Truth is all that matters. But in this life if a white person doesn't solidify your story/truth then you will always have a cloud of doubt. I'll give this example. I saw this movie a long while ago called "Anonymous" (https://youtu.be/uBmnkk0QW3Q) which theorize about who really was the true writer. I also want to point out this is what learning in school vs. learning after/outside of school. Makes you reflect what other lies are we told in school? After watching the movie I also researched that several notable writers also feel the same way. Also this stuck with me when I read that Shakespeare's own children were illiterate. (https://bit.ly/3c7MOIk) That never made sense to me because most parents want the best for their kids, more than what they had. So if such a brilliant writer and actor would let their own children be illiterate just doesn't add up. So to further back this theory here is a video of Keanu Reeves sharing his thoughts on this matter.
I bring this up also to challenge you reflect how I loved my mother wasn't one sided and exploitive. My mother's old conservator had stated if he was still around he would have let me be my mother's caregiver. He visited her and had plenty of conversations with her. He knew my mother really loved her grandkids and wanted them around more. I do question if that would have ever been that way because again my "great" uncle wasn't having it. Me being her caretaker that is. So do you believe my own words? or you want proof?
Below are more facts about me, with proof and some with none but still true.
I use to live in mod-rehab housing. I got the benefit of section 8 but it was attached to the building/landlord. So once I left, I lost the benefit. Here is a letter of my termination because I put my stuff in storage and moved in with a friend until the housing I did find was available.
I got arrested by Capital Police.
In this arrest I didn't get my hands tied behind my back but I have felt cuffs before. It was when I was a young mom of two. This gets into confessions territory. I was buying student monthly cards from a student I met in my internship at Covenant House of Washington. The metro police took my metro card. Couldn't understand my passport to figure out my birthday. I gave them so much lip for taking my metro card that they scared me by putting cuffs on me. My kids where in a double stroller crying and I started apologizing. All I remember were they where a lot of them. It wasn't my only incident with metro police. Second confession: A college friend wanted to go to Pentagon Mall. I was really reliant on my student card and if you don't know it is only good in DC and a few Maryland metro stations. So I tried to walk close behind my friend to go through the metro gate. Well the metro police caught me and I got a ticket to show up at Virginia court. My memory is the worst with this. I think I had to pay a fine and the judge or whoever told me to basically said stay out of trouble, like one year of probation.
Reminds me the time I got caught stealing at Union Station and I was banned a year I think from a certain part of Union Station. When I was homeless I slept in the parking garage at Union Station but not for very long. The security guards told me and my boyfriend at the time to leave. I also slept in the adult shelter by the police station downtown. I was terrified the whole time only did it once. I also slept in a shed at a building still being built not far from Union Station. We became regulars sleeping at a residence that lived in Chinatown. I think public housing for seniors, not the one for asians.
I don't have any bad feelings for the father of my teens. He did cheat on me and he hit me. I did start fights. Something I got from my mom. I was abused as a child from my mom and from him. When I got accepted to a transitional housing program at Covenant House I was told to get a restraining order on him. Also interesting fact, the child support system is right beside the restraining order place at the court house. I felt scooted into that office practically seamlessly. He of course didn't like either. We had our ups and downs throughout the kid's childhood. I think I tried very hard to keep in touch but inevitably he ruined the relationship between him and his kids. I think it was very smart to move out of DC. He knew DC would have killed him. Most of the things he has done he has done for his survival and similar to my mom. I think after a while we come up with a truth that makes us comfortable with our choices, with their alternative reality. I know I am the bad guy in their story and I am okay with that. But we did make a promise to each other while I was pregnant with our first, to not speak ill will of the other. I tried my best. My kids say I speak mostly ill will to complete strangers on the road than I do about their dad. I have a little road rage. I'll admit I sometimes say "you acting like your dad" to my oldest but I also say "stop acting like me". So I guess that is okay?
If you wondering, yes he was abusive to them as well. Also interesting fact, my youngest is finally getting therapy. It wouldn't have happened if a traumatic event didn't happen. I think it is odd that has to be the case. We used the events with dad to qualify.
I know some folks wonder if I have even interacted with these politicians to be a critic. Mostly yes. Should I confess who I haven't met? Not this time. I will in a future post explaining my political art. Below is a video I took to record Elanor Holmes Norton at this ANC meeting and just so you know that wasn't the only time I attended this ANC. But also interesting fact this was my ANC when I lived in ward 7. Never attended it while I was living there for two reasons had small kids at the time and probably wouldn't have gone because of that but also didn't know about ANCs until I got politically activated at Bread for the City and that was in 2016. I started going there when I realized the development happening at DC General is under this ANC. That is how I befriended Karen Settles, who would have been my ANC commissioner also. Small world. Also interesting fact every elder I know involved in this ANC don't like the chair and I know he would say they stopped many things from happening. But from what I have been told he is compromising with his corrupt landlord. But maybe I am spilling too much tea in this post. I'll move on. Just one more thing, the commissioner that replaced Karen Settles works with Phil Mendelson. So not a fan of her as well in so many levels, of course.
At 17:09 I ask the congresswoman a question about RFK stadium. She answers to an extent but also get confused what I handed her.
Another interesting fact about me, believe me or not. The truth means a lot to me. My mother's alternative reality meant I was lied to a lot. I have been very carful in my truth telling and honesty with my kids. I didn't tell them about the toothfair or santa clause. Confession time: Luckily the oldest lost his first tooth at school. My teen tells me that I was a lousy toothfairy. I apparently would forget that I gave him money already and give him more coins. Poor enough to give coins but not poor enough to remember how many times. I do contribute my bad memory for my very traumatic childhood. My mother was so stuck on the past and future plans. My days were filled with a earful of her past traumas and parenting self-doubt into me.
I plan to do a post specifically about how bad a mom I have been maybe a mix of some of the illegal stuff I have done to survive. We will see how good these confessions will get. So how did we do holidays? Christmas included. The first Christmas we had at our new place the mentor I got at Covenant House gave me a ride to Toys R Us and I bought gifts for the kids while they were in the shopping cart. I wrapped the gifts. I honestly don't remember if I put santa on the package. I don't think so. I spent so much money I think I decided to give up those special events and birthdays. So the kids spent time with their dad on those days and the summer a few times until they came back clearly traumatized one summer.
I remember on Saturdays going out my way after leave ward 8 to live in ward 7 to still drop off the kids to see their father but now that I reflect maybe it was just his family. He was spending a lot of time I think with his girlfriend in Baltimore soon after we had our second kid. I only feel the need to share some facts about my kid's father's family because I think folks can truly understand my insight as well. Their grandmother was married and he passed away long ago. She had a new partner but never married because she would have lost the (military) social security she was getting. We got really close at one point I was close enough to her with helping her with the bathroom. I also did this kind of stuff with my step-grandmother. I was told by their dad that the grandmother told her grandkids to pretend to be dumb to get social security. He said he refused to do that and that he won awards for some of his inventions/creations. We met at an alternative school which means everyone that attended this school came from another school. He told me he was originally accepted at Duke Ellington, I guess in drawing. When we met he was creating a lot of wire sculptures and he continues to do so. I have heard that Duke Ellington isn't very strict. So if students fell behind in their academic studies they got kicked out easily. He told me that Ellington didn't know how to teach him also in the wire art he did. He also shared he started doing wire sculpting to make the toys his mom/family couldn't afford to get. His mom was a drug addict and was in jail when I started living at their family home. They wanted me to work and I was just a very lost teen. I had no idea what to do. I think my mom also felt that in me as well. I was so lucky to have had straight A's that first semester because by time I ran away from home I inevitably stopped going to school but my grades were good enough I still passed my classes. I only needed two summer classes to qualify to graduate. Their father was the second sibling and also named after a problematic person. So he went by a nickname, MaaMaa. If I recall the mother named her son after a person basically the real father didn't like. And he had the audacity to suggest to make our second kid be a jr. Ummmm no. I think not. I had to bring it up and get my doctor to reinforce that is a hard no on a jr name.
Picture of my first born with his fraternal great grandmother.
Frist born with fraternal grandmother.
Their dad only had one sibling with the same father if I recall and he didn't get along with that sibling much. I was told their was a period they never spoke while living together and then their was a time things got so heated he life home. Maybe also ranaway or kicked out. I really can't recall. That is why I became a Covenant House youth. He stayed at the shelter for a little while because of these events long before me.
Their was also a aunt that had a intellectual disability. We shared a bed for a little bit while I was there especially once the mom came back from jail. As I reflect I have always never fit in or never felt accepted. I reflect on my decisions still and can say I made the best choices I had available to me at the time. Well there was that one time someone offered to adopt my second kid while I was pregnant. Being adopted is a type of loneliness it is hard to describe. So I couldn't do that.
More confessions: Keeping the Santa lie. When my kid's stop going to see their dad luckily my oldest got accepted into a catholic school that helped with Christmas presents. Once we left the mod-rehab place and moved I lied the first year and said because we moved around so much santa didn't know where we were. My oldest failed sixth grade and I enrolled him in his brother's feeder school as a seventh grader. The last time I used the Christmas help they didn't seem to like the gifts I asked for anyways. So I eventually confessed Santa isn't real and that I got help from the school.
My first job was as a hostess at a summer camp run by the Salvation Army. I was 17 and it was my first time away from my mother for such a long period of time. I loved it. I also got in some interesting situations. I made alot of memorable moments in just those three months. I discovered I had a strong work ethic and tried to do more than I could handle like pick up to many pitchers to refill at once. I thought I was smart for vacuuming the rug while sitting down but folks thought I was being lazy. My calves got so big. I got a white boyfriend for a week and I came across a love letter from a crush. For some reason I can't remember. I got caught up in a spin a bottle to a crazy hook up situation everyone was partaking in but I was alone. And I'm not sure everyone found me annoying, probably so, because all if not most of the staff pranked me by drenching me in water by catching me at every corner.
My other jobs included working at Covenant House of Washington in their Advocacy department to create a zine. It was a while I was in college over the summer as well with a small stipend. My job after college was at a portrait place at Sears in Montgomery Mall. I wasn't very good at it but my boss was so gracious and we are friends on facebook. I photographed her wedding pics. She and her hubby had a court house wedding but since she knew exactly what poses she wanted she was so easy. I was good at taking pictures just the worst at figuring out the software to bill the customers. I ended up having to quit that job. I learned to stop staking days off that aren't consecutive that wore my body out. My kids would fall asleep at school because I would pick up my kids at such late hours by time I got home and I was taking metro at the time. The amount of energy I had back then was amazing. I remember I would go back and worth to my house and UDC and not have a problem. And now I am like once I go back home. I am staying home. Another reason why I had to quit was because my boyfriend at the time was helping in picking up the kids and dropping them off at the sitter and he said that was making him risk failing school.
The job I had the longest first started as a volunteer position at the Anacostia Community Museum. I will never forget the first day I came to the museum to start working there. I made a mistake going there no one was there because they were doing a fundraising event for the museum's anniversary when I went back home that was when a earthquake hit DC. I recall my boyfriend at the time said he remember seeing the building wiggle. Thank goodness it did and didn't crumble. My boss became a mother figure and til this day continues to remind me more of my mom in more ways I care to admit. She did alot to keep me employed and I am so very grateful. I have to admit I have never been good with the politics between co-workers. I guess that is why real politicians hate me. Asking for help never works for me. And mutual aid folks and organizers don't care for me. I have been reflecting hard on this recently. Am I so weird? My art my approach or maybe just being asian. I always wonder maybe if I was black. These same folks would take my art or pleads for help more seriously. I noticed I do the same when I am around asians myself. So I guess I am guilty of the same prejudice. But somehow I thought my art would make folks more accepting of me but somehow I in up feeling more estranged. It also doesn't help because my mother instilled so much self-doubt in me.
What type of abuse I got from my mother? Making me feel like I couldn't do anything without her. She would say "You won't graduate from high school without me". Guilt trip me, She would say I would leave her and never come back and she wished she didn't adopt me.
My hair was pulled all the time during time she was angry and when she was calm she would joke I think or justify she was helping my hair to grow. Once she pulled so hard I believe I had a small batch missing on my scalp. I got spanked with a rubber shoe and a few times once with a extension cord. By time I was like tween age it started getting awkward and she stopped spanking me. I recall to keep controlling me I once wanted to braid my hair like I did at my first job and she wanted me to stop. I needed help with I think a school assignment and she said she would only help me once I took out the braids. Not sure if it is cultural appropriation? What do you think?
My small/big resentment when it comes to applying to jobs. Besides the small bitterness as of lately either knowing the person that got the job or another asian or a black person that didn't even grow up in DC and have this statement. Some even have an emphases of lived experiences which even feels even more insulting when someone that comes off like they had a suburban all white friend life married with one kid with no learning disabilities get a job. Or straight out of college and have no ties to DC. Yes I am sour about it.
I am also really bothered that I had a bad interaction with someone I thought I was polite to but somehow they viewed me threatening. I am truly kinds hurt by it. I think over and over what have I said or how did I say it? How did I come off? I really try not to create harm. And I am truly sorry if I did come off scary and/or triggering.
I realized that is why I always feel compelled to tell my mother's story and I have to show her picture. Someone once saw how much of a emotional toll it is on me to share and that I shouldn't feel obligated to. But I see folks faces change and they see me in a whole different light. In the end my story is all I have left.
After further reflection I thought maybe again it was my asianess. Maybe just being foreign makes people scared? I even got little offended and upset to hear they just rather have the black woman to come and come everytime. They rather not deal with me or the white lady that offends all the time. I somehow got grouped with her. So maybe inevitable as per usual I don't belong. That is why I have no right to ask for help from politicians because I'm asian and not black like them or white or middle class. I'm a nobody.
Have I been suicidal? yes. When you struggle to be loved to be heard to be accepted after a while you have to wonder should I even be here? When you let your adoptive mother down. When your biological parents didn't want you. When the odds for your own kids aren't bright and your odds aren't as well. Sometimes I wish I was aborted. That is how much I am for abortion. I wish I didn't exists. When you try over and over again to get help and is ignored. When you realize your health is deteriorating. When people in power literally make you sick in the stomach. When your ideas are short lived. What is my purpose?
The time I was at my deepest emotional pit was when my mother thought I was killing her. I was dropping off food using my own food benefits and asking her future guardian for help and met with silence. When my home was broken into and car shot up. When my kids didn't get accepted into the super elite schools. I remember driving so fast on my youngest kid's birthday (or maybe the day after) and got a $300 ticket for it. I was being reckless. I wasn't be a good mom. I pissed off my oldest once and he told me he wanted to get out a move car once to get away from me but I told them we didn't have health insurance at the moment. I don't remember why he was mad or how we didn't have insurance but didn't know all this prevented him from not doing that. It was a later confession from him. While looking at Lady Bird, i think. Glad we didn't do that.
So I stopped cussing when I noticed my toddler was at the age of copying every word I was saying and by time they were in middle schoolish age and I was driving them to school alot showing a lot of rage. I was like they old enough I can start cussing again. They know better not to repeat me. And yes I say "language" when I hear them cuss. I don't like hearing it from them. My youngest says fudge while playing games with their friends and I find it adorable and also asks when can they cuss. I say never around me. My youngest goes by they/them pronouns. This trailer shows a chopped up clip of a scene in the movie me and my oldest laughed so hard to because she have said much similar language to each other. He always asking why are we/you yelling so much. And I like saying the infamous words Samuel Jackson says all the time and yes in connection between us it isn't appropriate but my teen use to piss me off that much and I like using that word to express my frustration. These days we are much more chill.
Reflections: This month, July, has been super challenging for me. It is the month that my mother was born in. I am so frustrated with myself since it feels like 2020 still isn't done with me. I still haven't gotten my taxes done from the job I got fired from. Because my taxes haven't been filed it is keeping me from applying to FASFA. So I now feel like I am failing my kids in getting financial aid for them to attend college. It is like I failed my mother, my cat and now my kids. Being poor sucks.
When it comes to my kid's father and his family I have no hard feelings. Maybe moderately for the guardian and my mother. Do I give excuses for black folks. I guess so. Even for the compromising commissioner. I feel like the abuse to be behavior is all conduce to survival of their own. I might even give my same reason and logic for the black politicians. They survived a white world by becoming whatever they needed to be to get what they needed or wanted in this white run world.
I was in a meeting recently and used the words referring to organizing as to being soldiers for lawyers. I showed so much distrust in lawyers in that meeting. I realized I am really traumatized being around lawyers. Even the one lawyer is willing to help has made me feel my pain wasn't enough to get justice and that makes me feel small, like it wasn't painful enough. It isn't worth while to demand justice. As if a lost cause.
As for while people. I have little to no patience. I hardly can't relate or conversate. But I have realized all I like talking about is probably my trials and tribulations. My youngest asked me what do I like to do for fun? I said watching movies. Then said that fun usually includes doing something with friends and this autistic kid knows what they are talking about. But as per usual I just don't have that presence that have friends and/or allies in the worlds I want to be a part of. My short comes just continue to shine over and over.
On another note. I applied to a particular grant for a new/old project I have been wanting to do for a little over a year and was met with a familiar disappointment and didn't get it. I have tried something new and have tried applying to art fellowships for the first time. I hope these will come through. I need a win so very badly. It is so tiresome to have great ideas and never see them through.
My youngest keeps secrets from me. I wish they would share. My stance on privacy is this. I once reflected about how nosey I wanted to be with my oldest stuff. I was like he got a partner and well as long as it isn't illegal I rather not know anything about his life. Sometimes they share video with me that makes me go "stop ruining my adulthood". Both of my kids have confessed to some extent of feeling suicidal and I have felt horrible for it. So I try to find that balance of being honest and staying positive in hopeful and in uncertain times. They have been through a lot of constant food insecurity and housing insecurity. I have been trying to hard to provide and balance their happiness. But also being poor just can't make miracles happen. What is hardest for me is they have friends in so much better situations and I just can't live anywhere to that expectation. I wonder if that hurts their moral.
I am glad I am finally doing art again. And teaching my youngest to drive is finding a new type of courage. Hopefully as they say things pan out for the best only time will tell.
#suicide #homeless #housingauthorty #unionstation #grandmother #greatgrandmother #asian #advocacy #jobs #failure #arested
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