Hello everyone, I'm Chen Zhuo.
Today I would like to introduce you to a new friend, her name is Lumina, she is a doctor who worked in a famous psychiatric hospital.
How famous the hospital is — locally, the hospital's address is used as a form of swearing, akin to the "settled out psychosis" in Beijing or the "madman from Wanping South Road" in Shanghai.
There are mothers who have strangled their children, children who have killed their parents, and serial murderers.
But for Lumina, none of them were the scariest.
The scariest story she had ever heard came from a very young and beautiful grandmother who was over 70 years old.
This is how Lumina describes her life experience – this is the most terrifying life a woman can imagine.
If I hadn't been trained at the Sixth Hospital, I might never have known what was wrong with my mother.
The Sixth Hospital, our most famous psychiatric hospital here, has a mantra during local quarrels: "Hurry up and go to the Sixth Hospital!" ”
Two years ago, I was sent to this hospital for training. Every day when you walk through the parking lot, you can see a towering building standing next to it, which on the surface is indistinguishable from any other hospital.
Only the doctors knew that the towering building contained an enclosed ward where the most seriously mentally ill lived.
For example, a math maniac returning from a top university in London, a 28-year-old fool with an IQ of 3 years old, a deceiver who was deceived into going crazy by borrowing money everywhere, a murderer who strangled his son to death with his own hands because he thought his son was a water monster, and a suicide who repeatedly slit his wrists or jumped off a building.
I have been working as a family doctor in a community hospital for more than 20 years. Some elderly patients, even with their families, want to pour out their grievances to me like garbage. I was both a doctor and a confidant.
One day, the leader talked to me and asked me if I could go to the psychiatric department of the Sixth Hospital for one year. I was in my 40s, and I told my boss that I wanted to give the opportunity to the new young people.
But the leader said: "I have interviewed four or five doctors, but none of them are willing to go." ”
Rather than asking for advice, it is better to give me a verdict directly.
On the day I received the notice from the Psychiatric Department of the Sixth Hospital, on the way to work, I looked at the blue clouds at night and thought of my father. He worked as a doctor in the countryside of his hometown all his life, and at the age of sixty-four, I called him to help with the child. When I got home, he was cooking.
I walked up to the kitchen door and said to his back, "I might have to go out to study psychiatry and take a year off." ”
My father was chopping vegetables, but he didn't turn around, and after a long time, he said slowly: "Actually, it is no longer very suitable for you to go out to learn a new subject at your age." If you go out to study part-time, your income will definitely decrease, and you will have to pay off the mortgage and take care of your children. ”
I told him that I knew all this, and there was no way, so I should go out to study and increase my knowledge.
The father put down the kitchen knife, wiped his apron with both hands, and said, "Your sister asked me to help her take care of the child, and I agreed." ”
I felt a sudden sinking in my chest. The salary for training is very low, the family can't afford to hire a nanny, and my husband works in other places, so the only one who can help me is my father.
It stands to reason that he has been helping me with the children for many years, and it is nothing to help my sister now, but this is the time.
The father said, "Why don't you let your mother ......?"
But I never thought about letting a mother take care of the children in the past. Mothers had a temper when they were young, and we children would be beaten up if we children made the slightest mistake. Until now, when I see the marks of the beatings on my hands, I wonder if I became her punching bag when I was a child.
Now that she is old, we complain all day long if she can't move, and no matter how good the days are, they will be miserable in her mouth. Everyone in the family avoided her.
At this moment, my father was cooking in the kitchen, and my mother was leaning on the edge of the bed sobbing, clutching the phone and complaining to her girlfriend: the house is not big enough, the community environment is not good enough, and nothing can do what she wishes in her life.
Although I was not at ease, I had no choice but to entrust my child to my mother. I don't expect too much from her, I just hope that she can cook a hot meal and maintain the hygiene of the house. I also specially told the child not to make grandma angry.
Unexpectedly, when I went to the psychiatric department of the Sixth Hospital, the first patient I met had the shadow of my mother.
Zhang Jing was born in the same year as my mother, is about to be 70 years old, and was a kindergarten teacher before retiring.
When I saw her in the psychiatric treatment room, my first reaction was that the case was written incorrectly, and the oldest person was in his fifties.
Zhang Jing's short hair was dyed black, and her skin was fair, with only slight wrinkles under her eyes, neck, and hands. At first glance, it has been carefully maintained for many years. She looked thin, there was no fat on her body, and when she walked in, she was tall and dignified, and she couldn't see a sense of old age.
She looked at the doctors hesitantly and was motioned to sit down by the director. I couldn't help but look at her. Somehow, the gloomy face on the other side instantly overlapped with my mother, making me feel very uncomfortable, and my mother's endless complaints rang in my ears. I guess her husband and children mostly avoided her.
Her case reads: "Admitted to the hospital for two years due to recurrent mood loss, nervousness, and anxiety. ”
At the age of fifty-eight, Zhang Jing was diagnosed with acute glomerulonephritis, and after being cured, she was depressed and curled up in bed all day to sleep. The doctor in her hometown diagnosed her with depression and prescribed her medication, but she did not take the medicine when she heard from her neighbor that she could sleep well at home without taking medicine.
The longest time she lay at home for eight months.
When Zhang Jing said this, she choked up and fell on the table, covering her face and crying.
"I lay in bed day and night...... When it came to the meal, I flipped it up and took two bites, and then I lay down again......"
Depression on and off for almost a decade eventually worsened. The cause was a physical examination of her swollen feet, which the doctor said was caused by renal insufficiency.
She was intimidated by the diagnosis.
She had heard that if she lived to be seventy years old, she would have to think about death, and she was afraid that she would die too, and her depression relapsed, and she stayed in bed all day. I pricked up my ears to listen to these messages, because my mother was also too "afraid of death", and if she was uncomfortable, she kept asking me to find a big expert for her to prescribe a "miracle drug".
The director asked her if she had ever had suicidal thoughts.
"I didn't act suicidal, I just lay down, lying all day......"
Zhang Jing took the medicine according to the doctor's instructions, and this year's re-examination found that all the indicators returned to normal. However, depression did not improve with the body.
She used to be a kindergarten teacher and could deal with children and parents. Now she doesn't even go out of the bedroom door, and people in the house hide from her, and she trembles when she sees strangers.
"Sleeping, in fact, dodging." She muttered. "Living like this, there is really no hope in life. Since there is no hope, then dodge. ”
The mere reason of "fear of death" is not enough for us to judge what makes her depressed.
It wasn't until the next sentence she said that we found something strange.
Zhang Jing said that during the depression, her husband went out to play cards and listen to the radio more often. He didn't know what depression was, he thought he didn't need to take medicine,
Sleep will heal. What we find strange is Zhang Jing's attitude towards this matter-
Instead of blaming her husband, she tried to defend him, saying that he had nothing to do when he went out to play cards.
"Didn't he think about taking care of you?" The director asked.
She didn't answer, apparently she hadn't, but after a while she said, "I was hit when I was younger. ”
This sentence still seems to be defending my husband, and I feel strange when I hear it: I am sick, and my husband never pays attention to it, shouldn't it be angry and sad? Or does she feel like she was hit hard when she was younger, so she doesn't deserve to be cared for?
"What blow?" The director asked.
She didn't answer, still lying on the table and not moving, but if you looked closely, you could see that her shoulders were trembling slightly, as if she was trying to suppress the pain and not let her emotions explode. She didn't speak for a long time, and people really couldn't think of what kind of blow would make her pass for decades, and it was still so difficult to say.
The young doctors next to me, all with their heads bowed, were also in deep thought.
Seeing that she didn't speak, the director thought she didn't want to speak, so he moved his lips and planned to ask the next question.
At this time, she suddenly raised her head and replied loudly, "Sexual violence!" ”
We were stunned when we heard this word, and we didn't expect that the blow suffered by the patient was actually like this! As one of my kind, I felt as if I had been offended, and an inexplicable anger welled up in my heart.
I looked up at everyone, the doctors here were all women, and I wondered how people would react when they heard that. But for a while, the treatment room was extremely silent, and even the director opened his mouth wide in shock and did not speak for a long time.
And Zhang Jing's reaction was completely different from our doctor's.
When she said this, she seemed to be relieved. She sat up straight, looked ahead, and talked about the past.
Zhang Jing's mother was the daughter of the landlord's family before liberation. Later, the family fell into the middle of the road and had to run for life and marry Zhang Jing's father.
When Zhang Jing was thirteen years old, it was a special period, and her mother was sent to the countryside to farm and feed pigs. Unexpectedly, the first thing my mother did when she came home was to introduce Zhang Jing to the object.
It was the son of a high-ranking cadre transferred from other places, and his mother's idea was very simple, once Zhang Jing married this second-generation official, the fate of the whole family could change accordingly. But Zhang Jing didn't like that man, and she didn't understand her mother's desires.
One day when I was on the night shift, the man went to the factory to find Zhang Jing and said to her, "I want to sleep with you." ”
She didn't understand what this meant, so she asked her mother, "What does that man mean when he says he wants to sleep with me tomorrow?" Mom didn't answer, but let the man into the house the next day. The man wanted to have sex, but Zhang Jing bit him, slammed the door and ran away.
That winter, Mom put the man in the house again. This time, in order to prevent her daughter from escaping, she waited until the man entered her daughter's bedroom, locked the door from the outside, and left with the rest of the family. This time, Zhang Jing had no way out, and the man was in her bedroom, and it was logical to violate her.
"At that time, as I do now, I thought about death." She choked and stopped.
The treatment room was silent. Someone outside pushed the door, as if a patient had come to the director. The door was closed and could not be opened, and the people outside left again.
I think the trauma in her heart may be more severe than the trauma after a normal assault. This is a girl's biological parents, with the deliberate conspiracy of a strange man.
Zhang Jing continued to talk to us about these pasts, and this time no one asked questions, and she wanted to continue.
She didn't marry the second generation of officials, but the scars in her heart were permanently buried.
Two years later, she married an elementary school teacher who is now her husband. She confessed to the matter, and in the conservative era, her husband actually understood her situation and never disliked her because of this matter. So she is always grateful to her husband. "It's me who is sorry for him."
That violation made her feel that she would always owe her husband, and now that she was depressed and not taken care of, she was afraid that she was adding a burden to the other party.
"If I die......," she shuddered and cried.
Her self-blame and guilt are poignant. However, in the eyes of her family, she is another appearance that "makes people want to stay away".
According to what we have learned, she came to the hospital this time because she felt that she could not survive it, so she begged her husband to send her. Her husband couldn't understand what depression was anyway, didn't it mean that it was good to lie in bed?
And her son, thinking that she was simply in a bad mood, just needs to see the cute little grandson and will be happy. As a result, it has been two years, and no matter how much the little grandson coaxes the grandmother who is lying in bed, it will not help.
Her bad mood was like a cold, contagious to the whole family.
She also knew very well that her daughter-in-law had long wanted her to leave the house, and after she moved, she had never called her.
Zhang Jing said that her family was far away, leaned on the table, and covered her head.
Just like my mother, her uncontrollable negativity was not understood. Everyone can avoid her, and they will avoid her. I can't blame Zhang Jing's daughter-in-law, sometimes, why shouldn't I be like this as a junior?
I still remember those days when I had to get up at half past five in the morning, make breakfast for the family, and go to catch the bus. But when I got home, there was cold leftovers piled on the table, and my mother was lying motionless on the bed. I had to clean up the dishes by myself, and my tiredness hung on my face and my mother saw me.
She suddenly cried and called her best friend: "They are all indifferent to me, and no one knows how to respect me." ”
Before I met Zhang Jing, I didn't know what was wrong with my mother, but I was endlessly bored with her. Maybe it's because I've always looked at her from the perspective of a "mother" and asked her. It never occurred to me that she could be a patient.
I have never given my mother a chance to listen to her talk about what happened to her like I did to Zhang Jing in front of me.
I found that Zhang Jing and my mother were "very similar" and "not like".
They are all trapped in bed, not really understood by their families, and compared to my mother's choice to complain to release her emotions to her children, her way of releasing emotions may be more extreme - spurring.
She said she was a teacher and her husband was the principal. Now, even the son is a professor and the daughter-in-law is an engineer, and the family's resume is all shining.
"At that time, it was I who forced the old man to become an official, and I also forced my son to take the doctoral exam." Speaking of which, she looked proud.
"So the achievements of the two of them are inseparable from your cultivation." The director duly complimented her.
"But......" she sighed, tired of speaking no longer.
"Are you tired, should we take a break?"
She lay on the table, and after a long time, said, "Don't." ”
She talked about her married days, working in the factory during the day, learning to sing and dance during the break, and then the factory declined, and she successfully turned around and turned from a female worker to a kindergarten teacher. At the same time, she forced her husband to study and take exams, and climbed from a primary school teacher to a principal; Later, he forced his son to take the entrance examination, graduate school, and doctoral study, until his son was selected as a university professor and married an engineer from a research institute.
The family's brilliant resume is thanks to her encouragement, and everything strives for perfection.
This kind of perfection, she is not only for the family, but also for her own appearance, just over thirty years old, she felt that she was going to get old, so she went for plastic surgery, cut her double eyelids, and pulled her skin several times.
"This place," she touched her lower eyelids, "and if there's a little bit of eye bags, I'll do it." ”
From the age of 30 to 70, she had eye bags, eye corners, skin lifts, eyebrow tattoos, and no blemishes on her face. In the end, it became the exquisite appearance in front of our eyes.
At that time, plastic surgery was not as popular as it is now, and most people had only heard of it, but had never seen it with their own eyes. Now, at this age, there are only a handful of plastic surgery that can be done. But we feel that this plastic surgery addiction is more like an inner compensation. Only when you feel that you are a very bad person are you more eager to win by your appearance than ordinary people.
Zhang Jing said that she was not afraid of pain or moving a knife on her face, but if there were flaws on her face, she would be sad and couldn't sleep.
Because of the pursuit of perfection in everything, she realized a terrible thing: "I am becoming more and more like my father." ”
Why is it like dad to be described as terrible, she next told us something that even her husband had never heard -
Zhang Jing's father is an unsmiling cadre, if his daughter cooks with more salt, he will take off his belt and whip him.
She knew from a young age what the consequences would be if one thing didn't come close to perfection.
What made her even more difficult to let go was that "during the ten years that my mother went to the countryside, my father kept touching me. ”
After Dad touched her, he said, "Don't tell Mommy, I'll be nice to you." ”
I can't tell whether it's fear or flattery, Zhang Jing has endured indecency. Such days lasted for many years, until my mother came home, my father still did not restrain me, sometimes while my mother was away, he secretly went over to touch her, at that time Zhang Jing was twenty-three years old, and she didn't stop until she got married.
"Haven't you told your mom all this time?"
Zhang Jing shook her head.
I feel that the life of this woman in front of me is breathless even when I listen to it. I finally understood why Zhang Jing felt that her husband was very good. Just because when she and her husband got married and left this family, it meant that the most difficult period of her life was over.
At this point, when I was still in the training period, I had an uncertain guess in my heart, that is, the ultimate answer to Zhang Jing's condition.
When Zhang Jing was growing up, her father had a very deep influence on her. Whether it's strict or perfectionist, she agrees with this father deep down. But after her father molested her, she despised the man again.
Two diametrically opposed emotions collide to create a strong sense of anxiety.
On the one hand, she is becoming more and more strict with her family like her father; On the one hand, I also think that this kind of father-like self is bad, but I can't control myself from making demands on my family.
The seeds of depression and anxiety, planted in adolescence, took root in her heart for many years until she exploded at the age of fifty-eight. In fact, I admire her from the bottom of my heart, with such a shadow of adolescence, how many people can live the next thirty years like her? Even if you don't go down the road of crime, or become a madman, it is not easy to do nothing for a lifetime.
Before this old man entered the hospital, everyone said that she had been lying in bed for so many years.
But after listening to everything she encountered and analyzing her condition, I would feel that her current problem is actually just lying in bed for so many years.
Zhang Jing was finally helped out of the room by the doctor in charge of the bed.
Everyone started a case discussion.
The doctor in charge of the bed was the first to speak, and she summarized the patient's medical history, onset status, performance and conversation during hospitalization one by one, and finally made a preliminary diagnosis - recurrent depression. After she finished speaking, the rest of us doctors also expressed their opinions one by one, and finally the director summarized them.
At present, Zhang Jing's condition is not suitable for psychotherapeutic intervention, and symptomatic treatment should be based on medication.
In fact, in the conversation just now, the director has given her a lot of recognition: "You work hard, yourself, including the children, are very good in all aspects, you are also very powerful, you are not a weak person, you are very powerful." You've been like an adult since you were a kid......"
This is also needed in subsequent psychotherapy to ease the patient's inner conflict
In addition, try to change her perception. Whether Zhang Jing is judging herself, her husband, or her father, she is cognitively biased. During the conversation, she repeatedly said: "He is still a retired cadre."
If you analyze and interpret this sentence, you can get a result: Zhang Jing can't accept the grayscale of human nature.
In her heart, retired cadres are perfect images and very tall, but how can a villain who can do such a thing as indecency be a tall cadre?
Black is completely black, white is white and pure, and she can't accept the existence of grayscale, which is the part of her understanding that needs to be corrected the most.
As I thought back to the patient's conversation and the director's final analysis, I couldn't help but associate her symptoms with my mother.
Did her mother suffer from depression like Zhang Jing?
We have a group at home, and I told my father and sister in the group that my mother cries and complains every day and may be suffering from depression.
My father said that she was the habit, and she had been like that since she was young. Although he has been a doctor all his life, like Zhang Jing's husband, he knows nothing about mental illness. I told them about Zhang Jing's case and said, "I think my mother is very similar to her. ”
When my sister heard me say this, she asked me, "What do you say?" ”
"Do you want to send it to the Sixth Courtyard to see?"
When I came home that night, my mother's eyes were red and swollen, and she must have been crying for another day.
I breathed a long sigh of relief and wanted to talk to Zhang Jing like the director did to her. Mother is a chatterbox, once she speaks, she can't close it anymore. When she saw that I was willing to listen, she talked about the old story endlessly, because she had told it hundreds of times, and when I listened to it before, I couldn't help but interrupt.
But this time, I listened quietly and let her keep talking.
When my mother gave birth to her first child, my father was studying medicine in another place, and my grandmother was the only one at home. The mother was pushing and grinding in the mill, and halfway through, the amniotic water broke, and hurried back to the room. She didn't know how to call grandma, and she didn't know how to have children.
When the grandmother came in, she found a chubby white boy lying on the earthen kang, not crying or screaming, and had already lost his breath.
The mother sat in confinement for an empty day.
On the third day, her grandmother asked her to go to work in the fields, lacking food and drink, and from then on she fell ill. Every time she said this, there was anger in her eyes.
The hatred of fifty years ago has taken root, and she will never forget it.
I learned from the director's consultation process and accepted my mother's past. The death of her first child was her deepest and most serious injury.
Later, she gave birth to three of our sisters. In rural areas, boys are valued above all else. In my memory, the men often pointed at the girl's nose and scolded the yellow-haired girl for not being allowed to go to the dinner table. The mother caught up with the family planning and never had the opportunity to give birth to a boy, and everyone looked down on it. This is the second most serious injury to the mother.
The mother spoke for more than an hour.
According to what she said, it should have been postpartum depression back then, and it has not been completely cured to this day.
I listened quietly, and suddenly felt that the way we treated our mother indifferently before was no different from the way Zhang Jing's family treated Zhang Jing.
After talking to my mother, I said frankly to her, "You're sick, you're depressed. You need to go to the sixth hospital for treatment. ”
When I quarreled with my mother, my father always said things like this. Now she thinks I'm scolding her and resolutely doesn't go to the hospital. At the end of the day, my mother didn't think she was sick, she just felt that everything was because we were sorry for her.
Both her father and sister said that most of her life had passed, and now that she was asked to go to the hospital, she would definitely not go.
In the end, we discussed a compromise and bought her medicine to take back.
I'm a beginner in psychiatry and haven't fully grasped the essentials, so according to her symptoms, I prescribe a medicine first. She had been suffering from insomnia and asked me to buy her sleep pills from online ads. I told her that it was a sleep pill I bought online, and she couldn't read, so she took it as I said.
A month later, her mood improved, but the side effects raised her blood pressure, so she stopped taking the medication.
To make depression better, you need not only medicine, but also the environment.
My mother lived with me on the 23rd floor and didn't go out for many years. Even if you don't have a disease, you can hold back your illness. In order to make her better, I discussed with my sister to rent another house on the first floor, with a vegetable patch and a yard on the first floor, so that she could go out to chat with people and bask in the sun. All of these will make depression better.
While taking care of my mother, I calmed down and received training in the Sixth Hospital. The more I came into contact with depressed elderly people, the more I learned how to heal my mother; The more I treated my mother, the more I was able to help the depressed elderly.
A few days ago, an old lady came to the hospital, and after talking for less than three sentences, she started crying, saying that it was better to be alive than dead. She kept repeating her previous suffering, complaining about her son and daughter-in-law, and feeling that everything was unsatisfactory.
I called her daughter-in-law, and after some conversation, I was even more sure. The daughter-in-law said: "She always falls asleep at home, always chatters and complains, and always feels that everyone treats her badly. ”
I told her that the old lady was depressed and that this state was a disease.
After hearing this, she suddenly realized, saying that the whole family had misunderstood, thinking that it was just the death of her father-in-law two years ago, which made the old lady excited and changed her temperament.
Older people have suffered more and their knots have become more complex and hidden.
Their depression is more often disguised as complaining, crying, and even the most basic symptoms of anorexia, dizziness, and chest tightness, which make family members and doctors misjudge.
33.1% of the elderly over the age of 60 in China have experienced depressive symptoms, but so many patients do not know the cause of the disease because their spouses, children, relatives, and even the doctor who diagnosed them are not familiar with the cause.
These pains have never gone away, they have just been ignored.
Zhang Jing was lucky, she finally chose to come to the hospital for hospitalization, only three weeks later, I listened to the doctor in charge of the bed said that she had been discharged from the hospital for improvement, although she needed to continue to take medication, but the director's assessment was that the prognosis should be very good. I haven't heard from Ms. Zhang since.
My mother, to some extent, is being treated like Zhang Jing, not in the hospital, but at home, by my side.
After I moved my mother to the first floor, I readjusted her antidepressant medication.
At noon one day before and after Zhang Jing was discharged from the hospital, I went to my mother's place for a lunch break, and there was a handful of shallots on the table. I asked her, who gave this onion. She said, I grew it myself, and if you want to eat it, I'll pick some more for you. I was surprised: "When did you plant it, and how did you grow so much?" ”
She smiled and said, "The neighbor upstairs gave me a handful of green onion seedlings, and they grew quickly after planting." ”
Then, she took an empty pill box, "This medicine is finished, you can buy some more for me." It's good when I eat, and I haven't cried anymore. ”
Only then did I realize that the sad look on her face was gone, and the room was much cleaner and tidier than before.
I knew that her symptoms had improved, but I still asked, "You forgot all the grievances and hatreds you had for decades?" ”
"I haven't completely forgotten it, and I still remember it occasionally." Mother laughed breathlessly, "It's just that when I think about those things, I don't feel sad anymore." ”
It's hard work to be her daughter, and it's only now that I know that the source of these hardships was long before she became my mother.
She didn't mean to be a "bad mother".
I breathed a long sigh of relief at the sight of her smiling insolently, even though I felt that the moment was decades late.
Chinese aunts in social networks, dancing square dances, traveling together to take pictures, rushing to buy gold abroad, and even reporting crimes, leaving people with the impression of being alive and well. But Lumina told me that the real Chinese aunt is not like this.
In the outpatient room, she has seen many lonely Chinese aunts who have worked all their lives for their families, but are trapped in their aging bodies.
As their physical functions deteriorated, their social sphere retreated little by little, until they had a room and even a single bed. At the moment of information explosion, their pain and loneliness have not been able to make a splash, but have been silent for a long time.
In most cases, they express painful thoughts, "I don't want to live" or "I don't want to live anymore" is not seen as depression, but is just seen as a "normal reaction" of the elderly.
According to the assessment report released by the World Health Organization, the overall prevalence of depressive symptoms among people aged 60 to 70 is 22.3%, but less than 10% receive treatment, that is, one in five elderly people around us fall into depression, and the vast majority of them have not taken medicine, have not seen a psychologist, and do not even know what depression is.
The only thing that several Chinese aunts written about in Rumi's story can do in the face of depression is to endure it, just like Zhang Jing in the article, who endured it for more than ten years, and her condition deteriorated to the limit before she went to the hospital to see a psychiatric department. For more than a decade, her pain has been ignored by her family.
I once spoke to a doctor who specializes in women's diseases, and she told me, "When a real pain is seen as part of ordinary life, it is neglected." It was only in recent years that this hidden pain began to manifest itself and became something I fought against. ”
This is also what Lumina wants to fight, the sickness of their old age should not be regarded as the norm, let alone forgotten by the times. Everyone has the day when they get old, and caring about their present is caring about our future.
(Some of the characters in the article are pseudonyms)
Editor: Dean Little Whirlwind
Illustration: Big Five Flowers
This article is 8560 words
The reading time is about 20 minutes