Broken Relationship

WRITTEN BY HUY TRAN ILLUSTRATION BY JASMINE TABOBO

Iam lost in a place that knows no name, no boundaries – no one. I don’t know where to go or what will happen to me. Will I be this way forever?

If you are a college student majoring in the Arts and feeling lost and worried about your future, let me assure you that you are not alone. My anxiety about my future has long since eaten my joy away as I continue to live another day. While it brought me no physical injury, it has caused me a series of emotional damage – some of which will take a long while to recover.

So many factors have made me anxious about what could happen to me in the future. One is that I will be the first in my family to graduate college, so the mental toll and pressure my parents give me is increasingly heavy. Two is I might not get the jobs I feel good about after college. And three, and more importantly… my life is damn short.

Reflecting on these things, I sometimes feel like I’m an astronaut lost in space. Everything around me is weightless – no sky, ground, or stability. It’s hard to condense this silent chaos into a few words. Nothing is certain, and nothing is determined. It’s all just blank.

And while this place is silent, the only loud noise is the looming thoughts chasing around my head. Some of the thoughts include: “Who will I be after college? Will I get a job that I feel comfortable working in? Will I find a community that genuinely supports me and my work? Will I maintain my success as an artist? Will I ever get to know who I really am? Will I ever be happy?”

While I continue to find these answers for myself, several of my friends and people I’ve known have answered some of these questions for me. People who have seen my creative work know I am artistic and have a creative mind. They were impressed with my work and told me I have potential and a future because I have put in so much to my work. While these statements are boldly positive and larger than life, I’m unsure if they are all objectively true. As a child of immigrant parents and a person who was deemed to be a “child prodigy,” my measurement of success has long since been skewed and overly exaggerated. My peers and family members would often tell me that I was “smart,” “talented,” and “winning all of the time, with all of these A’s and accolades” and whatnot. And whenever I hear them say that, I lose a sense of fulfillment in myself. These “victories” were never mine in the first place; they were for others. And sometimes, when my “failures” show, like when I had terrible grades in my sophomore year of high school, or I couldn’t translate certain tax documents very well, several family members would often look disappointed, as if they thought I was better. In the most dramatic way possible, they felt incredibly ashamed that I had failed my family. They prayed and wished for the old Huy, who was always this young prestigious, gifted, and intelligent man. The thought of it makes me feel like I am fake and nonexistent, that I don’t deserve to exist in this world.

But thinking about it now, I empathize with my family because their past wasn’t as “normal” as the present I have now. They didn’t grow up in a privileged position in society or a place of economic growth when they were young. My family wasn’t pay attention or support me. So, I suppress all my thoughts and feelings from everyone just living – they were surviving for their lives. They work extra hard for jobs that are so simple today –just to earn extra and be acclimated with the rest of the upper society.

That is until I decided to contact my therapist for the first time. The thing was, my family and my culture have conditioned me to repress my feelings as a form of strength, maturity, and masculinity. On top of that, I’ve been told that talking to a therapist is not the right thing to do. I did it anyway.

And history repeats even to this day. I often get called one of the most “hard-working” people in my field because I want to maintain my success and my composure. But deep down inside, I don’t know what I am doing. I have been flooded with internal pressures to look “impressionable” and “better.” The weight of responsibility is killing me, but I keep telling myself to keep my ass going. And frankly speaking, this idea is toxic and shouldn’t be kept by myself.

Like many first-generation immigrants and “hyphenated” people, I was met with a great deal of expectations by people close to me that I must be successful. As an adult, I’m supposed to know everything – schools, finance, career, and the like. Because of that, I feel pressured and afraid. As much as I want to dump out my concerns and fears, I fear that anyone listening to me doesn’t actually

When I first talked to my therapist, I laid out everything about my life. It was awful and awkward at first, only because I wasn’t comfortable sharing my complete set of experiences yet. My therapist understood where I was coming from, and comforted me by saying it wasn’t my fault that I did not meet the expectations of others. Sometimes, people see life as a race: get a job at 20, get married by 30, et cetera. Seeing life this way is never the most fulfilling way to go. My therapist encourages me to take my time because my life is all that I have. I should own my life and, as cheesy as it may sound, savor every moment– no one who will take it away. I took the words from my therapist and put them into practice. Since then, I have accepted my decisions and experiences, knowing that everything I do has some meaning. For example, I have decided to major in film. In the eyes of many parents who have immigrated to America, including mine, their child majoring in the arts is one big part of an awful list of disappointments. My parents fear that if their child pursues an art career, they’ll feel unfulfilled with no “financial stability.” In reality, that is not always the case. There will always be opportunities to earn a livable wage while making art.

Even better, there are those out there willing to make the creative industry as sustainable and healthy as possible. Look at the strikes in the past several months: creators and artists have called out executives and authorities that their work has value and that they should be properly compensated and respected. On top of that, they don’t want their work to be fed into machine learning in the interest of creative executives. I’m sure that artists can agree with this idea: In every evolution, art is human first and foremost. I’m glad I get to see artists fighting for a common goal because this gives me so much hope for my future. I feel comfort in the community, the unity, and that the people in all these circum- stances care about each other.

That is why it is good for me to find my community – one I feel comfortable and connected to –that whatever I do and create matters. It feels so satisfying to surround myself with like-minded people and people who accept me for who I am, not only as a creator but also as a person. For a long time, I have been treated with contempt from other people for my work and who I am. They find me and my work to be “too much” or “too extra” and that I’ve overdone them. People often say that I am a showoff and I try too hard to prove my artistic abilities to them when, actually, I do this for myself.

There are also people who devalue my art and intentions. The worst thing of all is that I feel people become friends with me only when I make art.

I’m grateful that I have gotten a lot of support for my work during my time on campus. Before coming here, I didn’t get that much support as a creative person. I have poured extra effort into my creative projects, both personal and commissioned, because I want to get my work noticed by a lot of people, including potential employers. For a long time, I was living in a place where art is always looked down upon. My schools have often emphasize and support STEM more so than the Arts because officials believe that it is not only good for the student’s financial and overall well-being, but it’s also beneficial to the national economy. Art is merely an afterthought to them. The art scene where I lived was hidden from sight, and the kinds of art that I saw around my community were frankly unoriginal and over-copied – the spirit of art and art-making is barely non-existent. I only found good art and support in my local community through my friends and classmates. Not only have they made amazing artwork, but they have also supported me as an artist. The problem at the time was that I felt uncomfortable sharing my flaws and weaknesses with my peers. Because of that, I felt trapped in a place that was supposed to be my “comfort zone.” I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere.

Things began to change when I first stepped onto this campus as a Film major and stumbled across a special hub of creative people. From the beginning, I was welcomed into this massive and engaging community with open arms. I was assured that this “hub” was made to be a place of support for artists like me. In this place, I have met several people with similar interests and vibes as I do, and I also started to work with people with more experience in film production. When I worked with these people, they gave me not only creative inspiration but also creative freedom. It’s rare for me to collaborate with people who are willing to listen to my ideas. Being in that space has brought me comfort, knowing that whatever content I make has value. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel trapped anymore; I finally felt I belonged. I didn’t get that kind of appreciation and care before, and I would be a different person had I not been surrounded by a group of good people.

But time will go on and these good people will come and go. At some point, in my heart, I will know when it will be the right time to move on.

Leaving a place of support is a difficult thing to do, but it is always a respectable and mature one. This community has given me so many opportunities to showcase my creative skills to so many people, and it has fostered a feeling of kinship and connection in the knowledge that hard work shouldn’t go unnoticed. This kind of community is meant to be supportive and positive, and I wish to stay that way. Of course, any kind of hub or community comes with underlying issues and flaws that are well beyond remedying. To be trustworthy, everyone who mainly handles this community, would have to confront these problems head-on while being open and transparent about them. These values are undervalued in our society and should be practiced rigorously and discussed frequently. I have seen so many times where communities that were once thriving and supportive are later becoming hostile and corrupt because people prefer to brush off certain things that are directly their responsibility and move on. As an artist and a person, these are the kinds of communities that I don’t want to be a part of. To foster a healthy and genuinely positive community means that core members would need to acknowledge and address the underlying problems and communicate and find ways to solve them while being respectful of one another. There are not a lot of decent and honest art communities (yet), and finding them is going to require a lot of work even after I graduate, but it will save me and my sanity in the long run.

But until then, I will continue to float in this massive, foggy void and fear for what happens next to me.

What will happen next? To be honest, I don’t know. And I don’t really have to know everything –that is the beauty of the human experience. Every day is a surprise, and I get to learn new lessons. There is always something nice to look forward to.

But while I am optimistic about the future, I still remain cautious. It is possible that there are people who would take advantage of my own work, whether it would be taking mine without giving it proper credit or feeding my content in machine learning. I saw a post a while ago where machine learning can automatically edit a video and make it look like it’s well-produced. In a world where convenience while sacrificing integrity becomes a standard around the world, giving credit and appreciation to artists is underrated and important to the highest degree. People have worked their entire body and soul to create works that scream loudly: “This is human, this is me, I made this, this exists, and I hope that you recognize them.” Disappointingly, we haven’t reached the point where people, including commissioners, properly recognize, credit, and support artists – not just illustrators but also graphic designers, motion graphic designers, 3D/ VFX artists, and so many more. This, and being overworked but underpaid, is the root of complete burnout and artists quitting the creative industry. This effect is the worst thing that so many great artists, especially the most talented and hard-working ones, commonly experience to this day. I wish that there was some way that people treat artists with a high level of respect and understanding. They are precious, and, in my opinion, they are the last bastions of humanity. They saved the hearts of so many people and made their lives more bearable because of their creations, and I hope that people can acknowledge that.

As for me, I hope that one day I get to find a light in the darkness – a place that I feel belong to, where I am free to tell my stories and create something surprising. The catch is that I’ll have to make an effort to find one, so it will be difficult and take a long while. What is certain is this: wherever I go, whatever happens next, I will find my own answers and my own place in this strange and complicated existence, and it will be worth filling in the missing blank.

Istill remember going to kindergarten. I remember the small classroom with the letters of the alphabet stretching above the chalkboard. I remember the small round tables where we did arts and crafts and the playground right outside with the sandbox and a slide. I remember playing hopscotch and handball and playing heads up seven up on rainy days. It is a very distant memory that you have to reach into the back of your mind to get, but it’s still sitting there after all those years somehow. Now, here I am sitting on my university campus, where I hear the same chitter chatter of groups of students going by that I’ve always heard, but definitely less screaming since there’s no playground and we’re “grown-ups.” I’ve been to preschool, kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, high school, community college, and now university, with one semester left until my entire school career ends. I thought I was the only one a little scared to graduate, but I find that there are many others who feel this way too. Such a big shift in your life, even when positive, is terrifying, especially when you find comfort in the same routine you’ve been doing for years, even if sometimes it drives you crazy.

Growing up is very strange, and I still don’t understand it, yet it’s happening, and I’m doing it. I went from doing arts and crafts in preschool to doing fullblown business projects with legitimate companies; even with so many years in between, the slow shift is painful but exciting. It’s like not wanting to leave the warm comfort of your bed in the morning, even though you are excited for your day. Don’t get me wrong, there are many positives to growing up as well, but as most of you reading this may know, childhood is something we still daydream about. The innocence and lack of responsibility before the