A second start

Every time I get excited by something, it doesn't last very long before I was enticed to something new. Either that, or I retreated into a semi-hermit state, where my most concern is finishing a book too quickly. I would either get excited about an idea/event/to-do that I will throw all my energy into it, then when that short burst of energy drained, I would turn to its opposite, inactivity, whether or not the task I have set for myself has been done. And during all of this, I would get these spells of inexplicable sadness, for which I don't understand or know whence it came from. Just as tonight, as I'm typing this. It will pass, I know that, leaving me to focus on another thing.

I've search for a few things, and the explain I've found was INFP, an introvert personality from Meyers-Briggs category of personalities. I agreed with some of it, though I've come to resign myself to the fact that I am an emotional creature, and prone to moodiness. And I've also resigned myself to the fact that I am too sensitive for my own good. With me, it's always feeling guilty for speaking harsh words, for wanting something for just me. I'm slowly getting used to speaking up for myself, and I'm hoping I'll get more assertive in the future, so I'm not really worry about it other than I'm being impatient and want to reach the goal already.

Speaking of goal, I know I'm not perfect, though I tried so hard to be that it had left me broken; I'm currently in the process of building myself back up, and thought that I should start something again, to make sure that I am truly working on myself, and even with the running back and forth I've mentioned before, I want to finish this task. I want to be the best of me, and learn to love myself.

Loving myself was so hard before, when I wasn't aware that it was an option. I'm trying hard not to be emotional, to look at things with positive view; I'm trying to be grateful that I am the person I am right now because of past experiences, that it gave me the knowledge that I will always have myself (even though more often than not I forget that). Funny, when I thought of loving myself, I only thought of moving forward; but in making peace with myself, I found I have to look back at the past, to understand myself more, and to learn to forgive myself and others. It's hard enough not to be too hard on myself, it's also hard to live around my parents with hate for them inside of me.

Growing up in a traditional Asian family, it was instilled in me to be responsible for taking care of my parents when they are old. I've struggled with a lot of things that was taught to me from my family, although it helped that moving to America when I was 14 did help Americanize me to the point of realizing that I am my own person, it still didn't make it easy for me to leave my parents, to cut ties with them as I should have. Loyalty is my strong point, as well as my weakness. I've worked on the hate for my parents, knowing that it is for my own sake as well as theirs. I cannot be around them, but I also cannot leave them to fend for themselves, and the fact that they tried to control me with their weakness didn't help. I have had many nervous breakdowns because of them, and I felt trapped - I still feel trapped by them. I'm halfway to cutting ties with the man who biologically fathered me, and I can't wait till the day we part way for good. As for my mother, she's still depended on me, as much as I hated it, I'm trying to get her to a point where she can do without me. I want nothing more than to be away from both of them, but my sense of responsibility is shackling me down to at least helping her to settle somewhere nice, for her to make friends, and live in peace that she deserved. I don't hate her as much as my father, but I do not feel any love for her, and I hate that she kept trying to tie me down to her by emotional blackmails, by trying to use the fact that she's weak against me, to make me feel responsible for her. I don't even want to be around her, but she keep making up excuses as to why she required my help. I'm afraid that my hate for her will grow, I don't want it to be. As much as I understand that she did the best she could, given the situation, and I admired her for having the strength to put up with the abused my father and his family heaped on her (being a bride in Asian culture isn't as good as they made it out to be, more so when it had been as oppressive as Vietnamese culture back then), I feel nothing for her bu a strong sense of responsibility, and a growing animosity that I fear will have me cut ties with her as well if she keeps this up. I'm trying to hold on to my temper, to at least be a pillar for her while she's going through a divorce (which should have happened long time ago); but what is stoic muster of support, she's mistaking as familiar love and is trying to hold on to what's left of her life so much more, and in turn, it's doing more damage than good.

To give a little background, I was born and raised in Viet Nam. The culture is still in developing, and mindsets aren't that open. I have an older sister, whom I was closed to when I was growing up, and a half brother that is already in college, so I didn't know him more than a few visit to my father during his time in college, and some news of him getting married and having kids. My father was married to someone, have a son, and divorced before he married my mother - which he hid from her until some time has passed after their marriage, a bad start in Vietnamese culture. My mother didn't mind, but she would have preferred him to have told her first. I'm not sure what she saw in my father, but she was mistaken when she thought him reliable. For during their marriage, my father cheated on my mother so many times, and put her through so many hardship, both with him and with his family (as the wife is supposed to be subservient to the husband and his family, and she had suffered much shame and verbal abused from my father's side of the family). My mother tried to keep peace, to present to the world that we were a happy family, and while I understand her viewpoint, I didn't agreed to her solution, because my father physically and verbally abused my mother, my sister, and I throughout my life growing up. He would find every excuse he can to beat my sister and I. It was normal to hit children in Viet Nam, but not to the extend of what he was doing, and I would go to school with bruises, and lies to cover them. Every day, there would be new marks on our bodies. I grew up scared to death of him, and hating him more than any child know what to do with such a strong emotion. My sister and I would commiserate together, and I grew to worship her. We were close, sharing almost everything, then our five years age gap caught up with us when I was in middle school and she in high school. She have her friends, her study groups, and we didn't spend any more time together unless we're huddle in a corner crying after a beating. I still worship her at that point, but I was alone. My mother works all day to keep food on the table, so she's rarely at home. I tried to keep distance between me and my father, which leaves me wandering the street most of the time. As children are wont to do, I craved attention and approval. Mother was hardly at home, and I would never got any approval from my father, so I focused on my 'friends'. Of course they were not really my friends, as even at a young age I wasn't letting anyone get too close. The kids in my neighborhood already knew how my family is, so they looked down on me, and I tried hard to put up a face when I was in school, so my friends from school wouldn't guess how bad it is at home. I turned to stealing money and things, to use to show off to my 'friends' at school and make them believe that my parents are rich, and that they buy me whatever I want. I did have some good friends, who look out for me sometimes, but mostly the ones that I gathered around me, predictably, was those who want me to buy things for them. It goes on for a few years, until my father uprooted us and brought us over to America.

The beatings isn't as bad anymore, since my father know that he could get arrested here, so it was less and less, but he was still keeping us under his thumb, and his family was censoring us, verbally abusing us because we were poor. We didn't know much English then, and they keep trying to kick us out in the cold (literally, it was December, and they wanted us to move out of the house right away, with nowhere to go). We were treated like dirt because, like above, we were poor and didn't know anything in the new country. Gawd, it was so bad back then, I was barely allowed out of the room that I shared with my sister. I was pretty much alone then, too, except for my uncle's kids. My father's family, who had brought us over, made my dad help with the construction of my grandparent's new house; my mother and my sister they took to the nail shop to work all day. It was harsh time, but we gradually found our way. We move out of the house, rent an apartment. My mother and sister still works for the nail shop, I go to school, and my father stay at home. I was happy, I think, to go to school and learn new things, despite the verbal abused that was still going on.

Fast forward to now, after enlisting in the armed forces to get away from my 'family', and finding out that distance does not necessarily breaks the chains that they chained me with since birth, I came home to try and work on forgiving them and moving on, with a husband in tow. Things didn't work out with my husband of three months, and I called it quit, filing paperwork with the city court and he moved out. During that time, I listened as my mother tried to soothe my pain, and I thought that while I couldn't forget my past, I could at least try to understand her. She told me what she had went through, and at first she tried to convinced me to get back to my husband, then console me when the pain gets too much to bear. Then my father, who haven't change even after all this time, keep finding problems to blow up at us. I had enough, and told my mother that she needn't have to put up with him any more, and help her filing for divorce. I feel sorry for my mother for having to live with that bastard for so long, and tried my best to help soothe her hurt feeling as she tried to for me. But the more that I found out what she went through, what her experiences with my father was, the more I started back to hating her. She thought that having a father for my sister and I was better than none, so she stick to him, pretending to the world that we're a big happy family. Making up stories to tell her friends and others to make it looks like everything is great. I was sick. I was sick of having a person like my father be my father, and a mother who thought the physical and emotional abused that we went through was better for two girls than growing up without a father. I thought back of all the times that my sister and I wish that we don't have a father, thought of the times she looked on as he beaten us, of how much shame I felt, and still feel, every time she make up a story to be told while I lived the truth of pain. I thought of how much scars and baggages I'm carrying because of both of my parents, a father thought nothing wrong with beating a child of 7 with a metal hanger without regard to where the blow lands, until my half of my face was bruised and swollen (I was so terrified that it was how I would look for the rest of my life) and send me to school with a lie that I fell down the stairs, and a mother who thinks it's better to be like that than without a father. She enabled him for us to live in fear, in pain, in shame, and who now is holding on to me like I'm the raft in the storm, not knowing that I am already lost at sea myself.

Oh gods. I'm typing this and I realized I still have so much pain in me, so many bad memories to move on from. I'm working on forgiving at least my mother, because she is just as much a victim of an oppressive and violent Vietnamese culture as much as my sister and I, but I don't think I could ever forget. My mother thinks that I love her, that the stories she told to her friends about what a good child I am, that my good deeds are the proof that she had wonderful daughters, and she is clinging on to me, tying me down with the show of how weak she is, how she doesn't know English, and how I am the only one left for her to rely on. She doesn't know how much I hated being around her and my father. She doesn't know that I hate her reliance on me when I know she is smart and could do better. She doesn't know I hate it when she pretends to be so weak she could barely talk. I hate it when she shuffle from her room across the hall to mine, how the noise of her shoes slip sloping down the hallway grated on my nerves - just to ask me if there are any appointment tomorrow, even though there's an eraser board in her room listing the upcoming appointments. The more I don't want to be around her, for her to leave me be, the more she find excuses to talk to me, to see me, and to drag me from places to places to interpret for her. I'm trying to hold on to my sanity, but my hate is growing, and all I could do right now is not to explode. I'm trying to look forward to the time when the divorces is over, and having less stress. I need my solitude.