Early Childhood

My homelife during my childhood was not a great time. But I learned a lot. And I don’t say any of this to gain sympathy. This is just how I remember everything. My intention in writing this is not to hurt anyone. Things are actually really different and a lot better now, as you will see as I continue this series. But I have to write this part. This is to help others who have gone through this or are currently going through it feel less alone.

My mom told me that she wasn’t ready to have kids when I came along. It was her last year of college and she just wanted to graduate first before having a kid. She was told that by not having a kid ASAP she wasn’t following the prophet or listening to God. She was made to feel like such a bad person she finally agreed. So I never really felt wanted by her when I was little but it makes sense because of how scared and resentful she must’ve felt to have done that before she was ready. Things are better now that I’m older but it took a lot to get here.

I remember her working a lot when I was little. She liked working. She was good at what she did and found a level of fulfillment that she couldn’t find anywhere but at work. She didn’t become a stay at home mom til after my brother was born. Even then I don’t think she lasted a year. My dad always wanted her to stay home. Her answer was that they couldn’t afford for her not to work but he always said that they’d be blessed for having faith and following the prophet’s council for moms to stay at home and take care of the kids. (It honestly freaks me out even writing that. I think every situation in every family is very individual and things aren’t so generalized anymore. People aren’t judged quite as harshly as they were back then for choosing to be a mom and having a career too. They shouldn’t be.)  I was fully aware that my dad didn’t want my mom going to work but I got brainwashed to the point that one time he sent me over to her to beg her to stay home. I was about 3 or 4. I gave her 50 cents he had taken out of my piggy bank and told her that she didn’t need to work because I had money. Are you kidding???? I remember her sobbing. I can’t even fathom how manipulative that was. She was always stressed about money, though. She said she didn’t know what it was like to truly have no money until she was married to my dad. She counted literal pennies and clipped coupons and always had a job. However, this continued on even after they started making good money. Even now my mom still is a very money-conscious person and can never resist a good bargain. My dad was and always has been a spender. Another opposite thing. 

They had very different parenting styles and values as well. My dad is extremely affectionate, sensitive, and nurturing by nature. He just has a lot of feelings and boy, can he talk. He valued church, religion and morals more than anything and was really strict about it. My mom cared most about outward appearances, being financially stable, and school. The one thing they cared about and had in common with parenting was discipline. This combo didn’t give me much wiggle room. 

My dad and I were really close when I was little. He was fun and happy. I knew he liked me more than my mom and I think she knew it too. He worked all the time so he was hardly around. I hated that. I was always so happy when he came home and so sad when he left in the morning. I talked a lot when I was little (probably still do) and always asked a million and one questions (“why this” or “why that”) just because I wanted to understand how things worked. Drove my parents crazy I think hahaa. But I loved learning. He was always so nice, listened, and took the time to answer all of my questions. He made me feel like the most special person in the world when I was little.

My mom had lots of feelings too but wasn’t as good at talking about them and had more of a tough love approach to parenting. Very tough. Too tough for a child to understand. She liked having control of everything as well. She made all the decisions and threw a fit if things didn’t go her way. I think she was afraid of not having control and that’s probably due to how she had to take care of herself 100% of the time growing up. She was also clean. Like next level clean. Absolutely no shoes in the house. Ever. Which I don’t think is that weird but she would flip if you even stepped on the mat outside of the garage door or stepped onto the threshold with your shoes on. It was just a little excessive. And if one of my friends accidentally wore them in, she shot daggers at me with her eyes and yanked me aside for me to say something to them. All water fixtures had to be wiped down after being used. It was a tad obsessive and compulsive but she said we had to take care of what was ours so that’s what I followed. People hardly ever came over. Only certain friends were allowed over. The ones that weren’t allowed over, I had to play outside with or I went to their house. 

I remember being yelled at all the time.  95% of the time I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I was a really good kid. I honestly don’t know how to adequately describe what it was like so you can feel what I felt but I honestly don’t want anyone to feel or go through what I did with her. She has an ability to cut you with her words if she wants to. And it’s not the words she used. It was the way she spit them while snarling at you. Think of an angry chihuahua. She’d project this energy onto you that literally felt like the sharpest, coldest, darkest ice. It made me feel so small and afraid. She had a painful grip and sharp, quick hands that could inflict more pain than the strength her small frame suggested. I had so much anxiety and found myself flinching a lot to brace myself for her emotional impact. She got mad when I did that too because she wasn’t “beating” me or anything. I learned to take the brunt of a different kind of beating. I read books to escape. I read so many books. 

Despite not being ready to have kids, I was told she loved me when she had me. I was helpless and loved her just for being my mom. I needed her like any baby needs their mom. She needed that. But my mom struggled with herself and her impression of what children were supposed to be like/behave. That’s a cultural thing. I picked things up really quickly and when I could talk, I started having opinions. She didn’t want my opinion. She just wanted obedience. I loved asking questions, remember? She just wanted me to do whatever she was asking and not ask questions. Dad liked that I asked questions and encouraged it because he knew it was the only way I’d learn. My mom on the other hand found it disrespectful. Of course I wasn’t trying to be disrespectful. I was only curious. But that was hard for her. Culturally, you don’t question things. When mom or dad said to do something you just did it. (Remember what I said about elders.)

I realized most of her explanations to my questions or why she had us doing things the way we did didn’t make any sense or she was too embarrassed to admit the reasons because they were so illogical and not NORMAL. For example: being told to get on my hands and knees to pick crumbs up off the floor in the kitchen and dining room instead of just vacuuming and wiping the water off of any faucet right after being used to keep them polished and clean. I’m sure there are other people out there that do that but I don’t know them. I developed some OCD and a mad case of perfectionism somewhere in there with all the rules I was forced to follow and the fear of getting yelled at or disappointing her all the time. BUT I have her to thank for a trained eye that can identify imperfections in a matter of seconds. I’m a quality control artist now. A blessing and a curse. It’s crazy what quirks you have now that can be traced back to your childhood.

Anything less than an A was NOT allowed in my house. She had me learning my times tables the summer before 2nd grade. She wanted me ahead of the game I guess? Every morning that summer she had me sit on her bed while she got ready. I would stare at the new set of times tables on the workbooks she bought me to work on over the summer willing myself to commit them to memory. After I thought I had them I would go over to her, stiff with anxiety as she rapid-fire quizzed me. I got reprimanded or lightly smacked on the head if I got one wrong and had to return to her bed to keep memorizing. She didn’t know how to communicate with me while I was little. She didn’t know how to communicate well in general. Thanks, grandma. 

I know that being a mom was really hard for her but her being my mom was even harder for me. At the age of 5 I had a realization:

One day I was late for school, I was in kindergarten and my dad was dropping me off which I loved because he was always gone working. As we were walking up to my school I told him I wanted a new mom. He just stopped and looked at me, stunned and asked why. I told him that it was because I knew that I was never going to be able to make this one happy. No matter what I did or said she was never happy. Nothing I ever did was ever going to be good enough so I wanted a new mom. It was very matter of fact. I wasn’t emotional. I wasn’t sad. I had thought about it, weighed the pros and cons and this solution made sense to me. He was speechless. He looked at me like I had discovered something that he had been trying to hide. He looked so sad. I went into class. As a kindergartener I had identified what most people go to psychiatrists for later in life. I knew that when people truly love you, they don’t treat you this way for not doing anything wrong. I just wanted to be accepted and loved for who I was. I know now that it’s something my mom wanted and still wants for herself too.

My parents argued a lot. It was like they were on different wavelengths all the time. There was so much miscommunication and they hardly ever got along. Someone (usually her) was always pissed off and when she was unhappy, no one was allowed to be happy. Everyone was perfectly miserable in fact. Sometimes it was something he did, sometimes it wasn’t. Sometimes she just chose to be in a bad mood. That was more often than not. She was so unhappy. In her marriage. In life. What I didn’t know was my dad was busy with addictions, cheating on her, and blaming her for their marital issues. Knowing now what she went through with my grandma and my dad, it makes a lot of sense and breaks my heart.

I forgot to mention that made me learn chinese from birth and I’m very grateful she did. However, I wasn’t always the most willing and she didn’t always teach in the nicest way. She would not speak a word of English to me and if I tried speaking English to her she’d get mad and tell me she couldn’t understand me or she’d just ignore me. It was another rule of hers and it was MADDENING sometimes when I didn’t know how to say something. I especially wanted to boycott speaking it all together when I got to elementary school and started getting made fun of by friends that heard me speaking it. “Ching chong hahahahah” I was so ashamed. I just wanted to be normal.

Ethan came when I was six. I was very used to being an only child at this point. But if I was going to gain a new sibling, I really wanted it to be a little sister. I was devastated when they brought home a boy. A BOY. The best thing that could happen to an asian family and the worst thing that could happen to me. He became my mother’s star and angel. He was all that mattered. She lived and breathed for him which meant I had to too. I was responsible for anything that happened to him which meant I got yelled at some more. He got whatever he wanted and I got blamed for everything. I resented him so much. This breaks my heart now because looking back he was the cutest baby there ever was and he loved me so so much. I could’ve really loved him too. But it was impossible.

I remember one time he was just starting to learn how to roll over. My mom placed him on the couch and left him for a moment. I was in the other room when I heard the sickening thud of his head hitting the hardwood floor and then his screams. She screamed. Panicked, she asked how I could’ve let this happen? It was all “my fault.” Things like this happened often. I wanted nothing to do with him. And this is why the word “family” never really resonated with me. Family wasn’t safe. They fought a lot and you got blamed when they got hurt.

What’s really sad is I took all of this at home stuff out on people at school. I was really mean. I picked on people who weren’t in my “group” and sometimes even the people in my group. I made them feel small the way my mom did to me. I was the mean, popular girl who was somehow well liked. It was like a bad high school movie except this was from third to sixth grade. There are so many people I still need to apologize to. It still haunts me. Then I started getting made fun of for not having boobs or a butt in 5th grade. That’s when my complex and struggle with body image began. 5th GRADE. Can you even believe. 

I got used to my home life by the time I was in third grade and got really involved in lots of activities. I grew up playing softball, dancing, drawing, and playing the piano. During all of this, the fights never stopped though. I still held my breath a little whenever my parents were in the same room. I think I was 10 when my mom discovered my dad was cheating again. This time it was bad. The world crumbled but they tried to figure things out. It was dark. Then, things seemed to get better. My mom got an upgraded wedding ring. They seemed really happy for the first time ever. And then a few months later I discovered she was cheating on him. I don’t remember how my dad found out but I do remember her being on the phone with the guy while she had locked herself in the bathroom giving Ethan a bath. The fighting got extra bad again.

Then, one day when I was 11 and my brother was 6, my dad wasn’t home and I helped my mom frantically pack her car with her things so she could leave the house before my dad got home. I heard my dad pull up as she was escaping and I think I passed out out of fear of what I thought would happen next. How angry he would be at me for helping his wife leave. Another screaming match? Another shoe throwing debacle? Another person hitting the other with their car in the driveway? The next thing I remember was waking up on the couch alone.