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What It's Like to Be a First Gen Immigrant

Arranged Marriages

By Victoria MPublished 6 years ago 6 min read
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The topic of arranged marriages never gets brought up as much as they used to, love marriage is what everyone thinks about when marriage is brought up in a conversation. For me growing up, my life felt like it was normal, but everyone feels this way until you get to that age where you realize that your friends are the normal ones and you are the alien. The whole North American continent is made up of immigrants, but begin a first generation immigrant is the hardest thing in the world. You have to work harder than any generation—ok maybe not the generation that had to go through the wars, but definitely harder than the generation that got to buy bread for, what, five cents?

Being a Sri Lankan is even harder, not only do you have to live up to your parents' expectations, but you also have to live up to everyone who lives in Sri Lanka as well, people your parent’s may know. Then to make matters worse, Tamil people are like ants that go after that one crumb, they gossip like no tomorrow, and if you were to tell one Tamil person that school is too hard, your dads neighbors, cousins, wifes, brothers, friends, aunts, godmother will call your parents and ask what is going on with you and if you are too focused on games, computer, the Facebook or boys to not focus on school. The aspect of the game broken telephone would probably be their favorite game because they’d always win it no matter how long the phrase is.

Also being Sri Lankan—Tamil, you always have those individuals who live in Sri Lanka, not really struggling but do not want to go to work that one day; call to ask you for money, when you have a mortgage, you are helping pay for your child's post-secondary tuition, paying all those bills we got in Canada, buying food so we could have some sort of nutrition in our bodies. Always calls right when you go to the bank to pay the bills, and ask for money because someone broke their toe.

My dad is the nicest man, he always gives, gets nothing in return but thinks its good karma that he is putting into the world. I tell my dad all the time that I personally do not know these people, so when I'm at the age—I definitely will not be sending them any money.

My mom is the sweetest person ever, she was hard on me but that was because she saw so much potential in me that I didn’t really notice. She never gave up on me, took a lot of night shift work to help me save for university. I would never really get to see her when I was young because she was so busy but every lunch period when we would take out our lunch boxes their was always a note from my mom expressing her love for me. She has no idea how much those notes meant to me, how much they made me smile and miss her more and just love her overall.

Okay but that is a quick summary of what I grew up with, and what kind of parents I have, truly blessed not going to lie until now.

I recently turned 24 years old. I am at the age that the older generation would get/be married by now, start a family, get their life on track, and have adulting as their bitch. Where you have me, finally got a full-time job, but still wants to go back to school to do my MBA, and probably still take naps and watch Netflix on Fridays and Saturdays. Like the definition of non-adulting. Anyways remember how I mentioned how noisy Tamil people can be, well, let me tell you that these people would call my parents when I was 23 years old and ask them when my wedding was going to be. My parents always replied with, she is still in University, let us let her deal with that first so she can graduate in peace before we shove that in her face. Where their response would be "oh what's wrong with her that she cannot do both?" Let us see what is wrong with me, oh yeah I DO NOT WANT TO GET MARRIED TO A STRANGER. HELLO?!

Do not get me wrong, I was in a relationship but it was a mentally abusive one (a story I will write about). But that relationship just ended and it hasn't fizzled out of my life yet, I just want to enjoy life before thinking about committing myself to someone forever.

I mentioned as a joke to the family that if they wed me off there will be a large percentage, probably 85 percent, chance of divorce, just depends on how busy I am to file for divorce. My mom's response was why get married then, EXACTLY what I am saying, I do not want to get married. But like everything in my life, I caved in and told them to go ahead with the scouting of potential victims. So my parents took pictures of me in a dress, makeup done and hair did, to send to these people.

This process is the physical Tinder, but not the same because the male gets to physically swipe left or right until they swipe right on me; I get to swipe, where I always end up swiping left only cause I somehow know them and know their past. So my mom went over to the next continent, Europe, not very nice because my Tamil sucks ass and they don't speak English, and I love English. They are at a point where they want to go to Sri Lanka to find a man for me, like excuse me what was the point of you two immigrating to Canada if you are just going to bring me back to live there until the Canadian embassy sees that this marriage is legit. I see no purpose of being born in Canada, but my dad laughs at what I say and says I know nothing, YES BRO, I KNOW NOTHING. Far from Adult! So no marriage!

Weddings do not even excite me, like the topic of weddings bore me, I tend to yawn and get sleepy. The people I know who are getting married, or are married were just so excited to plan everything where I really could care less about. I much rather use that time and write or go back to work and work on other projects, anything but planning the wedding.

As of right now, my parents are still looking for potential candidates for me, as soon as this story goes somewhere interesting I will fill you all in on. As of right now, it is stuck with me swiping left.

Thank you for listening.

humanity
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