In my mind, my boyfriend’s mother’s message was clear: You don’t belong. Even so, I self-soothed, conditioning my body and words to deflect this uncomfortable feeling of inadequacy, and carried on. It was one of the first times I remember feeling deep shame. As I scrambled to find a way to ease their doubts about my legal status, I was unintentionally feeding into their bias and also internalizing it. I fought every inch of my gut and soul from disclosing the truth. I explained my immigration status by lying to appease them, telling them that my paperwork was in process or something. When I came back from what felt like a mental blackout, I found the confident person in me take over. The confident version of me pretended that this outright biased comment had little to no effect on the expertly disguised other version of me, who was screaming at me in my mind to run away before I got caught. “What a question!” followed his father, as everyone joined in and laughed it all off, delighting themselves in the bluntness of the question that so obviously did not need to be answered.Īs I smiled along with them, playing into their assumption that I was not undocumented, a strange out-of-body sensation came over me, as if I were two separate people digesting my environment. My dad had fallen behind schedule, struggling to start the car engine on his way home from his factory job across town. Blood rushed to my cheeks as my family dropped me off in our station wagon. I was scheduled to meet my boyfriend’s family for dinner at one of the best restaurants in town. This was a stark contrast to my immigrant parents, who worked two or three shifts and came home, on a good day, by eight at night with a bucket of Lee’s chicken, which each kid would eat on their own schedule because our parents were too exhausted to impose rules about family mealtimes.

They were well off and well known in town, the sort of parents who were at every one of their kids’ games and recitals, and could comfortably clock out of their nine-to-five jobs to enjoy family meals. He had grown up in the same town all his life and had conservative, well-educated parents who had gone to top-ranked schools. He had a big, close-knit family like mine, but his upbringing was vastly different from my own. I wanted to do my best to make a good first impression for many reasons. No matter who you are, meeting a partner’s parents for the first time can be nerve-racking. Points are not automatically returned to a your account if a reward is redeemed and not used.One of these experiences that stayed with me was when I met my then-boyfriend’s parents as a teen. Once a customer has redeemed their points for a reward, the reward will remain in your account until you decide to use it on a purchase. If your points account does not have enough balance, points will be deducted until it reaches 0. Points received from placing an order will be deducted, they will start being deducted from points that are expiring. If the return occurs after you have confirmed receipt, points from the original order will be returned to your points account.If the cancellation order/refund occurs outside the validity period of the points, expired points will not be refunded, and the user can view the records in the point details.If you request a return, the points for returned item will reverted to your account along with your refund.If it's a partial return, points will be returned based on a percentage of the product's price.If an unpaid order is cancelled, the points applied to the original order will be immediately returned to your points account.

My guyfriend likes to prank me