I had a session with my therapist today. I’m using an app called Wysa, in which twice a week I will have live chat with the therapist and during the week also with chat. He’s helping me to clear out my thoughts, giving me ideas and also responding to my journal entries. It’s been almost 3 months since I started using it and I think I’ve come closer to understand myself the most.

As much as I want to go back to Saigon to see my partner, I can’t wait to see him. I also don’t want to go back to Saigon to meet my family. Well, my extended family to be exact, I need to protect myself from the nosy relatives and acquaintances. With my mother, it’s fear, but with them, it’s anger. I was explaining my situation to the therapist, suddenly I feel a rage of anger. Instead of feeling like: “I’m coming home”, I feel like I’m gonna go to war really soon”. Instead of seeing relatives as something I belong, I considered them all as enemy.

I think this is because of collectivistic cultures, it enmeshed personal boundaries. It’s also can be very disturbing for someone who doesn’t see eye to eye with them. It’s me for example. I’ve grown up and started showing my attitude, calling them out on body shaming, I’ve tried to set my boundary with them on so many other things. I guessed we are forever enemy now.

My therapist asked me: Since you don’t feel a sense of belongingness toward them, what is belongingness to you?

The first image appears in my mind is my first home in Hoi An. I felt like home. I felt comfortable in the space belong to me. Nobody can say a damn thing about me. I can do whatever I want. And most importantly, I feel safe. I feel there, I have a family of choice, I have “Bà Mười, and uncles”, I have friends. Actually I felt the same anywhere, in Bangkok, in Chiangmai, in Helsingor as long as it’s not Saigon. The embedded collectivism has tattooed so deep in my heart that nothing can help to unfold.

Martin once asked me: you said you cannot talk to your mother openly, think the other way, WHAT WOULD IT TAKE if you can do anything in this world to untie all societal weights and have an open conversation with you Mom or anyone in your extended family.

My response was: Nothing, I guess. I have gone through the most tragic thing that can happen to a person, my father whom I consider is my only family died. Yet I can’t do anything. Well I did, I left the town. But I cannot talk and express myself. The societal hierarchy doesn’t allow me to do so. I don’t allow me to do so.

All Vietnamese who’s educated under the same system, with the same kind of family background think the same. Most of my friend who’s coming from a little bit upper middle class thinks the same. We all chose the same path, we ran away and never look back. We ran, and rarely flew back home “to visit”. Phuong has gone for 5 years, coming back home once, Ly has gone for 8 years, and come back maybe once a year even she lived very close by. There’s obviously a huge clash between the generations. Our definition of love is world different than the previous generation. Loving means ” Yelling, criticizing, scolding” in the name of ” I just want you to be better”. “Ba mẹ la con vì ba mẹ muốn tốt cho con”. “Tao thương mày tao mới nói cho mày biết, còn người ngoài tao kệ mẹ” … NO, ABSOLUTELY WRONG. In the perfect utopia world, I would like to be a stranger to all. So nobody can “in the name of love” hurt me.

We don’t see eye to eye with that, with the new world, we now understand what love is. And we don’t want to be a victim of that “abused love” anymore. We chose to leave, as far as we can. To gain autonomy, to gain sense of agency, to feel love the way love should be. If I should have a daughter, I will show and teach her how love is to my child, the actual kind, not the twisted “I love you so I hurt you” kind.

I guess, the only thing that is best for my well being is to not live in Saigon. I need to feel safe, I have lived in fear for many years, and I don’t want to live that life anymore.

Autonomy means safety. Safety is the most important thing to my well being.