vingt quang, or lessons I learned upon turning 20

things I learned about myself after turning 20

story of my life, a self-portrait of who I was since I was born until now

title is a wordplay, vinh quang means glory in vietnamese, and vingt mean 20

vinh and vingt are almost homophones

glory and gore go hand-in-hand

that's why we're making headlines

in christianity, there was a time before and after christ. in taylor swift discography, there was taylor swift before and after reputation. this is going to be something similar in the history of this blog.

I deleted linkedin, because who I am today is not what I showed up there, but a result of a lot of work that I put in and a lot of efforts coming from my family financially. I am not born rich. I live in a district that an average expat would not know its name. that's why I wrote about it to change the way we see it.

I write because I hate explaining myself to people that wouldn't understand, and because the truth is not that simple

I write because I want to be understood and loved when I live, and remembered when I die

I've learned enough languages to know what I want to live is truth

so whenever you're ready, buckle up and I'll walk you through the journey of how I navigated suicide, school bullying, misgendering, racism, unrequited love, verbal and physical domestic violence at home, and mistreatment in higher education and still fucking survive and thrive

NABOKOV: oh, my lolita, I only have words to play with!

ME: oh, my nabokov, I only have words to play with!

I

near-death experiences

dante and beatrice gaze upon the highest heaven;
from gustave doré's illustrations to the divine comedy

the first time was when I was in primary school going on a school trip with the english center. one part of the trip was swimming in the public swimming pool. I had no perception of the depths of the pool whatsoever, and I did not know how to swim. however, what I know about myself is that I hate noise. so what happened is that I went to the least crowdest part of the pool (which is also the deepest part). I have a very vivid memory of drowning and seeing air bubbles. I remember being stuck in there and trying my best to get afloat. I don't remember if I know if death was a thing. maybe I didn't know I could die then yet, but two people, a teacher, and a lifeguard saved my life. this experience taught me that I'm a very big time introvert and I've chosen peace over bullshit since the 2010s.

the second time was an accident and me failing to take care of myself. the prologue to this was me taking the L train to philly to eat at càphê roasters in philly with a friend, going to a movie evening at another friend's place. I had crazy motion sickness. I slept through it. I felt better the next day and decided to go for a swim. after 3 laps, I struggled to breathe in the shower. I called for help. the lifeguards, who were people working in the opposite lab, ran out to help me. I was shipped to the hospital, waited for a few hours and came home in a few weeks to a bill totalling 7k something. after weeks of emails and calls back and forth between the hospital, the insurance, and the school, I got it down to $300 something. it was one big traumatic experience for me in the summer.

the third time was when I felt suicidal. I was having a very hard time. imagine losing your camera, your life and millions of things in the summer. I had no break in the summer. I was constantly travelling on the weekend until research finished. then as soon as research finished, I helped my family move in and lived without privacy for weeks (with glimmers of hope in between where my aunt and uncle would take me out to nature to touch cactus.) imagine having to say that you're taking a shit so that you can text your partner in peace. then as soon as I'm back, I moved into my fuckass apartment. I didn't know what a fiberglass mattress was. I took off the cover to clean up, and I didn't know that I was nuking my own room with fiberglass. the cleaning up experience was deeply traumatizing. I had to dismantle the whole bed by myself and carry heavy shit downstairs as the elevator was broken. I live on the fifth floor, and when we moved in, the apartment was doing its stupid upgrades with sticky floors. I did not have the time and energy to cook. tuesday and thursday was hell for me, as I had a 15-minute window in between my 2 classes, and demanding professors meant that I had to uber with my pocket money to make it to class on time, barely have time to eat, and the professor wouldn't look at me in the face. I was reflecting on times I felt not valued in the lab, and the presentation of summer research was the last straw for me where I felt like many people looked down on me as a vietnamese person. if my partner and my mom didn't pick up my call that night, I felt like my life could've taken a very different trajectory. I was lucky to have a lot of friends that reached out to me and told me they would always be there for me. I reached out to deans and professors that I trust, and they helped me a lot in getting back on track. I will never forget friends that walked me to campus safety that night, people that drove me back, and friends that bought me dinner and listened to what I have to say, as well as my partner that was always there for me. I want to say thank you to everyone that saved my life that summer and that fall. you did the right thing, when no one was watching. you lived with integrity, so that I didn't have to die with dignity then.

the reason why I write is because I also did a lot of soul-searching on people's blogs and see how they navitaged life. like how did they navigate adulting, academia and dating, and what they wish they knew. I don't write to get famous. I write because I just hope that my experience would make someone that's going through the same problems feel less lonely. I also write because whenever people ask for life updates I get sick of telling them the same shit over and over. so yeah putting the blog somewhere accessible and letting them stalk and read to their heart's content. I also write because I would be there for them after I die. my words will live. je te laisserai des mots.

if you're also going through the same thing, please remember that there will always be people there for you. talk to someone that you trust. reach out to whatever resources that you have available for you.

II

a victim of injustice, how hard is it to read an asian name?

justice > karma

to all the bitches that ever made fun of my name, your jokes were not fucking funny

when I was in primary school, I was fat. boys would play this game called bà bội sang dí (getting chased by [my name]), where they would chase me around during recess. I didn't understand it then that I was being bullied, but as soon as I realized, I would stop in the dirty bathroom of vietnamese public school and wait for them to stop. I feel like I had some self-knowledge before understanding why society was this way. the female gendered bathroom then was the safe space that would protect me against the boys. I also remember fake telling the teacher that they were messing with me. I remember times when I fell off the bục giảng when I was being the role model during physical education, and the class would laugh at me.

when I was in secondary school, I was considered too masculine because of my appearance. my name was unisex with mostly masculine connotations. I was misgendered by teachers, and the class would laugh about it. I was pretty good with graphic design then, and this means that I would get exploited for very good reasons. teachers would ask me to do a million things that was their job, and I would not get credit for it. we didn't get educated on our human rights. we were told to do stuff that was the rule, the law, but not human rights. like in the us, teachers are not paid well, and they would have collective punishment. we get yelled at in class instead of getting an education. classes fight against each other for the best class prize every single week, and I think the teacher get some extra money when the class wins. it was nothing but peak performative. I didn't understand that then, but whoever was the school principal has a lot of say over what's going to happen to the school, from uniform to policies. and you cannot be principal unless you're a member of the communist party. the best years I had at school was when a woman was in charge and we were allowed to wear pants. when a man takes over, he makes the girls wear skirts. it's really fucking stupid like that. I was within the last generation that could wear pants. I also watched it happen to the top school in my city, where their amazing uniform turned into a piss color uniform. and they don't have a voice over principals. it sucks like that.

when I was in international school, I was poor and uncool. I remembered times when korean classmates would laugh at me for not knowing how to use teams, and how my dell computer was too heavy. I took a while to integrate into the school's culture. I remember being unfriended on facebook. I remember how hard it is to make friends at school. lunches that I spent eating alone until I actually find friends. and how social circles dissolve quickly too when friends move away to different schools or into different friend groups. I remember being so fucking alone and no one would talk to me sometimes. having to wake up even earlier than when I was in secondary school and getting home much later. whenever I did model un, I had to sacrifice another 3 hours due to my city's traffic. my parents grow up poor, and they work hard so that I can have an education. they grow up in patriarchal societies, and a lot of that generation trauma were put on me. they did not have the understanding of what I need to be a healthy person. my life back then was simply going back and forth between a school were I was not socially accepted and a house where I was also not accepted. I grow up without privacy and peace of mind. I grow up in a family where my mom would read my diary and go through my sister's phone without her consent. I group up in a family where my neighbors would have karaoke noises every single weekend. I grow up without peace. I was constantly at war at school and at home. I also did not have the freedom to study what I wanted. when I wanted to take french in high school, I couldn't because for that year the government banned whoever with only vietnamese passport to doing only english and vietnamese, and needless to say how pissed I was then. I go to classes with the richest people in the country, people that would smoke weed in the bathroom, and people that don't have to work a single day in their life. I'm tired of not being recognized when I'm one point short of the ib score that year, when I was given way less resources to start with. not having the freedom to date, having to hide everything from my family and my sister. getting caught in the library before my first model united conference, and I don't know how but I still have the courage to be who I am today. having to do chores and get yelled at when I could've done homework. I did not grow up in a happy family, yet I chose to be kind. I am the generation that had to put a stop on so many generational trauma. when I was head girl, I spoke up many times to the principal about the issues that I see at school, from how we pay all the bus drivers the same amount of money even though some of them drive further from school. I also spoke up why we don't get better teachers for certain subjects. and what did the school do? nothing. I didn't understand then that the principal was just the intermediate person that deal with students and teachers, and the real person is the one controlling the money, and they get to say what money is spent on. even after being a head girl, I also did not have the respect of the school, as people just cared about people that they know, or people that was popular, people that were therer for 10 years or beyond, unlike someone that climbed the social ladder in 3 years like me. out of loneliness, I befriended people that would betray me in the process. it's a lot of wounds when your trust is placed in someone that would readily tread on you to get further in life. I felt bad about my ignorance, as I felt like opportunities would have been given to people that deserved it better. before senior year, a teacher also passed away. it was only until then that the school would fucking hire a new teacher, and by hiring hear this means begging the old teacher to come back to teach. I had no idea he passed away on that day, so I stepped into the classroom with extreme relief that he was not there, because he was a very bad teacher but a good person (his last words to me was congratulating me when I played the piano in front of the school.) I felt like a lot of people judged me in that moment. but to be honest, I have the right to be pissed, because it takes me literally 2 hours of commuting to school every day, only to waste time in a class where the teacher doesn't teach. I also liked psychology then, and incompetent teachers made it very hard for me to succeed. the problem is the selfish capitalist system and the people that endorsed it that would pay more for the school infrastructure instead of giving teachers paid sick leave. I felt like I didn't have a voice then.

when I was in college, I had many traumatic experiences. I lost luggages so many times when travelling abroad. and the disappointment when you go back home and home is no longer what you remember as you too have grown up. people that were your friends also grow up and moved elsewhere. times when I was being rejected from acapellas and told to apologize for something that I didn't mean due to cultural differences, and more often than not, it's a white person. times when I work in the dining hall 14 hours a week to be financially dependent from my parents and yet some people would not look at me in the eye. times when I live with shitty neighbors that would party in their room and say that my complaint is not valid because it's not quiet hours for the dorm yet. my off-campus life sucks now, but I would take that over whatever crap that was dorm life at the mawr. I start french from scratch at bryn mawr, and that also goes with a lot of bullshit. I remember for freshman year in college, for lunar new year, I was the only asian that was in class that day, and he would call it chinese new year and keep asking me questions like why does vietnam celebrate it, is it because of the war? why was ho chi minh's will was published 20 years after his death and it's coincidentally after the national independence day? while all this is true, and he actually wanted to be cremated and not being another stalin and lenin, this is not a respectful way to talk about my culture. I regret trying so hard to be liked in that class, and I was also frustrated with how my classmates didn't understand that he was being weird and racist, not kind towards them.

when I travelled in vietnam with my friends, I was also being mistreated because of my masculine voice and my friends also had racist experiences. it was really depressing to see my country through this lens. and how I also won't have much freedom of speech to say what I want to say both in vietnam and in the united states, because let's be honest, every country hates hearing ugly truths about itself.

I remember feeling left out in the lab I was working in, times when I wish I was in the lab photo. I remember giving people stuff from vietnam and countries that I travelled to in the hope to make friends, and how they also wouldn't talk to me. I remember not having a say over what I want to put in my poster. I remember people calling my name the wrong way. I remember times when I was excluded from the email list. I remember times when I was trying to speak up in lab meals about my culture, and yet everyone would not listen to vietnamese folklore. I remember the stress I had from missing flights, losing my camera, emergency trips, work gone unrecognized that summer. I feel so looked down on as a vietnamese person, whether by accident or design. being hard working is not enough, when you work is simply unrecognized. I deserve better.

I may forgive that professor at one point or another, but I will never forget how she made me felt during that time. I will never forget how I barely had the time and energy to cook and eat during lab days, and how she made me cry every single day, to the point that I lose my vision, to the point of being suicidal. little acts of kindness helps, don't step on people that already have less rights, that already tried their best, just for your fucking peace of mind. the people that made me quit academia before I even begin. the stress that that professor gave me made me withdraw from the first french class that counts towards the minor, and I will not fucking forget that. I didn't just sacrifice stuyding abroad and summer that I couldn've gone home for fucking nothing. I will never forget someone that makes me cry every single day when I wake up and no amount of eye lubrican would prevent my eyes from drying out.

I feel like I was constantly trying to please white people, and constantly falling short. it was until that day that my close friend told me that "sang, you don't need to give me stuff for me to like you" that I think I finally awakened. when I talked to faculty about grad school, a lot of them also had trauma stories, and I was also severely discouraged from doing that in the first place. no paid maternity in the united states is a lot of bullshit and it only makes people that're downstreams, aka the students, suffer.

I grow up in a family where both my mom's and dad's side was a victim of the vietnam war, no matter what side they followed. they both suffered because of poverty, lack of human rights, and patriarchy. they both suffered from the death of someone they love in their family. on my dad's side, I grow up with male relatives that were addicts, unemployed, suffered with the stigma of teen pregnancy, blind follower of faith, and female relatives that would get into domestic violence, people that my dad would give money to instead of investing it on my own tuition. I remember my mother fighting with my dad just so that I can have a better education. I also grow up constantly being compared to whoever that was better than me in my mother's side. they asked me why I put so much pressure on myself now, yet they don't even see that it was them that did that to me in the first place. before I made it, no bitches would believe in me but myself.

let me be fucking honest with you, vietnam is still a country with very unsustainable economic growth that's nuking its own environment. and wherever there's poverty, there's corruption, even religion. I've seen so many cases of people exploiting their faith for unjust causes: from my catholic kindergarten nun asking for money, my dad's friend who's a buddhist nun and her network that's also subtly racist and homophobic. they tried their best to give me a good time, but their lack of education means that they have no idea they were doing more harm to me than good. and after seeing them, I cannot believe in religion anymore. I know and understand religion, but I can never believe in it with complete faith.

you cannot escape from your family, but you can resist the bullshit you see, and try to be financially independent to escape from the bullshit that you see.

my parents wasted so much money on supporting people that were corrupted, and this is because they didn't have time to get the education that they deserved in life. I can no longer believe in religion. I also no longer believe in knowledge the way that I used to know. I also don't believe in politics. I know religion, science, and politics, but I don't believe in them to fix my problems, because I can die before the candidate I love or hate die, and they're not going to fix my life. you just have to accept that social changes are happening, and like nature, old ideologies will die too to make space for whatever that's better. the rule of nature is simply if it works, it works. death is not a bad thing. I don't think we would miss a world where hitler was still alive right now.

I don't like the concept of karma because in buddhism it promises happiness after death and it forces people to behave outside of fear. I like freewill and justice better because people do that as they want to, and you get that happiness in your lifetime. justice is in the law, but also within yourself. 

can you imagine how much courage that it took for me to love myself for what it's worth and be who I am today, when I was not born with that resources? a lot, and I did not do that alone. it's thanks to the friends that I made along the way that I was able to survive and be happy. it's the choices that I make.

III

we accept the love we think we deserve (perks of being a wildflower)

you don't need to be accepted by others, you need to accept yourself (thích nhất hạnh)

the lovers

I had crushes on a lot of people, some of them are considered pretty problematic to normal societal standards. I think that's why I do a lot of soul searching in wes anderson and trần anh hùng's movies to feel like I'm not alone in all this bullshit. when you don't have a stable family growing up, you mistake whoever that gives you peace of mind for romantic love, and this happens to myself and a lot of people that I know. your feelings are valid. don't beat yourself up for feeling something, you're human too.

I dated and had crushes on horrible people, and it's only because it was the only love that I was allowed to have in the society that I was born in. my taste in people is getting better, and if you want solid dating advice it's something like this: like because, love despite. and in vietnamese we have the word thương, which translates to unconditional love.

dear young people, life is not a sprint, it's a marathon. good things take time. it's human to hate seeing happy and successful people. delete social media not because you want to prove anything to the world, but because it helps with your mental health.

you don't have to prove anything to anyone, including yourself.

I don't fuck with people that only have one of these adjectives to describe them

• nice people → this is the scariest kind, nice people either (1) doesn't know what they want and change themselves to please you and/or (2) is secretly evil inside
• rich people → please leave the chat, cash can't buy class
• elite/preppy people → please leave the chat, a brand name school doesn't guaratee basic common sense but can guarantee a lot of generational ego
• mean/creepy people → please leave the chat, you can't fix them
• hot people → please leave the chat, ghosting is not worth it
• cool people → please leave the chat, a person with a big ego and failure to accommodate is not worth it
• dumb people → please leave the chat, it's a waste of time (ở với người ngu thì mệt, said my grandpa)

there we go my philosophy in sex

the bare minimum in love, I repeat, the bare minimum in love

• kind people, people that treat everyone with respect, including yourself
• consensual people, people that ask you many many times if you really want it before proceeding with anything
• honest people, people that give you solid answers and certainty about what to expect, people that know their bandwidths
• people that treats you as a priority and not an excuse, no one is too busy to love (không ai là quá bận để yêu, huyền chip)
• people that try, I like people that fail and show their vulnerability more than people that cover up their insecurities 
• people that does projects for the common good (this is personal as this is me in most of my life, I'm a sucker for egalitarianism)
• people that make you laugh, like bro if you don't allow yourself happiness who else would?

love skills (the four immeasurables in love)

từ bi hỷ xả is a concept I learned from thích nhất hạnh's làng mai (plum village)

• từ, giving each other joy
• bi, relieves each other from pain
• hỷ, freedom from jealousy
• xả, giving each other space

this is a good starting point, but I also don't really agree with it because current patriarchy will tend to make women suffer more than men due to their gender roles as a daughter, a wife, and a mother. the solution to this is concrete laws that enforce gender equality. we need to understand that the current patriarchy breaks both men and women. men that grow up not knowing how to stock a fridge and women that had to sacrifice their career for an incompetent man due to societal pressures. I don't like barbie because I feel like it's a hollow movie and fails to prove this point.

my dad literally told me shit like no matter how successful career-wise I am, I have to drop everything and get married before 30. my mom also won't allow me to date until after college but I have to get married before 30. it took me a lot of blood, sweat and tears to say that I don't fuck with this system, and I've seen people that spent their whole 20s to exit the bullshit patriarchy, only to reinsert themselves into another one upon getting married because of societal pressures.

I hate big weddings with a burning passion. big weddings are only fun when you're a kid eating all kinds of food, not when you're the main character. both my parents come from traditional families where wedding is a show-off. that's why I like legal ceremony and elopment. those prioritize the marriage, the real thing, over the wedding, the performance.

my grandma from my mother's side used to tell me this one thing: pray once before going to war, pray twice before going to the sea, and pray thrice before going into marriage.

let's be fucking honest, money is not easy to come by in a society doesn't have paid maternity leave, and I'm unwilling to spend that on pleasing people that were basically sexist to me from the day that I was born until I make it. I'm not performing for the people that made me suffer the first place.

IV

broken dreams, the state of exile and almost happy

DOSTOEVSKY: the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons

ME: the degree of civilization in an office can be judged by how open you can be about telling the person that you work with that they suck

nowadays people know me as a chemistry major and french minor. what people don't know is that I had so many dreams before that, which my parents gradually rejected because we were poor and asian. like when I wanted to be a historian upon reading 4th grade vietnamese textbooks, or when I wanted to be an astronaut, a scientist, a psychologist, a graphic designer. people that said that mental health is not a real thing. I hate asian culture because of that.

they rejected all of my dreams as my dreams can't make money, then asked me why I am so unhappy when they gave me so much? I understand that they're human too, but growing up in a family with physical and verbal domestic abuse, as well as no privacy and trauma dumping is not the best thing that ever happened to me.

there comes the teacher that gave me 10% on my first stoichiometry exam in chemistry. I did not get involved in the corrupted system of education where you pay teachers money to take their outside classes and get access to the exam. there comes the teacher that made me navigate my IB program all by myself. there comes professors that made me suicidal and drop the french minor that I tried so hard to begin with. my family and I didn't work all the way here just for you to treat us like shit becuase we are vietnamese and you think we won't speak up.

because of my unfortunate past, I try my best to join places where I feel like would accept myself for what I'm worth, whether it's model united nations, to international programs, high school leadership, to clubs in college. in every single case, I'm almost always the one that's being exploited for the shit that people didn't do because they didn't have time. I'm always the one doing the extra work that they didn't do in the first place. and the worst thing that I observed in these cases is this: the people with brand name positions do the least work. I remember being rejected in an interview for a entrepreneurship club when I was being asked what I would do if I was given money, my answer was education and that's why I failed the interview.

I always join a school or a club when the most amazing people has left and the corrupted people got into the club. I've seen so much bullshit happening with people having crushes on each other and it changes the politics of the organizations that I was in. it happens so often that I don't even find it funny anymore.

climbing the social ladder made me realize that I like walking on earth with real people more. it was easier for me to make friends in vietnamese schools. for private schools that I attended for financial reasons, friendship is hard to come by and easy to dissolve.

V

dear hater

casey neistat: the haters, the doubters are all drinking champagne on the top deck of the titanic, and we are the fucking iceberg

do you want to know how I fucking get here? I worked my ass off, and yet so many evil people would still step on me to get ahead in life, because I'm vietnamese.

VI

dying for an idea is very fucking stupid, 

because nothing feeds a revolution stronger than the idea of progress

hate the system, love the people

I don't agree with this meme

let's play a game where we look at similarities. people in this meme are all men. no hate against them but I feel like patriarchy also broke them more than it healed them. imagine a world where dostoevsky could be going to the pride parade in new york instead of suffering in a prison in siberia.

don't die because of an ideal. live because of something. live because life gives you something to do, someone to love, and someone to look forward to. if you learn history and it's not depressing enough, you're not doing it right. maybe you should burn your country's history book and travel the world with a local. it's not your job to fix ideologies that have existed for millions of years. you only have one life to live, so do it right.

I'll tell you a story about 2 men, hồ chí minh and thích nhất hạnh. one man tried to liberate a country, another tried to liberate himself. one men died not according to his own will, another was also exiled and banned from going back to the country.

with the current existing inequalities in academia, I don't know if I would ever join academia or win a nobel prize, but if I do, I will win it to reject it like sartre and lê đức thọ did. thích nhất hạnh, despite being nominated one by martin luther king himself, never won one. I don't need a sticker to tell me that I can work. the only prizes that I've won so far is english and vietnamese, and it's my own fucking work.

never let grades define your performance. fuck academic validation. fuck generational trauma. fuck trauma dumping culture in chemistry.

VIII

and you know, we're on each other's team

chopin's hand cast

according to stacey flowers, you need 5 people to be happy in your life, you can remember this using your hand

1. cheerleader, someone that tells you that you can do it (thumbs up)
2. mentor, someone that points you in the direction you need to go (index finger)
3. coach, someone that gives you a hard time so that you can maximize your potential (middle finger)
4. friend, someone that knows your true heart's desire (ring finger)
5. peer, someone that keeps your head in the game (pinky)

the best thing you can do during times like this is not letting bullshit people destroy you.

intention, not attention, is the most basic form of love. if you've already been hurt enough, the best thing you can do is love yourself and stop all the generational trauma. so that when you welcome future people into your life, you can give them the freedom to be who they are.

sometimes you just have to tell yourself that you deserve this, and be with people that tell you the same thing. you deserve the most beautiful love story ever written on earth. you deserve this, you deserve that.

I've seen too many people that died in front of my eyes before I get to understand them and tell them that I love them. we don't have forever, we have to act now. if something takes away your peace of mind, it's too expensive. learn to say no to bullshit. life will always be so full of shit, but you can do it.

don't wait for politics or anything to fix your problem. the time is always now.

IX

put the past to sleep

ojou sama go to bed. it's been a long night.