An Unknown Identity
Ever since I learned about myself, I wish I could forget everything.
Westminster is known as the breeding grounds for newly Vietnamese immigrants to enjoy their new lives in America. The Vietnamese culture engulfs the streets of Phước Lộc Thọ (the mall of Vietnamese culture in California), even the occasional tax evasive businesses help represent the American dream. The people in their áo dàis flood the front of the mall, while taking pictures for their Facebook pages to brag to their sisters about their recent trip to that sad mall. Instead of joining them, you’ll find me in the local dim sum restaurant across the street, wondering.
Who am I? My parents came from lowly lives in Northern Vietnam then migrating to Southern Vietnam during the war. They still don’t feel Vietnamese living in America. They don’t remember much from their childhood because the war is still in their hearts with every loud bang from the television making them shiver. Growing up Vietnamese American, I never felt Vietnamese; only American. My parents strived to their best to teach me English, but also passing on their horrible accent. I said “ellow” instead of “yellow” until I was five. Maybe I felt Vietnamese with my horrible accent or my love for bánh mì, even though I never liked the pickled carrots and daikon.
Am I Vietnamese? Am I American? Or am I neither? I don’t know who I am. I never could make my parents proud of me. Not with my broken Vietnamese or my own identity. When my mom found out that I was gay, she didn’t speak to me for days. She was trying to deny the fact that she could raise such a monster. Even now as she still is learning to accept my identity, I can’t. The disappointment in her eyes made me wish I wasn’t who I am. I could never accept my identity even when I was younger. I would pray to the higher being in the sky, asking them to make me feel normal. I still sometimes do.
Does “I love you” lose its meaning when it’s routine? Does it have meaning when they feel like they need to say it? I never got enough love from my parents and my loved ones. Most Asian parents, they never said the simple words of “I love you.” Unlike them, mine did, but I never wanted it. They didn’t love me for just being their child, they loved me for the impossible accomplishments they put on me. They loved me for the grades I brought home and the bragging rights it gave them to tell my aunties that they raised such a smart kid. My parents instead raised a monster child with mediocre grades and with no expectations for themselves and any else.
Maybe I’m who I am because of my sister. We were never close as kids and I’m glad that we weren’t. Unlike most sibling arguments, I was treated as below the family by her as if I was an outsider in this family. Simple mistakes like not microwaving the food enough or not changing the TV to the show that she wanted lost me the right to breathe. People call it abuse from the cuts and bruises that were inflicted on my six year old body. Other people call it neglect for letting my sister treat me as a slave and not doing anything about it. I call it normal. This is what all siblings do to each other. Red marks that never seemed to go away. This is what all younger siblings have to go through every day. The purple spots all over my body. It’s normal for a six year old boy to want to write in his Angry Birds notebook that he wishes that he could die or run away in his multicolor pen he bought at his school’s book fair. It’s normal for a nine year old boy to go to school with puffy eye everyday because he was crying himself to sleep. It’s normal for a twelve year old boy to flinch when his desk partner raises their hand to answer a question. It’s normal for a freshman to cry in a car after being slammed into the window for not knowing how to do senior level math. It’s all normal.
My childhood taught me things that I still remember today. That I’m not loved. That I complain about things that are seemed normal. That I’m don’t deserve anything including my life. Everything that happened in my childhood is all because of me and it’s all my fault for being that way.
