By Daphne Chen

I’m not the kind of person who usually tells her parents that she loves them.

In fact, I’m not sure it happens in many Asian families at all –  a cultural thing, I suppose, just like the way we don’t talk much during dinner or interact much during the day. I sometimes joke that I’ve spent more time nurturing my relationship with my biology textbook than with my parents.

We have always fought far too often, something I’ve traced back to the introduction of piano lessons when I was in third grade, the beginning of an endless stream of increasing pressures to perform the best and solve the fastest.

The fighting would get especially bad my freshman year, often reducing to me heaving, gasping blobs of tears for hours and hours as I listened to the pain in my heart and wondered what parent could yell at her daughter like that, and watch her crushed like that, and still love her. I used to construct elaborate plans to run away from home. I’d turn 18, change my name, transfer colleges. They would never be able to find me again. And I’d never have to see my domineering mother again.

I would hate her.

I’d think, “When have my parents ever told me that they’re proud of me? After all I’ve done for them… after all I’ve sacrificed.” 

But over those tumultuous years, I never thought about their sacrifice. I never thought about how much they’d have to care about me, how much they’d have to love me, in order to fight with me so much. In order to protect me from every little harm that could come my way.

My parents may not (ever) tell me that they are proud of me, but they show me love by making me orange juice when they think I have not been eating well. They show me love by making me put on giant puffy jackets every time I go outside. They show me love by buying me SAT prep books.

I remember going to a summer camp when I was a sophomore and having to dorm by myself in one of those creepy rooms that look dark even when all the lights are on. I remember feeling so lonely that night, for some reason, the thought “I miss my parents” crossed my mind like a flash. I was startled to have felt it. I usually thought of myself as staid, independent, a separate entity from my evil parents, and I had never, ever been homesick.

I thought that night, “Maybe I do love my parents.”

Next week, my mom will start at her new job, requiring her to leave the house before I do for school. My dad will be in China, trying to jumpstart his new company.

And I will be alone when I wake up every morning, in a house too big for me, watching the sun tick by the second hand so I can leave exactly at 7:45 a.m.. I will grab my backpack and two coats, beep-beep to unlock my car door and peel out of an empty driveway. I will wave goodbye to no one.

Isn’t this what I wanted for so long? To take care of myself? To get out from the iron fist of my parents?

But I dread the thought.

Maybe it’s just because I’m afraid of being alone. Maybe I just miss the days when my mom used to make breakfast for me and my dad used yell at me.

Maybe this means I always loved them after all. I was just too afraid to admit it.