Your sad is not special

I’m in New York. Yeah I know another movie about some privileged kid in New York. Another one for the road? No, this is a true story, my story - with some exaggerations as ones recollection would like.

Snorts line. Looks up at mirror. Music playing loud. Touching hair. How did I get to this point? Walks back to diner table. Guy sitting at the booth. So where were we? Well it’s getting late, you were in the bathroom for an awfully long time.

Scrolling through Instagram and getting angry when I see my friend liking the photo of my ex boyfriend’s new girlfriend

Here’s a lesson on how to feel everything and nothing all at once.

I grew up in a very complicated house. Don’t get me wrong, I grew up in a very privileged complicated house. For 13 years of my life, I lived the perfect life. I had an amazing childhood. I grew up with parents that doted on me and my little brother. We had movie Sundays, where we would go to the cinema and we would take turns choosing the movie. For the most part, they did everything a child would ever ask for. Sometimes, they would miss my birthday but at the end of the night they still try to make it there for us. Ice cream cakes and whatever gifts we wanted. But by 13, that is when everything changed. Talk about the dream. My best friends at the elite private international school would always tell me how envious they were that we were a perfect family. For them, their parents were either divorced before third grade or they unwillingly realised that they were the child of their mistress mum - a truth hard to swallow but common in our Asian culture. We would take time to take them to dinner at restaurants, to show them that we were a perfect family. Then it happened. It happened fast. Like an avalanche raining down on us until we couldn’t breathe. A bad business deal my father made. A mistake my mother couldn’t forgive. A mistake she single-handedly resolved for years to come, while he sits in despair and changes as a man with every year that passes. I did not recognise it at first. They tried their best to shield it from us. But eventually we knew what was happening. My brother pulled out of school in the middle of the semester. My mother crying most nights. I watched my mother at the heights of her years, accomplishing her dreams, crumbling down, left with almost nothing. We knew. But we didn’t know what to do. The fights became consistent. A constant in our lives. It grew louder and louder everyday. I retreated to the corner of my room. They don’t know how to communicate with me. But they still believed in me. With the last of our luck and pennies, my mother sent me abroad when I was 17. I lived and learned who I was. A privilege later afforded by my brother and the guilt I still carry at 32. Throughout the years, I never knew how their dysfunctional relationship would have an effect on us. But it did, and it was for the worst. But how long until you stop playing the victim? Other people have had it worse, at least they were always there and we still have movie Sundays, and I still get to pick the movie for the week. But I guess you always think your parents are your heroes. That their relationship is what you would strive to achieve later in life. I thought I would get married around the same age that they did. They were, for an Asian couple in the 90s, progressively married later at 32 but here I am staring at the calendar and counting down the days, realising that it is not going to happen this year. Realising that I haven’t had a meaningful relationship since I was 26. Their relationship, it made me yearn for any type of love given my way even if it came with conditions and red flags. Even if I knew that it wasn’t the right love for me. And I gave it away, as easy as candy just because I wanted them to stay. My little brother, on the other hand, bare the bulk of it. He had to grow up fast. He soon realises that one shouldn’t settle until it feels right. But it never felt right. And now he is 28 and wondering why. You see, my parents are divorced but still live together. They wake up to each other. But just in different rooms. They eat breakfast. But at separate times. And most of the days, they still fight and it is constant and it is still louder and louder every day.