Farewell to Lin Yihan, Hope There is No Pain in Heaven
In May of 2017, Lin Yihan, a 26-year-old female author, said goodbye to the world in the form by taking her own life. Her death swiftly went viral in China. And the root cause of her death is her miserable experience in adolescence during which she had been raped by her Chinese teacher for nearly 6 years since her 13 years old (Catherine Lai, 2020). She wrote her real-life into a novel, namely Fang Siqi’s First Love Paradise. Despite the strong support from her parents and husband—she married a year before her death, she couldn’t escape from the traumatic sufferings. I, therefore, think severe childhood trauma may be among the hardest ones to get rid of.
In module 1 of this class, we talked about the reasons why trauma and stress suffers could go onto a completely different life path after experiencing trauma—some may be stronger and more resilient while some may suffer from different kinds of mental illnesses. I mentioned that the severity of trauma is a major factor. According to Van Der Kolk (2014), people with histories of severe, chronic childhood abuse lose the ability to pay attention to themselves because their brain is unable to be activated to create a sense of “self.” They are too painful to receive signals from the outside world. Therefore, they shut down the brain areas that transmit feelings and emotions. On the contrary, such stress reactions are rare among mild trauma sufferers. For example, modern office ladies encounter stress from their work. But such stress cannot be paralleled with that brought by an abnormal original family or child sexual abuse.
In addition to the degree of trauma, I believe that the time a trauma occurred may also be attributed to the results of PTSD or post-traumatic growth. Li Yihan was seduced at the age of 13 until she became an adult. As the book, Fang Siqi’s First Love Paradise describes, Lin’s mental condition was still normal in the first few years, because the man who raped her told her that “this atrocity is love”. At that time, that man in her eyes was indeed a “respectable teacher who teaches Chinese, is knowledgeable and has literary talents”, because she loved literature since childhood. When did things start to get sour? According to the novel, it was when Fang Siqi, the protagonist of the book, entered high school. She is beautiful, and there are boys to pursue her. These boys would use the “adolescent boys’ way” to court her: they have a crush on her first, secretly look at her every day, and then make appointments, secretly want to hold her hands but dare not do that, let alone other body contacts. For young boys and girls, engaging in intercourse is something that will happen a long time. At this moment, Fang Siqi’s view of “normal love” began to collapse. Is what her teacher said right? Or are these young boys right? When she was about 17 years old, she began to experience “dissociation”, that is, she suddenly couldn’t remember what she had done, and when she woke up, she seemed to be in a new place and doing new things. That’s because she began to understand that the teenagers around her who liked and respected her might be the true love of youth. In other words, she had to admit that the things that she has suffered in the past do not love but boundless pain and torture. The truth was too painful and cruel to make her directly confront. Then she chose to split herself… If she was raped in adulthood, she could at least immediately know what that man did was rape rather than love.
What we learned from Lin’s blooding story is to realize the importance of early sexual education. According to Lisa S. Panisch and her colleagues (2020), a trauma in childhood is prevalent in the U.S. with over 63% of Americans, both men and women, undergoing at least one adverse event when they are young. Given the prominence of this problem, efforts need to be made to implement adolescent sexual health interventions which can help to address trauma. In their study, Dr. Panisch and her team put forward that trauma-informed content needs to be integrated into school curricula so as to give early education on sex. Yet I think we rely on school education to address child trauma is far from enough. At least the other two parties should also do their parts: the government and parents. The rapist in Lin’s case is still teaching Chinese at school. His “unguilty” is also a reason for pushing Lin to end her life because evil isn’t rewarded with evil. The government and authorities, therefore, should formulate related regulations to restrict evils behavior, making them know a crime is too costly to be committed. On the other hand, parents should be more tolerant of and kind to their wounded children and take them to resort to professional therapies. And as a reader and commentators, we should have the very basic conscience of human beings not to accuse and exact the victims.
References:
- Catherine, Lai. (2020). Suicide of 26-year-old writer sparks public debate on rape and cram schools in Taiwan. Retrieved from https://hongkongfp.com/2017/05/21/suicide-26-year-old-writer-sparks-public-debate-rape-cram-schools-taiwan/
- Van Der Kolk. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma New York: Penguin.
- Panisch, lisa S., Faulkner, M., Fernandez, S. b., & Fava, N. M. (2020). Exploring How Trauma Is Addressed in Sexual Education Interventions for Youth: A Scoping Review. Health Education & Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1177/1090198120954398