my mom's view on my writing

I have emails with my cousin and some of her friends. They talked about mostly what they read recently and found interesting. I joined through my cousin's invitation. She's nice.

I of course wrote some thoughts on some of the readings. They are talking about an article right now about Chinese should learn to repent privately, not something like a political confession in front of everybody in a public meeting. And by repent privately, Chinese could learn to build independent personality and think from themselves. The author is popular writer and professor in Mainland China. I was upset over some of the comments in the article about Chinese. I guess there's a big gap between Chinese who went through something as overwhelming as Cultural Revolution and those who did not. Their views on what is Chinese and what it meant in almost every old sayings are vastly different. At least they are vastly different from mine, a person who sits in front a screen, putting himself in a jail he made from thin air, and a person who is in the most populated Chinese place on this Earth.

I started to write what I thought. I was excited at first. But I could not really write. Because I very clearly know what I was about to write would definitely be frustrating to my cousin. I sat in front of the screen for 5 hours, I deleted every single entry. I emailed nothing. I was extremely mind boggling. There was something I really want to talk about. But I felt my words was going to be difficult to some people. I stepped out of the room. My mom asked me what did I do in there for 5 hours. I told her what happened. She bid me to take a walk with her. We discussed about it during the walk. It seemed to clear my mind.

I emailed my thoughts on the article the next day, privately to my cousin. It clearly bothered my cousin. For one she did not gave me reply at first but asked if I could share with other people. I did, and a long discussion commenced. My mom also asked how it went. So I showed some of the emails of mine and my cousin's to her.

After reading through many posts, She had a comment that shook me. She said that my cousin was really good at writing. She could explained herself really well, at the same time very smoothly, not offensive. She said that I did well too. But I did not express my meaning fully, there always seemed to have something alluding. I felt she also implied that I was offensive. I asked about it, and she confirmed it. I was kind upset. The one thing I did not want to be was being offensive. The one thing I wish to do is to express myself clearly. I failed both.

After that, I fell out of the discussion. I felt that I could not grasp the theme of the discussion and the article. I went very one sided. And when I went back to see some of the previous emails about other topics. I felt I was running circle again. The feeling of being trapped and that my perception of the things I saw was awkward, weird, within a very limited viewing angle compared to other people annoyed me deeply.