The Oldest Child

As someone who is living with immigrant parents and the oldest of three children, certain expectations must be fulfilled. The oldest is one who is expected to assume responsibility and caregiving roles to younger siblings. The oldest who are considered as role models, leaders, polite, and perfect. I make expectations for others and higher ones for myself. Nonetheless, there are times when I feel imperfect and times when I am unable to meet those expectations. 

Being the oldest has shaped me into the person I am today but I can’t help but feel envious of my younger siblings. They have it easy since I paved the path for them to walk on, I taught them and gave them advice on how to overcome certain obstacles I went through. There are times when I wish I wasn’t the oldest and I was able to rest easy while my older siblings would do everything for me. 

However, something I realized is that not only am I growing as the oldest child, but my mom and dad are also growing as parents. Their expectations and courses of teaching have changed over the years. Although my siblings and I come from the same parents, our experiences and expectations are certainly different. 

A Mindless Robot

Photo by Rocknrollmonkey on Unsplash

Growing up my family was deeply involved in our local church community, especially my mom who converted from Buddhism. I remember my mom telling me that I was a child of God that he had planned out my whole life and that I just needed to fulfill that path. Every day I would pray before going to bed and every Saturday, I would dedicate my time at church for the whole day with bible classes starting at 12, vietnamese classes around 2, and then a special program called the Vietnamese Eucharistic Movement which ended at 7. At that point in my life, I felt that I was moving farther away from God because I was being forced into something I did not like. I doubted my relationship with God and there were times I thought he wasn’t real.

Nonetheless, I continued to obey my mother’s orders, I continued to attend classes there at church, to grow up and to become a doctor, to become someone my mom would be able to brag about during family reunions. However, after attending a new church for a year, I met new people who were able to change my life. My prayers no longer felt like empty words, it felt like I had I then suddenly felt closer to God. As if he was there all along guiding me to one day meet them.

Losing Me

Photo from the album, 1989 by Taylor Swift

“You say, I don’t understand, and I say, I know you don’t.” Maybe that’s where it went all wrong. When he told me he liked me over a text, when his ex had to text me, or when I said I couldn’t give him the attention he deserved. Maybe it was when he dated another girl after a week he told me he “liked me.” Maybe that’s where he started losing me, where the gap between us started to crack. My close friend, my childhood friend, my family friend, and my everything is now my “nothing.” There are times I wonder, “do I throw out everything we built or keep it?” Times if I should believe if there was still a chance between us if they would just, do something, say something, lose something, risk something, cause “I got nothing to believe unless you’re choosin’ me.” It hurts knowing that you’ve been replaced, it hurts knowing that they couldn’t tell you in person, it hurts hearing it from someone else. So, “…the only way back to my dignity was to turn into a shrouded mystery. Just like I had been when you were chasing me. Guess this is how it was to be. Now that we don’t talk.”

Hurt

I don’t know what hurts more. Being told that you were liked by someone but they started becoming close friends with your nemesis or having the person that said they “liked” you start to date another girl after a week and have their ex cover for what they did. Either way, it both hurt not as much as a paper cut though. The feeling of being betrayed by someone you trusted and confided with hurts. To make it worse, like a papercut that feels like it would never go away, thoughts of us together still linger around. Like a paper cut, although it’s small it’s deadly, it hurts more than it should have. Like a paper that is quick to get but takes forever to get rid of. Maybe I liked them more than I thought I did. 

Cooking for Memories

Photo by Morsha on Unsplash

Only 5 minutes left on the clock and we are about done with our plate for the yearly camp food competition. My team decided to make crawfish pasta, its aroma is spicy but cheesy at the same time. Ding! Time is up and all the teams slowly bring their finished plates to the judges. The judges carefully examine each dish. One dish is too undercooked, one is too overcooked, one is too plain and the other has too much seasoning. I nervously brought the plate up to the judge’s table, luckily for us, we had a secret weapon in hand… dessert. The judges complimented the pasta saying it was perfectly right but when we handed them the dessert their eyes sparkled up like stars. No surprise though, we easily dominated all the other teams and brought home many good memories with us along with bragging rights.