My childhood revolved around my father and was filled with unforgettable memories. I was the ultimate daddy’s girl.
My father showered me with attention and made me feel like the luckiest person in the world. Every morning, I would stare at myself in the mirror to see a little girl with a sparkling huge smile wearing thick thanaka that her dad applied to her face.
Every night, I would sit on his lap cajoling him to feed me the chewed betel nut out of his mouth, disrupting the silence of those peaceful starry nights. He was the fairy godmother to my Cinderella, the jungle comrade to my Tarzan, and the Genie to my Aladdin.
But my whole world turned upside down when my father was diagnosed with stage-three lung cancer. I was told he had just six months to live.
I despised the syringes injected into my father’s shrinking veins. I hated to see the blood from his wrist and my own hemophobia as my weakness.
Seeing the person I loved the most suffering while not being able to help was the worst kind of pain. The only thing I could do for him was to avoid crying in front of him. I was eleven when he passed away. At his funeral, all I could do for my mother was to avoid crying and pretend to be strong. As we prepared food for the guests, I took my only chance to cry, blaming the onions I was cutting. Since then, I have become an expert at hiding my feelings.
I hid my feelings to an extent that showing any vulnerability became my biggest fear. “Oh, what a cheerful girl with charming dimples!” was a compliment I often heard from my mother’s friends. When the class celebrated our last farewell to the math teacher, when my first cat died, whenever I saw my friends’ fathers pick them up after school—no one ever saw me cry.
About Yun
- Age: 21
- Ethnicity: Burmese
- Country: Myanmar
School & Program
- Sterling College
- Bachelor’s, Environmental Humanities
- 4th Year in Program
Goals & Dreams
- Become an environmental consultant
- Be authentically me
Loan Details
- Loan Amount: $7,000
- Amount Left To Fund: $6,200
- Contract Duration: 13 years
- Status: In School
Despite my apparent toughness, at the back of my mind I was missing what used to be my safest spot to unleash my tears: my beloved dad’s chest. I had to suffer alone, which doubled my burdens. The last straw that pushed me to the edge was while preparing for the matriculation exam, which is the most critical turning point of a student’s life in Myanmar.
I could handle the pressure from my teachers, family, and myself no longer. In the classroom, while I was sitting alone in full distress, my best friend came up to me with a spoon. She gently stared at my eyes and said, “Just cry out loud, and put this on your eyelids afterward. It will prevent your eyes from swelling up.” The moment I started to cry, I reminisced about how safe I had been with my late father. But he had never left me; he had been in my heart the whole time. I just needed to unlock my genuine soul to reach him.
Showing my vulnerability did not imply that I am weak. Tears are a part of who I am, and I don’t feel ashamed of them anymore. Of course, it was and still is hard to break my long-practiced habit of hiding my tears, but I won’t try to conceal my feelings and emotions any longer. I smile. I cry. I enjoy what I am. I would never choose onions over a spoon again. I’m sure that my father would want to see me as authentic—a person without a mask.
Written by Yun with editing assistance from Zomia’s volunteer editors.
Yun
“I believe that education is power, and I must be educated to be strong.”
