ASSIGNMENTS:
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Ang
Houston, Texas USA
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REPORTS:
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Person named Angela.
In November, very early in the morning, I was born. The event of my birth actually happened in 1992, on the day exactly one year after Freddie Mercury passed away. Which is heartbreaking to the maximum. He should never have died, but anway.
While I was growing up my parents often told me I was beautiful girl, and for most of my life I believed they meant it. However, I was recently told by my father: right after I was born my mom begged to hold me-she took me into her arms, looked upon my face, and with the air of somebody about to say something, she stopped short, hesitated, and said, "Oh!"
And my dad told me she looked not unlike a disappointed kid, gazing at her daughter's face for the first time.
I know! It's so horrible. I guess I was a very ugly baby or something. Well looking at the pictures, I do admit I could've used a workout or two; I was not trim in infancy. But don't let my mom know that I know about her initial unlove of me-that might embarrass her.
Ok, now may be a good time to mention my parents are immigrants, directly from China, and that they had and still have really bad English. So even if I had been a pretty/thin baby, my Chinese immigrant of a mom may still have said "Oh!" simply because she didn't know any other words to say.
Following my birth (which happened in Arizona), we moved to College Station, then Houston before I was one. Both of these wretched places are in Texas, which is doubly wretched, I suppose, if it contains both those cities. In truth, Houston's not so bad but for the weather and the occasional redneck, but the weather mainly. It's a hot place; Arizona was hot, too. I have a history of hotness. The rednecks are a lesser problem, but unbearably annoying when I do run across one.
I was raised Chinese style by my immigrant parents. Tragically, this kind of raising tends to result in culturally confused children. Culturally confused is how I was, and to a slight degree, still am. Example: in second grade my mom gave me a bowl cut, sent me to HuaXia Chinese school, and dressed me tacky clothes (the flowery, spandexlike cotton pants characteristic of Chinese children), while simultaneously encouraging me to play soccer, take part in Western Day, and-wait. Take part in Western Day. That-yeah, that is the Americanest thing anybody, ever, could do.
In addition to being raised culturally confused, there was this omnipresent expectation of greatness at a young age that was engrained in me, like some whispering voice that never went away. You will go to Harvard! You will be a high-paid scientist and/or professor! SuccessSuccessSuccessSuccess! And the concept of success was such a hugely important theme in my life that it still is, actually, hugely important.
Back to chronology, elementary school was okay. I excelled. Man, I was so smart it scared my teachers and they hated me. But at the same time, elementary school wasn't so great because there was no one remotely like me. I did things that none of my classmates would ever consider doing, like piano competitions, or theatre. I acted in skits and did funny accents (I had the most convincing British and Scottish accents in my class, my class full of WHITE kids, and me being UNWHITE, even Chinese!) But that was a summer camp. At school in the non-summer, I had no friends that were like me. Nobody liked books and plays like I did. Nobody would go to the Miller Outdoor Theatre to see Oliver Twist with me. Nobody liked that kind of stuff, and after a while I made myself not like it either.
Middle school was the pits. That was the height of my cultural confusion, I think. I could not identify with either the Chinese or the American community. But I had to identify or I would end up in a black hoodie, loving Metallica.
So I chose to be Chinese. Or Asian rather, because there were hardly any Asians that were not Vietnamese. There was a huge population of Vietnamese kids in my school; most of their parents worked in the nail salon/tapioca industry.
I felt pretty good, belonging and all, but when I got to high school I realized I didn't have friends. I had a ton of "friends," but not friends, people with whom I could share my deeply buried interests, which had begun rising out of the depths of my brain. I started reading a lot more. Also I got really into music, both playing it and listening to it, and right now I am in love, in LOVE, with Radiohead. I think the books I've been reading coupled with the depressingly beautiful sounds of Radiohead have rendered me much melancholier than before. Also the whispers of Success! have been growing increasingly loud inside my head, and I am conversely losing interest in the things that could bring me surefire success, such as schoolwork.
A note on aspirations: I used to want to be that Harvard-graduated doctor. Now I aspire to write a bunch of screenplays and make great movies, and I really hope to fall in love someday.
I just realized I have been writing this entire thing under the assumption that you care about my life; do you?
If not, I can just sum up my life today, and I would still be completing the assignment correctly. Today, I am a creatively ambitious youth that is driving herself insane with her own ideas and potential. However, though I may be ambitious, I have no willpower and therefore don't usually get things done. The fact that I waste all my ideas and potential, I guess, is what kills me.
Also about today: today, Friday, was my last day of finals; I'm a high school sophomore. I did pretty well on my Friday finals, in fact. World History final, piece of cake. English final, over Julius Caesar and Fahrenheit 451 and DIDLS and literary devices: I got a 97! Success! That deserves a pat on the back, and welcome to my life!
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