Miss Stubbs

My last two blog posts both pertained to dating a man. For the most part I’ve observing the pattern without judgment. Still, desiring a m*n isn’t entirely aligned with my values, so I’m thinking about why this theme keeps coming up.

In my early 20’s, I felt confident about my mission: to help people in some way and to promote social justice. A man would enter my life or he wouldn’t.

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Nope!

I started seeing a new therapist two weeks ago. He’s quite talkative, and though his comments are not always exactly in tune with what I say or how I feel, he has shared some right on the money insights even within our first couple of sessions.

He asked me about my childhood in our first session. I gave him my standard spiel: emotionally abused by my mother who yelled and criticized me almost every day for 18 years, neglected by my work-oriented father, saw my brother struggle in different though similarly painful ways as I did, nurtured by my compassionate grandmother, thank goodness, and fought my way out of that hell on earth and into my now more stable and healthy adulthood. After I shared a few more details, he paused me and said something like,

Losing the Battle

I turn 28 next month, which activated an early-onset midlife crisis. Not to be a Capitalist Connor or a Girlboss Greg, but in the career domain, I’ve crushed it. I progressed directly from high school to the honors program at a mildly reputable undergrad, from undergrad to a fully-funded Psych PhD program, from my PhD to my residency in the Boston area, from residency to my tenure-track job. I faced bumps along the way though thanks to both my privilege and my perseverance, nothing stopped me. Reflecting on this relative smooth sailing made me feel angsty when I thought: then why haven’t I found a queer man of color to [REDACTED] with me form a long-lasting romantic relationship with?

I first felt some self-judgment and shame.

A Life of the Mind

The other day I stumbled upon the google scholar profile of an ex-friend from undergrad. I met this ex-friend, P, my first year of undergrad, where we lived in the same honors dormitory. I felt drawn to him because of his smarts: he won one of the four full-ride, academic merit-based tuition scholarships for our year. Even more than his brains, I appreciated his affability – he had this happy-go-lucky, friendly attitude that made him likeable to people. We both enjoyed reading and identified as Asian American men, though we differed in that I always exuded a more intense, purposeful energy with strong opinions about right and wrong, whereas he came across as more laid-back and flexible.

We talked about academia and research a lot.

That Sounds Rough

Listening to the Childfree Girls Podcast has helped me reflect on my parents’ relationship with parenthood. When I asked my father what made him choose to have kids, he said that it wasn’t a decision he thought about. He said that for him and people in his generation, it was just something that you did, with no elaborate consideration of the pros and cons. I also learned that my older brother’s conception hadn’t been planned. Four years later my parents chose to have me because they thought that it’s best for children to have siblings.

A younger and less experienced Thomas may have felt disappointed or hurt by this background information about my parents.

Giving Up

The other day I drove home from a tennis match, reflecting on the racist comment one of my Asian American acquaintances made. I texted him how I felt about it and he apologized, though I still felt annoyed and hurt. This incident made me reflect on all the Asian American men I have met with internalized racism and how much it deflated their self-esteem. I’m not generalizing Asian American men – I know some who are self-aware, healthy, and confident – though in that moment in the car my acquaintance’s statement pulled my focus away from those folks and more toward those who struggle with their racial identity. The psychic pain escalated to the point where I thought: wow, it would feel easier if I were just not alive right now.

I didn’t have any active intent or plan to kill myself.

My House in the Hamptons, My Trips Around the World

When I moved to Boston last year, I joined the Facebook group “Subtle Asian Boston” and saw this post:

I felt annoyed when I saw this. Tall white boys??

Set Me Free

The other day I caught up with an acquaintance of mine over coffee. At one point he shared about how he felt misunderstood and embarrassed by his Asian parents. He said that his parents do not know certain specific details about his life, like his specific graduate degree program. While I tried my best to display empathy to this person in the moment, on the inside I felt annoyance bubbling up in my chest. At the end of the chat he stated with such an earnest tone that he appreciated our conversation, though I walked back to my apartment more perturbed than before.

I think I felt annoyed because this person did not display much understanding or compassion toward his parents’ circumstances. I’m not saying he has to love his parents or feel any particular way about them.

The Success Frame

Growing up, my mother expected perfection from me. As a child, I found her constant evaluation hurtful and invalidating, especially when combined with her general emotional abuse. Even though I considered academics more as a ticket to escape my mother than as a metric of my self-worth, I think I internalized my mother’s voice a bit, like when I cried after getting a 4 instead of a perfect 5 on the AP Biology exam, even though I didn’t really care about biology at all.

A little while ago I read about the success frame, a concept created by sociologists Dr. Jennifer Lee and Dr. Min Zhou. A simplified version of their argument: Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants in the United States expect their children to graduate from an elite university with an advanced degree and a job that can net a sizable income; achieving this isn’t special, it’s expected. Reading about this framework helped me understand my mother’s view of me and how I consider my own accomplishments.

We Are the Childfree Girls!

In the academic department I’ll join later this year, everyone except me has a child. Seeing this reminded me of stigmatizing comments I’ve received about staying childfree, like an ex-friend who once said that my nurturing and feminist spirit would be wasted if I didn’t have a kid. I also thought of one of my past therapy supervisors who told me about how because she doesn’t have a kid, her former coworkers expected her to do more work, as if she didn’t have other things to do with her time.

To cope with this childfree stigma, I searched “childfree” in the Podcast app of my new iPhone and found the amazing “The Childfree Girls Podcast,” where three women living in different countries talk amongst themselves and with guests about being childfree. I’ve felt so validated after listening to just a few of their episodes.