My senior year of high school, in the midst of more emotional turmoil than any young woman my age should have to face, I decided to make a drastic change in the way I think. I decided to become more positive. I know, I know. It sounds cliche, but it truly did make a difference in my life. I decided to ignore the negativity around me and to focus on my own personal health. After constantly noting my thinking patterns and stopping myself from holding onto negative thoughts, I found myself happier than I had ever been before. I started caring more for myself and for the people around me. I was actually genuinely happy, an emotion I forgot I had. However, with this came a new dilemma that I thought I would never have faced since making this big self-induced change: people question why I always try to stay positive, why I always try to look for the best in people and why I always try to be nice to strangers.

Here’s an open letter to all those who have questioned the authenticity of my positivity.

My family isn’t exactly what most people would consider a stereotypical “Asian family.” The fact that they allowed me to pursue journalism in college speaks a lot to how much we break the stereotype of an “Asian family.” I would instead like to argue that we fit the stereotype of an extremely dysfunctional family. My family has had a history of mental illness (depression and another illness that we have yet to pinpoint) that has caused a lot of discontent, distrust, and constant eruptions of anger to become a regular in my household. In an environment like this, with a mother who quite literally lost her mind and a father who forgot how to love, it’s easy to focus on all of the negativities this world seemingly has to offer. I was upset at everything. Any little thing that went wrong - related or unrelated to my situation at hand - suddenly became a reason to hate myself, my life, and my family. I stopped seeing the little joys in life.

I once tried to tally the days in a row that my mother did not go through one of her mental illness-induced stints. My longest tally was two days.

Instead of smelling the roses, I complained that the roses weren’t in bloom long enough. Instead of enjoying a cup of coffee, I complained that the coffee was too hot to drink faster.

I kept this mentality on for almost a year. Every day, just loathing who I was and who I knew I would become because I knew it was going to be passed down the family tree to me. I decided to stop this way of thinking when I looked at my family and thought, “You are all the reason why I decided to go to university on the East Coast,” when I should have been saying, “Thank you for supporting my decision to go to a prestigious university.” It hit me. What is my unhappiness and distrust with this world doing for me? Anything positive? Am I a better person for being negative? Absolutely, definitely not. I was feeding off of the negative energy of my ill family circumstances and spitting this negativity back at them. I was doing nothing to alleviate mine - or their - situation. I was not at fault, however, I was not being a useful human. Me yelling at my mother every night for not trying to find a way to alleviate her mental health should have been switched to sessions in family therapy right from the start.

When I caught myself brewing in my own negativity for the first time, I decided it was time for a change. It was time to smell the roses and to drink my hot cup of coffee. I spent so much time looking at the bad traits of my family that I stopped acknowledging the fact that my mother and father had once raised me with immense love. One day, I hugged my mother and helped my father come to the realization that maybe seeing a psychologist and family therapist was not something that they should be ashamed of. One day, I decided to change myself for the better.

I try to smile at every stranger now. I try to pet every dog that I see walking on the streets. I’ll always stop to help someone, whether I know them or not. Whenever someone rants to me about how much they hate someone else, I try to justify the other person’s actions. I decided I was done trying to be angry at the world. No one is at blame for what had happened, but if you are unwilling to help alleviate the situation, you are contributing to it.

Every once in a few months, my positivity barrier drops for a bit. When I feel stress start piling up, I can feel my guard slowly letting down. The last time this happened, I took a walk down to the river next to my dorm at one in the morning and let myself cry for a few minutes. During this time, the only thought running through my head was, “what if I am becoming like my mother?” However, as usual, I caught myself. I kept telling myself I should be better than these thoughts that I was having. My mother’s condition and my family tree does not dictate my happiness. I was brought onto this Earth to carve my own path, to make a difference uncontrolled by my past.

I stay positive on a daily basis because back at home, I am reminded of what happens when people do not maintain positivity. I stay positive because I know what it is like to be negative, and that is something I never want to go through again.

This is to everyone who has complained about my positivity, who has complained about my constant need to befriend everyone and to be nice to everyone. I know what it is like to be unhappy, and I never want to grasp that emotion tightly again. Don’t ever let yourself succumb to the negativity around you because you are better and stronger than your issues and the people causing these issues to happen.