Validation

So many of us go through life needing validation from those around us. Be it from our peers, from our family, or from our friends. For some their validation comes via their professional success. For others, it may be possession of luxury designer items. We’re all guilty of this to some varying degrees, whether we’re conscious of it or not is another story.

For the longest time I’ve been trying to break free of needing validation from my family. My dear family has this thing about “face”, like so many in Asian culture. So long as they “have face” (see : looking good outwardly to society), they couldn’t careless how that is achieved. Most of the time, it was achieved by ignoring the emotional damage.

I used to love painting my nails when I was a teenager, often having different colors on at the same time. One time I was out with my mother, her friend and her friend’s daughter. We were all in a taxi going somewhere, when her friend’s daughter noticed my nail colors and complimented them. My mother looked at my nails and slapped me across the face. I had apparently embarrassed her by having different colors on my nails. The atmosphere in the taxi immediately tensed up. No one spoke for the rest of the way. And when we got out of the taxi, my mother acted as if nothing had happened, and expected me to act normal and carry on about the day.

My mother and father had always had an issue with me painting my nails. Even few years before this, I had on clear nail polish I borrowed from my grandma, my dad scolded me in the middle of a grocery store. He was so loud and made such a scene that the ladies working at the grocery store had to comfort me and defuse the situation.

Apparently painting my nails to them was a sign of them losing face. They couldn’t fathom that I wanted to paint my nails was just something a normal teenager would do. They believe that I was doing that to embarrass them, because to them only hookers and the undesirables would paint their nails.

A few years later, we were at another family gathering. A young daughter of my cousin had her nails painted. My mother complimented her in front of everyone, saying how pretty her nails were. I cringed so hard inwardly, memories of her slapping me in the taxi quickly flashed before my eyes. I didn’t say anything … but I often think back to that moment wishing I had. My mom wanted to be the “cool auntie” so she complimented my cousin’s daughter.

Talk about emotional damage.

For so many years, I’ve carried the shame of not being “good enough” for my parents. All the while fighting the demons to stay true to myself, to be who I want to be, to do things that I like to do. But no longer. It may have took me 30 plus years to get here, but I’ve finally achieved nirvana (lol). I no longer care what they think, I no longer yearn for their approval. I’ve built a pretty incredible life, I’ve checked off so many things on my list. My revenge is to lead a happy and fulfilling life without caring what their opinions are. And I know they absolutely cannot stand that.