Coming Out to My Parents

Telling my parents I’m not a scientist anymore was like coming out of the closet. Like a gay guy, it took a while to tell the truth. I started with a common intro: “Are you sitting down?” My mother felt like it was coming, since she knew how unhappy I was. Manipulative words were coming out of my mouth before I could stop them: “I came out of your uterus and I’m the fruit of your loins! You have to love me!”

There were extraneous apologies, too: “I’m sorry that I disappointed you and that I’m still single.”

I remember this commercial of a phone company I saw in Manila about this student in medical school who called his father to tell him he wanted to go into fine art instead. I can totally feel this guy’s pain. The ending was similar, but it’s not the fairy tale you guys think. There was acceptance, but I didn’t get it in one go.

My biracial upbringing also became obvious in this situation; initially, the Filipinos and the Chinese were polarized, with the former being cool with it and the latter feeling that this rocked their world. When my Filipino uncle picked up the phone as I was calling my Chinese aunt, I shrieked, "Oh God, I am so glad it's you because the Chinese are not ok with this." They were upset I didn’t tell them sooner. “I didn’t want you freaking out when I was freaking out,” I said.



Argh. This is not the Joy Luck Club.

The profound joy I feel working for WYA is very telling. When you are stuck in a horrible situation for a year, all that repressed creativity and happiness is suddenly oozing out of your pores like a bad breakout. I discovered graphic design skills I never knew I had. I love the intellectual independence I have now, when I can just do my thing instead of having to see what other people are doing all the time. More importantly, I realized that the environment is just as important as what I’m doing; I just can’t work with boring miserable and/or obnoxious people all the time. It was sucking the life out of me.

Kurt Vonnegut once wrote: "If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to turn homosexual, at least go into the arts." It’s not too late for me to turn lesbian.

It could be worse. I could have left my Ph.D. program to work for non-profit.