Tragic.

Besides myself, no one really knows the reality that I have to face everyday. No one knows the actual, full, unfiltered life of mine. 

At the age of 29, I still have no stable income despite my academic background. I’m not stupid but I’m also just an immigrant that can’t speak the language. Hence, I put aside my master’s degree to join a course for caretakers while working as a waitress (I hate being a waitress). Between the course and the waiting job, all I have left for myself is stress, depression and insomnia. The truth is: I am always tired.

On top of that, I am torn between staying in Italy or going back to Vietnam.  Everyday I dream about spending time with my mom who has been fighting with cancer for the last two years. Another day passes by is another day that I’m grateful that she is still here with us. At the same time, the guilt that I keep building every second for not being there with her is taking the life out of my soul. At the same time, I am in my critical stage of building my life in this strange land. In this period, if I drop everything, I lose everything.

And these days, it’s been hard. Through the phone screen, my mom is grayer and grayer. “It has spread everywhere, to the brain and to the bones.” I tell myself, it is time to go home. Approaching 30, with all these life challenges throwing at my way, while I was just starting to build my life, I decided to go home. I don’t know what will happen next but I also don’t want to know what it will be. 

Soon at the age of 30, I would still have not achieved a single thing that I set for myself during my early 20s. No career, no husband. I wouldn’t be able to hide my “incompetence” from the Vietnamese society anymore. No more European escapism. But then how I would even live if the world was without my mom. And I don’t want to imagine that kind of world. 

I’ve decided to come home.