starting again

my writing tonight is a result of anxiety, jetlag, general insomnia, and perhaps a lot of desperation. i'm not sure if anyone even reads this anymore, given that i haven't posted a letter in almost a year. still, in my times of despair, writing has found me a way, so to it i shall return again tonight.

i don't claim that my life is somehow more difficult than that of the average person; everyone's on their own journey and i am grateful for mine.

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as an adult living through the times that is the 21st century, i too feel the inescapable pressure of needing to make it. my journey is complicated a little more when you realise that i am an immigrant, needing to carve out my own path from scratch if i want to survive the rat race. the pressure feels insurmountable, but i persevere. it feels personal, you know?

i grew up in a conservative society, which many may label as "backdated" due to the views we hold as a people. i was very lucky and privileged to have been born into the family that raised me - they (unknowingly) paved the way for me to make something of myself. in a community which sees women as a liability to wash your hands off of, my parents raised me to be their son and their daughter at the same time. i was taught to be my own person and do what was right for me, even if that sometimes meant i would defy them. when people were asking my parents why they would ever think to send their young, unmarried daughter off abroad all by herself, why i needed to get so many degrees, my parents always stood by my side and allowed me to make my choices. they respected me to let me be who i wanted to be, even when that led to many heated arguments.

so i feel very strongly about "making it." not because they are waiting for an ROI, but because i want to get to a point where i can confidently tell them that all their efforts paid off. i don't want their faith in me to have been misplaced. i want to make them proud, but more importantly, i want to finally shut all these people the fuck up and be an example for other girls in my family to follow.

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i'm starting to lose the point of this piece. this is what happens when i pick the wrong album to listen to when writing.

a little village from my jpn trip w/ my beautiful boy

you know how they say, "it takes a village," when referring to raising a child? it took a village to raise me, too. my grandparents, my mum's siblings, and obviously my parents. my mum more than my dad, but that's a different conversation. and a lot of neighbours along the way.

the village put their all into doing everything they could for me (and all the children that came after me; i was the first on my mum's side). a crisis has now befallen the village. time is not on their side.

it makes me feel helpless that i can't "fix" everything or "save" them. it feels essential to my being that i swoop in and bear the weight of their burden, the way they did for me. i hate seeing people i love go through difficult times, not knowing what i can do but wanting to do more than just... write.

so i've come to this conclusion that i must achieve everything i've set out to achieve. find happiness and success, whatever they might mean to me, not abstract, vague definitions other people assigned to my being. not only for myself, but also for the ones who should've been able to experience the world for themselves, and others who aspire to do the same. for the people who made sure that i would always know what unconditional love means, never the absence of it. and for the people who carried me when i was too small to carry myself, literally; pieces of you i will forever carry with me, no matter what i do.

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it doesn't have to be lonely at the top if you bring up the people around you as you go. i will strive to do that at every turn. we will all make it, and we will all celebrate.

# i have been out of writing for a really long time since i've been dealing with a lot of personal shit and mostly just trying to get my life in order. Alhamdulillah i'm starting to find the time and energy to write again, but i am quite rusty and will take a while to get to a point where these things make sense.

# if you read this far, and know companies hiring intl students as interns / grads please lmk lol i'm looking for busn/compsci stuff for this year and the next.