Chapter 25

If nothing else, high school was a busy time for me. As you can clearly see from the previous chapters, music was a huge chunk of that. Here’s the thing though, as much time as I spent on music, it would not be the main storyline of my life. 

It was definitely worth mentioning though because although music wouldn’t follow me to my eventual career path, it would be critical to how I grew up and developed my own morals. As I mentioned previously, if you really wanted to know about me, my musical involvement is where you got to look. My upbringing and growth does not parallel any other hobby of mine as much as it does with music. 

So now the question is, if music played a huge role but I never went into it as a career, where did I go? 

That’s a simple question with a simple answer. STEM. But there’s always more context. So I guess the story isn’t why I went into STEM but why most Asians like me go into STEM. The first thing that comes to mind with Asians? Familial pressure. 

I went to therapy before. You’ll see that later on in a few more chapters. The therapist I saw was a bit typical. She listened to me a bit, asked about my father and mother, and then charged me an inordinate amount of money for her services afterwards. I never really got therapy or felt it benefited me much. Maybe I quit too soon. Regardless, I thought it was fascinating how therapists would always talk about family and our upbringing. I thought I was immune to all that mainly because I considered myself so distant from my mom. However, thinking back, an absence of a relationship is still a very strong basis for development when it comes to parent and child growth. I wouldn’t really come to think about this fact until way later on in life but the biggest takeaway I got from therapy was that my messed up relationship with my parents may have impacted me the most when it came to my romantic relationships. 

Now, if you know where this is going and want to look away, that’s okay. But I think it is worth mentioning the awkward relationship phases in high school, at least briefly, because they exemplify some of the character traits I picked up from my mom and dad. 

Relationships are natural in high school and despite all my busy lifeguarding and music on-goings, I wasn’t immune to this biological norm. I initially wasn’t actually sure if I was going to include relationships in this memoir. The first reason for exclusion was that this wasn’t really meant to be a romantic drama blog. I also would not really define my life story with such a genre. The second reason was that it was pretty typical. I could describe it as me being an idiot and a horrible boyfriend because I always had priorities beyond my partner. A common trope I would say. The last reason was that it was just kinda cringy. High school was cringy. Since the advent of TikTok and the internet that has only become more and more evident with time. But I think I do have to include the relationship side of things because despite my desire to save face and not mention some of the weird things in high school, I do think it is too human of an experience to leave out. Also, once again, it does answer the question of “What does it mean to form private and vulnerable relationships given my familial history?”

I dated very briefly in high school, at least in comparison to all the other stuff I was doing. I’ll save you some of the details mainly because as I mentioned, I was a teenager, and all the cringy stuff that happens almost always amounts to nothing. If the world recorded your life-partner traits from your high school dating record, I’m sure most of us would be pretty ashamed of our files. Though, high school, for most of us, would be the most memorable time of our lives. So, with the benefit of hindsight and a pretty unforgettable time period, I think I boiled the essence of how horrible I was in high school as a romantic partner down to one thing. It had to do with responsibility. 

I thought responsibility was a critical part of life. I had a responsibility to practice cello. I had a responsibility, and a contract, to my duties when working my job as a lifeguard. Being a good son, being a good student and being just a well-behaved individual was a responsibility. It was exhausting to keep it all up but it was necessary. I never really got to get loose and separate myself from the mindset that I should be doing something due to my responsibilities until I discovered breakdancing. Keep in mind, that was in the beginning of high school. All those years before breakdancing? No breaks from the weight of your duties! Breakdancing was the one thing that gave me no responsibilities and was just for making friends and having fun. It is probably one of the reasons it persisted so much longer than the other hobbies of mine. Anyhow, responsibilities, very important. And yet. You may have noticed. I didn’t mention any responsibilities with regards to romantic relationships at all.

I think I wanted to be in a relationship as much as my mom wanted to be a mother. That is to say, not a lot. I was horrible. Romantic relationships were seen not as responsibilities to the other person but rather almost like a game. How much care do I have to give someone before I get some of that serotonin in my system going? How much attention do I need to give my partner so they don’t guilt-trip me on how bad I am as a person or partner? I never really felt like I was supposed to be responsible for the other person’s feelings. I never took it upon myself to think about relationships as being a unit. A couple that did things together. Or at least, a mutual relationship with decision-making that required communication. I think I got that from my mom. I was selfish in my actions and more in my thinking. It was always about me and what I wanted. This isn’t as clear a line as you may think though. Sometimes, you do have the interests of the other person in mind, it’s just that the way you would go about it is, you would claim all the decisions and choices for yourself, leaving them out of the equation. You may think doing a particular thing is good for the other person but if you do it against their will, it kind of has a bad aftertaste no? It gets worse when you realize that sometimes, you really don’t know the other person that well and maybe communication was necessary. That was the main problem with this way of thinking is that at some point, all relationships felt like burdens. Unfortunately, that wasn’t even the worst of it.

I had gotten a lack of priority and a lack of a desire to communicate from my mom. Those are not great traits to find in a good partner. However, they are much better than what I inherited from my dad. If you’re wondering what you can inherit from an absentee father figure, it’s simple. A desire to be wanted. I never really thought about this a lot until later in life but I realized that despite the apparent attitude of wanting to be independent, what I really wanted more was to be recognized and be seen. At home, I was definitely not getting enough parental love nor attention. Mom was always working and dad was never around to begin with. I think in high school, those in my situation find that we try to substitute familial attention and familial bond for being just wanted and accepted. It seemed like a decent substitute at the time. Not enough attention at home? Get it from school! What could possibly go wrong? How does this affect a romantic relationship? Well…

I really only had 1 somewhat real relationship while I was in high school. Even then, I would describe it as very on and off. We dated early in high school, broke up, and then got back together near the end of high school but again, just briefly. What really made it go all wrong was my constant indecision to be with the other person. Lack of commitment most people would call it. 

To this day, I still feel kind of bad for that 1 girlfriend I had in highschool. She did nothing wrong. I was just carrying too much baggage that I didn’t even know I was carrying. That’s no excuse but let’s just focus on how my familial relationships may have ruined this relationship first. You know what’s a toxic thought? 

“If I get into a relationship, I will only be liked by this one person”. 

I didn’t want that. I wanted superstar status. I wanted to be a Korean pop star with everyone loving me all the time. I needed attention and affection. More than what was possible from one person. What a mindset to have in highschool. I was very lucky I never got involved trying to achieve this goal but the point is, that is not what being a good romantic partner is all about. I wanted so much affirmation that I think even if I got it from my 1 relationship in high school , it wouldn’t have been enough. I had no affirmations from my mom and no interaction at all from my dad. CC was the only other adult figure in my life and as you’ll recall, not only was he affirming, he was pretty much the polar opposite. The concept of wanting to be loved and validated was so strong that I don’t think I could have settled for 1 relationship. Some would chase multiple girls, at this stage, I found myself mostly chasing multiple hobbies instead. Gotta fill the void with something. 

If you’re wondering why I had developed so many hobbies in high school. This is a fuller picture. I wasn’t only trying to avoid coming home to an empty place. I was also trying to validate myself at various crafts. I thought that if I got good at some hobby, I would be liked more. With that mindset, every hobby I have was really more of a coping mechanism than a true interest. My hobbies would eventually define me but that’s a very long conversation that we won’t talk until way later in my life. It would be a while for me to understand that my peers can’t fill the hole I had. Further on, I would find that hobbies can’t fill that hole either. With that said, I guess looking back, in high school, it was better than chasing every girl I saw at least. 

Now. Does that sound familiar? Does that remind you of anyone, I don’t know, from Chapter 1? No? Remember my dad? Remember how he slept around a lot? While I never slept around in highschool, or at all since I was very conservatively Asian, I could picture myself in that scenario. To be clear, I am referring to the scenario of filling in a void left by your parents from not giving you enough attention. I think my dad just didn’t have access to the outlet of hobbies when he was younger. I shudder to think that maybe I would have found a lot of similarities with my dad if I were living in similar circumstances. In truth, I didn’t know about how their upbringings were, only the stories that were told around. Toxic and biased as the stories were, they were the only glimpse into how mom or dad were like when younger. Beyond that, neither mom nor dad really talked about their upbringings. Their generation just didn’t talk about this stuff. 

While that was not an excuse for what I did or didn’t do in highschool, I am happy to report I have not had any children with someone who was unsure about me just to tie them down. That is a cruel use of a child’s life. I still wonder to this day if my mom doesn’t regret having me in such toxic circumstances. Regardless of what my mom thinks about it, I think it’s important to try and avoid the wrongs from your parents. Luckily I steered clear of doing anything so drastic. 

Okay. Back to the timeline.

I was breakdancing, I was doing lifeguarding, I was doing a lot of music things, and I even had a bit of a romantic life in highschool albeit not a very healthy segment of my time then. That has to be the full extent of my activities in high school, right? Welp. Not really. There is one last part of this that I think we need to address. The part that directly associates itself with the title of the book. The part that I’m talking about? The biggest elephant in the room. The SCHOOL part of high school. 

Asians were known to be chasing grades and putting in all their free time into homework to get A+’s in class. Yet here I am, talking about breakdancing and romantic problems. Classical music did give you a glimpse into the Asian culture I experienced but it’s still just a hobby that hyperbolizes what Asian culture is like. You can only learn so much from an example. Even a really defining example has some missing pieces of the big picture. That is to say. I think we beat around the bush enough at this point. Let’s have a direct conversation about this. 

What is a Tiger Cub?