Catching Up to You

Chapter 18 - Housewarming

"Ugh, I don't even know why I'm even going," Trang replied. Her mom had been badgering her for more details about her invitation for the past hour - after already an hour of prodding her for details about Danny's new looks, new outfit, new job, and new family who she hadn't met yet.

"Oy, why are you going! Just stay at home if you don't want to go," her mom yelled. Then, she turned around to continue unloading her dirty laundry into the washer, and in a soft mutter, said, "See? This is what happens when you don't appreciate what you have. You end up losing everything." She was speaking to her invisible accomplice, who seemed to now be hiding in between the layers of jeans .

"Okay, Mom - I think you're going a little too far now. Danny and I were not right for each other and you know this already," she said, recalling her time attending a life coaching workshop on establishing boundaries. She came into that workshop as a last-minute decision, an excuse for leaving her restaurant job early that day. However, after sitting herself down cross-legged across from her assigned partner - a complete stranger to her - and speaking word affirmations like - "I'm feeling hurt by your words," "I want you to listen to me and not interrupt me," and "I'm removing myself from this space right now because I'm hurt," she eventually broken down into a pathetic bawl, loud enough for a few nearby hippie-dippie pairs to stop with what they're doing to come over and give her a quick hug. She wasn't sure whether it was the nonjudgmental eye contact her partner was so willingly and patiently maintaining with her or rather, something more profound than that (it was the latter). Little did she realize how often she still felt tempted by the thought of punching a hole in the wall in a fit of rage over calmly semi-psychoanalyzing, semi-talking her mom out as if she was a patient in care.

"I don't know what you want me to say, that I wished I had stayed at home like you wanted and got married to Danny?" she responded. "Because I still don't regret the breakup, Mom."

Her mom shook her head. "No, not married. At least still together."

"Well, neither of us would have been happy if we had done that!"

"How do you know? Danny is a good boy. I know he loved you a lot."

"He wanted to have a child at the age of twenty five and I wasn't ready."

"Trang, you asked me to give you freedom for the first few years after college and I did. Now, it's time to start thinking about family."

"Why?

"Everybody has children." Her mother's voice echoed as if she was reciting a 1940s manual on being a woman in the U.S.

Trang scoffed at the ridiculous statement. "You know that's not true. Look at our uncle and aunt!"

"They're different. They sacrificed their lives taking care of Grandpa and Grandma. You don't have to do that."

"So, just because I'm not taking care of you means that I should be hooking up and having babies with the next guy I see then?" She scoffed. Her patience dissipated into the sound of firecrackers hitting the garage pavement. The idea of her sharing her pregnancy news with her mom had been replaying in her mind for the last five minutes. Might as well tell her the news since she wanted to have grandchildren so badly, she thought to herself.

"I don't understand why you spend all of your time so far away from your family, leaving your mom here all by herself. And then, you come back here with no job, no man, no future. You know, Trang, you don't know how sad you make me."

The torn wound that had been inflicted on her heart reopened itself, now bleeding orange-red from triggering words of her past. It was unfair of her mom to unload her honest thoughts to her now. It was unfair that her mother was making her feel guilty when it should be the other way around. Trang knew full well that she was at a cliff's edge of being gaslit.