reinspired

i've been feeling really drained and horrible about work lately . . but today. today was different.

honors reception

today in my honors class . . we were talking about our honors reception.

we all concluded that it was going to be a hella awkward night with all of our parents just standing around not really knowing what to say to each other.

my parents are coming.

it's going to be great. i can't wait to introduce them to all my classmate's bougie parents and show them . . yes. my mama and papa were refugees, barely speak english, and probably work two times as much to make half the amount of money . . but they raised me and made it possible for me to go to college and write a 60 page paper about their journey and our struggle.

school.

i think i need to withdraw from school.

but i can't.
i have like five weeks left.
i'm on the degree list.
my parents have their plane tickets to come up.
my financial aid told me they won't pay for my college anymore.

home and pick me ups.

I've been feeling really shitty for the past few months so I decided that I'm going home next weekend. I just bought my flight. It's perfect. I'll be home for new years. Can't wait to go to temple with my grandparents and parents then go to the park for some good ass papaya salad and sticky rice.

On another note. Our check in question at SASComm was:

"When you're feeling really down or sad, what do you think of to cheer you up?"

The sad thing was that I couldn't think of anything that automatically cheers me up. The normal things people think of . . just make me feel even sadder. When I think of my family . . it makes me sad because I don't get to spend time with them. When I think school . . it makes me sad because I'm doing so poorly in it. When I think about organizing in the Southeast Asian community . . it makes me sad because, well, I don't know.

I answered by saying that instead of thinking of something, I do things that make me happy. Like call my grandma or call my sister. Go somewhere. etc. While I guess that came off as relatively proactive . . which is good. It also means that I'm incredibly dependent on other people to make me happy. This is great, except sometimes those people who really cheer me up or make me happy aren't always there. Everyone's got their own stuff to do . .

love & marriage

Knowing that receiving countries considered families a better bet than single men, he planned to marry one of the young Vietnamese women in the camp. Although there was no romantic interest between them, it seemed a fair arrangement to both the propective bride as well as her groom. By marrying Ngoc, the young woman would take him out of the 'single male' category, the one immigration officers like least. In return, while sharing her bunk, Ngoc would protect his bride from abuse and possible rape, constant threats to unattached women.

From: Beiser, Morton. 1999. Strangers at the Gate: The ‘Boat People’s’ First Ten Years in Canada. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press. 29.

I wonder if the reason why I've never been fully committed in a relationship is the result of having parents who got married not out of love but out of necessity. Just like how we often talk about being activists by circumstance, my parents became life partners by circumstance.

I grew up in a home that did no emphasize love or compassion in a selfish "I love you and can't live without you because I would feel empty" kind of way. I grew up in a home that emphasized love and compassion in a "I love you and how you contribute to my life as well as the lives of others around you" kind of way.

I grew up not seeing my parents express any kind of passionate love for one another . . and perhaps that is why I don't necessarily express (or maybe even believe) in any kind of passionate "I can't live without you" love for anyone else.

Just like how my parents did not necessarily marry one another out of own individual passionate love but out of a need to keep the small Lue community together, I wonder if the partner I choose to spend the rest of my life with will also be for something bigger, greater, and more important than my own passionate love for the person as an individual . . but for the passionate love I have for my people and my community and my love for who that person is in the greater scheme of things.

or maybe. Maybe I'm just hella self-centered and not willing to give my self up to anyone in that kind of way. Maybe I'm not optimistic enough and too realistic to believe in love at first sight and believing that loving someone is something you learn to do by enjoying their best qualities and learning to live and love their not so great qualities.

the slump of things.

after coming back from UCLA.. i hella just knocked out for like 12 hours.

although i found law fellows really helpful and was really empowered and inspired . . almost immediately after i got back to berkeley, i fell back into my slump of things.

i don't really know whats going on really. i think sometimes i feel unsupported. and then other times i feel like people don't know where i'm coming from or don't understand what i'm going through. and then further more, sometimes i'm feeling all of that at once.

it's pretty selfish of me to be so ME centered. i know people got hella shit going on and that it's unfair for me to hope that folks would step in and really help me out. i don't even know what i need help on. i'm just really ready to be done with all of this.

thesis

so i've just figured.

it should be hard for me to write this stupid thesis . .
because i've already written 9 other papers on SEA refugees.