Eating bitterness 吃苦

I never really asked why. My mama told me that’s just what I had to do. That’s what all of us, especially those who are not grown men, had to do.

She would say it like it was a fact of life as true as gravity and the ground I was birthed onto.

吃苦

She never said much else about it but it was implied that I would be considered good if I did it enough.

Good enough to deserve to be fed and my needs of life awarded .

吃苦 meant fear and stopping was not an option.

And I was like grew older, I started to understand why it wasn't an option for her, like many others in her shoes.

But it doesn’t mean that it was right or good, judgements that none of us humans have authority to make.

Yet, we do .

吃苦 coloured every achievement I ever made. 

It coloured them grey .
Always shades greyer than others no matter what their true shade and value was.

And later on life, the motto of the culture my worldly heritage came from, merged with western patriarchal and colonial ways, squeezed me even smaller.

I was always too big no matter what pant size I wore. 

My whisper too loud.

My handiwork too rough. 

More than anything, my thoughts too real and raw for the cookie cutter Mattel society around me to embrace. 

I have swallowed many bowls of dark root medicine.

Jumped into freezing water as a child.

Silenced my cries for help.

And tended to my lashes of flesh and soul. 

How much 吃苦 is enough?

How many times do I need to repeat my ancestral wars?

What if healing was freeing myself to stop

吃苦 

I don’t want to eat your bitterness anymore .