The Other Daughter

I’ve always hated my mother, at least that’s what I’ve remembered since I was a child. But I need to meet her again before she’s gone, to see if I can still love her or if these feelings are too deeply set to ever change.

I often find myself overwhelmed by the weight of what has transpired within my family. Perhaps this is why I struggle to forge a close bond with my mother—our shared experiences echo, yet I grapple with my own emotional battles. Initially, I attributed everything I underwent to my mother’s upbringing. Feelings of discouragement, disappointment, a fear of abandonment, and even a desire to distance myself from my family plagued me. However, after my grandfather’s passing, I stumbled upon fragments of my family’s history in the items he had preserved. My grandfather’s presence strengthened after his death, enabling me to recollect the positive memories that had been overshadowed by the turmoil within my heart.

In 2022, I formally established a new family through the institution of marriage. However, the sudden onset of melancholy, stemming from my mental condition, often leads me to question my decision. Concurrently, I hold a deep desire to find solace and redemption within this marital relationship. The divorce in my family history haunts me. There is a strong urge to revisit my family’s past, with the hope of discerning patterns to avoid, ensuring I don’t repeat historical pitfalls, and, of course, maintaining the health of my marriage.

However, discussions regarding marriage with my mother and grandmother were always connected to their past. Both of them chose marriage to give themselves hope, the hope of having a family they never had. My reasons for getting married are actually not far from that. Then I also imagined how my childhood played a role in my choices. Since then, my mother and grandmother are no longer the same in my eyes.

Through this film, I aim to reconstruct my relationship with my mother and grandmother by bridging my understanding of their past to the present. It also illuminates how family relationships, initially formed by wounds, can perpetuate and give rise to new wounds to next generations, providing answers into the roots of all my sorrows.