I'm crazy, because I feel the pain

After reading the article "Beccah", I feel this is a story full of mysteries. Maybe it is because it's about the phychic mother who can know things others cannot. And maybe it's becuase I don't know anything about the background of this mother and daughter. Where did they come from? What they had got through? How did Beccah's father dead? What happened to Akiko? I really cannot tell what excatly happened to them, but from the reality today in the article, I can imagine what had happend. It must be a sad and tough story.

I think Akiko is a combination of the three--she is psychic, crazy and traumatized. I don't know what's the order actually, nevertheless my conjecture is that she became traumatized first, then crazy, then psychic. The reason for saying that is that nobody is naturally born crazy, except the genius like artists or scentists. Obviously, Akiko is not that kind of genius that she is a normal woman. So there must be some causes for her craziness, and the very reasonable one is that she got traumatized, which is related to Beccah's father's death. In the beginning of the article, it says, "On the fifth anniversary of my father's death, my mother confessed to his death." A woman confessed that she killed her husband to her daughter. We can see she had already turned to be crazy at that time. There must be some bad things happened between his mother and father. Maybe she never loved this man and gave birth to Beccah reluctantly. Maybe this man ruined her life and own plan. There maybe thousands of possibilities. The only one result is Akiko got traumatized and crazy. I don't think Akiko is really phychic, at least I don't believe in that. In Akiko's perspective, she may believe that she really owns some special power, in this way her husband is killed by her curses day by day. As in the ending paragraph, Akiko told Beccah, "I'm teaching you something very important about life. Listen, Sickness, bad luck, death, these things are not accidents. This kind stuff, people wish on you. Believe me, I know and if you cannot block these wishes, all the death thoughts people and you collect, become arrows in your back." In a world in the reality where you feel that you cannot change anything, people start to build a dream world where they can change things. Akiko is such an example that she builds the phychic world for herself. And the guests' belief in Akiko's power, on one hand is becuase Auntie Reno's persuasive word, on the other hand is becuase they maybe victims like Akiko as well.

I don't know Akiko has any connection to the Korean War or not, but she reminds me of the women during Nanjing massacre, who were raped and tortured by the Japanese soldiers. A lot of them were tortured to death, while some of them got through and gave birth to children. What you will feel if your children's father is someone you hate? I think the experience is miserable and complicated.

Here are some pictures of the women during the Nanjing Massacre.