home is (part 2)

Gia đình.

This is the Vietnamese word for family, but it holds so much more meaning than just family. When I think of my gia đình, this is what comes to mind: obnoxiously loud, all-the-time weird, slightly dysfunctional, but also somehow really loving family. We're blunt. We have loud personalities. We cry. We get upset. We love.

And then I think of the other gia đìnhs in my life.

Apartment 106. My home. The place I can retreat to at the end of the day, laugh-cry with my roommates, and share anything and everything about life. The type of family you dream of having one day.

Then...

There's VCN. Vietnamese Culture Night. The family that you end up adopting over the years. Like the in-laws you weren't completely comfortable with before, but now feel like blood relatives.

When I look down the traveled road, I never anticipated that VCN would be a destination. Or maybe I always knew, but didn't want to believe it. There was a time in my life when I got embarrassed to be seen with my dad's side of the family out in public. Sometimes I'd be out with friends and hear Vietnamese people talking obnoxiously around us. My friends would look at me weird and I'd just laugh it off. Why is their accent so heavy? I don't know them! Other times I would bring giò (aka chả) to school only for my White friends to ask me why it smelled and looked so weird that I would throw it in the trash pretending I didn't like it.

I was confused - about my identity, my culture, and where I fit into it all.

I went to school with White people, but on the weekends I would be at Vietnamese Girl Scouts.

My favorite food was chicken tenders. Or was it phở? 

Did I mention I was confused? Oh boy.

I always felt like identities needed to be kept separate. I could be totally white-washed on the weekdays, and then switch to my Vietnamese side on the weekends. But the thing about identity is that it needs to be a tangled mess. It's two parts that are better together than apart. Like chocolate chips and cookie dough.

Not like water and olive oil. But that's how I thought it was supposed to be for many years. And no matter how hard I tried mixing my identities together, they never quite found their harmony.

Until I hit college. And it all made sense.

I learned to embrace both sides of me - the two put together made me a more complete person. I realized that my multiple identities are what provide me with the perspectives that I have, the experiences that help bring clarity to an otherwise fuzzy world. See, I'm not just a Christian. I'm a Vietnamese-American Christian. And not only that, but I'm a Vietnamese-American Christian woman. And all of these identities are what make me who I am.

I'm not really sure if this identity mindblown-ness came before or after joining VCN, but that's irrelevant to the story.

The point is VCN is the gia đình I'm eternally grateful to have right now. It makes me stress, and cry, and laugh, and pushes me to my limits both mentally and physically. But that's what family is. At the end of the day, it's about love. It's about being passionate about something to the point that you will do whatever it takes to see it lift off. It's home.

---

Interested in this series of posts? They definitely hit home for me in ways I could never convey out loud.

Read home is (part 1) if you haven't already, and be sure to subscribe by email on the sidebar to stay updated on all my posts.

Next time, I'll share thoughts on defending my passions.