"Mom, where the hell are you? I've been waiting for 10 minutes." I shouted into the phone.

"Honey I'm so sorry. I left the office a bit late and the fog caused really bad traffic, but I'm two miles--"

I hang up. Conversations like this happen every week. Being a teen is hard enough, and my parents often make me feel less important than their work. 

In second grade, I broke my arm on the slide. When the school nurse called my mom, she was too busy to answer. When the phone call reached my father's desk at his university, he sighed and said, "I'm in the middle of research, let me think about it." The nurses laughed and started to nickname me, the "let me think about it girl." I sat in the nurse's office for a couple of hours, before my parents finally showed up to take me to the hospital. 

As an only child in the family, I wished my parents could keep me company. I was jealous of my father's students. I secretly wished my mom's business would go bankrupt so she could stay home with me like other moms. 

To make my parents take me seriously, I resorted to yelling and screaming, which often caught them off guard. I tried to establish my own authority by ignoring their schedule. My mom scrambled to buy books about teenage problems. Nothing worked until she met that counselor.

One day after I slammed my door in her face, my mom didn't complain or cry. Instead, she knocked and said, "I have something to tell you." I opened the door. "Today I met a really good counselor. He said that every time your daughter is angry, she is just saying: I need you. I need you to listen to me. I need you to be with me. I need your time. I need your love."

It dawned on me that my anger was merely a mask for me to hide my loneliness and disappointment. But facing your unmet need is the first step towards being happier. This discovery not only helped things between my parents and me but also enabled me to handle conflicts and emotions. I started to pay attention to other people's anger. When a teacher became angry with the morning class, she was just saying, "I need more respect." When an angry customer approached me at my volunteering job, he was saying, "I need more service." When a homeless person uttered words in anger towards me in a parking lot, he was simply saying, "I need food and help."  

I am now able to see through the fog of anger and see the real face and heart of the person.

Five minutes after I hung up on her, my mom's car finally showed up through the fog. She rolled down her window and smiled, "You look cold. Let's go to a hotpot place shall we?"  I grinned, "Ok, but tomorrow promise me that you won't be late again."