Stop fearing that I'm worthless
This fear is so pointless. First of all, it's not bad to feel like I'm worthless, because I would be free of all these pressures I've put on myself. So, it would be pointless to fear my worthlessness, because I would be worthless already, and fear would not change my worthlessness. Yep. Anyway, I'm not worthless.
I'm worth all the books I've read; therefore, the only way I could become worthless is if I started selling all the books I own (700) and if I disowned all the beloved books I've read over the years (don't know how many). Since this sounds too tedious for my lazy self, I'm still worth all those books.
Stuck forever?!
Well, this fear has a darker side. I'm afraid I'll be stuck in college for years. To clarify-I'm afraid that I'm afraid I'll be stuck in college for years because it doesn't sound like such a nasty fate. I'm a senior now (a senior) and I'm still sitting around in class daydreaming. I love learning everything. I even love the classes I failed or did poorly in. I feel worthless because I'm stuck in my mind most of the time, and sometimes, I wish I were more like those cousins my mother wants me to be more like.
You know, like that cousin who won a full ride to UCLA, or the biologist who's making 80 grand a year, or the radiologist who bought a house the year after she graduated, all of them living respectable middle class lives married to respectable Vietnamese-American men. Yep, my beloved mother is putting the weight of Asian American success on my broad, fat Lesbian shoulders. Sometimes, I want to yell and rant at her, but since I love my mother, I'll rant here, where it'll hurt no one.
Reginamin's rant towards her beloved mother:
Well, you know what, I'm absolutely happy for their success, but every time you compare them to me, I'm not proud of them anymore because I feel like such a worthless laboring water buffalo. I get all mean and nasty inside, my heart hurts and I feel like insulting them to regain a bit of self worth. I despise them for living such boring middle class lives and I belittle their imagination and their creativity.
I think, well, they were able to succeed because they have no imagination and don't starve for creativity. They've never had to retreat to the shitty prisons of their imaginations. They never fell wrongly in love and thought that this love was so disgusting and horrible and needed to be killed over and over. They, oh so confidently feminine and femininely clothed, never ever doubted and puzzled "bout the transcended body, the feminine and masculine.
They never knew how it felt to rely on silence to cover up wounds that festered and grew year by year, a patient monster waiting within. No. They all grew up in a healthy heterosexual society that nurtured them and accepted them. After all these years, I"ve only recently found my society, where gender and sexuality is as beautiful and expressive as I've always known them to be. These cousins did not have to waste time learning self-acceptance and honesty. Fuck "em, fuck their money, their shitty houses, fuck, fuck, fuck.
Analysis of rant:
Of course, I don"t absolutely agree with all the opinions expressed in this rant, but I'm glad I wrote it, since it expresses the pain and doubt I feel. (I'm puzzled about transcended gender. Odd phrasing.) I admire and respect these cousins of mine, but I hope I never meet them again. They are the type of people I avoid because when I'm in their presence, I feel like there's something horribly wrong about me. They're so healthy and happy-the golden symbols of Asian American success. (Usually I am quite calm and reasonable, and then I write something like this, and I have hope that I'll be a worthy revolutionary).
I just wish that my mother will stop making me fear the artist's life. I already know the risks, and it doesn't help to know that my mother fears more for me than she believes in me. Since I'm supposed to make a resolution, my next resolution is that I'll just take care of my days one by one instead of looking at the future months and years from now.
I hate judging poorly about other people, and I feel ashamed of myself when I can't help it. The only way I know how to understand others is by trading stories, so since I wrote crap about them, I offer this true story about them to ask their forgiveness, because they've suffered from the arrows of fortune as I have too. (Continued in Part 3).
