DNA Intergenerational Trauma Capsule

 


Randy Kim vietnamese cambodian american

By: Randy Kim
Heritage: Vietnamese/Cambodian-American
Profession in U.S.: Communications


One night, several years ago, I was awoken to a sudden scream downstairs in the living room. My body jolted out of bed as I heard my father yelling. I couldn’t make out the words from his moment of terror. I woke him up.

He quickly convulsed and opened his eyes. I asked him what was going on, and he snapped, “NO! Go back upstairs!” I left him alone and for the rest of the night he stayed silent. In the nights that followed, those nightmares would continue, sometimes into daylight.

My dad is a Cambodian genocide survivor. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge staged a military coup and took over Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. From 1975-79, the regime murdered 2 million+ people and forced civilians to evacuate into the rural countryside where they were overworked, starved, punished, and caught illnesses. My dad managed to escape, along with a few other men who joined him. They arrived in Thailand and were put in refugee camps with thousands of Khmer refugees. After several months, my father embarked on his new journey to America.

A few years later, he met my mom, who arrived in America a year after she escaped Vietnam. They married shortly after meeting, and brought me into the world, where I became the first one born in the U.S. from either sides of my family.

Along with my two younger brothers, I grew up in a middle working class family in the Chicago suburbs. My dad, at his best, was loving, tender, and jolly. As kids, my brothers and I would excitedly race each other to greet him at the door whenever he came home from work. I would remember him tucking me into bed and kissing me goodnight. However, there was a side to him that grew dark, unpredictable, and menacing.

He often lashed out at my mom, then would take it out on my two younger brothers and I. His burst of anger would come at random moments; I could be asking him whether it would be okay for me to visit my friend down the street, and he would suddenly erupt and insist that my friend is manipulating me. He was also verbally and physically abusive whenever my brothers and I struggled in school.

My dad’s temperament made it challenging for me to be confident in school. I was pressured to succeed academically, and in doing so, I had to assimilate into a culture that my parents were unfamiliar with and wouldn’t be able to guide me through. As a result, I had to navigate my parents through the adopted culture we were living in. Whether it was having to write or speak English for them or educating them on how to utilize resources that would help our family, I took on these tasks as a young kid.

By high school, my relationship with my dad began to worsen. I would have loud arguments with him, and fought against his paranoia over my life and his own perception of the world. I have seen some of my dad’s close friends, who were also genocide survivors, live normal lives and have closer relationships with their families, and wondered why my dad couldn’t be like them.

I didn’t live through my parents’ war trauma, but the residue of their experiences have impacted my life. I often felt the shame of bringing my dad around my friends. I dealt with self-esteem issues because of the unreasonable expectations that my dad wanted from me as a kid, and the shame I experienced when I never fulfilled them. I inherited some of my dad’s rage that I had used to fight back against him. I was fortunate enough to have a strong support system from family and friends who kept me from succumbing to my anger.

For the past 10 years, I have witnessed my dad’s decline. He has never been able to let go of the trauma he experienced in Cambodia. Consequently, he has isolated himself from his family and has refused to seek medical attention for his own fear of being harmed. His inability to hold himself accountable for his harm towards my family has made it difficult to reconcile our relationship with him. This is the man who brought me here, and shielded us away from an environment that caused him trauma, yet his own pain is passed on for us to either continue or heal.

I choose to heal.

• • •

Randy Kim is a 2nd generation Queer Vietnamese-Cambodian American from Chicago. He currently serves as a board member with the National Cambodian American Heritage Museum & Killing Fields Memorial, and has served both internationally and locally in non-profits. His hobby includes writing, traveling, and civic engagement.

- Follow Randy on Instagram: @randall_kimball