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acrifice plays a complicated role in my life. A concept often familiar to immigrant children. Our parents have undeniably sacrificed more than we’ll ever know. My parents left their strong communities, their loved ones, their languages, their food, and a large piece of their heart with their homeland. It was a sacrifice they were willing to make for me and my brother, for our futures. It was their American Dream tax. But it was a decision made without me. My parents moved to the United States from India in 2002. They never intended to stay very long; it was only for my dad’s job. As a child we bounced between countries, never having a permanent home in either. But, in 2010, we were done. It was time to move back to India, permanently this time. I packed up my life, which at the time, wasn’t much. Holiday Barbie in hand, I put on my light-up Skechers, my Dora back-pack and said my goodbyes. I couldn’t conceptualize the huge change that was coming; I was just excited to play the games on the plane ride there. But soon enough, I traded in my Skechers for Bata, Dora for Chota Bheem, and Barbie for Tinkle Comics. The real culture shock came when I started school, but the realities of corporal punishment, higher academic standards, and an incredibly strict dress code which mandated the length of our nails are for another day. I just went on living in the way only a six-year-old knows how, and it would be three years before my parents decided that the United States had better opportunities for us, in more ways than one.
They say it takes a village to raise a child. But the village that helped to raise us disappeared overnight, and in its place remained the best efforts of my young parents. My parents always thought about the long term: trading the comforts of India for the success the U.S could bring to their children in the future. Their parenting was no different. Tough love often feels synonymous with Asian immigrants. Tough love thinks ahead; it creates opportunities for future success, even if it’s hard and nearly unforgiving in the moment. It’s the only love I’ve known for most of my life. It’s well-intentioned. I know that. Yet, tough love still has a way of breeding resentment. All of my parents’ pushes for me to rise to the top, to achieve the success that they wanted me to, coalesced into one intrusive thought in my adolescent brain: you are not enough. It’s enough to understand that as the eldest daughter of my immigrant family, my parents’ traditional beliefs, sky-high expectations, and years of intergenerational familial pain cemented a cornerstone of my heart with ribbons of sadness running through it. I can now attribute many of my self esteem issues and anxiety to trying to live this perfect life that was expected of me. I was a servant to my parents’ wishes by my own choice. I wanted more than anything in the world to make them proud, to keep them from feeling disappointed after they had done so much for me.