Tattoos to honor

Last October, I got my first tattoo: a red string with a few jade beads on my upper left arm.

Everyone likes to ask about its meaning or why I got it. Sometimes I say it’s a fanfic trope, but most of the time I tell the truth, or at least what Wikipedia told me. While the red string of fate is traditionally associated with marriage, I feel like it ties me to my family. The jade beads are more for me — some well wishes of luck.

This past fall was the first semester I spent away from home since the pandemic started. I’d spent more than a year in suburban Southern California, so I really missed my family, and wanted something to remind me of our bond. I was already calling my mother a few times a week — she’d ask me about how my classes were going, and I’d ask her if anything new was happening at church, if my brother was adjusting to his first year at college — but it was never enough. I wanted something more permanent.

Was I well aware of how my father despised my older siblings’ tattoos? Absolutely. But I felt like familial honor could shield me from too much yelling. I had constantly pushed for the highest grades in my class and stayed out of trouble, even when it was to the detriment of my social life. I never told him if there were any obstacles in what he saw to be my perfect life — if it’s for him, he shouldn’t be too upset. Right? I don’t plan on finding out. My brother decided to be a wise guy and tell my mother. She told me that my father could never know. I’ve seen how my family reacts to things they don’t like. There’s a lot of yelling and frustration and a consistent inability to hold a conversation about it. Defense mechanisms leave me silent and my eyes full of tears.

With the help of light jackets and brief interactions, he is still none the wiser.

It’s a pretty tattoo, and I’m content with how it looks. But as with every decision I’ve made under the scope of honor, I don’t feel anything beyond contentment.

Honor is a complicated thing for me. Time and time again, I’m reminded of all the sacrifices my family has made — my grandparents are immigrants, as are my parents. My mother left her family and all of her siblings in Malaysia to accompany my father for U.S. residency. My father never made it past his high school degree, but he somehow achieved that rags-to-riches dream. He says his sole hope before he passes away is to see each of his kids walk their college graduations.

In life, and especially in academics, I try to be the perfect kid, the one your parents would be jealous of if they heard my name. It was the only measure of worth I’d known.

I chose NYU over the state schools I was accepted into because it felt like I’d somehow done better than my siblings. High school forced me into an environment that quantified value by academic worth and college appeal, so it was like a two-for-one deal for validation from both peers and family.

I’ve often joked that I ran solely on anxiety, which was painfully true for those four years. I just wasn’t diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder until I graduated.

So I complain about my GPA going down by a hundredth, try to complete that inconceivably long thesis, and recite by heart three practical routes I can take with my applied psychology and linguistics majors to any questioning soul. I think it’s all a part of fitting into that honorable perspective.

If I can’t even get honors in a major that everyone has to question, is it really worth it?

All of my friends around me reassure me that it is, that one C-plus isn’t the end of my academic career, that I’ll overcome a missed assignment or quiz, that all that matters is that I’m doing my best. While I do believe some of it, there’s a little voice in the back of my head that has internalized years of academic pressures and familial expectations with a sprinkle of generational trauma. It says that my 15-minute breaks are excuses to slack off and that my efforts are simply not enough.

I can’t help but contradict myself. Even when I feel like I won’t be able to, I constantly encourage everyone around me to work toward what they want to do.

It makes me so happy to see my younger brother ignoring our parents’ expectations. He sacrificed job marketability in order to actually enjoy what he’s studying. Our parents don’t sing the same praises about him, but the pressure I feel is a burden he doesn’t have to carry.

He makes me want to work harder — if I do, our parents will never have a reason to turn to him.

But all too often I wonder: Am I really OK with this perfect life my parents want? Is everything I say I want to do really what I want to do? How far has the line blended between what I want to do and what they want me to do?

For me, parental love isn’t just serving cut-up fruit and being unable to talk about your emotions — it’s a bond that feels like it’s only acknowledged when you can honor them.

So naturally, the second tattoo I got was also for them: a line of their Chinese zodiac signs. The tiger is for my father, the first goat is for my mother, the snake is for me and the second goat is for my brother. It’s a piece I’ve been thinking about getting for a while, and when the artist I wanted to get it from had an open slot, I almost considered it fate.

When my mother found out about my first tattoo, she made me promise not to get any more until my father passed away. It was a bit morbid, but my family likes to work in extremes and empty promises. When I was consulting the artist, I considered coloring my brother’s and mine black, while our parents’ were red, a representation of our differences, physical and cultural. My brother said it was cringey, so I didn’t. But the message still rings true. I constantly feel like an impostor in my own home. If I ever came out to my family, I have it hammered into my mind that I would be shunned. My parents are the kind of people who say, “Gay people can do whatever they want — if their lives don’t affect me.”

So of course, they can’t even fathom their children being gay. I know I have nothing to apologize for, but I can’t help but feel like my existence is wrong, can’t help but fear their backlash.

My use of 他 (tā) is like me grasping for straws: the intersection between my culture and history and objective fact. Historically, it was the only thirdperson pronoun before its male denotation. Now, many Chinese transgender individuals have reverted to its original, singular meaning. Because all thirdperson singular pronouns are homophones, it’s weirdly validating from other people. But there’s this impending, unfortunate knowledge that the same will never be true for my parents.

All I can do now is take the praise they give to their daughter, the person I pretend to be. And I can’t say anything to correct them.

I’m so used to the support they give me, and losing that is so terrifying.

All I can do now is hope, dream, that if I ever tell them, they’ll think it’s an honor. Much like the kind I try to return. It only makes sense after all they’ve done for me.

Maybe, eventually, I’ll get something that doesn’t make sense, something that I don’t feel like I need to justify.