ORIGINS
(OR "INSECURITIES, PART I")

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I think as humans, we all live with certain insecurities no matter how hard we try to shake them off. For me personally, I still have a few that haven’t gone away since childhood – some that stay in my subconscious for the better half of my life and then emerge just as I think I have forgotten them. They’re never easy to talk about, these embarrassing truths called insecurities, but I feel like I’m obligated to at times because I am a writer and a writer must be able to brew up the courage to write about her fears if she’s not going to face them in real life. So here we are now.

Anyway, like I was saying, I’ve harbored a burdensome mountain of insecurities since I was very young. I have trouble letting little things go so I let these kinds of things sit like anchors on my shoulders until I’ve thoroughly worn myself out. As you can (or maybe you can't) imagine, I was that one kid in class whose parents never showed up to Christmas performances or Career Day and that one kid who had anger management issues because of it. I was insecure about my family and insecure that I was insecure. We’d never been wealthy, my family, so ever since they immigrated to America, my parents had felt it necessary to fill up their piggy bank rather than fill up their hearts. And also mine, which I felt very passionately about. Let us waltz into storytime.

During the first couple years of elementary school, my home away from home was my parents’ workplace. After school every day, I set up camp in the storage room of my parents’ clothing store and stayed crouched there until closing time, which was usually after nine. The last couple years of my childhood were far worse, though, because my mom took up a small 24-hour sauna business and my dad started working a night shift as a taxi driver. My shelter was a house this time, the same apartment building I have lived in for ten years now, but it quickly became the most dreaded place to end my day in despite the warm connotations of home.

One of the most vivid memories I have of my childhood occurs in the nighttime, in that cold little house of mine. I remember some nights, I would wake up to the shrill ring of our home telephone piercing through my ears and then out through my eyes as I opened them in alarm. I would lie there in bed each night staring curiously up at the black ceiling of my room, unable to guess why neither of my parents had woken up to pick up the wailing phone. In my defense, it was something they had always done before. And so sadly, it was during that time that I realized why ignorance is bliss.

Each night, I felt the telephone ring louder. It got me irritated to the point where I just burst out of my bed because the sounds would not let me sleep. It didn't occur to me then that all I needed to do was throw a pillow over my head and close my eyes. But I wish it did, because once I stepped into the living room, I realized why the phone kept ringing throughout the night. It was because nobody was there to answer it. For the longest time, I didn’t even know that my parents weren’t home at night.

I remember calling out for my parents in the darkness of my house after my realization, crossing my fingers as I peered into their room to see if anyone was quietly sleeping there. Always, I searched only to find the house empty. Perhaps this is where my present fear of the dark comes from, now that I think about it. There was nothing scarier than those solitary hours with the ear-piercing telephone ringing through my whole body to tell me my parents weren’t home. Darkness was my only company, and it chilled me to my bones to be standing there in the living room so weak and fragile.

When the rings died down, which they always did (this happened many nights on succession and I would stand there shaking and dumfounded each time) I would call my mom, who never answered on the first time.

“Umma, where are you?” I would say into the phone.

“Heidi?” she would say, probably wiping the massage oil off her other hand. “Why aren’t you sleeping?”

“Where are you? Are you outside? Where are you?” I would ask.

“Go back to sleep, Heidi,” she would reply, “You have school tomorrow.”

And because I was a big girl, I hung up the phone in obedience, crawled back into bed, then prayed to God that he would bring my mom home safely – that I wouldn’t die alone in this house. Because what if there’s a fire and I sleep through it and nobody knows? What if someone robs the house tonight and they kill me and my mom isn’t here and she can’t protect me and she comes home to find me dead and my dad doesn’t even know for a whole day because he’s working and what if my mom doesn’t ever find out because she never comes home because she’s working too and what if… What if?

I would repeat all these scenarios in my head until I had tired myself out, and then I would cry myself to sleep.

Little Me was like that – too bloated with negativity but too reluctant to change. I’ve always been good at waiting, because my parents made me do a lot of it. I did it every day, every night, actually. I waited because I thought if I stayed awake just a little longer before I fell asleep, my mom would come home for just one minute to kiss me goodnight. And I thought if I waited long enough at the end of my choir performances, rocking on the balls of my feet and lowering my head to hide the disappointment on my face, my parents would surprise me with their appearance, maybe even congratulate me with flowers like the rest of the choir’s parents did. I waited backstage while the other girls’ moms tied their hair for them and straightened their uniforms out, waited for my mom to show up even if I knew she wouldn't be able to. And I waited until I was the last one standing outside my tutor institution each night, biting my lips against the cold while I cursed my parents’ tight schedule and cursing myself for lacking understanding.

“You’re still here?” the principal would say each night as she locked the door. I remember it would make me feel so much like every time she asked.

But I nodded, because it was the truth and it was the obvious truth. “Yeah,” I would say, “but they’ll be here soon.”

"Soon" I said, but often it wasn't so. And I think it’s ruined me a little, all this waiting. Just a few days ago there was a parent meeting at my school for all the students in my grade and I got angry at my parents because they came late. While everyone had settled down in their seats with their parents, I stood kicking at the grass in front of the auditorium, alone yet again and so angry at my situation that the first thing I did when I saw my parents was yell at them. I couldn't help it; I feel my face heat up every time I'm the only one waiting outside for my parents to come.

I’ll always be a baby in that way I guess, but I think it just means I’m as human as anyone else. These memories make me into who I am and it’s been hard holding onto them, but I think I’ve earned more than I’ve lost by experiencing them. Singing to a full auditorium but an empty crowd, learning how to tie my hair by myself, tending to my wounds without the help of anyone else – these all have made me independent, and it’s made me strong. It hurts me every time I look back on my dark childhood and I’m crying as I write this, but maybe this is what they call the good kind of pain. The kind you learn from.

I guess what you should take from this is that if you hate your parents like I used to, it'll hit you one day. One day, you'll realize how much they love you and how much they’ve sacrificed for your wellbeing. And if they haven’t sacrificed anything (as this is the unfortunate case quite often), you’ll know something just as valuable. That you’ve made it this far without their help and if that’s not something to be proud of, then I don’t know what is.