Category Archives: Memories

Nothing is Wrong with Loving Your Culture

it hurts me to write this…

i’ve always been an open minded person. i have always wanted to know MORE. i have this guilty pleasure of knowledge. and not only that, but i have this guilty pleasure of broadening my mind to different cultures.

i am Hmong, born in America. i am a Hmong American girl.

i grew up with TWO cultures. there are times when something from BOTH cultures don’t make sense to me. it is hard, to be made fun of for not understanding something from someone who was more exposed to that culture. it is hard, to be made fun of for liking something that another person does not take time to try and understand.

it is even harder when my Hmong siblings make fun of me, a Hmong girl, for liking Hmong music.

judgement on me, on who i am.

as a Hmong girl trying to make a name for myself, is it wrong to enjoy and encourage other Hmong artists that are on the same path as me, as all of us are?

because of this judgement, this sneer that would come my way, the disagreement of what is “good” and “bad”, i have been lost.

i am a lost Hmong American girl.

i love music and it makes me who i am.

yet i can’t even enjoy it when my family, my peers are judging me about it…

in this moment where i am lost, i have given in to the guilty pleasure of Hmong music and i have not regret it at all.

i can finally connect to something. relate to other Hmong communities, like finding a little lost piece of myself.

these past few days have been filled with nothing but good. i can finally write, write and write without worries. i can finally write what is deep in my heart. what bothers me and what makes me, me.

so don’t suppress yourself just for the sake of others. find out who you are, find all your little missing puzzle pieces. take a stand for what makes you, you.

Childhood Dreams

I sat there, listening to music, that carried my childhood in them. This particular night was like any other night of my life. Nothing special was going on. Other than procrastinating on homework, life was a yawn.

I closed my eyes and thought back to when I was a child. Back in California. When days were much simpler. When the only thing I had to worry about was coming home with bruises on my knees from playing with the boys at recess.

The days when my siblings and I didn’t get yelled at for playing in the sprinklers after school,  making our uniforms soaking wet. When all I had to do was read books after books.

And of course, that smile of my best friend.

I had missed a few days from spraining my ankle (jumping off my roof). And when I returned, she had greeted me with her big smile and told me that everyone missed me. We were inseparable.

But that was back in California.

My parents moved us to the great midwest, to the state of Wisconsin. Everything I ever knew changed. People were different there, my friends new. It was difficult to accept the change. Despite my difficulties, day after day, month after month, even though I yearned for my home in California, I was moving on.

I lost connection with my childhood friends, I lost what it was to be a Cali girl.

What did I become? A girl stuck in reality. Dreaming at night but forgetting to have dreams while I walked the grounds of Earth.

a girl sits in front of her computer screen

a girl sits in front of her computer screen

unaware of who she is

unaware of how she is supposed to

tell the world how she came to be

where she came from

why she does the things she does

days turn to weeks

weeks into years

but there is only

confusion after confusion

My After Effects Of Depression

I haven’t been able to think straight for a while now. After school ended my goal was to find myself and figure out the reason why I went back to school. I didn’t know it would actually consist of losing myself in the process.

I am lost. Everyday that I don’t work was supposed to be a day full of writing. I wanted to write every moment I could. But I can’t, my heart isn’t in it. I was writing and having thoughts of writing almost everyday when I was in school. Now I can’t even sit down to think about it.

I feel like I am nothing since I have nothing to do everyday. Going to classes was my life for those five months. Now that school is done, I’ve gone back to the girl who has nothing to wake up to anymore.

My reasons for going to school is still the same and the motivation is still the same too. I guess I just added another reason to wanting to go. I want to wake up to something to look forward too. I want to wake up early with a full list of schedules.

I haven’t been sleeping well. I’m not having nightmares, I’m not staying up to look forward to anything, I just can’t sleep. I lay there and hope to knock out but my mind won’t let me.

I’ve been thinking about my after effects of depression.

For a person who never cared about timing, I started to do things in a timely matter. One of the biggest was leaving for work at a certain time. Small things were doing things at 1, 1:15, 1:30, or 1:45. I don’t know why, but I would always look for a time marker.

I don’t do it as much anymore. I know for a fact that it started when I hit depression stage and I wanted to get rid of that habit. I try to take life as it is and not worry as much as I did anymore.

There was this one time in the past when I thought was over my depression, and this habit hadn’t disappeared yet. I was getting ready for work, and when I went outside to my car, it was gone. I came back inside screaming my head off, wondering where and who took my car. I found out from my sisters that it was my mother and I was angry! It was my time to leave and I had no other way to get to work. It felt like my life was out of my control! I started to cry and bawl my eyes out over this fact.

I cried in front of my sisters. I didn’t even know why I did that in the past. But when I think of it now, I guess it was the fact that I was screaming out to them that I wasn’t fine. I needed help, I needed my sisters to help. But I am the black sheep of the family, and everyone is scared to ask me how I am feeling unless I talk to them first. So life went on. My mother came back and I left later than I did normally for work. I was still angry but I did make it in on time.

The sleeping thing is another side effect of my depression. Like I said, I used to have nightmares. It sucked even more since I remembered them, all of them. They weren’t of monsters or anything like that. The people, who had a cause in my depression, they were ignoring me in my dreams. Even though I wasn’t acting any different, even though I was trying my hardest to get things back to the way it was before, nothing was working. They still ignored me and left me out. And it may sound silly but it really hurt me. Even in my dreams they were still causing me pain.

Ever since I started those dreams I’ve been scared to sleep. I started to sleep later and later every night. I would wait till I was crazy tired, unable to keep my eyes open tired, then finally I would fall asleep.

The last one may be the biggest for me. I can’t help but become a hermit crab again. There is no reason to go out. There is no reason to socialize with other human beings. I feel like even though I try to look more approachable, people just don’t want to talk with me.

I don’t even want a boyfriend at the moment, I just want people to acknowledge that I am alive and worthy of talking to. Make me realize that all human beings aren’t bad, since I’ve lost all hope in men already…

Another thing that has been bothering me is the fact that my memory is horrible. I was the girl who remembered everybodies birthdays and sent out cards ahead of time. I was the girl who people could rely on to have everything. But now I refer to myself has the girl who has a memory of a goldfish. Someone could say something to me and I would forget it in the next three seconds.

And in trying to forget what made my depression happen, I forgot a lot of things that happened around that same time. I even went further back and forgot most of my high school years. People could ask me about things that happened to me back in 09’ and I wouldn’t know.

Except, I would remember random weird things. Like the fact that my parents wanted body pillows and a year later I would buy one for each of them. Or the random little conversations I had that weren’t that important.

I’ve become a different person since then. For better or for worse, I live with it and do my best every day.

Yea I’m weird, I’m random, I’m shy, I’m awkward, I’m an ice princess, I’m boring, I’m strange. I’m a lot of things…


Going Bald…

There was an idea behind this. I don’t know what, but it was there. The Christmas before I turned 21, I put into my phone of how I wanted to shave off my hair. On my 21st birthday. I had seven months to really think about it, but I knew I was dead set on this goal.

Yet, when it came to my 21st birthday, I didn’t do it. I went out and did the normal twenty-one year old scenario.

A year passed, and still the thought of shaving my head was floating around. But, as it turns out, it was not going to be the year.

But this year came about. I knew if I wanted to go bald, this was the last chance I was going to get. I had to do it while I was young, before I regretted not doing it sooner.

I got over my depression, I was on the path to figuring out who I am. I was happy.

I got the courage to finally let my sisters on the in about my goals.

screenshot-by-nimbus

screenshot-by-nimbus (1)

We came to an agreement of baby steps. And not soon after, I went in to get a pixie cut.

IMG_20140607_150254

I was happy, but still, the lingering thoughts of being bald bothered me.

After my hair grew out, we thought again about a new haircut. This time, I wanted to go shorter,

It was the day before my birthday and I wanted to go all the way this time. But I was pulled back by my sister again. We cut it short but not all the way.

IMG_20140721_130509

Soon after it was like the world was messing with me. My nephew and niece got to the razors and decided to give themselves a haircut. They had to go bald.

I watched the ending of Legend of Korra, and Jinora fulfilled her wishes of becoming a airmaster, getting the chance to go bald,

I was thinking of Doctor Who and remembered that Matt Smith went bald.

So I messaged my sister again.

screenshot-by-nimbus (2)

After three months of talking about it, I was finally going to get my wish. My sister was agreeing to help me out in my goal.

And finally, after two plus years, I got to fulfill one of my life goals.

My before:

IMG_20140906_005547

And, finally, my after…

IMG_20140907_161315

Society tell us girls should have long hair. To be a woman, you have to have a head full of hair. To be pretty and wanted, you have to have a long lock of hair. In my culture, a good girl has long hair.

For me to cut my hair, I am going against all reasons.

There is no beauty on the outside unless there is beauty on the inside.

I love myself regardless of how my hair looks. I will love myself through this experience. ‘Cause I will weed out those who still stick with me even though I look different.

(P.S. I am super happy how it turned out. I love how I look and feel. That’s all that should matter. Run and chase your goals, fight for your happiness.)

 

Hard to be Happy

It is hard to be happy.

I should just stop trying.

But there is a reputation to uphold!

Who the fuck cares about a reputation!

But wait, who am I really doing this for?

Why the hell do I even try to be so nice to everybody for?

Oh yea…

Those people who conceived, birthed, and took care of me till now.

They are the only reason why I am still living at home, why I still act nice to our other family members, the only reason why I haven’t fallen back into my deep hole of depression.

But it is so hard…

When they can’t let go of the past.

When they can’t stop caring about how everybody else views them.

It makes it hard for them to be a happy person.

Thus, making it hard for me to be a happy person.

The Way The World Sees Me

I’ve been generalized for my height, ethnicity, and gender. I have all the traits of what our world is constantly at differences with.

There is no lie that I am viewed differently for having black hair, almond eyes, and
different skin texture. I’ve encountered many people in my life where I am
judged first for my looks. I’ve walked the halls of high school with boys
mocking a language that is not my own. I’ve dealt with toddlers asking their
parents why I look the way I look. They don’t even have to ask their parents,
their stare that follows me is enough. I know for sure I am treated differently
at work with certain customers.

With my gender comes my ethnicity. There are always downfalls on how men treat their
women in different cultures. In my culture, if there is a traditional
gathering, women will cook the meals and set the table for the men. Women do
not get to sit with the men though; they set their own table in the kitchens
and eat there. Our chores/life goals are different. We are grown to be the
perfect daughter-in-law, practicing kitchen work since young. Our life goal is
to marry into a good family and birth many children for our husbands.

My height is more of a personal one. I cannot count how many times I get words thrown at me
about my height.

“Do you want to stand up now?”

“Can you even see over that?”

How are people able to live with themselves and say these types of words..

I love my height. I would not be the same person without it.

I noticed that I do seem to write negatively at times. So on a lighter note, I’m going to
write my positive thoughts on these generalizations.

I love being Asian and would not change it any other way. It is my way of being unique in
this plain world. I don’t have many good memories of high school. Although I
wish I did..

One memory I cherish involves a child. I was walking in to the local grocery store to buy
lunch. Walking ahead of me was a couple and their baby. The baby was facing me,
while being held by her father. She looked at me and smiled, giggling the
happiest giggle. I don’t think I ever felt happier. We did eventually go our
separate ways, but it is a memory I don’t plan on forgetting. She was such a
sweet little angel.

I did point out the many ways my culture puts men before women. It is something that should
be fixed. I am glad to hear that in some household, women shares table with men
now. Where there used to be more men dominating the title of Shaman, there is
more women taking that title too now.

Parents do want more for their daughters. It would be great to marry into a good family,
but schooling is more important. They want daughters to do just as well as
their sons.

There isn’t much I can say about my height. The comments are something I am just going to
have to live with. I do live with it. Even though I want to say I am use to
them and they don’t bother me anymore, it would be a lie. Because those
comments still hurt. I try to play it off but it sticks in my mind and I
continue to think about them for a long time afterwards..

Wow, so much for positivity.. I’ll have to try again next time. The memory of others reminding
me of my height is still fresh. (As if I needed a fucking reminder of what I
live with daily…)

Dear Me, Part One

I have been reading a lot of Dear Teen Me stories. It got me to think, what would I write to myself? Did I want to recall such memories like those of whom I read? Memories filled with regrets, hate, decisions to make us who we are today. Do I want to think of my bad memories as the memories that helped make me a better person?

Was being disregarded by my uncle, when all I wanted to do was follow along in the walk and he told me to go back home, a memory I want to use. When my neighbor kid would come over and say that our dog liked him better, and we had to force the dog back home. Following girls into the boy’s bathroom because I thought it was cool, but we got caught by a teacher and was told on. Being lifted upside down by a boy who I considered a friend, were these memories to be used? Did I want to remember how I had gotten a reward for something and my name was listed with others in the lunch room. How my sister was trying to show me, but the girls sitting across from us thought my sister was pointing her fingers at them. A few minutes later, my sister would run to the girl’s bathroom in tears. Is this how I want to remember things?

I just realized… These are all my memories of California… I was just a kid, younger than eight, and I was going through all that. I wonder what it would have been like if my parents decided to stay.

Is it better that we moved?

Do these memories mold me in anyway? Did I learn from them? Did I become a better person?

I learnt that family, although I cannot live without them, is better to be missed than hated.

I learnt that our family is just not cut out to take care of animals, except for goldfishes.

I learnt that true friends will stick by you, even after all the hard times you go through together.

I learnt that I lived in a racist world, were people I loved get hurt, yet we had to deal with it.

Remembering all these memories, I am kind of glad to get away from that harsh environment. Sure there were some bad times here in Wisconsin too, but it did get better. I can’t even imagine the person I would be if I still stuck around those people. Even if I did have a childhood friend there, would they be willing to deal with a girl like me? Would a girl like me being okay dealing with people like them?

There are many more moments in California, too much to write out now. Some I would not like to remember.