Part 2: The Beginning My beginning starts with leaving the home I always knew when I was twelve. But I oftentimes think of me leaving home as being exiled, or being displaced away from where I was meant to be, because if I had a choice, I would’ve choose to stay. This is the beginning because it is when I realized I’ve lost something dear to my heart. I’ve lost my childhood and a sense of belonging. I’ve left a part of myself in a land called Vietnam. People think that going to America as a kid is easier because we blend in quickly, find new friends and learn the language easily. But I felt as if adults do not really considered that we kids have friends and worlds and memories that we had to leave behind that are no less real than theirs. Peers around me seemed to embrace the process of adapting and claiming America to be their home. But despite the years I spent in America, I never once thought this is where I belong. I was always aware that I am a guest here, and that I would never be able to laugh or joke around with people here the way I did with my cousins and friends back in Vietnam. I knew I wouldn’t be able to go to class with people who speak Vietnamese and learn things about Vietnam anymore. And never would I be able to ride bike across town, across the busy outdoor market and across empty lands with grasses and trees in early mornings anymore. And never would I walk in chilly Christmas nights with excitement of seeing hang đá and Christmas trees and eating grilled chicken with my family anymore. I held on to these simple memories to keep myself from crumpling. I replayed them in my head to escape the world, because the realities were too painful to face. There was a loneliness and emptiness in me that wouldn’t be filled, no matter how many Anime I watched, how many Korean and Vietnamese songs I listened to, or how many laughter I tried to uttered. I tried to find belonging in those things, and they numbed me from the pains of a wound---of losing pieces of myself, of being displaced. My heart was enclosed to the present, and imprisioned by a past once was. Looking back, I felt as if I never had the chance to mourn this loss that I was not fully aware of. It is expected that I would just simply move on with a new life, a new name. “it felt as if we are floating, with no land in sight, without knowing where we’re going, but unable to look back,” A Vietnamese-American friend of mine poetically described our immigrant experience. Like a boat hanging on waves. directionless. Life in American seems to revolve around work, making money, buying things we desire, things that bring us temporary happiness that soon would fadd. Deep inside i asked: what is awaiting? Where are we going? And why? These questions left unanswered, andI was instilled a yearning to belong to somewhere, something, someone… A turning point for me was when I was applying for college during my senior year of high school. For the first time I got a chance to write about my own experience. It was also the first chance I got that I could remember where I get to reflect on what really mattered to me and what did all of these years away from home meant. These are the words from my college essay: “I had learned to endure, to hide the pain of loneliness. Sometimes I close my eyes, listen to my old Vietnamese songs and let myself relive life as the boy in the traditional uniform of a white shirt and blue pants, and then burst into tears realizing that I can never return to that place. The Vietnam in my mind was a very happy place, full of jokes, laughter, love, and understanding.” Being able to put my sorrow and pains into words for the first time was therapeutic. It was through writing them down that I was able to be witnessed, both by myself and others. And because of that, I felt as if these things are more real. Something I held on for so long, alone, now was shared. It was the beginning of me acknowledging that I suffer, from loneliness and from losing a home where I can laugh, be happy, be loved and be understood. A song that was very important during this process in which I played everyday was Xuân Này Con Không Về. The song describes how a son could not make it back home to celebrate Tết with his mother because he had to be with his comrades in the battle field. At the end of the song, he asked his mother to wait one-day until he can comeback. I had a special annoyance with war songs ever since I was little, but something about this song, the image of the mother and son reunited, touched my soul. Despite the different contexts, it was as if me and my yearning to come back home to Vietnam were encapsulated into a song. I felt like my deepest sorrow could finally be spoken after years of suppression. I cried and cried and cried, mourned and mourned and mourned for the reality that I am…truly a child away from home, away from where I was safe and sound, where I can simply be a kid. Tears kept on streaming down. Maybe because it hurts. It hurts to lost something so precious, for all of us, across time and space and political spectrum, we’ve all lost something important in our heart. We’ve lost parts of ourselves, years of youth, loved ones, home, land, country, a life we once knew. We’ve lost what made us came alive. So, we remained ghosts, with hearts half-filled, with souls chilled as ice and eyes losing their sparks. We remain in a state of perpetual sorrow. Somehow, the person who wrote these lines, the person who uttered the yearning and sadness of the song writers into existence too, are as lonely, and are as sorrowful as me. I was not alone in holding this pain. Across generations and political sides, we are all away from where we are meant to be, and we all have the simply yearning for the embracement of our mothers. In those days, as i reflect on my life through this song, it is as if I could finally cry for myself, and the mother and son in that pictures and all the mothers and sons that have been through war and whose war have refused to escape their soul and who could not cry, not finally could. Now they could cry for their pains and lost. Now they could cry through me. In tears, we were hand in hand across time and space, for the sorrow of war do not discriminate. This pain was not mine alone anymore. My suffering is a part of the fabric of the Vietnamese people’s generational suffering. The past and present finally met. And perhaps, this deep sorrow might be the only thing that tie us all together. And maybe, that is the virtue in this great tragedy, that we can be found in each other’s vulnerability, and to find belonging in our common humanity. A war that never felt real to me, now finally does. displaced to afloat floating to be longing loss to be found Because I've suffered, I am drawn closer to my ancestors. Because I was away from my physical home, I could learn to find home in my heart. Now reflecting back, I wouldn't have my life any other way.
With deep respect and love, Liêm
1 Comment
Rhea Miller
7/5/2019 06:39:11 am
So moving. Thank you. I too share tears of all our roles, and the ones we are still creating as a country.
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