Relatives' Weddings (Part VI)

One year later, it was another relative's wedding. It guess it is about time that people reach their age for marriage: setting down, starting a family, and all that jazz. But really, I find individually in people who do not follow the trend of setting down in their late twenties and early thirties. Then again is the question that my mother always asks me -- "are you going to their wedding?" Without thinking my answer is no, but this time I wanted to end this tireless questioning of whether I will ever attend any social events hosted by any of my relatives.

I told my mother that my reluctance to attend those activities is due to their general vibe of prejudice. I purposefully dramatized their sense of superiority, because I know my high self-respected mother cannot tolerate those things been done to her precious daughter.

"I am so sorry, I haven't realized all of those things that you went through. If I had know, I wouldn't have given you all the invitations."
"That's okay, mom."
"I'll just go by myself and make up some excuses for you. I'll tell them that you cannot attend because you are a lot of things at work."
"Thank you, mom."
"I know they won't be happy about it, but I will just sweeten them up a bit by giving them compliments."

It was then I realized that my recklessness has caused a lot of problems for my mother, the middler person who has to make two sides happy. I cannot imagine all those excuses that my mother made up for me in front of those chatty relatives about how busy I am with work and school. I cannot imagine all  the complaints that my relatives has made once acknowledges my absence. But on the other side, I was not sure if my mother was purposefully saying that to make me feel guilty about all of those things that she does for me. I know that mothers can be passive aggressive, and introducing guilt to me is not something new.

Relatives' Weddings (Part V)

In my third year of college, I got a warming phone call from my mother.

"Do you know that [Random relative's name] is getting married?"

"Really...congratulations to him."

"They are getting married in two weeks, and the ceremony is taking place in New York."

"Cool."

"...You are not coming?"

"No...I am busy with my exams."

"I understand you are busy honey, but you should try to come. It's [Random relative's name]'s wedding, people are getting together."

"I am not sure, I will see what I can do mom."

"Try to come, okay?"

"Okay..."

I did not go. Afterwards I sneaked at some of the wedding photos that some relatives have on Facebook. It was good that they made these photos public, that way I can get to know what happened as an internet passing bystander. The bridesmaids with faces I can recognize. 'Look at that ugly color...such stuffy wedding dress...poor decorations...what are they eating?' These are the thoughts going through my head-- harsh and bitter. But what is causing those ideas, are my deep desire to become one of them. If things are different, I could have enjoyed the wedding with them. If I attempted at befriending them, I probably would be in happier state of mind. But I didn't, and the longer I wait to reach out, the less bonding will form. 

Too late, things are already this way. I ended up trying to convince myself that they actually looked down on me due to my immigrational status, so that I can channel this sense of injustice to something more useful to me -- career. As a result, bitterness subsided few days afterwards when I performed well on my exams. However, even now, I am unable to truly blame this broken connection to their prejudices. Because I know that I was at fault as well.

Relatives' Weddings (Part IV)

Living in Westchester, New York for a couple of years has eventually diverged me in different directions from my fellow relatives. I remember beginning a conversation with my cousins and ended up with the only comment: "You talk like white people". I always end my conversion with them in confusion, wondering if some of the topics they were actively discussing about were actually important or "fun". One time I overheard the conversations that my cousins were having, and they were talking about new immigrants. Alarmed, I paused what I was doing, and focused on what they have to say.

"She is so quiet, I'm not sure what I can say to her."

"Maybe she is just shy."

"Well she shouldn't be shy anymore since she has already been with us for a couple of month."

"She can't speak English."

I slowly moved away from these sound sources, and swam to look for a safer place for docking. I'm not sure if they were talking about me, but for a timid individual who only has her parents to talk to, the American sassiness only frightened me more. They dislike me-- for my status as an immigrant, and for my appearent lack of enthusisum in talking to them. The latter was not true, I wanted connections with them more than anything, since positive relationships with people can only benefit me. However, I was not able to overcome my fear of messing up my English while talking to them. 'What if I don't know what they were talking about? What if they don't think I am as cool as them? What if I mess up my pronunciation?' Now reflecting back to the concerns I had, I admit I was being silly.

When people have bad first impressions, especially when they were in a more vulnerable state, it will make a large impact on the rest of their relations. My first impressions with my relatives were not positive. On top of that, I did not try to make any efforts to move our relationship with them in positive directions. Maybe it is because I refuse to kiss up to people, or because of my odd experiences in Westchester.

No doubt that this odd immigration journey has made me feel much unique compare to other immigrants. Similarly, these unique environments has yielded very little heart-to-heart friends. Often times I see a group of girls walking on the street talking in a foreign language in the city of New York. These encounters were especially prominent during the summer, when students take advantages of their summer vacations to go to places exotic. Seeing those groups of people has never affected my mood in any positive direction, either because larger crowds of people are always intimidating, or because I never belonged to any groups of friends close enough to travel together.

Relatives' Weddings (Part III)

Walking along the neatly cut grass I place my foot into the asphalt. Birds are nesting on the trees, dogs are running around looking for buddies. Occasionally I pass by a few hispanic loan cutters who were incredibly nice to me -- they said hello. It is 7:30am. I am going to school. Cars constantly zooms over me. And I can feel the eyes inside of cars that pass by me. They are going at 40 miles per hour, I am going at 2 miles per hour. Do I feel that I belong there? I do not. I try to, but my own insecurities prevents me from making the best out of an incredibly successful school system.

After I leave that town where my relatives reside, I come to Westchester, New York. I then was able to see many things that I never saw before, expose to people with ideas I never thought of before, and do things I never done before. It is a vast different world here. It is clean and quiet. People are overly civilized to each other. Everything here is photoshoped picture quality. Unlike my home country, there are no cows walking on the street. Unlike my relatives' town, there are no garbage on the side of the streets. Unlike any other places I have been to, there are huge houses!

The place where I can feel the most change is the schools. My fellow classmates in the hall way saying things like these:

"Stop by to my house in the Hamptons, (random girls' names) and I plan to stay there for a couple of days."
"She is going to do work for Bloomberg this summer because her dad knows him."
"My family is going to Paris again, I am so board of it."

As oppose to my older classmates saying things like these:

"Are you going to go home today? You mom is going to kill you."
"(Random boys' names) were part of that gang, they beat Michael up."
"Are you from China? Chin Chang Kin Kong Wan Wa..."

I do feel safer in my new environment, because I don't have to witness people getting beat up everyday. This picture perfect utopia, however, is constantly questioning my existence and position. People in this town do not walk, they have their own method of transportation -- cars. People do not yell at their kids, they have their babysitters do that. People do not cook, they have reservations. And me? I do not have cars because even my whole family cannot provide a car for ourselves. We do not have babysitters because cannot afford one. We do not make reservations for dinner because it is cheaper to make dinner at home after grabbing friday sale groceries.

I do not fit into that environment because my family background and my financial situation prevents me from doing that. I ended up spend the rest of my middle school years and high school years living like an oddball, rejecting everyone's invitations to their birthday parties because I do not have anyone to drive me, cannot afford tiffany gifts to the birthday girl, do not have a dress that is dressy enough for those events.

Relatives' Weddings (Part II)

The typical immigrant story starts with memory back to zero, and an empty mindset. As I settled on US ground, a sense of wildness overcame me. No tall buildings, no apartments, and no one walking on the street. Unfamiliar scenery did not prevent me from charging forward, discovering the definitive boundaries of the unknown.

I walked into the small metal door that seem always to be shut tight, and entered into a dim living room with simple yet complete furnishings. Ran over a girl staring at me as if I was an object, trailing behind an older brother with no emotions on his face. What met my eyes were four slanted eyes on blank faces with no expressions of warmth and welcome.

My mother lead my luggages and slowly descends to the dim basement. In a room with no windows, we were situated with a provided full size bed. "You guys can temporarily stay here for a while." A pity help which mother responded with cheerful thank-yous to sweeten people up. I stood there, feeling uncomfortable with crushing celling and sticky carpet, dim lighting and stuffy air. I knew we had no choice but to stay there for a while, but I did not know that my mother was able to get us out of there just a month later. I knew I cannot complain about anything in my relatives place since I was a guest, but I did not know that they had so many things to say about me. I knew that I have to get use to this place very soon, but I did not know that a couple of years later I can stay goodbye to this town forever.

Relatives' Weddings (Part I)

I have two groups of relatives: maternal relatives, and paternal relatives. People in my maternal family sucks, while people in my paternal relatives are really nice. Because my maternal family sucks so much, I choose to talk about this in detail.

My maternal grandfather came from a very big family. It was a family that involved six sons and five daughters. Apparently one of the first few sons died at birth and did not add to the count. I find it quite pointless to have so much children, especially when the family have limited resources. In addition to my modern twist of feminism, I felt sorry for my great grandma, whom I had always viewed with the image of pig and piglets. Am I indicating that I dislike my great grandma? The great grandma whom always showered everyone around her with complaints and disrespect? Quite frankly, yes. The result from having given birth to many children, is a grand separation of groups when those children grew up. Like politics, there were a couple of sons and daughters that my great grandmother favored, a few optimistics whom tried to unite the family just like childhood, a few loners whom refuse to accept their pasts, and a few narcissistics whom only think of themselves. When I was little I usually see my grand aunts and uncles fight against each other verbally, and sometimes physically, which is more entertaining. By the time when I turned to my later teens, I then realized that it was not a family, it was a battlefield.

My family is part of the loners group. We slowly isolated ourselves from all that family politics that was going on within the larger family. We choose to move away from some relatives, we choose to selectively gave out our numbers for contact, we choose to turn off our phones when people called. There were many events that happened before the formation of our current situation, but we have to say, that it is very nice having a small, simple, united family.

My experiences with my relatives were negative, which caused my strong opinions against those people. However, I must admit, that I was also at fault for the outcome. I, unlike other relatives in my generation, am an immigrant. And believe it or not, the whole foreign immigrant status is not a glorious one. When I first came, I immediately given an English name. Soon after I realized what was going on, I developed a strong dislike against that name. It was not only because I do not like the way the name sounds, it was also because my identity was taken away and be given a new one against my will. Of course everyone in my relatives family started calling me by that name. I hated it, but I did not know enough English to accurately express my ideas, and did not know my relatives well enough to speak against them. This vulnerability has placed myself in an extremely unfavorable position, and I remembered it very well.