A Letter to Mẹ

The irony of the word mother in Vietnamese, mẹ, to look synonymous to the English word me.

Mẹ oi mẹ,

You are the person I love the most in this world and I know how much you love me. I know how much we as your children mean to you. I know how much you’ve sacrificed for us. The suffering you’ve gone through. How hard it was for you to raise all of us, me especially. Those days when I was so stubborn, so selfish and so self centered. I did what I wanted. I was not mindful of anyone, not even you, especially you.

I understand that things are so complicated. Everything is subjective and relative. I know that you raised us best you could with what you knew. It makes me so content that physical abuse is no longer an integral part of how you raise us anymore. I am so happy to see how the relationship of my younger siblings with you is so much healthier. I don’t blame you for how you parented back then, it’s not something you knew was wrong because it was so normalized and I understand that it’s so subjective to culture too. But I’m so glad that you’ve grown out of it and that you’ve learnt a new way to raise us. It makes me so proud of you.

Back then when I would dress how I desired, it took me so long for me to realize that even small things like this, all those comments from people that I didn’t care about, I didn’t notice that they would bounce off of me onto you. That you had to deal with all of that. That you were hurt by what I was doing. That is why now whenever I’m back, I take off my septum, I hide all my tattoos, I put on color, all that for you.

It’s a small inconvenience for me, at least in comparison to otherwise how comments instigated from such would hurt you. So I would cover up myself more. But every time I’m back home now, I keep doing so and it’s making me lose myself. Having to pretend, even with all the small things, they are accumulating and I’m now just suffocating. It’s so hard for me to have to lie and pretend. Especially when all the people who I love keep asking me if I have a Vietnamese boyfriend yet. I don’t and I never will, mom I’m gay.

I know how much it hurts for you to hear me say that and I’m sorry, but I don’t want to pretend anymore. I don’t want to hide things from you anymore. I can feel how my secrets are distancing me from you and I don’t want that. Even with just my tattoos, just thinking about your reaction, how disappointed and ashamed of me you would be or are. When you came in to help me dress up after my surgery, I both wanted you in there as well as I didn’t. I wanted your support but I didn’t want you to see.

I want to call with you more often but every time you pretend like who I am is a delusion, it hurts and I know how much it hurts you too. It hurts me every time you ask me whether or not I have a Vietnamese boyfriend yet. Mom I don’t, I have a girlfriend that I love right now. I’ve tried mom, to love a man but I could never the way I have loved some women in my life. None of them ever came close to how much I love you, so I tried, but I can’t anymore mom. And I can’t stand how hard it is to talk to you now, how it’s no longer moments of happiness for me to hear your voice because your words hurt. But then trying to avoid that lately by calling less, it is even more painful so I hope that this letter can lead us somewhere.

It hurts when you shut me down when I bring up this topic. It hurts when you neglect my truth. But I also know that you are doing it because it hurts you too. Where you come from, how you were raised, this is deemed wrong. It is even embedded in our mother tongue. To be gay is to be ill. But I am gay mom. And I’m sorry, not because I’m gay, nor because of your believes, but about how through us being the way we are, we hurt each other so. And all that is just drowning as it pains me that I cause you so much suffering. I really don’t want to do that because I love you and I want to be by your side for all times and that keeps getting harder every day.