Repressed Feelings

I just got back from a two-day retreat with progressive Viet folks from across California. A lot of issues came up for me from this weekend.

Being ethnic Chinese and mostly culturally Vietnamese has made me one really confused person. Yes, my heritage traces back to Guangzhou, but because of famine my grandparents left for Sài Gòn in the late 1890s/early 1900s. My mom and dad were born and raised in Việt Nam and experienced some harsh conditions.

I guess, this weekend opened up this box I've been holding in my heart that represses my feelings towards my parents. These are feelings of pain, sadness, anger, but also compassion, understanding, and forgiveness. I am supposed to love them unconditionally as this "good Chinese daughter," but I find it so... so immensely hard to give that kind of love. I hear from other people about how much they love their parents. I want to feel that kind of love too.. I want to love them deeply, but I can't seem to find that love anymore.

My parents have put me through a lot over the last few years with their horrible decisions. And I have arrived at a point where I feel like I want to walk away from them, but I can't. There were three moments where I ALMOST left, but couldn't bring myself to leave them. If I left, I wonder if my life would have been healthier and happier. Because of bad decisions they made, it has resulted in the deterioration of my health and well-being. When they were working 7 days/week, I had to clean their house, take care of the dog, do their laundry, AND go out to the restaurant to help with whatever they needed that required by computer and English literacy. But over time, my mom expected more and more from me. I had to fill out thick ass application packets, work on EVERY holiday morning to night, write letters, translate, constantly fix the computer menu ordering program (in THREE different languages - Eng, Viet, and Chinese), outreach/marketing, be their lawyer, be their spokeswoman, cater for parties.. all the meanwhile I was attending graduate school full time and working half time.

My parents are always bragging about how other kids are helping their parents with their family business. That's great, but do those kids have anything else going from them? Do they know what they want to do with their lives? Do they have this bicultural identity that I do where I don't want to run the damn family business and be on call 24/7? I am different from all of them. I am the black sheep anti-capitalism-socially conscious-activist-ruckus raising-non-profit working-compassion for people-person.

We're told that to be good daughters we have to help, but at what point does it become abuse and at what point is it taking advantage of me? My sister would like to disagree and say it's not abuse, but what would she know? She's not the one here doing the work.

It's interesting because at this retreat, we had this activity where we create a timeline of our life and include all significant events that contributed to who we are today. I noticed a lot of the folks started their timeline from when they were born or when their parents fled to the refugee camps. For me, it started before 1978 when they left. It starts with my mean and horrible grandparents who physically and emotionally abused my parents, particularly my mother. Three generations down, I suffer from how my grandmother raised my mom. She beat her incessantly with boards that had nails in them. Grandma waterboarded my mother. Grandma forced my mom to give her all the money she made from working in the factory at age 10. Grandma forced my mom into this unhappy marriage because my dad had some wealth and forced my mom into being his mistress. Grandma forced my mom to do so many more horrible things that I can't even write on this blog because I respect my mom enough to not share it. Grandma made my mom crazy, unstable, violent, aggressive, cold-hearted, and emotionless. Grandma made me suffer through my mom.

I only met the woman once in my life when I was 5 or so and I don't remember that much about her. I just remember when I was in the second grade, I walked out of my room in the morning to find my mom crying on the couch. She said, "Grandma died." She cried silently for 5 minutes and got up and went to work at the nail salon. In hindsight, I wonder... I wonder if those tears were tears of relief for all that grandma put her through. And I really don't want to have the same experience as my mom and cry tears of relief that she's gone. Cry that the pain and misery that she has put me through has finally ended. Of course, what I went through is absolutely NOTHING compared to what my mom endured. Still, it wasn't easy.

It pains me. It pains me so much that tears stream down my cheeks just thinking about all the suffering in my family.