every time I went to my grandmother’s house, I was always assigned to sleep in the same bed with my sister-in-law.
If I accidentally touched my sister-in-law when I turned over, she would kick me with her feet, kicking and cursing viciously, scaring me so much that I curled up in the corner of the bed and didn’t dare to move.
My sister-in-law was kicked around by her family like a ball, and she married several men in a row.
Once my sister-in-law took me to the market to buy clothes, she was in front of a stall selling underpants, holding the underpants and gesturing, and then suddenly put the underpants directly on the coat to try on.
At that time, there were many people in the market, and my face was so red with embarrassment that I could not wait to find a crack in the ground, but my sister-in-law was so calm and relaxed.
At that time, the whole family thought that she was just an introvert and irritable, not easy to get along with.
At that time, I always had an inexplicable fear of my sister-in-law.
When I grew up and thought about it carefully, I realized that my sister-in-law was able to try on her panties in full view of the public without any problem, as if she was completely absorbed in her own world, which meant that her mental state had already deviated from the normal track.
As she grew older, my sister-in-law’s madness became more and more serious. First, she did not do any housework, lying in bed all day long with nothing to do, then quarreling violently with my grandparents every day, and in the end, even chopping my grandparents with a kitchen knife.
At that time, my grandmother’s other five children had all become family members, and only my sister-in-law lived with my grandparents. My sister-in-law didn’t work every day, and she was very fat, while my grandparents were already over 60 years old, so my sister-in-law’s round arm was swung over, and my grandparents had to stagger back a few steps, not to mention that my sister-in-law liked to use a knife to cut people.
During that time, all the metal products in grandma’s house were locked in the cabinet.
My sister-in-law’s madness was intermittent. When she didn’t have an attack, she was like a normal person, but once she had an attack, she would talk nonsense and act uncontrollably.
It was as if a demon lived inside her, and like Aladdin, she could summon this terrible devil at any time.
Grandma and Grandpa lived in constant fear.
My mom said that my grandparents were responsible for my sister-in-law’s madness. First, my grandparents didn’t let my sister-in-law go to school for a few more years, and second, they paid too little attention to my sister-in-law, who was sensitive and introverted and had too much self-esteem.
Whenever my mother talked about my sister-in-law’s school days, she used a particularly proud tone: your sister-in-law’s grades were very good when she went to school, and she was very serious about her studies; I still remember how she studied until midnight every night with a small oil lamp! However, my sister-in-law’s sensitive and introverted personality had harmed her.
She read to the third grade, because the head too fast, the teacher always put her in the last row, she thought the teacher is not good for her, is intentionally targeting her, so the blocking said not to go to school.
Her grandparents let her drop out of school without any persuasion.
My sister-in-law was the youngest child in the family, and my grandparents’ family’s financial situation was not bad, so there was no problem at all in paying for her education.
My mom said that if my grandparents had found a way to keep her in school and let her study more, she might have been more open-minded.
My mom thinks that people’s mental problems are caused by their brains being stuck in a dead end.
Maybe there is some truth in my mom’s analysis.
I remember that when my sister-in-law did not show any signs of madness, she loved to watch TV and would giggle when she saw her favorite programs, and that bright laughter contained the desire for a better life in the future.
I guess she must have had dreams, maybe she wanted to go out and see the lights and greenery of the big city, or maybe she wanted to be a glamorous woman in the workplace wearing formal clothes.
But my sister-in-law only studied in the third grade, she has no education, no skill, she can only be trapped in the countryside, like other rural girls, chopping wood, picking water, Xian clothes, cooking, day after day to do simple chores, but also often face the grandmother’s criticism and scolding.
Her heart is higher than the sky and her life is thinner than paper, which may be a true reflection of her.
When my sister-in-law was so crazy that she took a kitchen knife to cut people, my uncle sent her to the local mental hospital for treatment, where she stayed for one or two years, and then came out with a much more stable mental state.
Because the antidepressants she took contained a lot of hormones, my sister-in-law was like a fermented bun, so fat that her eyes were only a slit.
After she came back from the mental hospital, her spirit was much more stable, but her temperament was still repetitive. She would not cut people with a knife, but she would quarrel with her grandparents.
The old man took care of the crazy sister-in-law for nearly ten years, has long been physically and mentally exhausted, and now both of them have reached the age of old age, the sister-in-law has become a heavy burden on the grandparents.
My sister-in-law was twenty-five or twenty-six years old, just the right age to get married, and the whole family planned to find her a family to marry.
There weren’t many matchmakers because everyone in the countryside knew about my sister-in-law’s madness.
However, Grandma’s family was able to find a man in a town a little farther away who was willing to marry her.
When it came time to talk about marriage, Grandma and Grandpa explained directly to the man about my sister-in-law’s mental condition, and that by that time she had very few episodes of insanity.
The man’s family was poor and divorced with a son, and he was lucky to marry a girl, especially since Grandma’s family was in good financial condition, and his uncles and great-aunts were considered to be rich relatives.
If the sister-in-law’s madness does not attack, the man is certainly earned.
So the man married his sister-in-law with a hint of luck.
Auntie’s wedding in the village held a very grand, grandparents specially to Auntie a large carload of beautiful furniture to accompany the dowry, but also gave Auntie a generous amount of money in the bottom of the box.
On the wedding day, my sister-in-law put on a nice makeup, head with a big red flower, wearing a red head of my sister-in-law was carried to the wedding car by my uncle, shaking around the red cover can not hide the bride’s shyness and joy.
Half a year later, the sister-in-law was sent back by the man, along with the return, there is a beautiful car of dowry furniture.
It is said that the sister-in-law to go to the man’s home three months after the beginning of madness, the man began to dislike the sister-in-law, she is not good at all, the sister-in-law often call the grandparents complained, however, the grandparents are to persuade the sister-in-law to be patient and so on.
Later, the man began to beat her, and she often ran home with a swollen face and bruises, but her grandparents still advised her to be patient and sympathetic to her husband, and then sent her back again.
Probably in the countryside, scolding and domestic violence by husbands against their wives was not a big deal.
The sister-in-law and her mother’s family were able to put up with the man’s domestic violence against the sister-in-law, but the man eventually couldn’t put up with the sister-in-law’s insanity, and the man insisted on getting a divorce and sending the sister-in-law back.
Over the next two years, my sister-in-law was married off two or three more times, and either my sister-in-law ran back on her own or was sent back by the man.
Like a ball, she was kicked back and forth.
She went from one family to another, like a swallow that built a temporary nest under someone else’s roof.
She became a heartache for the whole family, and perhaps only by marrying out would this heartache be lifted.
03 In those years, there were some middlemen in our countryside who specialized in introducing girls to foreign provinces for marriage. After the man finalized the marriage, he would pay a generous dowry to the woman’s parents, and the middleman would draw an intermediary fee in the middle.
It’s a lot like a business, like pimping, like human trafficking.
The only difference is that it’s all consensual.
The provinces where the out-marriage takes place are mainly Jiangxi, Yunnan and Guizhou, all of which are poorer rural areas.
It is said that because the local market for bride price is frighteningly high, it makes it very difficult for men in these poor mountain villages to get wives.
These light mongers found out that the bride price was very low in some places in foreign provinces, and the cost of marrying a foreign wife was much lower than that of a local wife.
Thus, it gave birth to this particular marriage market.
However, very few people are willing to marry their daughters in the provinces, because those light mongers come from poor rural areas, where the mountains are high and the roads are long and the people are dangerous, so people are not willing to marry their daughters out to suffer.
Those who are willing to marry in the provinces are those whose families are very poor, or whose women’s appearance is too poor, or who are too old, and who do not have a marriage market in the local area.
My sister-in-law was also introduced by a middleman to marry in Jiangxi.
What it means to marry far away, mom knows in her heart, grandparents and uncles and other aunts know, but no one raised objections.
My sister-in-law has always been like a hot potato, waiting for some unknowing receiver to pick her up, perhaps the farther away the better.
A few days before going to Jiangxi, my mom specially picked up my sister-in-law to come home to play, I came home from school that day, she stood by the window sill and greeted me with a smile, the sunlight shone on her chubby face, shrouded in a layer of love and a soft white light, I think she is very much like the Maitreya Buddha.
At that moment, I felt that my sister-in-law was no longer the crazy person who chased my grandparents with a kitchen knife, and that she might have gotten better, I thought to myself.
During the meal, my mom nagged my sister-in-law to be more diligent when she went to her in-laws’ home in Jiangxi Province, to take the initiative to do housework, and to be nicer to her husband, to which she agreed in a meek manner.
A few days later, my sister-in-law carried her own luggage and followed the introducer to Jiangxi.
In the beginning of the year, my sister-in-law would often call back, often saying on the phone that she wanted to go home, of course, without exception, everyone still advised her to be patient.
About every time my sister-in-law said she wanted to go home, my grandmother’s family had to worry for a while.
But now it’s not so easy for her to go home by herself. The mountains are high and the roads are far, and she doesn’t know much, and she’s never traveled alone, so she doesn’t even know how to take a train.
Later, my uncle stopped the landline at my grandmother’s house, but my sister-in-law would call the landline next door and often talked about wanting to come back.
Later, the neighbor’s landline also stopped working, and everyone used cell phones.
Without the landline, my sister-in-law couldn’t make any calls, and she lost contact with her family completely.
A few years later, my sister-in-law was removed from my grandmother’s household as a missing person.
Slowly, sister-in-law in everyone’s mind, like a wound sealed by a band-aid, once bloody and painful wounds, hidden under the band-aid gradually well, no one remembers that here once flowed blood, once painful grimace.
04 more than ten years have passed, my sister-in-law is nowhere to be found.
My mom occasionally mentioned my sister-in-law, always said: if she died outside, I’d rather she died early, so she never had to suffer on earth again.
After I graduated and started working, every time I saw a ragged homeless woman on the street, I would think of my poor sister-in-law. Was she kicked out of her mother-in-law’s house after she had an attack of insanity, was she sold to several families, or was she wandering in some unknown place?
More than ten years have passed, and perhaps in everyone’s mind, she has long since starved or frozen to death on the streets somewhere.
Except for Grandma.
Grandma was a very superstitious person, she believed in Buddha and some fortune-telling masters.
Every year, Grandma would ask the so-called fortune-teller to tell her sister-in-law’s fortune, and every time, the fortune-teller would say that she was still alive, and Grandma was convinced of this.
Last year when my brother got married, my 80-year-old grandmother met my 82-year-old grandmother, who is the daughter of my grandmother’s village, and they knew each other when they were young, and the old sisters chatted very happily.
I heard them talking about my sister-in-law, and my grandmother said with certainty, “My little daughter is not dead, the fortune-teller said she is alive, so she must be alive! The fortune teller was right.
I went back to my hometown in March this year, and one of my neighbors worked at the police station in the city. My mom was standing at the door asking him about how to apply for a disabled person’s ID card, and I interjected, “Who wants to apply for a disabled person’s ID card?
I interjected: Who wants a disabled person’s card? My mom immediately gave me a secret look, signaling me not to ask any more questions.
After the neighbor left, my mother told me that she had found my sister-in-law.
My sister-in-law is still the secret that cannot be told to outsiders, and everything about her has to be wrapped up in an airtight package with three layers on the inside and three layers on the outside.
My sister-in-law is not our initiative to find, is my sister-in-law’s husband in the construction team to do masonry, know a grandmother’s town, after several inquiries, only to contact my sister-in-law’s mother’s family.
My sister-in-law now lives in a rural area of Nanjing, my sister-in-law’s husband’s family has four brothers did not marry, my sister-in-law’s husband is delayed until the 40s before he met the wandering sister-in-law, so the sister-in-law picked up home to be his wife.
The sister-in-law also gave birth to a son, son of white chubby very cute, now 3 years old, although the family is poor, but the good thing is that her husband is honest and generous, but also has a craft, she is also considered good.
My mom told me about these through the relaxed and happy, I then asked: “Auntie people, she is good?
I then asked: “How is my sister-in-law?” My mom’s expression darkened, and she lowered her eyes and sighed: “Your sister-in-law is blind, she can’t see, she can’t take care of herself, but fortunately her husband is still willing to take care of her.
“What about the child?
Who’s taking care of them?
“I asked.
I asked, “I was told that the child was brought up by an aunt.
“My mom said.
My sister-in-law has been seriously overweight since she got out of the mental hospital, and she is probably blind because of her long-term diabetes.
My mom said that my sister-in-law’s husband had a good heart and had taken my sister-in-law to have her eyes treated, but the doctor said that it could no longer be cured.
After learning the news of my sister-in-law, my uncle and two aunts and uncle and a group of four people immediately drove from Hubei to Nanjing to visit my sister-in-law, but my sister-in-law behaved very coldly to them, and did not have the joy of meeting between relatives.
She was lying on the bed staring straight up at the low roof, her eyes empty, as if the family members talking in the room had nothing to do with her.
When her uncle and aunts occasionally asked her something, she felt very impatient, and either did not answer or yelled hard.
When the uncle and his party were leaving, each of them gave the child a red envelope with a thousand dollars wrapped in each.
My sister-in-law’s husband put forward a request to the uncle: I hope that my grandmother’s family can produce a household account to give my sister-in-law a disabled person’s certificate, so that my sister-in-law can get a low income subsidy in the local rural areas.
My sister-in-law’s account had been canceled as a missing person a few years earlier, but my uncle promised my sister-in-law’s husband that he would find a way to get my sister-in-law a disability certificate.
Mom also said that she called her sister-in-law and asked her: Do you remember that you have a big sister named Zaishen?
She asked her, “Do you remember that you have a big sister called Zaishen?” She said, “Yes, I remember.
My mom then asked, “How are you doing over there?
“On the other end of the line was my sister-in-law’s familiar growl: “Why are you asking so many questions? And my sister-in-law had forgotten to speak our local dialect, she only spoke Mandarin.
As time passes, the accent of her hometown has changed. My sister-in-law has been wandering around for more than ten years, experiencing many times of hunger and cold and sleeping in the open air, and in her heart, her hometown has long been ravaged into a broken old postage stamp, and the scenery and characters printed on it have long since been completely changed.
The afternoon I heard the news from my sister-in-law, I hid in a deserted place and cried a lot.
