Trapped behind my door

Growing up in Toronto, the multicultural diversity never made me feel my race would put me in a particular disadvantage. Sure there are some days when I wished I looked different, with more defined features and lush wavy hair. But mostly, I feel my parents are the ones that make me feel shameful to be a Chinese.

I have a love/hate relationship with my parents. The love part is obvious, they’re my parents, raised me and always try to provide the best for me etc etc. Which makes the hating part all the more painful. Immigrating from Hong Kong, they grew up in a different cultural period, working hard most of their lives to finally reach the upper echelon of the middle class. They believe hard work got them to where they’re at, so they try to be very materially supportive to their children so they wouldn’t have to go through the threshold of blue collar to white collar, which led to extreme unnecessary protectiveness, and an unwillingness to let go of their children.

I came to Canada when I was 10, so essentially I grew up in a very much different time period and cultural background than my parents. At 24, it boggles me to no end that my parents would still try to make me come home at 12 like I’m on a high school curfew. At first, when I was younger, I would try to comply because I’ve always felt a pang of guilt of the sacrifice my parents made for me. I hardly go clubbing and mostly stay out just to have fun conversations with friends, and it’s a constant struggle to have my parents understand that this is just how young people socialize in my generation. It’s an embarrassment to have to rush home right around 12 like Cinderella (and a lot less romantic too) because “my parents make me”. And then my parents would take offense and wonder why I like to stay out as opposed to staying at home. The ironic part is that their treatment of how I handle my personal life is what makes me hate staying at home. I couldn’t really invite friends over so I end up hanging out at theirs. I’ve never come home hurt or disgustingly drunk, so I really don’t understand their claim of being worried even when I give them advanced notice that I’ll be running home late.

Just last night, my dad called me at 1am yelling at me that I’m wasting my life away – because I’m still out and not home. Hello? I really don’t see the connection here, I went out rock climbing and was just having conversations over a bite. It’s a double edged sword when my parents call me at night, if I pick up the phone, I would face the inevitable nagging of my whereabouts and to get home asap. If I ignore their calls, they would just persist calling and I would have to face their disgruntled yelling when I get home. I tried to explain to my dad that this is MY lifestyle, and he accused me that I don’t want my parents to care about me. To “care” and to “control” are two very different concepts in my mind, but they seem to hold similar meaning in their perspective.

Anyway this is turning into a full fledged rant, and I really can go on and on about this, but the point is, I’m overly frustrated at my parents’ over protectiveness, their relentless attempt to control my life in false claims that it’s for my own good. What they failed to understand, or recall, is that the joy in living is not in material goods but how meaningful the human interactions are. By having me locked up at home, I’m within their supervision and they would probably feel they I would be safe, but I would also lose out on connecting with people in my generation. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that my parents don’t let me out ever, but they frown upon social activities at night, and would prefer my hanging out with friends at a lower frequency than I would like to have (like, going out every weekend is too much for them). And to top it off, my parents are in denial that I am frustrated with them, because every time they would yell at me for coming home late, they would act like nothing happened the next day. I would harbour all these frustration and anger, and they would simply act like everything is fine, wiping away all the mean words they said to me the night before. Maybe I’m being over sensitive, but that is an outright refusal to deal with my emotions, and a future attempt to make everything seem superficially all right. So here I am, on a slightly snowy Saturday night, staying at home the whole day to step away from further conflict and avoided making plans for the night so I won’t get in trouble again, wondering, and wondering, when the hell will I get a job so I can move out and leave my jail cell.

~ by Timbits on Saturday, January 10, 2009.