Dear Fraidy,
It was such a privilege to have an opportunity to listen to your talk on October 15 at the Columbia University Department of Population Health. My name is Chung, the boy who sat in the front row. I, on behalf of everyone else, would like to thank you for taking your valuable time to share with us your life journey and give us such hope and motivation for helping others the way you do! I thought that it was only fair that I should as well share my story with you because you remind me of a very important woman in my life.
I came from a family of six in Cambodia (I’m the youngest). My mother taught me so many lessons, bad and good. She was so poor that she could not afford any story books. So she would tell me stories of her survival through the civil war (the Khmer Rouge, right after the Vietnam War in the 70s), her resistance towards my father to have me, how precious I was that she would do anything to protect me–despite the bitterness and hatred she lived through (if anyone at all can relate to her, it’s you!).
My mother, too, had no choice but to marry my father during the civil war (the couple-matching rule created by the communist leaders at that time). Shortly after their marriage, the war ended, my father became very violent and cruel. The only things he did were drink, gamble, and abuse my mother physically and emotionally. In our culture (influenced by Buddhism and Hinduism), divorce is something a woman would do right before she lost her damn mind (that’s what every member of my society would say). Therefore, my mother had no choice but to live under a male-dominant culture, taking her socially assigned role as a woman whose primary job is to please her husband’s sexual desires and to produce children and nothing she or anyone can do about it. However, my father tried to force her to abort me because he believed that I was conceived from a dark spirit and thus would bring my family bad luck (like we always had so much luck in our family before I was born).
I grew up without any relationship whatsoever with my father. He developed hatred towards me for no fault of my own. On the first day of my second grade, he gave me the first kiss I have ever had, and never had I imagined what it’s like. I didn’t know what it was, but I know it was not my father who gave me that kiss. It was a man who broke every piece of my mother’s heart, a man who provided me nothing but fear and anger. The only thing I remember of him were those nights when my mom hid me in our old bedroom closet and locked the door from the outside so he couldn’t hurt me. When my mom was not home, he would force me to give him oral sex. I remember one time I refused not to do what he wanted and he slapped me so hard that I couldn’t get off the ground. The next thing I knew was me waking up in my mom’s arms with a few neighbors surrounded her. I wondered why I couldn’t walk. I thought that was because my father hit me so hard. But it wasn’t what I thought. It was something I truly didn’t understand at that age. Yes, it was rape. My father raped me when I was only 7 years old.
My mom had to give my two sisters to relatives living in the city so that they would be safe away from my demonic/psychopath father. I spent years and years dreaming about those moments, moments I looked through the cracked closet door watching my mom get beaten, raped, shattered glasses all over the floor, the blood, and the tears on my mother’s face. I still have these dreams today!
My father later on committed suicide, but I have no memories of what exactly happened to him. I grew up knowing he took his own life, but I never know the details of it. I came to the U.S. in 2012 with the help of my American host family (you can find the detail of how they brought me here at this link). Ever since I came to the U.S. and start having this comfortable life with proper family, I have had this dream that woke me up almost every night. I dreamed of me walking into the wood, and suddenly the sky turned dark and an old falling-apart outhouse appeared in front of me—than this very fearful feeling took over me. The feeling of hopelessness, pain, and guilt all at once. Then I felt obligated to open the door of the outhouse and the dear I felt got worse and worse. A figure of a man hung up from the ceiling of the outhouse appeared when I opened the door. This dream woke me up shaking and sometimes crying unconsciously every time. So in 2015 (three years after I arrived in the U.S.), I went back to Cambodia to renew my passport. I wondered if my dream that had been hunting me for the past three years had anything to do with how my father died. When I asked around, my relatives and older siblings were so shocked. They were shocked because I did not remember that I WAS THE ONE WHO FOUND MY FATHER’S BODY HUNG IN THE OUTHOUSE after school. It was then when I realized that the kiss he gave me on my first day of my second grade was a goodbye kiss, and it was the last day I saw my father’s face.
The story of my mother, however, was different. I had an inseparable relationship with my mom. She was my hero and role model growing up. She was there for me whether I needed her or not, showed me what was right and what was wrong. She showed me what a woman was capable of, and what a mother would do to protect her children. Unfortunately, my mother too, passed away from liver disease (Hepatitis B) about seven years later when I was only in my 8th grade. I was her primary care person at home because all my siblings had to work far away to earn just enough to buy her very minimal required medicine. I was there for her every day of her life for one last year. I was there watching her drifting away with her last breath…yet, I could not do anything to help her. I wish I could take away all of her pain to myself and gave my life for her.
After my mom passed, I developed this hurtful feeling, a broken soul that finds whatever could relieve the pain from the inside. I did unspeakable things like insert needles under my fingernails, pull my hair, and whatever you could think that a broken 14-year-old boy would do, I did it. I did it not because I wanted to die, but I wanted to feel alive!
Having said that, you have given me so much inspiration that I tried so hard not to cry in front of my classmates (–well, I did a little–). People like you and my mother are the reasons I am doing what I am doing–doing public health, supporting women in any way I can. Every bit of my miserable life experiences started from the arranged marriage between my mother and father. Having to witness strong women like yourself able to rise and stand up against the male dominant society meant the world to me, and I wish my mother could be a part of it! And because my mother couldn’t be here, I am living her dreams and continuing her legacy for her, to be the man my father and many men couldn’t be.
I wanted to make a difference in the world even if it’s a little one. My hope is to continue onto my DrPH program right after I finish my master degree specializing in Population and Family Health, as I am doing now. I wanted to make sure, in my ability/power, that children whom I can reach would never have to live the life I once lived.
Again, thank you so much for deeply touching my heart with your story!
-Chung Lip
