Foggy Days, Rearranging the house, Reflection to lessons I learned These Past 10 years...

That’s what I thought back in the day when I still had “parents”. Even among friends, relatives and alike, there’s this nuance that if you’re moving back with them, “something” happened and you’re seen as a loser.

This isn’t the norm for most I think especially in an asian household, but in my family and how we grew up, typically by 17 or 18 we would be out of home either to go to far away school, then find some job and later settling down there with a house that was financed by the parents.

Only later I know that it is actually a privilege to have parents who can afford to buy their children a home and make their 20’s easier. There were so many privileges that I consider normality until I learned they are not. Going out of the house, I didn’t understand a lot of people’s struggles, wants, or why they really chase the mortgage dream and such. For those are just something expected where I grew up, something natural that your parents would get you a house in your preferred area so you never have to worry about all that.

At one point, I shy away a lot with the privileges I had and purposely make my life harder than it should. Maybe, that’s the only regret I had in life in my entire 20’s and I think that when you have privilege in this unfair world, use it to your own advantage.

While absolute freedom is nonexistent in this kind of dynamic, you can still use the privilege to buy your way out. Why make it hard when you can do it easily? I only recognize how stupid it is to make our life harder than it should be. If you have such a challenging family to deal with, just bear with it considering if they have the economic upperhand and connection that you would need later in life.

I was the odd one out, I think. I refused help, experimented with life too much and only to end up living as if I was covered with fogs. So, while out there people ask you to experiment with life and do stuff, it’s good in moderation. I mean, you’re not missing out much. You can be young and have a lack of energy too. I don’t think these days age is all that matters.

When I was rearranging the house, it all felt surreal to me. I barely got the time to sit down with my thoughts lately but once I was done with moving some furniture and such, I realized how those years away from home felt like something of me was stolen.

For almost a decade, I never moved from a tiny room. It’s pretty shabby and they have an open sewer. I wasn’t the one finding it either, it was by a recommendation and something that was meant to be temporary.

In my birth mother’s mind was “ teaching her some humility and the meaning of hard work”. So, I went from not knowing how to do house chores to doing them. I grew up having them taken care of and that’s just the way it was. As much as I complained about it and had the chance to move, I don’t know why I found comfort there and lowered my standard of living. Slowly, I learned that the environment really influences who you are, so make sure to be careful about it. This is probably common sense but sometimes you can forget about it.

If there's one thing from that place that I learned is that I learned about humility, empathy and about everyday struggles that I never experienced or worried about. I learned their aspirations that are different from what I used to hear, something a bit more humble than I used to hear but at the same time, it was the life I partially hated too.

When I decided to move back in, I thought about dying a lot less. Like I’ve got room to breathe, I no longer see open sewer, comfortable bigger rooms, and just having a place to do things. It was like I was back to civilization, a proper one. It doesn't matter if you go to a fancy university or the best one, if you live in a place where it feels like living in an isolation and worse, prison, that only makes it more challenging with added stress. To think that I survived all that, I deserve a good pat.

Maybe my birth mother failed with her intention? I don’t know but one thing for sure, I am one of her failed experiments.What even is hard work? Because as much as things aren’t always necessarily easy, I grew up understanding them. I didn’t have to be taught twice or thrice with extreme level of hardship that was just too disconnected with the previous reality I used to live. Or maybe I wasn't her failed experience cause now I grew up to be more adaptable.

When the fog slowly lifted, I could only see the damage of things I did along the way. I burned a lot of bridges, living the life I hated, and even going further away from my life goals that only strayed me even further.

The biggest takeaway is to never lower your life standards and just be really good at saying no. Take a grain of salt when hearing recommendation and advice from people who never truly know you.

Now I am 28, starting over in a place that though it’s not where I ideally want to be but at least it’s mine and a comfortable one. All the dreams were made in this house and I made them come true which made me more confident about starting over than ending it all once.

As much as it is hard when I hear family and relatives around me progress and I am still on my way up once again, but to me, it feels like I am exactly where I need to be and where I should have been surrounded with; The family and people who motivate me to do better and be better in my life.