content warning(s) (CW): abuse, trauma, drug abuse mention, abandonment, diasporic language, death, loss
this week’s reading of Catherine Chung’s Forgotten Country and the screening of the film Twinsters brought up a lot of my feelings about home and family. my family’s always been a very dysfunctional one. there are a lot of secrets, a lot of untold stories that aren’t discussed or were never brought up, at least, to my attention until much later in my life. why did grandpa Paul never tell my mom or her siblings about his life in the Philippines? why didn’t he teach them tagalog, or the language that him and his family spoke in Pangasinan, where he was born, a place i never knew about until one of my aunties shared that information with me? why did grandma marry him? wasn’t that illegal at the time (misegnation laws)? why did they divorce? why did dad hit mom so much? why did he leave? why did they both do so many drugs when my mom was pregnant with me, and my mom with my sister’s dad when she was pregnant with her? why did grandma and grandpa take me away from my mom? was it because of the drugs? why were my grandparents white, but my mom is brown? why did we have to move to washington? why is grandma sick? why did she have to leave us so early? why did my uncle hit my mom like my dad did? why does sissy hit and yell at mom like my dad did? why did grandpa have to pass before he could even see me graduate from high school? why are all my family members, my cousins so much lighter than me? why does no one talk about being pilipino? why did no one tell me i was mixed? is it because they all knew that i was already, or because they didn’t care about race? why does my mom not understand when i talk about race stuff? why does my sister think her writing about being pilipino for a grade means that she knows what the hell she’s talking about?
i think i relate a lot to how anais felt about her childhood experience. i think there were some happy times during my childhood, but i feel like with all the loss and trauma i’ve gone through, my childhood felt pretty lonely. i think the only places i’ve felt solidly a part of have been san diego (which i can barely remember now. i hate having bad memory) and tacoma. i was the youngest grandchild of my family. i wasn’t an only child, but when your sister is 18 years older than you, it’s kind of hard to communicate with each other. she was more of a parent figure than she ever was a sister.
forgotten country was probably the most difficult book for me to read so far, but difficult in terms of content, not comprehension. my time in college is my first time away from my family, and it’s both a relief and a source of stress. i go back to visit my mom every month or so, but being back home is immediately being back in the fire so to speak. the constant fights, the yelling out of nowhere, the exhaustion all come back in waves whenever i’m home, and it’s more bearable than it was in high school when i was all alone thanks to my partner often visiting with me, or letting me stay at his place if i can’t bear being home. it’s bittersweet, for sure. i love my family but our home is painful and hurtful, so i’m glad that i’m able to be away from it while i’m in college, i just worry sometimes about having to return after i’m done here. i feel a lot of jeehyun’s stress, having to go between her parents’s expectations, reaching out to haejin, and working on her dissertation all at once. her abusive relationship was also really messy, and reminded me too much of my sister and my dad. i also feel for haejin, i respect her desire to leave her family and find a healthier space, and even though she left she still cared deeply for her family in little ways. they both had it really rough, and the communication issues really didn’t help. i’m also really surprised that neither of them fought their aunt. i have an aunt on my dad’s side who’s also super religious (read: christian) and has tried many times to force her ways of thinking onto me via facebook but i just kind of ignore her now. it’s easier than trying to tell her no or asking her to respect that i’m agnostic. reading those last couple chapters made me think back to when my grandma passed, and later my grandpa. i never got to see them when they passed, which i guess i should be thankful for, but i find myself still grieving over them years after they’ve passed. those two are my white grandparents, and i grieve over them a lot because they were the folks that raised me for a lot of my early childhood, but i grieve over my pilipino grandpa as well. i wish i could’ve connected with you in some way before you passed, lolo, but i was too young to even think about asking you about our heritage. i’ll forever be sorry about that. i hope i learn more about you, about our family, as i grow older.
i’m starting to tear up thinking about all of this, haha. family stuff is so complicated. i probably overshared but i mean, it’s probably better than not talking about any of this.