After 10 years of hiding my queer identity, I finally came out to my mom at the kitchen table of my childhood home in Irvine, California. Tearfully reading a letter full of “I know’s” and “I’m sorry’s,” I looked up, expecting her to disown me. Instead, my mom looked at me with pleading eyes, asking: “Does that mean you’re not going to move back home?”
What did my geo location have to do with my sexuality? I simply could not fathom her perplexing response — until I watched “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” At the climax of the multiverse epic, Michelle Yeoh’s character, Evelyn, catches up with her daughter Joy, where the psychedelic journey began — in the parking lot of their humble laundromat.
Naturally, I saw myself in Joy as she begs her mom: “Just let me… go.” I had fled as far as I could since turning 18 — to college across the country, to working abroad afterward, and to graduate school on the East Coast. But like Joy, I couldn’t escape my mother’s reach, nor her love, no matter how far I traveled. When Evelyn tearfully declares to Joy, “No matter what, I still want to be here with you,” I finally understood my mom — perhaps for the first time.
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