Get out. If it's as bad as I think it is (there is more to this, right? no need to say here) ANYTHING..ANYPLACE would and will be better. The hardest part is taking that first step and doing what you KNOW in your heart is right, which is leaving..cold...and not looking back. After that, I promise, it gets easier.

What ever you read here, save maybe from one or two people, is what we would do. I'm by no means an expert for what you present as your problem. Sir Smiley has also provided a great suggestion. Again, first and foremost leave.

A close friend told me that my mother could be clinically insane. She's not insane as most people would think. When she's calm and cool, she's very clear headed and charming, but when anything in the world seems wrong to her eyes, she goes on an insane rage - rage dangerous enough to do anything. My friend told me that if my mother threatens something in that moment of rage, don't take anything she says as a joke.

She's threatened to kill me and promised that she will kill herself because she's ashamed of having a daughter like me.

I'm a foreigner in China. The authorities, as I have been told many times, are unreliable. There are no churches anywhere that can be seen within my house, even within driving distance. Remember that Christianity was forbidden in China for many years, and it still might be. I've actually never seen a temple of any sort where I've been.

I know no one here, and there isn't anyone I can confide in without them going to my parents and talking to them about it. My parents have my travel papers all locked in their safe. They won't let me keep it under the excuse that the workers might steal them one day and sell it.

My fiance has flatly told me to keep myself safe. If my mother did try to threaten my life with a knife that she so explicitly expressed, then fight back like hell. No one can protect me here, but myself. He says to try to keep my travel papers with me, along with my things.

I just never thought I would be one of those people you hear and read about, you know? I don't know what saddens me more: my parents' ignorance of their abuse on me allowed and followed because of tradition and culture or their complete lack of understanding of who it is I am and what it is I have been through in their quest "to give their kids a better life."

I think the most surprising thing I feel for myself is that I don't hate them, nor do I hold any grudges against them. I simply don't trust them. If there is just one thing I feel, it is disappointment. My parents say I let them down since the day I've been born, but no one here ever asked me if I feel like they've let me down.

I'm not afraid for my life. I know I'll fight to live because I have someone out there waiting for me, patiently waiting and building a place where I can be free of this emotional torment. The biggest thing I'm afraid of is letting my own children down, disappointing them, and never giving them a chance to tell me what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong. I'm scared of becoming my mother.

Is your father crazy?  What does he think of your mother?  Can he help you with this part of your life?
You've been told the authorities are unreliable; have you tried them anyway?  What do you have to lose?

Are you afraid or not?

Maybe the next step is to always carry a knife of your own.

The advice you've been given is to get out.  Leave.  Run away. Something.  Anything.  But you are still there posting.

What are you waiting for?

You're right, Jafo. I should've written something else there, but I was in a hurry because I had a plane to catch today.



That seems to be everyone's suggestion thus far.

I almost made it out of here. No, I didn't have doubts and turn back. My parents canceled the plans we had to head to the States in September because the tickets were too expensive. They wouldn't let me go back alone. I made it back to Taiwan, but I had to go back with them upon cancellation of the plans.

I was supposed to have arrived in the United States by September 6th. Two weeks later, I was going to stay over one night at my neighbor's house by sneaking out, then have my neighbor smuggle me out to the airport where I leave on my flight to Princeton, NJ and never look back. I was going to get married on October 24th, change my name, and said goodbye for good to my family and never look back with the exception of a letter sent from some post office box number to let them know that I was fine and doing well. If there is one thing any parent in this room can vouch for, it is that "worry" that never leaves until we've moved on to some place else.

This path that I'm trying to force is leading me nowhere. I'm going to have to fight back through a different route now. I'm being forced to work for my parents' friend, that's true, but I will be paid a salary so I'll be able to save my money. There are hints of a raise if I pass the probationary period. Time for me to buckle down again and work harder than I did in college.

I know what buttons to avoid my mother's outbursts. For now, I'll try to keep a low profile. I won't stop talking to my friends or to my fiance, but I'll find a different way. Work offers me more freedom, albeit a lot less than what I had to work with while I was in college. I don't get paid OT, which is good. My mother's sharp mathematical senses can't calculate how much time I'm actually spending at work and when I am supposed to be home. We'll see where I end up in 1 year. If I don't like it, I'll pursue something in the States. If I do well at the job, my boss promises to try to set me up in the US. Whether I choose to stay or go after that point is all on me.

I'll be gone by 6:30am in the morning to go to work. I probably won't get back until 7pm. I'll have to be in bed by 9:30-10:00pm for those early mornings. Dinner, shower, and some alone time with my laptop for outside communication will keep me out of my mother's hair Mondays through Fridays. As for the weekends, my parents' work anyway because it seems like they've got nothing else better to do. I plan on spending that time by myself. If they don't work, we usually go out, and currently, I have two cousins living with us so I'll be safe with their coverage. They just don't know I'm using them as my shield.

I start October 8th. That's less than 2 weeks away. Between now and then, I'm back in Taiwan. Things are always cooler when we leave the privacy of our international space and enter "family" space.

It's not much of a plan, but it's better than being locked at home.

It's good and sincere, but it's something I'll have to take on a day-by-day basis. The timing on this offer is longer than I would like, but there's nothing much I can do about it now. The only problem with all this is that I need to find a way to keep my parents off having their hands on my payroll. I'm not kidding when I say they use the excuse of a safe to keep all my legal documents locked up and I don't even have a key to access any of it.

I'm looking for a time when I can talk to my boss alone (although I have no idea how much this would work since he's under my parents' obligation, not mine) to tell him to keep my business clear away from my parents.

All I can do is hope for the best. There's nothing else for me to do. I don't trust my parents, and I'm getting a small plan together for my friends to pull all important things from my parents' house in Houston so my parents can't get to those.

It's not just safety that's important. It's all the paperwork that I must have for me to break free and be able to move on.

Sometimes I've considered working for the CIA, you know? heh.

This is a community site based around skinning.

It's a family site based on skinning, but one of the points we've emphasized when I was last here was that any problems that the site members do have that they would like an opinion on, we will help out where we think we can.

It is my fault for not checking to see if that was still a policy, so I apologize for the confusion.

move out into a safe location, call the police and report the threats

Everyone here has said for you to leave you're home and be free from the threats I say the same to you as I have been there b4 and it is not a nice place when you have nowhere to go or feel safe..do as suggested by many of these folks here, cos we do care about our friends.you need to leave that place NOW. I pray for your protection and peace of mind on and in your travels

Its not the war in Iraq we are talking about here. Taking up arms against ones mother isnt an option, there are other alternatives and posting a thread like this on a skinning site isnt one of them.

Elfie has been a skinning-site member since eons before Wincustomize.....she's grown up amongst the originators of online skinning sites....so her trials and tribulations are shared with us all.

She knows this isn't THE 'expert advice' source...but knows too that she will find sympathetic and intelligent comment from her peers.

There's no harm done there...we're all human individuals together, after all...