Once I’m Ready

Sometimes I wish I was not alive to encounter this experience. Sometimes I wish I was stronger to overcome it. Sometimes I wish I could do more to bring what my beloved family is missing–happiness. Living every second of my childhood, seeing and hearing the anger and vexation between my parents was what I detested, and I let it hurt me. It hurt that I could do nothing to mend the financial burden that was causing my parents to grow further and further apart.

I was seven when I commenced being conscious of the awkward and hazy tension between my parents. They acted oddly. They barely talked, other than dousing one another with their fury. The misunderstanding and confusion kept building up in my juvenile head as I tried to unravel the knot. For several weeks, there was this constant raucous noise and frustration on their faces. “If you can’t handle the consequence of your own action,” my mom shouted furiously to my dad in Khmer with tears slowly rolling down her cheeks, “you can leave!” This phrase stuck in my head since that seedy day and every quarrel seemed to end the same, with my mom trying to break free from my dad. I knew that there was something not right, something that they both were trying to suppress from the rest of the family.

A year later, my dad lost his mind. He was either inviting people home and getting insanely drunk or coming from somewhere with the scent of alcohol all over his body. My mom rarely uttered a word when dad and his friends were around. Their relationship had changed. The change that shattered our family into a million tiny pieces. The change that I could not consent to without knowing the rationale. I tried to curl up my emotions into a ball and let God decides on what would happen, but it just did not change. It was too much, so I lost my faith in God. I risked asking my mom about it many times and all she ever did was try to comfort me and tell me not agonize about it. But I could not. I wanted more than just her sweet words. I wanted more than just her fake smiles that she puts on whenever her children were around. I just wanted our family to be happy.

I know the expression, “it takes two to tango”, but every time my mom tried to confront my dad, things always worsened. He said that he needed times. Times to clear everything up. I still could not decipher what was the root cause, until my dad let the cat out of the bag that our family was in a massive debt. My jaw dropped to the floor at that moment since I could not believe that something that important had been hidden from me. I felt like a fish out of water. Several weeks later, my mom started to work in a garment factory. Things just could not get any worse, and then she got sick. I had been so off guard that I could not really focus on my studies. I wanted to help them and eased the problems. I thought of finding a job so that I could contribute, but my parents were intensely against that idea. My dad yelled at me for coming up with such a foolish thought. My mom told me that the only thing that I could do for this family was to keep studying. Study!

As time passed, I began to comprehend the sacrifices that my parents have made for our family. I began to see the responsibilities that each person had in this tiny family in order to survive. I began to realize that my responsibility was not to work toward paying the debts or trying to solve the family issues; I have a much greater task to focus on, which is to keep working toward a brighter future. I understand that all my parents want is for me to be educated and thrive in my future toward a better life. Without those painful and memorable experiences, I could never perceive how crucial my education is to the rest of my family.

I may have been born into a wonderful family with difficult issues, but I would never allow this struggle to stop my future. I learned to accept that sometimes I am not ready to tackle all the adult responsibilities yet. Still, I do have compassion for my parents’ struggles and have learned to be really patient in dealing with things beyond my control until later on. My family issue has become one of the immense motivations that keep pushing me forward. I want to save them from all the sorrow and someday help them move to a better life. I want to be the beacon of light for the rest of my family, community, and country by creating positive change to fight for the greater future!