A move halfway around the world and the search for who I am

By Angela Limun

My inherited cool didn’t come from parents who had enough funds to provide for their child so they could have fun stories to tell their friends, stories like the many times they went to Disney World or when they flew out for vacation for the third summer in a row. Instead, mine came from the experiences of having a hardworking immigrant mom and dad with strong cultures, neither of whom grew up rich or middle-class to say the least. My inherited cool came from the countless times when cultural differences found a way to punch me again and again; the racks and racks of stories piling up from the indifference that life carried while growing up in a third-world country present in the moment. My cool began the first day of 3rd grade when my mom packed my favorite food for lunch, pork adobo with rice, and a girl told me that what I had was making the lunch room smell.

In her defense, she was just a child. Like a typical kid would, she reacted instinctively in the same familiar fashion she was raised and surrounded by. Maybe the grownups around her behaved in those painful, harsh manners towards each other, and she just happened to pick it up. But regardless of that fact, it stung.

It was my first day at an American school, my first day speaking a second language (I had a difficult time understanding myself), and my first day being a kid in a distant world different from the one I grew up in. Could you imagine the terror that rained on me when that girl said those words? Even though her language didn’t register as quickly, her disgust definitely did; it slapped me hard. Although there was no intent to mock me, it still became the first instance I ever felt the fluency in culture that everyone else carried showed up in such a small detail, yet clear enough to leave a scar.

The night before, my mom spent an hour in the kitchen, marinating the meat just right. She laid out all of my brothers’ and my lunch bags on the counter, putting together a Filipino version of Capri-Sun for each of us. She was so happy that all of her kids were going to receive an education in the “Land of the Free.” The day of, she woke up at 5 in the morning to prepare breakfast and cook our lunches. She even added additional herbs and seasonings, smiling and singing along to worship music. You can say she had no idea of the horror that was looming.

At the time, I wasn’t thinking that what’s considered a “rich kid’s lunch” in my country, the Philippines, was something I would get criticized for. I was just happy my mom took the time that morning to get up early, so I could have a warm meal later. I was used to the other kids having to eat cold food or nothing at all because their parents were too busy working to whip up anything just to make ends meet. Rather, my gratitude twisted into shame, and I was embarrassed by the negative outcome that came from someone else’s good action.

 After this, I never brought homemade lunch again. My mom, upset, obviously wondered why, and I just told her I wanted to try more American food. Don’t get me wrong, I love her cooking, I love my culture, and I love the taste of comfort in her dishes, but I loved the thought of belonging more. From a certain perspective, this situation became the first match that lit up my desire to fit in.

I made my parents buy me Lunchables, actual Capri-Suns, and all the standard, highly processed, American kids’ lunches you could think of. I remember eating the pizza version for the first time and gagging at the taste of the marinara sauce. “Made from real tomatoes,” yeah right! But I ate it anyway. It’s safe to say that Lunchables will never ever meet my mouth again.

It didn’t feel right that I was disregarding the past and trying to move on, but at the same time, it felt wrong to show the others that I didn’t come from the same set of puzzles they did.

I wondered if I acted like them, ate like them, played like them, spoke like them, that I could finally understand them. I read so many books, practiced English at home, and even graduated from my English Learning Assistance (ELA) program a year early, but what I was looking for couldn’t be found in an American classroom, it was somewhere deeper.

Even though it felt like war back then, it’s because of those battles that I can stop living in performance.

Starting at the ripe age of nine, I began to live in constant awareness of the gap between me and everyone else. It was silent and accumulating, showing up in taste, experiences, and conversation. All my friends talked about listening to the same artists as their parents, watching certain shows as a family, doing specific traditions during holidays, and telling stories about them. None of these were considered special because they were normal to them, but my parents grew up with none of that, and in turn, I didn’t either.

My mom was born and raised in a small village, and my dad on a small island, both lacking the opportunities to expand their education, consequently not having very good-paying careers as adults. Though we immigrated to the United States, nothing could change the fact that they grew up poor, and I lived with the results of their outcome.

Because of this, I became hyper-focused and fixated on trying to be like everyone else, all while quietly living another life at home. Behind every permission slip and signed school activity was a little girl reading off and explaining what’s foreign to her parents just as much as it was to her. As a result, what came of life and school was easier for others, but required strategy for me.

Growing up and coming of age alongside people who had access to the resources that I didn’t was suffocating. I was consumed in making up for the time I spent in my country, which subsequently made navigating school, social gatherings, and institutes incredibly hard without friction. When I was in middle school, I called it “people illiterate,” which was just the way I coped with yearning for connection and not receiving it.

It wasn’t until lately, now my junior year of high school, that I woke up and stopped caring. I guess all the years I self-reflected on why I had such a hard time getting along with people eventually stopped being such a big deal to me because I learned that it’s so comfortable to be by myself, immigrant or not.

My perspective has changed a lot, and looking back now, I was just a very gullible, shy kid who wanted nothing more than fruitful friendships. In my writing about the struggles of being new in 4th grade, I wrote, “I kind of got over it when three kids asked if I wanted to be in their group for our math project. Of course, I agreed because I didn’t want to feel lonely.” This is funny because the follow-up to it was, “The next day, those three kids didn’t talk to me much, and I was too shy to talk to them.” Later on, I found out the only reason they talked to me to begin with was because our teacher forced them to. WHAT A PUNCH TO THE GUT!

None of this is to say that I want to be alone all my life though, now I’ve just found a better way to look at things. Even though it felt like war back then, it’s because of those battles that I can stop living in performance. In a way, splitting childhood in the Philippines and America uncovered my niche. Relationships play a huge part in growing up, and I think that if I never moved, I wouldn’t have blossomed the way I have due to the people I’m surrounded by.

I credit my parents who worked so hard to bring us here, because they provided all the tools to live the life they didn’t have through me. So my inherited cool still came from many of their experiences and funds, just in a different box beginning with one of my still favorite meals to eat, pork adobo and rice.