Tag: writing

marking 30th

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At the age of 22, how nice it was to be fresh out of college, and about to embark on a volunteer gap year in Europe. I felt my life had just started, I was hopeful, grateful, and that everything had all come down to this point. Undoubtedly, my following years were beautiful.

When your life is full of excitement and happiness, you feel generous. So was I.

I decided to share it with myself, in the future. Thus, the letter to my future self with all the questions I could think of, with the predictions, with my young hopes. I was hyped for my life at the age of 30, assuming that life could only have more to offer and never the opposite.

And the song, a cute little reminder, I thought.

….

On my 30th birthday, I received a letter from myself on July 23, 2018. I played the song like she asked. But words felt empty.

People on the airwaves always preach who I should be
How to dress, how to talk
Baby, how to breathe…

I have realized now that people are just people. There isn’t “me vs the world”. It is indeed “me vs myself”. At the end, it’s turned out to be me, my mind – the most difficult judge to myself. The world would be kind if I am kind to myself.

Then the questions and speculations she wrote. How should I answer them? That half of the things have been gone. That life does take things away from you. That nothing is certain. That she should stop having her hopes up?

I stay silent.

So my younger self, she can stay hopeful. She will slowly figure the world around her as she walks. She has her own song to sing. She doesn’t need no warning. And when she reaches 30, I hope she will stand still against adversity. She will do things her way. She will find comfort. Importantly, no matter what happens, she will stay honest and kind, especially to herself.

cHoicEs

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i am aware that my life is extremely privileged, that up until this point, i always have had this able body, a roof above my head, food on my table, love from people around me, the literacy, the education and the experience that make me not so clueless about the world. my life has brought me so many cHoICes to choose from. “what do i have for dinner today?”; “what show do i want to watch?”; “which shirt do i wear this morning?”. at the end, isn’t it all about the cHoiCes that tell us apart?

the irony is (not surprisingly), the privilege to have these many cHoiCes has resulted in me hating having cHoiCes. what a privilege to say “i hate cHoIcEs”. because those cH0iCeS I made had me leave my home country, had me do all these adventures, had me decide to start my life all over abroad. and while i was doing it, it made me realize how far i was from home, from what actually matters. now i am in the middle of the two lives: the life founded since i was born in Vietnam with my loved ones, and the one that i just founded abroad with my chosen family on the other side of the globe.

i am speaking about this journey as if it was a burden to have such a journey. it wasn’t. the burden is the NOW, when i, once again, have to make a choice. wherever i choose to settle, i would lose a significant part of my life. and since my mom passed, each choice, each person weighs heavier in my heart. i’ve learnt that i can’t live peacefully without my people, not being able to be there for them aches my heart. i want to be there to take care of everyone that i love, which is probably unachievable and nothing more than a wishful thinking. but i saw my mom do it. should i try to do it?

imagine you go away from your country to start a new life, while having endless challenges throwing at your way but you don’t give up, you find a way and you are almost there. BOOM! one big painful life event. you pack your bags to go back to your country. now you leave everything you’ve built to again start all over in your country.

no one knows what life has ahead for us. we take what we are given. maybe there are no cHoiCEs. maybe this is all part of the illusion of choice conspired by the aliens. we know nothing about what is happening around us.

the life I’ve lived

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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.