Tag Archives: Expectations

My Rants of Today

back home and nothing feels real. it’s a thing i go through. is there a word for this? it’s like after repetition everyday and then going through some crazy adventure, you miss the adventure and the everyday lifestyle is not enough.

the trip was good though. i guess i have been craving to be feeling like a part of something. i have never truly felt American and i have never truly felt Hmong, because i am both. and it was good to be part of that Hmong community again.

when i was young i was disappointed in my people and wanted nothing to do with them, but when i mentally grew up, i realized that i could never throw it away. even if i can never be wholly part of the Hmong community, i can at least fit in the way i want to.

also, i have known for a long time that there are going to be people who are negative about everything. they can’t help but put in their thoughts. in the past i would let them get away with it. if they want to continue with their thoughts, go right ahead, i can’t do anything about it.

but i have changed again. if they have a right to their thoughts, i also have a right to my thoughts. and i have a right to put them down if i have to, no matter who they are.

i hold grudges, i hold them for a long time. even if you don’t remember, i will. i will let you get away with things the first time and if it is only about me. but if you decide to attack me again and it is about someone who i support or love, then it is your fault for not being able to just stay silent and support me.

so yes, i can hold back, but don’t taunt me or i will be angered. also don’t make assumptions about people you don’t even know.

These Times are Hard

That is lyrics of a song playing while I thought about titles. Times aren’t hard at all. I’m just having to make decisions for my life.

Last semester, I had to deal with work, school, family, and personal stuff. The stress from it almost drove me crazy.

It was holiday season and I was working almost everyday for over 8 hours. I had to, we had gotten new people, who were airheads, and I felt like the place was going to fall into pieces if I wasn’t there.

I was into my second semester of my first year, and I was freaking out that I was not going to make it. I was scared that I was going to fall back into the person I used to be. The girl who was too scared to show up for class, so I just didn’t go. The expectations were too great, and I too minsulate to be there of any importance.

Since it was the holidays, family were always in talks of what was going on. This year, thankfully, my younger sister took the liberty of handling Secret Santa. But my other sisters would not concentrate on when we would meet, as if to avoid the subject. They wanted us to wait for them, but they didn’t want to be there…

I was having issues with my period… I was stressing so much, I missed a month. Then I tried to calm down enough to actually get it, and then I did. But I missed the month after… I struggled with it since I wanted to be healthy and happy. But how could I be healthy and happy when I was stressing out and not getting my period…

This semester is for difference. I plan on making big changes, to see how things go.

I decided that I was ready for the whole five classes. But to take those five classes, I knew I would have to change something about work. I decided that I was going to not work any day I had classes. I gave myself four days off from work, only to work Fri, Sat, and Sun.

It is something I need. I could not deal with going to school in the morning to receive assignments and know that I could not do them till I was done with work, only to have to be at school early again the next day. I don’t know why I did that to myself in the past.

I figured I could do with one less stressful thing.

I had worked there for five years. In those five years, I struggled through school for two years. One of those years were not successful and I worked through the last year and it was hard. The other three years, I struggled with personal family issues.

This year I want to do something different. The one thing [work] I put so highly, I will put down for a while and give myself time to work on other things.

There will be time in the future to work as hard as I do.

A Little Something I Wanted to Share

I wrote this to a friend and thought it would be cool to post it here. I do mention references to my story I am writing, which is what sparked this conversation.

Have a little of my past 🙂

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Personally, why I don’t agree to forced marriage and fear it, is because I don’t want to lose my freedom. I had to struggle just to be the person that I am right now. When I was growing up, I was “the pretty one with white skin” that all the old ladies doted on. I grew up with expectations to do well, to marry well, and to have a good looking boyfriend/husband, all because the fact of me having “a pretty face.”
I was basically told what to expect out of life. But having all these words thrown at me didn’t make my feel any better. My sisters, and cousins had to witness it too. They were being compared to me, but I didn’t like to be the china doll that everyone showed off. Honestly, as a young girl, I didn’t think there was much about me that was charming. I blinked too much, I was empty minded, and filled with
imaginations.
It should have made me a bitch, and maybe it did, but since I was so different, I secluded myself. I didn’t want to stand out as “the pretty one.” It got to the point that if any guy talked to me, I would turn my back to them, honestly I was an ice princess during my middle and high school years. It was something that I never noticed till just last year..
I never allowed myself to grow to my full potential, I was scared to be ‘me’. So while I still worked hard, I pulled back in the department of social skills and love life.
For awhile I did find ‘me’, and I thought I was finally going to go somewhere in life, but things aren’t always that dandy and great. I had a conflict with my sisters. I had other life ambitions and they were worried about their love lives. We weren’t seeing eye to eye in anything. They were the closes people to me in my family, and in matter of months we hated each other with a passion…
But they were still my family, and with time we slowly became family again, but never as close as we once were.
I still lost myself though, and I was lost for so long too. I closed myself off again. My best friend could see it, but she didn’t know how to deal with it. She didn’t know what I had to grow up with. For years I would put on a mask with a smile, but I was basically dying on the inside.
It was just two years ago that I started on my life journey to be happy and to be ‘me’. I feel like I took three big steps in my life. If I were to be married, I would be taking four steps back.
Plus, I tend to think that my dreams carry heavy messages that I am afraid to admit, and I had dreams about forced marriages. Maybe it was due to the fact that I was thinking consistently about my story, but it showed me what my darkest fears were about forced marriage. People kept trying to get into my bubble, trying to control everything for me. Just like Luna, everyone was making mistakes for her and she had to deal with the mess. Nobody would let me grow as a person, and nothing would be mine anymore.
That is another thing, while growing up, my sister’s would claim things as theirs and I would step back and let them. I had nothing to claim as mine. Now that I do have something that is mine, I am scared that someone is going to take it away from me.
And yeah, I lost a lot of my sisters while I was young. They were never really sister figures though, or at least I felt like they never were. They never tried to understand me as a human being, even though I tried with every last tear to understand what was going on in their minds. I tried so hard with my younger sisters too, and it only left me hurt even more. I love them to pieces, but no one really understands me.. So yea, I do have a silent promise with myself to not let my younger sisters go through what I went through when all my married sisters left. Because honestly, when my family was already under scrutiny, it hurt that my sisters were finding love and I was stuck to deal with all the drama and gossip.
Rather than focusing on others, my main goal in life is to focus on me. As greedy as that sounds, it’s something that I owe to myself, to my kid self who worried too much about what other’s thought about themselves and about me.
When I write a stories, my characters are their own people, but I tend to leave a bit of me with my them. And that may seem greedy too, but I can’t help but leave part of myself in places that my family would never think to look.
I can’t seem to make my stories short…. I had to share my whole life story… (and why would i share my whole life story? i don’t fear my flaws or horrible past.)