To my mother: An explanation for my behaviour

Dear Mama,

A couple days ago, I told our story. And it made people break out in tears.

May is Asian and Pacific Islander (API) month. My company wanted to hold a tribute of sorts to it, and so, asked me and two other Asian and Pacific Islanders to speak about our experiences. And I thought to myself, this is something I could finally own.

To prepare myself, I latched on to the word “experience”, thankful it was not something more structured and contextual like “culture” or “heritage”. “Experience” — less defined, and more open to the sense of not feeling tied to any one country. After all, I am a Filipino-Canadian who grew up in Micronesia and lives in the States. The phrase “where I’m from” means almost nothing to me.

I say it’s our story because all along the way, it’s always been you and I. Sure, there were other family members, but they were either born into the family or they had their own lives prior to rejoining us. We were always in the core, the Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks of our group.

I’ve been attached to you all my life — I am, in every sense of the word, your child. Your values taught me what was important, your reprimands taught me right from wrong, your strength is the one I try to mimic.

I told the crowd of the immense sacrifices our family had to make.. That you had to make. And right then and there, in front of 100 people, that’s when my voice cracked, because I knew I would not be standing there if it weren’t for you, bullying me every step of the way, and forgiving each and every one of my mistakes.

You had to be a single mom for five children, three of whom you were away from most of their lives, and you had to bring them all to a strange country where we knew no one. Because of all your sacrifices, I stayed quiet in my anger, of being displaced frequently, of your criticisms, of having to grow up quickly. I was very Asian in my teenage rebellion. Though I didn’t have the right to be angry, I was.

You and I, we never had the kind of friend/confidant relationship some mothers and daughters fondly speak of. You were never my friend. You were my strongest critic; your tsk-tsk-tsk was the sound of my childhood. Your words were never of encouragement and support; they were always words of warning, of caution, of chastisement, taking my hope and enjoyment hostage in return for my obedience.

I understood, even back then, that your roughness was a byproduct of your will to control the outcome of our family’s success. I understood that back then, and I understand that still now. The difference is, back then I resented you.

Our relationship today, as amicable and pleasant as it is now, skirts around our lack of closeness. There are elephants constantly occupying the rooms we talk in, and as much as I enjoy visiting you, it’s always business as usual. I can’t hug you without mentally squirming in my seat.

No, we can’t get past this stage. Too much has happened. We have bruised each other too much. We are reduced to the friendliness of acquaintances. You now respect my autonomy and I now respect that you did what you thought was necessary. The restraint and fondness you now display with my brother was not shown to me. And that’s fine. I am a wilder, more contemplative breed because of it, constantly aware of the emotional dances people partake in.

I know someday, I’ll understand the type of creature you are even more. Our journey as enemies is over. You are no longer the antagonist of every obstacle in my life, just a bystander. I’m caught in the strange middle ground of acknowledging all we’ve been through together and yet, feeling like you are a stranger to me. I hope one day, you and I can begin to open up, finally start processing all that has gone on between us.

Sincerely,

Your ‘inday’

Classically beautiful

You think before you speak
You understand before you seek to be understood
You disagree, but always acknowledge
You argue, but always respect
You are kind, but you are firm
You mourn and celebrate each person’s story
In so many ways, you are
A mother, child, and lover
Nurturing, learning, and feeling

This is beauty to me.

Emotional nomad

I had the suitcase with all the books, I remember. Recipe books, my mother’s accounting books, romance novels I had secretly read just for the naughty parts. I was 12 years old and immigrating with my family to Canada… leaving my island, my haven in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

I think out of all my points of identity: Asian, woman, heterosexual, millennial… the one that has created the most powerful ripples in my life, ripples that still affect me as much as they did 21 years ago, is my identity as an immigrant.

I have been an immigrant most of my life. From the time I was three years old, I have only ever lived in places other than where I was born. And that has had such profound repercussions on me, my approach to life, and my relationships with people.

It’s not my fight.

That has been my mother’s mantra for as long as I remember. Don’t get involved, just mind your own business, stay quiet, do your work well, and you will be successful. After all, we are just passing through, right?

In today’s world where everything that can be said aloud can be taken the wrong way, it’s hard to maintain that veneer of impartiality. And the more I grow up, the more I can’t avoid putting down roots and standing up for something. For me, being raised to think like an immigrant meant things like: not maintaining friendships after moving; not exploring the place I lived; not developing a relationship with my environment.

It’s difficult for me to imagine knowing an area like the back of my own hand—I’ve never stayed long enough in one area to do so. I hear people refer to a particular shop on a particular street as if they were lovingly describing an old family friend, with comfort and certainty in their voices.

And oh, how I do envy them, and the easy camaraderie they enjoy with fellow locals. Becoming an adult, I’ve discovered that knowing the in’s and out’s of surrounding neighborhoods provides lubrication to your social life. But I can’t force myself into those crowds. I’ve never really been good at bullshitting. I only remember a place by how it made me feel, not by what I did there or who I knew there. They’re just flashes of color on a globe.

People are easier, I think. You get wrapped up in them and fall in love with them. There is history, context, pain, lingering stares, direct touch. But with the exception of ex-lovers who have changed me irrevocably, these tendrils of people will eventually pass and slip away to the wind. I know it makes me seem heartless and fickle to those whose lives I just disappear from. But trust me, I do have a heart. It’s just been spread thin, I think, from living in too many places or leaving too many people, I don’t know. Most of the time, like a parasite, it knows its time with its host is limited and temporary; it will just move on.

This will change, I know. My heart’s passiveness will cease once I have children; I will then be forced out of necessity and sanity to know the in’s and out’s of surrounding neighborhoods on the way to music lessons and shopping trips, and I will grow to love the place I’ve settled into like an old family friend. No social anxiety. No restlessness. Just a love for the area and knowing it loves me back. I look forward to that.

It may sound romantic to think and feel like an emotional nomad, but it’s really not. It gets pretty lonely sometimes. Next time you read a less-than-positive article about immigrants, or see a group of unfamiliar people congregated somewhere, I plead with you to be generous, and to understand that they are far away from home and are trying to make the best of it.

An adult’s secret, a child’s shame

A murmured command, a dilapidated porch. His eyes closed—from ecstasy or from shame, I could not tell. Hands on my skinny thighs. Lego’s and Barbies and Nancy Drew books swept off the bed. Nancy Drew could not have saved me; her wholesome efforts to catch the villain would have been futile. This was a villain that evaded magnifying glasses.

It still amazes me how much detail I remember, for events that feel like dreams. I still remember his black mustache and swarthy skin, and how he used to cook breakfast on the weekends. Mama seemed so happy to have a man so willing to do the cooking. She used to say that in all her years as a mother, the only time she had been able to sleep in was when he was around.

I don’t really feel rage for my mom’s ignorance—feigned or otherwise. More like a quiet, seeping anger. A martyr’s anger, the kind that nibbles at you and serves reliably as an excuse. (Years later, I found out that she may have known something all along. But that’s a story for another time.)

As for him, he was (is?) a pedophile. That was his modus operandi. People say that the effects of shock after trauma are what keep you from feeling anything. After being numb for some time, the pain comes, along with the tears, the recognition of loss, the anger, the self-hate, the sensation of a phantom limb… Well, is there such thing as a phantom limb for innocence?

I once came across a website created by a pedophile, for pedophiles. It sympathized with them. Pedophilia, on this website, is characterized as a disease, as an orientation… Apparently, people who identify as pedophiles cannot change it or help it. They must simply accept that they are sexually attracted to children, and that acting on it is a crime, and will effectively render them pariahs of society. Upon reading this, in my disbelief, I started feeling sorry for them—Stockholm Syndrome instigated by the internet.

He fit the description. He touched me inappropriately, he told me to touch him back; he was an adult and I was a child then. But to label him, to mentally diagnose him that way would make a mugshot out of him; he wouldn’t be my mother’s lover years ago who made us breakfast. I’m not ready, after all these years, to make him guilty.

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Updated 8/29/2016:

Upon further research, I have come to realize that, though he committed sexual acts against a child, that does not necessarily make him a pedophile. Pedophiles are attracted to children. But some, if not most, choose not to act upon their sexual desire. 

More later on the topic of pedophiles versus regressed child sexual abusers, I suppose. 

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And yet, here I am, questioning if I have overtly been the product of all those incidents all this time, or if this is who I really am. My social awkwardness then and now; my fascination with sex and intimacy; my twisted perspective on father-daughter relationships… Is this all due to occurrences that still feel hazy to this day?

I don’t think I’m angry, per se. I have built my wall of self-preservation, a wall that started being built between the ages of 7 and 12. I merely mourn the normalcy that could have been, if all of it had not happened. I mourn the chance to feel innocent and whole, to not always feel like I’m hiding a secret, a secret that was not my fault, but still unnervingly, a secret that I am ashamed of. It’s a minefield I have yet to tiptoe across with the people I am closest to—my own mother, my siblings—and can only tell an online community of complete strangers.

I long for the day when I can look at a father and daughter playing together, and not feel a sour tinge in my soul, or for the day I can look an older gentleman in the eye and not feel naked. Until that day, this will always be my secret to bear.

A response to today’s Daily Post prompt: Secret