The Journey So Far

Book 2 : ...And Here My Troubles Began

Book 2 : ...And Here My Troubles Began

Homecoming

So after two years and nine months in America I was back home. It had been a long time for a little kid. I didn't yet know how much the US had changed me, but I would soon.

The day I came back is forever etched in my memory. It was a hot, humid night. (If you know anything about Singapore at all you'll know that almost every night is like that!) Our house wasn't quite ready for us to move back into and so we went to my grandmother's. After putting the luggage and everything away it was bedtime and as we settled down to sleep I looked at the unknown ceiling (I had never ever slept in this bed before even in all my childhood) and all I could think to myself was "I'm home. I'm back in Singapore. I'm home."

I thought of all my friends (especially C and C!) and how I was going to meet them and play together again. My cousins and what school would be like now. My room in Sanc Ville next to the McDonalds. The game shop and comics store and all the bookstores in town. The swimming pool and Dad's motorcycle.

I was home! I was home. Things were going to be just like before. I was going to meet all my friends and talk to them and tell them stories of the States and then we would play games and read books and it would be great. Just like before.

Little did I know how things would turn out.

I've asked myself a hundred times over the ensuing years - where did it all start? When did it begin to go wrong? What the exact moment my life ended? Now I have the answers (as much as these things can actually be answered) but to my past self, everything was a blur.

Until this point I've intentionally kept the focus tight, showing you things as I experienced them, when I experienced them. But now I'm going to take off the blinders and expand things somewhat, explaining that which only my adult self can understand. If not, all you would get a mess of angsty emo poetry (which I can tell you I wrote plenty of during my teenage years) and despairing wailings (not that I didn't do my fair share of that either!)

With age often comes perspective, and with that perspective, clarity. So here we go.

Like most descents into Hell, it started off slowly enough. My mother started working a lot. Sure, she had always worked a lot. After all, she was Asian, and in an Asian country, and in an Asian country known for hard work. Like I've said in the previous chapter, she grew more and more distant even in America, working, always working. But now it slowly grew into an obsession.

Or rather, the PhD did. What started out as a chance for career advancement and further studies soon became an albatross around our necks, choking the life from everyone it touched. Though I can't blame it all on the PhD either. It was perhaps just a symbol for all that went wrong...but I'm confusing you at this point, I'm sure.

Back to the facts, or at least what I understood then. So Mum was working harder than ever before, and mentioning the PhD perhaps a few times every day, strewing statistics and papers everywhere. Does that sound obsessional to you? Sure, to a normal person yes, but not to us back then. That was the reality. That was normal. Everyone thinks their normal is normal, and I was no exception.

So when she started asking me to do the accounts, I did them. I tallied up each and every expense from the utilities to property tax. I'm not sure why we had to do it but I did it anyway. When she told me every son is expected to help their parents, I did. I helped with transcribing the interviews from the participants in the PhD study, even when I was worn out and tired from school. I was a Good Boy.

She would tell me what a terrible person my father was, and how she was going to divorce him because he was a Creep and an Asshole and Never Did Anything to Help the Family. I listened to her and agreed with every word.