My mother's son

Dad sits and watches the news.

We all have dinner.

At night.

Mom sits and watches Korean drama
Dad sits and watches more news
In separate rooms. On separate floors.

On Sundays, we go to have Pho.

Dad comes home and sits and reads his newspaper.

Mom comes home and cleans and takes care of her rooftop plants and plans for meals the week ahead. 

She nags. He yells. 

They end up in separate rooms. On separate floors. 

(End of scene)

We keep telling our women, that they are expecting too much.
When in fact, it’s the men who need to be doing more. 

Maybe when we stop looking at what’s happening to the world out there
And look into our partners’ eyes

We might have seen the tears

Before we end up

In separate rooms. On separate floors.

Chasms apart.

“Sometimes you make it very hard, you know that?” – Self-assessment

Growing up, I always thought it was odd that my mom has very few friends. She was (and still is) very pretty, out-going, charming, and she cares for people (sometimes a little suffocating, but well-intentioned). And then I slowly realized, she is just so god damn exhausted to hang out with people. Not just the physical exhaustion, emotionally exhausted. We don’t talk enough about women’s emotional labor. It’s the planning, the home management, the looking at the fridge every time and planning what to eat so we don’t waste food, the looking at what to clean, the looking at where to go for the kids to have fun. It’s fucking work. 

Any therapists that went to school in North America will eventually tell you it’s your parents, especially your mom’s fault, when it comes to how fucked we are as adults. We are conditioned to blame our parents. In fact, in one of my intro sections to a white girl therapist, I explicitly told her I don’t subscribe to that bullshit. How about growing up in a post-war country? How about being queer in a country that criminalizes gay sex for 7 years? How about trauma with racism in North America? Nope, it’s your mother’s fault. 

I am tired. I think I am starting to understand why my mom has so few friends.

When we decided not to have kids anymore, which was somewhat the plan ever since I was a teen, my first feeling was relief. How fucked is that? I felt relief because I don’t have any more emotional energy to expand to another human. I’m exhausted. I still think it’s the right call for us. I just couldn’t help but wonder, would my mom have made the same decisions if she had had the choice? (Also fuck the US and so-con politicians globally trying to dictate what women do with their bodies)

Sometimes I make it very hard. I know that. Especially after I have asked time and again that it’s not the work that I’m tired of doing, it’s the emotional labor of planning for the work, the travel, or everything in life I have to do on top of my full-time work that I need help with.

But I guess, for now, I will learn to be ok.