Tag: decades | A Banana Peeled

Tag Archives: decades

The refinement of me by the decade

Posted on May 3, 2022 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I’ve had many big realizations throughout my life. They started when I was in my twenties and have continued throughout my fifties. Actually, they started when I was a kid, but they were more incoherent back then. And more in the vein of realizing what I didn’t want rather than what I did want–which is very much my M.O. Such as not liking dolls. I rarely played with them and I especially did not like the realistic crying, pooping, eating ones. I had a few Barbies (plus a Dorothy Hamill doll and a Oscar Goldman from The Six Million Dollar Man/The Bionic Woman). I hacked the hair of my Barbies and used black shoe polish to make their hair darker. I had them have sex with each other, which was my extent of playing with dolls. I much preferred plushies which I could squoosh and cuddle.

I was taught many sexist beliefs by my parents throughout my childhood. One, that my main purpose was to marry and have children. Yes, I had to go to college and have a career, but that was a distant second to the whole breeding bit.

Side Note: My niece decided to not go straight to college after graduating high school. My mom wanted me to talk to her and convince her to go because we’re close. First of all, that’s my mother who saw her maybe once a year and had no day-to-day interaction with her. Second, I really resented being made to feel like I had to go to college right after high school, so, no, I wasn’t going to do that.

This was several years ago. This year, my nephew, her brother, is a senior in high school. He does not want to go to college because he thinks he’s too smart for it. Which is funny, but beside the point. My mom told me she emailed him with all the reasons why he should go to college, but he didn’t answer. Which, of course he wouldn’t. He has even less a connection with her than my niece does and what a boundary break that email is. And it shows her narcissism that she thought this was a reasonable thing to do.

Anyway, I realized when I was in my early twenties that I was Asian and that racism existed. That was followed quickly by the discovery that sexism was a thing. Then, that I did not want to have kids. Which is still the best decision of my life. Then, I realized I was bi, but put that on the shelf because, frankly, I could not deal with biphobia as well as sexism and racism.

Accepting family dysfunction is not a one time thing

Posted on December 21, 2021 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

Many things have changed in the past three months, though not externally. You may not be able to see it with the naked eye, but I can definitely feel it. To put it bluntly, it’s my family. Before I ended up in the hospital, I had reached an uneasy truce with my parents. My mom called once every three or four weeks and we talked for a half hour, mostly about my father because that’s all she ever wants to talk about. Then I talked to my father for up to ten minutes, hoping he wouldn’t say something incredibly foul that I had to ignore with difficulty or confront with no hope of any positive results.

My mom would email me when she needed something, mainly editing, but other than that, I wouldn’t have any interaction with them, which was exactly how I liked it. When I woke up in the hospital and saw their faces, my heart sank. It was immediate and instinctual, though I hid it from them as I had years of training in not showing my emotions on my face. I can do it most of the time except when I’m really tired. Then, it’s really difficult for me to keep my emotions under control.

I have said more than once that the physical recovery from my medical trauma was relatively easy. The stamina took some time to recover, but other than that, there wasn’t much else I needed to worry about. The minor things that were wrong with me went away on their own. I do have a numb/tingling patch on my right thigh, but I’m not too worried about it. What I’m more worried about is the family. Well, worried is not the word for it. I’m resigned to the dysfunction, but it wore me down and was an obstacle to my recovery.

Someone on Twitter said that the worst thing about family abuse was that you always hoped it would get better–even after the abuser died. He was so right and it stuck with me. My last therapist said something similar in that she commented how my mother would never be the mother I wanted her to be so I had to accept her for the mother she was. It stung, but it’s what I needed to hear.

Side note: Here’s the funny thing (funny meanly bitterly ironic) about the family dysfunction–nobody thinks my father can change. My mother wants a miracle to make him not him (and she points out that I was a miracle in being alive, which, while true, is no reason to think she’s going to get another miracle concerning my father), but we all know he’s been like this for his whole life, which is 82 years. He’s not changing. So any discussion the other three of us have about him (or two if it’s my brother and me) is predicated on that knowledge. He’s a narcissistic, thin-skinned, overly-sensitive, unrepentant asshole who is also misogynistic, racist, and would be homophobic if he had to acknowledge that queer people existed. There is very little redeeming about him and we all know that.