To my mom, dad, and crazy brother:

For people who read my article on how I avoided my tragic death. You may think that I have a very tragic childhood and whoever my parents are, they did a very bad job at it. Let me tell you that people make mistakes, I made mistakes, my parents made mistakes, everybody made mistakes.

Things didn’t go according to plan as I would expect it would be, that’s what life is. My articles for the past few weeks has been all about negativity, but now, let me brighten up things by putting a bit of spice in the story. My childhood in elementary school was awesome because I was a child… Yes, a child. When we are a child, we think that everything is awesome, and in my case, it was. I had a cool first childhood. I got to go to places and explore new things, you could say that it was my first memory about school. It was great but they were just my memories about school, it wasn’t as important as my quality times with my family. My mom devoted her time to teach me English and wanted me to travel to the U.S and become successful. My parents were also very adventurous and they devoted their time to take me to places. I don’t remember where I went on this trip, but I remembered what happened to me. We were on a bus which was totally empty except for me and my parents. They were so excited to show me the world, I was excited too, for like 15 minutes before I snoozed off on the chair. What happened next sounds like it came from a movie but this actually happened to me. I fell off the chair and rolled on the floor, the funny thing was that I was still half a sleep so I didn’t feel the impact but kinda know what just happened. My parents rushed over to me, worried that something might have happened until they found out I was still sleeping. They busted out laughing and put me back on the chair with a smile. I saw that smile, from my dad, from my mom, they were beautiful and vibrant. I love their smiles.

Fast forwarding to middle school, I had my first trauma. It wasn’t pretty and I almost lost my life. I hid that piece of me from everyone else, including my parents. I don’t know why I thought that no one can help me at all, even my own parents. My judgement was wrong, dead wrong! Yes, things didn’t go so well during my time of being bullied, but by spending more time with my parents on trips to islands for vacation, to foreign countries, it took the bullying and suicide problem out of my mind. Suddenly, I wasn’t faking my happiness anymore, it was genuinely real. Real happiness. My brother was apart of it too. He was always my sidekick, a cool one too, a smart ass sometimes.

Jumping to High School, 10th grade was my last year in Vietnam as a High School student. I had my courage to tell them what happened, but I backed out of it in the end and decided to keep it as a secret. BIGGEST MISTAKE EVER MADE IN MY LIFE! I went to Virginia and finished High School there, my happiness blinded others happiness when I heard that I received a scholarship for the college which I am in now. I went back to Vietnam to renew my VISA and spend some of my time with family and friends. It was great, I get to have more time with my dad at home, I had more emotional but adult conversation with him. I had more time with my mom by visiting her at her work place and spend a few days with her and my little brother in Thailand shopping and visiting her old boss. I get to see them again until I left to Washington for college. I was excited but part of me saying that I should have told them what my past was. Again, I decided to keep it as a secret because I know they would think that they were bad parents, teaching me all the wrong things, but no, those tragic events that happened to me was because I didn’t tell them the truth. If I would have that conversation with them, they wouldn’t have to find out about my story by reading it from my article. I had a Skype call with my mom on Feb 3rd and I knew she was going to rage and angry at me, especially to herself for thinking that she was the reason that those tragic events happened to me. This article is devoted to my parents and my real feelings about them in this following quote from me:

“Mom, Dad. You guys taught me a lot of things that made me become ME today. All the events that I kept as a secret from you was a bad idea and I’m sorry for that. But I used one important lesson from you guys which is learn from my mistakes. I used that and I improved myself after 10th grade. Everything is fine, there is nothing to worry about and don’t be harsh on yourself anymore, it wasn’t your fault, it was mine, IT WASN’T YOUR FAULT, IT WAS MINE.”