Going through a Personal Spiritual Crisis

As the new school quarter started, I realized why I always felt empty inside.

I come from a very that escaped war and poverty and immigrated to the U.S. for a better future. Earlier this week I’ve just come to the conclusion that my family’s deep dedication for me and my brother was not love – it was care. Imho love and care are very different things and are often conflated. I certainly got lots of care–my physical needs were met, I got music lessons, and amazing home cooked food…and we, as children of those traumatized parents, have to hold paradoxical truths. The amount of times we’ve been shouted at, to do better in school, and to stop indulging ourselves online in front of the screen has desensitized my heart.

I don’t think I was ever abused or beat by my parents in the traditional sense of the word. The phrase that would best aptly describe the way my parents raised me would be “physical nurturing and emotional neglect.” My mom has dealt with her own trauma brought on by her father’s death and my dad’s indifference to being a supportive member of my family. Perhaps partially because he never had to experience the hardships his generation went through, he grew up spoiled and never really developed a solid moral compass. As a result, my dad never gave me a hard time about anything growing up. Instead, he was completely indifferent to the point of not giving a single care; another form of neglect that initially seemed wonderful as a teenager given freedom by an indifferent father figure but later harmed me psychologically and created resentment during my adult years.

You put my mom and my dad together, and you get an emotionally lonely childhood and adolescence to this day. My parents recently divorced and I soon realized how alone my brother and I was living in this first-world country. Going back to how they cared for us to the last drop, they always made sure we participated in activities outside of school but never wanted to join in to help themselves.

In addition, my family and I never had the emotional connection between to language barriers. We couldn’t ever joke in English or understand each other’s exclusive jokes. It was always “speak your mother language cause I don’t understand English and it’s annoying to hear” so my American identity is pretty much suppressed at home. I silently rebel by absorbing all forms of media that are American and just speaking in my first language online.