By Samuel Liu,
Managing Editor
As college decisions loom and the first semester of my senior year ends, I am reminded of who I am: a young adult yearning to grow out of my parents’ shadow, yet still a son to a loving mom and dad who’ve done everything from buying Motrin to washing fruit for me. As a result, I’m stuck between my preparations for adulthood and obligations as a son.
For the last 17 years, I’ve been someone who eats and sleeps under my parent’s care. Soon, I will no longer be mopping the floors because I live under their roof, or washing the dishes because they cook for me. But I will still be bound by their financial support. What is my independence? What is the new unsaid contract that will replace the dissolved pre-18 version of me?
Recently, I’ve found myself drawing away from my parents to do more on my own. In our student culture, we boast involvement by filling our schedules. Jumping in and investing my time into these activities are ways I show my progress to adulthood. I feel the need to prepare myself, and also my parents, for a time when I won’t be around. Yet on the other side of the coin is the time winding down to the separation from my parents, which calls on me to cherish my lasting moments with them. While I don’t totally share their sense of urgency, I understand where they’re coming from. So where does my time go?
A second place I find myself torn is that my dad hates that I’m gay. Apparently, I’ve been tricked by the devil and its worldly seductions. But I don’t agree with him, and so he cites the Bible’s seemingly anti-gay verses, or the commandment to “honor thy parents” as reasons to reject my sexual identity. According to him, I have an obligation as a son to heed his words, which include the rejection of my sexuality. I am what I am, but I still feel that I’m falling short of my duties as a son somehow. Taking a stand for my sexual orientation feels like abandoning my identity as a son, yet caving would murder any chance of expressing my real, true self.
Now, I stand at a threshold. Through the contradicting directions, my urgency to settle stems from looming life-defining choices like locking in my college decision. To move forward, I need to find how to honor both my role as an independent human and a son with obligations. Yet I know that although I may settle on one decision, my search for identity will never rest. While the truth is that we are shaped by those that surround us, we must find a way to claim our lives. That is our independence.
Hi, Samuel – I don’t know if you’ll see my comment since you’ve already graduated by now, but I’m in a similar position to yours in terms of my own sexual identity as well as my parent’s intolerance toward it.
Given the cultural differences between the countries they and I were respectively raised in, I’ve also struggled to reconcile their love for me with the likelihood that their feelings, as unconditional as they seem right now, could change if I were to one day reveal even such a fundamental aspect of myself to them. For me, Western maxims of found family and cutting off any and all toxicity, even that which comes from our own blood, always felt at odds with the filial piety I was raised to uphold. While I understand that there are limits to devotion founded upon familial ties alone, personally, this particular conflict between my immutable identity and the cultures I was raised with has stifled and isolated me my entire life.
However, after you came out, I’ve admired and envied the bravery and strength of will you needed in order to risk so much for the sake of taking a step toward being your authentic self. Seeing a peer dauntlessly confront the same kind of overwhelming pressure that’s weighed upon me my entire life has touched and inspired me beyond what my words can explain. I never had the chance to express this to you personally, but wherever your life takes you from now on, I truly hope that it will be filled with love and support from people who embrace you for who you are. You’re as strong as I hope I could be one day.