Dear Tee,

“So you never told them what was bothering you? Have you ever tried telling them?” I tried at one point but they couldn’t understand how I felt. They said it was my fault that I am alone and my fault for failing to make friends. I realized that no matter how many times I try to explain things to them, they won’t understand. Then the conversation about suicidal people came up, and I tried to defend suicidal people and trying to make my parents understand the pain they may be going through, but my dad still said they were idiots. So based on that response, how can I ever tell them that I am suicidal? Even with the church situation, when they confronted me, I had to deny it so that they would not overthink it. I just stopped wasting my time trying to express myself. After a while, my hatred for them grew to a point where I just decided I did not want them to ever understand me. I have been doing most of my responsibilities by myself since I was a kid anyway, barely ever asking them for help. Over time they did their responsibility by checking up on me to see if I was happy and etc, but I always told them I was fine and living a normal life.

“But you did tell it to your school/church friend, didn’t you? Because you told her that you attempted suicide because of your parents. Did you tell her what you didn’t like about your parents’ behavior?” No I told her that I attempted it cause of a lot of things. I made a website to confess my feelings to my first ever crush, but my classmate released it to the public without me knowing and so I become a clown in three different schools. I laughed it off though. But the difference is that everyone was laughing AT me, instead of WITH me. On the day I found out that the website was released, my crush’s best friend told me that I was a creep and the website for my crush was wrong and disrespectful and humiliating for her and etc. I couldn’t say anything. Days later I eventually gathered up my courage to ask my crush out, but when the time came, I decided to just apologize to her for the humiliation I caused her and then I went to my classroom and cried. We barely ever spoke after that. I was already struggling with making friends, being pushed away by most of my classmates. Every time we had recess I would just wander around campus searching for a “friend”. Then the bomb incident happened and my classmates started teasing me about it too, asking me questions about how to build bombs and etc, and I entertained them by explaining how to build them. I laughed that off too. But they were all laughing at me. Then the incident with the group project happened, and cause the girl was crying and it was my fault, her friends were all against me and I had to bottle down my tears. I remember them saying a lot of bad things to me, but I couldn’t come up with a response cause I didn’t have a smart mouth like they did, so I had to just take it. Then when I tried to rant to the church girl’s brother, he told me that nobody cares. I realized that he was right. Who wants to listen to another person’s rant anyway? Who has the time to be dealing with other people’s problems other than therapists (who usually only do it cause they are paid)? As I drowned in my depression, I started remembering all the times I tried to make friends and they all pushed me away as a kid. I remember when I made friends with the neighborhood kids but a girl managed to convince them to not play with me. I remembered the times when I completed my work on time so I could hang out with my “friends” but as soon as I caught up with them, they said that they were done with the games and they were going home, but I went home and sat on the porch while watching them continue playing in secret without me. I remembered the time when I changed schools and I had to literally beg my classmates to make me their friend, to let me hang out with them. Eventually I quit begging but my teacher refused to let me stay inside the classroom reading books because I needed vitamin d from the sun. I remembered the amount of parties I went to where all the kids that were my age pushed me away like an outcast. And all I could do was find a corner to sit down and patiently wait until it was time to leave. And I remembered how my parents looked at me like I was a burden to them. I remembered a lot more of similar events and it made me come to accepting that maybe it would have been better if I never existed.

I didn’t tell the girl all of this, but I did tell her a brief description of how I was being treated by my classmates and I told her that I felt like a burden to my parents and that I wished I was dead or non existent. The conversation was too brief for me to get time to explain in detail. And then she told her parents and the rest of the drama happened.

“So after your suicide attempt, they had other parents lecture you. What did those other parents tell you?” No not after the suicidal incident. It was about a year or so later when I was lectured saying that my way of thinking is wrong and I should just change my mindset like the flip of a switch and etc. I had become a pessimist after going through so much cause it was the only way I could prepare myself for whatever experience life decided to throw at me. The parents started indicating that I am stubborn for not changing my ways and they were getting tired of advising me when I refused to change and etc. Basically I made a fool of myself in front of them when I tried to express my reasons for the way that I was. There was a party once and the kids my age, though I have known them for years, pushed me away again like an outcast, so I decided to sit by myself. A parent noticed and asked me why I wasn’t with the other kids, and I told him that they didn’t want me around, to which the guy said I should still try to make friends and I shouldn’t sit by myself and etc. Like what part of “THEY DON’T WANT ME AROUND” did he not get? I already tried to be friends with them and they rejected me. What does he not get about that? So for the rest of that night, I continued arguing with that parent trying to make him understand how I felt, while he kept repeating that it is my fault for not taking the initiative and etc.

“What did your school teachers say about you? What did the Church men say?”
My school teachers told my mom that I was a quiet and reserved student but they expected better from me due to the “potential” I was wasting and etc. They have noticed that I wander around the school and have seen my sitting by myself away from the other kids and they think it is my fault for not engaging with other kids. They told me that I should grow up and act more mature for my age cause depression and pain is just a state of mind and not real. The Church men said similar things too, that I should follow the path my father has chosen for me cause it gurantees a good future for me and I shouldn’t continue the way that I am acting because it is not mature for my age and that a lot of people are experiencing much worse in life and they do not complain and so I should just endure whatever emotional/mental issue I am having and move forward because that is what a man does and etc.

“So you are saying your parents still have impacted your emotional and mental health, because they haven’t realized the mental and emotional deterioration that was happening, they haven’t given you the encouragement you needed and the understanding that you expected from them. And they let you go through this process ALONE, all by yourself.” Yes that is what I am saying. But because they cannot understand my pain and suffering, they shut me down when I tried to express myself a few times, after which I decided to just bottle up all my emotions, making them unaware of my suffering.

“So you are basically saying that your parents’ treatment did affect your emotional and mental health. That there was something they failed to do: they failed to realize your mental and emotional deterioration, i.e. your suffering. And they failed you give you encouragement and understanding you needed, which left you feeling all alone.” Yes that is what I am saying. But I will still forgive them because it was my decision to bottle up my pain and hide my emotions from them, because I knew that they would simply tell me to just suck it up instead of trying to understand what I was going through. Why waste my time trying to explain something when I already know the outcome? But I know that they still took the responsibility to check up on my mental/emotional health, but I just hid my suffering from them cause they cannot understand what I am going through. So I know they had good intentions, but their inability to understand me prevented them from being good parents.

“You are saying that their failure to provide those things left a mark on your mental and emotional health. Which means you are basically agreeing with me, because I have been saying the same.” Yes that is what you don’t get. I was literally agreeing with you that my parents were cruel to me, but the difference is that I know my parents had good intentions, they just had poor execution of their intentions cause they could not understand the pain I was going through. That is the part u seem not to understand.

“This image is bs, if I may say so. It has nothing to do with how a good, strong and yet compassionate man should behave. The very fact that you are supposed to ignore your emotions and your heart cannot lead to wise decisions. You cannot be wise and at the same time ignore and suppress your emotions.” It may sound bs but a lot, and I mean A LOT of families still work with this ideology. That is why there are a lot of cases where women leave their partners or look down on them when their partner reach a breaking point and starts crying or something. You may not be aware of it but this ideology is quit common around the world and so men have no choice but to keep their emotions under control because if they cry or something, their partners tend to see it as weakness and inferiority as they expect their man to “hold down the fortress” and not “whine”. I am not saying good women do not exist, because I know that a lot of men found women that understood them emotionally but the reality is there are a lot of women who do not understand this. The point is not that we should ignore our emotions, but to have it bottled up so that it doesn’t cause us to make rash decisions in the time of need.

“Also the idea that you need to “lead” your wife – who supposedly is not too smart and needs your guidance – is super misogynist.” Please don’t misunderstand, I am not saying that the wife is not smart enough and needs the man’s guidance, but that the family should be following the father as he would be taking the responsibility of the leader that carries the foundation of the home while the mother keeps the home intact from the inside. Without both of them, a home will not stay intact for long. Both partners are equal but they have their own roles to play in a family. A father cannot act as a mother and a mother cannot act as a father. They have their own set of responsibilities and skills and roles that are important when it comes to turning a house into a home. It is kind of like a figure of speech, I am not saying that “men are smarter than women” or “women are incapable” and etc. If you read what I said a while back, you would notice that I want to serve my wife. I want to treat her like a queen, make her feel special, show her respect and etc. I am not saying my wife is inferior to me at all, so please don’t misunderstand.

“This whole idea of man wearing the pants and making all important decisions in the family is bs.” Tee, I am not saying the man gets to make all the decisions, cause there are times when the woman has a better solution than the man. But the man is technically supposed to be a leading figure. When the house is on fire, you rely on the man to ensure the family is safe. When there is maintenance work to do around the property, the man is expected to do it. The primary responsibility of disciplining your children is also the father’s, but that doesn’t mean the mother shouldn’t discipline their children. I am not saying that women are stupid or anything misogynistic so please don’t misunderstand. These are just examples, please do not overthink them.

“If you believe you need to be that kind of man – the kind of man your father taught you to be and that he himself is – then I am sorry, I cannot help you.” Tee, just go back and read how I want to be with my wife, cause you are misunderstanding me too many times now especially after expressing how much I want to be able to SERVE my wife.

“But you said you wanted to be an engineer (computer engineer, if I understood well). That should be acceptable enough for Asian parents. But they still wanted you to study medicine.” My main goal was music but I also wanted to do software engineering. My parents didn’t want to do it because there are too many unemployed computer engineers out there and they didn’t want me to be stuck like that. There is always a high demand for doctors all over the world, so they believe that I have a higher chance of getting a job as a doctor, which is why they pushed me down this path. Besides, they were also focused on the amount of respect I would earn in society as a doctor, as well as advantages when it comes to impressing my future bride’s parents, and other advantages. But yea, even among Asians, some of us are not that lucky.

Paradoxy