Despite my best efforts, it seems that slowly but surely, my life is crumbling apart.
How do I even begin to describe this phenomenon? There are so many things going on at the same time that I don't even know where to start.
Firstly, it's the creeping sense of displacement - that when I read what my fellow countrymen are sharing on Facebook, the likes of sensationalized propaganda from therealsingapore or even worse, TREmeritus - that I balk at the prospect of returning to a country overrun with people like these. How can I go back and peaceably interact with people who think that having trains come once every 3 minutes or that waiting till 35 to buy an apartment is the worst thing in life? I can't - not when I have had to wait an hour for missing a train by a couple of minutes, and then sat in the station across from a homeless guy, who sits there and smells strange because he has nowhere else to go.
But yet my future in the USA in uncertain. We are, as they unceremoniously call us, "non-resident aliens"- not exactly the most welcoming term, but one that encapsulates the transitivity of our stay and the strangeness of our beings. I hate orange chicken, I'd say, and even the Chinese people here look at me like I'm crazy.
My happiest moment in the last few months was wandering into a crockery shop in Chinatown and finding the exact same porcelain bowls my parents use at home. I cried out in delight and immediately bought a set of 4, and gave them to S who doesn't use them at all, preferring his miracles of modern engineering - Pyrex.
In order to secure a future in the US, I need to find a job, and that means searching for internships, because there's a very low chance of getting hired without having done a previous internship with that company. In order to get an internship, you have to be a junior - barely anyone hires sophomores, but barely anyone hires juniors without work experience either. I do not have rich family friends that are vice presidents of investment banks, so I have been hunkering down to the grind myself, with limited success. Everyone knows how to schmooze, how to network, how to smoothly extricate a business card from the person on the other end and leave behind a glowing impression.
At a previous internship, the CEO of the company came over to talk to me and asked me what my parents did. I said my mum worked at an accounting firm and my dad was working on his own engineering business. He exclaimed in recognition of the firm's name, and asked when my mum made partner. I said she hadn't. He asked how big my dad's business was. I said he was still working at it solo. He was a little surprised - I suppose in the elite circles, you all tend to know each other or have friends of friends, but my family was clearly one or two rungs lower on the social ladder. When I told my mum what had happened, she laughed a little sadly and said she was sorry for me that I hadn't been born into a better family, and that was perhaps one of the saddest things I had heard in my whole life. I wanted to make sure I succeeded in life to vindicate the effort that my parents put into raising me, and to bring my family up the social ladder to make sure that no one ever looked down on us. Back then, I had some measure of success - it is easier in Singapore where you just have to work hard, show results, and have them be recognized. But here, where so much of your success depends on who you know rather than what you know, it's been a little harder.
I've been working hard. I'm taking a lot of classes, trying to do well in them. Going to information sessions to meet people and learn more about the careers I'm interested in, so as to convince the people who will someday be interviewing me that I really want to do what they do. I've been working out - nearly an hour a day between the gym and pilates - and counting calories just so that I can get back in shape to dance. I've been trying to coordinate the dance team and soothing ruffled feathers on all ends just so that I can continue having classes to attend and somewhere to practice. I've been working on research to earn money so that I can buy groceries for S, to make it less of a financial burden when I go over to his place to cook. I've been trying to learn how to drive, so that I can get places without having to bother others. I've been trying to organize the orchestra for the Viennese Ball, because all the other musicians are too busy perfecting their craft and as the weakest musician there, I need to earn my keep in other ways. I've been trying to strengthen my religious faith and be a good person, because bad things don't happen to good people, right?
I don't know. Either that's untrue, and the world sucks, or that is true and I have failed in being a good person.
Nowadays, it is starting to feel more like the latter.
Someone I care a lot about recently brought up a ton of issues about the way we have interacted - basically a list of all the unacceptable things that I do and that I need to fix. All of them sound like my fault, except that when I was doing them I didn't felt like I was being a horrible person. I
asked - but they said I
made. I just wonder if people have been feeling that way about me all along - that I am horrid and manipulative and selfish - but have just been too polite to tell me.
Some things don't even pertain specifically to actions I have taken - more of my just
being.
Is it a sign, then, that there is something horribly, horribly wrong with the kind of person I am?
I don't want to hurt people I care about, but if my very existence hurts them, what should I do? Correct the problem of my existence?
Some days I wake up and I feel like a non-resident alien in my own life. I want to leave, but where do I go from here?
