Somewhere after college I developed a deep fear of hanging out with other Asian Americans.
I moved to LA after graduation in a hasty move to find some type of screenwriting career and expunge myself of the depression from my last breakup. Asian friends would introduce me to other friends to suggest we hangout in my new city. After a few half-hearted text messages, I let the conversations slip through my fingers.
I grew up in the cult known as the Korean United Methodist Church of Metro Detroit. It is a place where, in addition to serving the Lord, our parents would talk about our achievements as if they were our personalities. “Hanna is starting Clarinet. Grace won first place at her piano concert. Jenny has a 4.2 GPA”. All this talk shaped my own value system to believe my worth was the bragability of my resume. I remember being in middle school, hearing about a certain someone from church who had decided to take a gap year between high school and college. I thought to myself, “what a disappointment”, like the deranged little twelve year old I was.
Though I’ve tried to leave this thinking in the past, it follows me. I still partially identify with the stereotypical Asian American blueprint, particularly the idea of making a ton of money so your parents turn off the firehose of criticism with the ability to afford Skims as an added bonus. However, I am not so willing to give up my romantic ideals of passion and greater purpose in life (yet). So I muddle in between, using my 401k and 9–5 sales job as a shield, then railing against the idea of said shield every spare minute of my life.
I pressure myself to validate the other thing I want to be. To come back with results in the realm of writing and prove it was worth it. However, trophies are far and few in the creative world. Nobody is handing you a ribbon for sitting down and learning how to write that script you’ve been working on for weeks. And because not many people walk the path with you, you are alone in your small victories.
So in LA, where the pursuit of a degree no longer protected me from judgement and my lack of writing achievement was bleeding all over the place, my brain latched onto the narrative that anyone I met would think negatively of me for falling off “the path”, as I had done to others in the past. It was specifically bad with Asian people, because other people (for the most part) can’t look at me and conclude, “her parents moved to America so she could get a better education and continue accruing generational wealth, and here she is writing stories at night no one will read while working at a glorified call center”. They are unaware of the particulars of my failure.
I could see it all so clearly. My Asian American peers would ask, “so what have you written?” I would say the titles of my unknown projects and they would nod, following up with “so do you write for a living?”. I would tell them no, I currently have a day job, and their eyes would glaze over with the disinterest that I rightfully deserved. I would then go home to re-watch that Lulu Wang interview where she advises to get a day job where you can write at night, cling onto this small wisp of hope from Lulu for dear life, and lie in bed scrolling my problems away on Tik Tok.
I’ve failed on countless occasions, and while I continue to try, it’s hard to shake the downs. There’s a slight undercurrent of being “found out” at all times. Like one day I’ll be hanging out with my friends and one of them will proclaim, “Jin hasn’t accomplished much of anything at all”.
The voice in the back of my head whispering, “they know”.
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I am back home in Michigan due to Coronavirus. A few weeks ago I agreed to go to the golf range with my cousin Grace, who is just my mom’s best friend’s daughter, and her husband Paul. They are 26.
I was excited, then anxious, then regretful. I drove to the golf range doing my best to stay positive about our hangout, while simultaneously disassociating myself from my feelings.
They waved their arms big when I spotted them across the lawn. Grace was on her phone. Paul bought me a large basket of practice balls, as I suspected he would. They are the last people that should make me nervous.
Grace is an elementary school teacher and Paul has the same job as me. This is not criteria for intimidation. However, my childhood was so swathed in feelings of self loathing and inferiority. Even the friends who experienced it with me are triggering at times.
I braced to deflect the conversation from myself and my career as much as possible. I collected the wisps of community gossip I knew about my childhood acquaintances like a lawyer preparing for trial, braced to move the spotlight on anyone else’s news. I reassured my nerves by telling myself I had permission to check out mentally if the conversation went in a direction “I didn’t vibe with”.
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No arrows came my way. I had expected an onslaught of intrusive questions, or at least gossip about who was working where and “succeeding” at what — all information designed to make us feel bad — but there was nothing of the sort. If anything, I felt I was the one teeing up the conversation for shit talk out of some auto-pilot behavioral mechanism. But anytime I accidentally pitched a question about some person from our past of which I didn’t care to know the answer, the conversation disappeared — as if the three of us collectively agreed to not give a shit about what other people were doing anymore.
We worked on our swings, Paul and I chatted about our jobs, since we both work in sales. We talked about how it was demonic, but fine. He asked me if I felt my degree was unnecessary for the job. Of course, yes. I asked Paul if he wanted to stay in sales. Of course, no. We laughed. Grace asked me what I wanted to do besides sales. I said, “I don’t know” and threw out a couple of alternative ideas. Paul did the same.
None of us felt the need to coddle each other with, “I’m sure you’ll figure it out” or “what about this/that?”, and I’m grateful. We had all grown up a little, felt a few more of the atrocities that adult life had to bring us, and had consequently stopped holding each other to the impossible standard that one day we would each achieve a type of success that would validate our existence.
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It’s hard to decipher where my fear came from. Is it Asian American culture? Is it our parents? Is racism? Is it ourselves?
It is incorrect to dump all of it on being Korean. Certainly, being a Korean immigrant comes with pressure. After all, Korean culture is forged from rising up against impossible circumstances (colonization). But is it not the American way to constantly expect more as well? My company, situated in Santa Monica, CA, sets metrics for sales employees, then raises those metrics the better you perform. God forbid anyone allows themselves to feel good for too long.
Even with Grace and Paul, my brain convinced me they would think a certain thing of me because of the way I incorrectly classified them. Yes they are Asian, but Grace is a teacher and Paul has the same job as me. These are people who have also fallen off the beaten Asian American doctor/pharmacist/accountant/lawyer/financial analyst path. What was there to be scared of? I was invited to their wedding, after all. They like me.
I’ve talked to Grace about her job, and Asian parent pressure. She’s good at her job, and she’s devoted to being better. She described her drive as ,”wanting to be the best teacher possible”. She was specific to note that her drive was internal, not from her parents. She wants it for herself. It dawns on me that I generalized her as feeling, “pressured by her parents, doing something she doesn’t want to do, driven to insanity”. My brain had somehow categorized her down to a stereotype. It was almost racist.
Sometimes I forget about real Korean culture because the fake version is reinforced to me on so many levels from the outside. It’s more than “your parents want you to do a lot, and it makes you sad”. Korean culture is also being loyal to your family, deep appreciation of sad music, and your dad smoking cigarettes like it’s the 90s.
I was scared of them acting toward me in an “Asian” way, when really the fear is that they will treat me in an “asshole” way.
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Any time I hangout with friends that don’t come from the world of my childhood, it feels like an escape; a reprieve from what I’m used to. I get to exercise the parts of me I was too afraid to try out in childhood, like being a writer and taking shrooms and watching movies with lesbian protagonists.
Carrying these extended parts of my personality back to my home base, the Christian Korean American community, has always been a challenge. Can I be the person who grew up in a strict, practical world, and still exist in that community as the person who believes in doing stuff I like and failing forward? After this particular hangout, it felt like a soft yes.
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I hate the blanket statement, “you need to let go of your expectations”. It’s minimizing and redundant. As a human being, I’m hard wired to desire, and have that desire met.
This little hangout with Grace and Paul did not cure me of wanting more for myself. But it did cure me of the fear that because I had failed to live up to expectations, no one would want to have anything to do with me. I still deserve companionship and kindness. I’m not the only person in the world to be disappointed by what is, and desperate to have what is not. To desire something else is nothing to be judged for, and in fact, most people are in that feeling together.
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When I got home I felt a bit of a vulnerability hangover. Had I given myself away? Should I have made up my goals for myself and spewed lies of my way forward? My phone dinged.
I picked it up. A text from Grace read, “It was great seeing you! You seem really at peace with yourself”. I should text her to hangout again.
