I do not even remember how many times exactly I have had a fight with my mom over this topic — Me being okay with my bedroom in a mess vs. my mom being extremely unsatisfied. I guess she was trying to clean up my bedroom again since I left home for school. And I realized I must have done something really wrong when I saw her extraordinary long angry WeChat messages. She found a shirt of mine with a large smudge. “You could have cleaned it up the time you got it on your shirt! Now it is so hard to wash!” Following that were her complaints about my previous similar “crimes”. My solution to her anger was being silent. Though I have to say what I have done was totally gross….

Mom and Zhang took the bullet-train from home to Shanghai and I promised to pick them up at the train station. I took the subway for about an hour and arrived earlier than their estimated arriving time. I was waiting in front of the south gate. They arrived at the north gate of the station. And I was having problem getting to the north gate, which got me extremely anxious and annoyed. Mom was complaining that I could have figured out earlier which gate they would be getting out from so we could saved much more time. I was on the other hand upset and angry about her being mad at me. I always become the most impatient person on the world in front of my mom and I feel like she is like that too.

I must have argued something about politics the other day face to face with Mom. Because although I did not remember exactly the topic we had, her tone sounded like I had strongly disagreed with her perspectives on politics or some sort of social issues. We always had fight over social events. And for many of the times, we disagree with each other. I often got super offended and became sad about the fact that my mom could not agree with values I deeply believe in. But now as I think about these things, I am glad that I could share and exchange ideas with her about all these things that matter to me.

I do not know if this is true for other daughter-and-mother relationships, for me and my mom, we fight much often when we are together with each other. I at least had three fights with Mom in just two weeks. We could fight over something tiny little issues in daily life. We also argued about politics quite often. There were always things that we are unsatisfied with each other. If I could, I wish I would never make my mom angry because of me. But I think it is extremely hard. Love does not only produce happiness, doesn’t it?