We’re immigrants from rural China who immigrated to the United States a decade back. My mother barely graduated high school before she started to work and my dad went to university but never got a degree. They didn’t understand the full scope of parenting when I was born; my mother was in her early twenties and my father, late twenties. We were poor, never had a stable home. And to add on, I was a sickly kid who went to the hospital every other month—so that didn’t help our financial situation in the least.

My mother and I immigrated first because she had family here. My dad came in two years later; they weren’t officially married then, just had a ceremony in my mom’s village. The first few years in the U.S were tremendously difficult. It was only because of my parents that I managed to pull through. They’d tell me to work hard and excel in school so I can receive the opportunities they never had, get a job where I’m not surviving from paycheck to paycheck, and own a home of my dreams.

I listened because I’d been old enough to understand that the opportunity we received isn’t always granted to everyone. And I wanted to make them proud, so I threw myself in academics, learned all the school smarts but abandoned the street ones. Every time I hit a burnout, it’d last for weeks, sometimes months without end, but my parents’ words would be what pulled me through.

Until it didn’t. To summarize, I reached a point where there was just nothing left in me to move forward. It’s hard to describe; felt like a visceral hole just kept eating away at my chest and insides. This burnout just didn’t end, going into my junior year. My mom noticed, and she tried to talk to me about it but I would clam up and brush it off as simply nothing. My dad knew but not the extent that my mom did. It wasn’t his fault, he’s away most of the month due to his job. They kept trying to understand but I just wouldn’t let them. We had, and still have, a language barrier. I’m only conversational in the dialect we speak, and is frankly shit at candidly expressing my emotions.

Earlier this year, they found out I’m suicidal. I won’t go into the details. My mom found out first and she just stared at me in this incredulous way. I thought I fucked up, letting her know about my problems the way she did when I’d been the one to push her away. She didn’t speak to me for a couple of hours, and couldn’t even look at me in the eye during that time.

Then she talked to me and frankly, I didn’t think I could’ve hit a better jackpot of parents.

It wasn’t incredulity, she wasn’t disbelieving of everything, she was scared shitless. She didn’t talk to me because she couldn’t trust herself to stay together, and knew that she needed to be the rock in this conversation. She asked if it was okay she told my dad, and I said yes. She doesn’t deserve to bear the knowledge alone. It wouldn’t be fair to my dad either.

They never spoke about it again, but it was fine. The original belief they had about me needing to work above and beyond to get straight A’s and to get a better job? Not even a week after the conversation, they threw that out the window. They told me they don’t care what I pursue or what grades I get. As long as I’m happy and I’m content, they don’t care. They will love me either way and I’ll still be their daughter. I’ll always be their daughter.

It probably sounds silly that I’m emotional over it, and I don’t care if I sound silly over it, it’s so ineffably touching that they were willing to change their set-in-stone beliefs in such a short amount of time because of me. Heck, those things were spoken to them by their respective families. They simply told me the same thing they were told as children. Except they encouraged it more because my opportunity had been bigger than theirs. They came here for the same reason. It wasn’t as simple as simply saying it for the sake of it. Their words were raw and genuine.

They started to plan more trips, made a habit of saying “I love you”, and so much more.

We still can’t understand each other fully. I’m not fluent in Chinese and my parents aren’t in English. But I like to think that they’re making efforts to improve and I’m trying to get better at it as well. I want to tell them this one day, once I get the courage.