I’m not angry. I’m not broken. I am, simply, a little tired.
It all began earlier today, after a long month of battling vertigo that stubbornly refused to leave me alone. I had just returned from the hospital, weary but hopeful. My parents’ house was nearby, so I thought—why not drop in? Perhaps a quiet moment, a little warmth. Foolish optimism, really.
The moment she saw me, my mother greeted me with a blow sharper than any blade drawn in daylight: “You’re fat. That makes you ugly. Don’t eat dinner today.”
Imagine that.
Fresh from the hospital, juggling medicines like lifelines, and the first thing handed to me was not concern, nor comfort, but contempt—cold, casual, and so familiar it barely stung.
I deflected, of course. Reflexive, like all good Asian children. I smiled thinly and said I’d just stick to my protein shake — if I don’t eat carbs, maybe I won’t offend her eyes too much.
“Don’t eat at all,” she replied, “because you’re ugly now.”
Am I sad? No.
Hurt? No.
Irritated? Profoundly.
Because you see—I still need to eat. I need the medicines to keep vertigo from dragging me under again. Survival is inconveniently tied to nourishment, no matter how hideous I apparently look whilst achieving it.
But I’m not surprised. Not anymore.
This is the reality many Asian children live with—particularly those spun from Chinese, Taiwanese, Hong Kong, and Thai-Chinese bloodlines. Outward perfection is demanded; internal withering is tolerated, even expected.
You are to be glossy, brilliant, unblemished—even if it means crushing your own spirit in silence.
And perhaps the cruelest joke of all? Watching her be all sweetness and silken smiles to my cousins—those golden, untouchable deities—while I marvel, quietly, if the mother who adored them so tenderly is the same one who cuts me with every word.
Body, clothes, hair, posture—there’s always something to fix. Always some fundamental flaw that must be named and displayed, like a grotesque trophy.
Once, I even believed her. Once, I questioned every choice, every ambition, every mirror.
She has no idea—or perhaps she does, and it simply never mattered—how deeply she carved uncertainty into me. How she sowed hesitation into the soil of my life, making it harder, heavier, lonelier to begin anything at all.
We were meant to be a team. Somehow, I’ve come to realise—we’re not even playing the same game.
Still, I count myself lucky.
Lucky that somewhere along the labyrinthine way, I learnt to build love within myself—small, patient, fierce—and to stop measuring my worth with the rusted rulers she offered.
Perhaps, if I hadn’t, I would have crumbled.
Where I stand now, quietly:
I am not here to fight. I am not here to rewrite her.
I am here to live—without dragging my own soul through the same ceremonies of guilt.
Loving in my own way.
Smaller. Quieter. But real.