As a teen I would stay up at night wishing I was white (because my white friends’ parents were OK with me being queer. They showed me a kind of love my life was so sorely lacking in.

My mother also used to throw my medication (antidepressants) away because “chemicals bad” and it’ll “ruin [my] brain”, essentially.

Oh yea this is a big part of it.

Idk why, but like everyone in my extended family seem to just distrust psychaitry. Nobody takes depression seriously.

Apparantly, one of my uncles/aunts/cousins managed to "get over depression" without taking medications, now my mom is using that as a role model. Like... the fuck.

I'm called weak for not having the "willpower" to "just get over depression". The fuck lol.

Like... I read about some of the international adoption thing and, despite the potential problems that could cause, I feel like some random white European/North American/Australian family would, statistically, probably be more understanding and tolerant of depression, more empathetic. Like I know I probably sound a little bit "internalized racist", but it's not really about the race thing, its the extremely conservative culture of a lot of Asian families. Like you go to my home village... omg people like just gossip and badmouth about that one family with the disable kid and think of him as a "burden" to the village. Like they'd have false pity, like "omg so sad" ... "so sad that this useless eater is wasting resources".

This is why, Taishanese (台山话 a variant/"dialect" of Chinese from Taishan, Mainland China, not to be confused with Taiwan, which is a different place) is kinda a dead language in my eyes.

Its just... (1) my parent never really spoke Taishanese to me and (2) a speaker of Taishanese is probably rural, and very conservative. Nobody in the cities uses that.

So while I can understand it, I just don't care for it. I don't wanna speak it.

As for Cantonese... I guess I can think about Hong Kong and how there are a lot of more liberal open minded people there. So maybe I wanna hold on to Cantonese. As for Mandarin... well there is Taiwan... and I just... hope that like out of 1.4 billion people, that there is a silent majority out there that wants a better government than... you know... the current one. A lot of Mandarin speakers are urban, more educated, a lot of intellectuals At least I hope there are alot of intellectuals out there that secretly wants change.

So... I guess I'm trying to make up the reasons to justify keeping Cantonese and Mandarin. I try to remind myself that my parents and the authoritarian government of China don't own these languages. But its hard to get rid of the subconscious negative associations.

As for Taishanese, yea I lost hope on that. Its pointless. Statistically, 99% of people speaking Taishanese are gonma have extremely fucked up rural conservative views.

Yeah I'm trying to.

But like

除咗同屋企人之外，我唔識幾多人講廣東話。

喺美國呢度出世啲都唔係幾識講，或者識，但係唔係幾識（我都自己唔係識幾多粵語 volcabulary），所以淨係得講英語。

識講廣東話嘅人一般都係啲老一代嘅人。我冇可能同啲老嘢傾得都計，思想都唔一樣。

以前可以同我哥傾計，但係而家屋企關係已經係似戰場。

而家我用粵拼，其實一開都係我哥 introduce 呢個粵拼系統 to me.

所以我而家打緊字都一味諗起佢同我打攪嘅記憶。

我記得有一次我喺廣州嘅時候，佢打我，我怕道走出街。

我仲記得嗰日，自己一個人，8歲都未夠。好驚阿。

我都唔知點解最近先諗返起。A "repressed memory" maybe.

So... you know... it hard. I try to think about Hong Kong more, I think about resistance against the “當今皇帝” (if you know what I mean), resistance against the “朝廷”, I know, Cantonese symbolize that defiance...

but its hard, its hard to when 99% of conversations are with your abusers...

Ironically, it was actually the adversity I faced when I first arrived in the US that, at first, made me more attached to my language. I remember just writing down the Chinese characters of my name just to kinda "show off" a bit, that I'm unique. I even learned the traditional characters to make it look "cooler". I wrote it on my notebook covers and on assignments, right next to the "Pinyin name". Even though I kinda forgot like basically all other characters (can read, can't write, characters are hard, no time to practice lol).

I remember like sometime I'd write stuff in Pinyin for fun. Nobody in school can read it. Like a secret code.

Then over time, as I moved up in school, after I finally learned English. And also as you get older, kids tend to mature and are less racist. Then the scale shifts, suddenly, the emotional trauma I faced at home is worse than what I faced on the outside world. So now, even if I just hear a Cantonese song, that I actually like, and it still, it keeps remind me of my parents.

Like, you see. 99% of interactions in Cantonese are with my parents and older brother. they suck. so that feeling naturally is associated with the language.

For English, its only 50% bad, 50% good or at least "fine", so I feel more negativity about Chinese languages. Even with Mandarin, which I don't speak at home. I hear all their WeChat shit on loudspeakers. It reminds me of CCP. One Child Policy, I'm the 2nd child. So that's why. So the Chinese languages are just "tainted" in my mind, subconsciously.

It's complicated, hard to explain.

This was the main reason my mom's side didn't pass language down. Not even food! Just assimilate 🤷‍♂️ But they were peasants in a new country so best to make it work in the easiest way possible. It sounds like OP has it pretty rough 🙁

I think people that want to leave their country are probably from countries that are less developed in terms of like civics. Like Human Rights, democracy, equality, disability rights, open-minded ness. So these are generally more conservative.

The less developed the civics are, less less desirable it is to live there, thus the more desirable it it to leave that country.

So... conservative families... need say more?

Statistically, they are very strict and have an authoritarian household system.

Literally, like every Asian classmate I've met, like not just East Asia, but also like Southeast Asia and South Asia, by the way they all describe it, it all sounds similar in terms of authoritarianism of their household.