our Cambodian parents Hate you: when the weight of love and trauma bear a heavy burden

“Let no one mistake us for the fruit of violence - but that violence, having passed through the fruit, failed to spoil it.” - Ocean Vuong

Even after 44 years, a shadow still looms over the lives of us Cambodians, and its legacy still continues to haunt us. Not only has it marred the souls and scarred the bodies of our elders, our parents and grandparents, but it has created a major rift between generations. An issue that I believe affects the lives of us Cambodian teenagers is our misperception of and our fractured relationships with our parents. Little did we know, there’s an underlying cause behind all this.

Although we’ve learned about it through textbooks and understood its significance in history, we still do not dare to casually bring it up. Even after 44 years, the Khmer Rouge still acts as a puppeteer controlling us. Our parents and elders who have gone through those 4 years of tyrannical reign — but it felt to them like an endless time loop of suffering — have been greatly affected by it. Years of hunger where even a bowl of warm rice was nothing but a luxury one could merely dream of paired with countless hours of wretched labor their body couldn’t sustain, is not something one could forget so easily. 

The metallic smell of blood, the sight of crimson-tainted fields of grass, and lifeless bodies were all ingrained into their minds. And even as they grow up, the fear still clings to them. But being Cambodians, they wrapped tight bandages around their wounds instead. But wounds don’t heal properly when bandaged forever, do they? The negative stigma around mental health has caused them to suppress all their trauma. But suppressing all the stress and emotional damage they endured is ineffective. Instead, it translates into their interpersonal relationships and how they interact with the world instead, which of course, includes their parental relationships with their children.

Being children, it is only natural that we yearn for love from our parents, whether it’s through words of affirmation or spending quality time with them. And when we don’t receive the love we crossed our fingers and wished for, we feel upset. Many of us believe that it’s almost contradictory; Cambodian parents don’t shower us with love, yet they remain authoritative and overprotective. We watch videos of American kids and yearn for the freedom they have and think of our parents as a cage trapping us from enjoying the remainder of our youths. We believe that our parents wish to have absolute control over us. 

But as they say, there’s more to the problem than what meets the eye. Our parents wish to shield us from walking on the same barren paths they did. They wish to see us live a life ten and thousand times better than us. But a parent’s love isn’t always so easily shown; their desire to protect us slowly morphs into overprotectiveness. Their overprotectiveness, and sometimes, hostility towards us are only formed by their fears and horrors of the past. But beyond their equipped roles of being a parent, they are a survivor. Therefore, to break this cycle of generational trauma and bridge the gap of misunderstandings between both parties, we must extend our ears and hearts to understand them and their struggles. 

First and foremost, we must destroy the negative stigma surrounding mental health. As mentioned earlier, bandaged wounds don’t heal properly. The same applies to mental health. It is essential that we promote the idea of seeking help and destroy the narrative that seeking emotional help makes us weak. Vulnerability does not make you weak. We must normalize active conservations on the topic of mental health in productive ways that allows everyone, especially the older generations who have spent almost all of their lives suppressing their pain and trauma to themselves, to realize that being human means being vulnerable. 

Everything is easier said than done; the nuance of theory pales in comparison to actual practice. Addressing an issue that is rooted in our cultural schemas is no easy task. It may take multiple generations worth of effort to get to a point where we don’t cower at the mention of this dark period of our history. However, with small and steady steps, tremendous progress can be made. I believe if we manage to properly bridge the gap between generations, our society would be able to change for good, and old wounds can be stitched together once again. Regardless of our age and whether the gap between generations stretches far beyond what our eyes can follow, we’re all humans. So why are we continuing to distance ourselves from other generations because of mere differences when we are capable of animating our love and connection with one another in so many ways?

(@nezartdesign on tumblr)