Chapter 15 – the end of 2023

Holy moly what a year.

Really…. What.. a year…

I’m going to quickly summarise this year. And not include any names because.. yeah.. I don’t want to make anybody feel bad about the things that have happened, the situations that they had been put into.

A friend got arrested and went to jail/prison

A friend went to rehab, it didnt go as planned, and they ended up living at my house for couple weeks

A friend lost their spouse, and are now a single parent.

A friends mum got a cancer diagnosis

A friend had a mental break down and needed stress leave from work

Nathan had his own mental break down, and it got so bad I told him he needed to quit work. More on this later

Ester needed teeth surgery.

One of my bff got married

A friend found out a secret about their partner that could have ruined their relationship.

Another bff moved away to the blue mountains

Nathan’s bff had a baby!

A couple of my friends also had babies

A friend got a sexual harassment thing happen to them at work.

We went on holidays!

A couple people from my past passed away

we got punched in the face with a stupid debt.

It doesn’t sound like much having to write it down, but man, has it been such an emotional journey for everyone..

Anyways, so now I’ll elaborate.

Esters front top teeth had always been so terrible ever since she got them. The dentist we take her to thinks that it’s because she must have bumped her face while she was a baby before her teeth grew, so they grew out weaker than all her other teeth (which are perfectly fine) when we took her to the dentist, the dentist tried to remove the yellowing build up on her teeth, which must have weakened her teeth even more. And because this was all on chair, she fought a lot, and her teeth couldn’t be covered properly.

When she came home from school one day, we noticed that her tooth was broken. We went to see another dentist and they didn’t do anything, told us to just use sensitive toothpaste. Even though the pulp of her teeth were now exposed.

I asked for a referral to a specialist, and they mocked me for asking. We went back to our regular dentist and he tried to cover it, but the stuff he has was only temporary for how her teeth were broken. Said kids teeth don’t hold the filling well. But he tried anyways. But then also referred us to a specialist.

We went to specialist. they did their job. and booked her in to get her teeth removed. She went through surgery. We told Nefflen about it and he was so worried about her the whole day, very anxious, and the moment he saw that she was okay, he was okay too. But man, she did not have a good time after surgery. she had been fasting for ages, so shes starving, shes tired as shit cause she also didnt get much sleep, so after surgery she cried loudly for hours, that they had to just let us go home while she was crying.

but she bounced back so quickly because children are resilient.

My friend that went to jail, because we (friend group and I) didn’t hear anything from their end. Which, how could we, they were in jail; I had heard it from my circle of friends who were still in contact with their ex, so I reached out to their ex, and asked if I could post presents to their child, I just remember being in such a terrible mental space when I was younger, having felt grief and loss from leaving my old house and moving to a completely different suburb.

I’m going to be honest, it was hard to understand everything that had happened, and I’ll admit, my mind did start thinking about all the negative parts, how they ended up there, etc. at the end of the day, I just felt so awful that a child was involved in all this, regardless of the outcome of the situation. I also held onto some resentment for my friend for ghosting us a few years prior.

I’ve since been in contact with my friend, and they are doing well, and I try to help them out where I can, But I won’t say much else.

My friend that went to rehab, I’ve been so close to them the past few years, and it’s been such a hard mental journey for them. it’s literally been a roller-coaster of emotions, so many ups, so many downs. They decided that it had been enough, and they needed more intervention, so they checked into rehab.

On their healing journey, they had past traumas come up, that threw them off, and they ended up in extreme situations that they would never imagine themselves doing. But because of that, they were able to get a different mental diagnosis.

But because of these extreme situations they were in, life had completely changed, and they didn’t have a safe space to go.

And as it has always been throughout the years, our place always welcomes people who are down on their luck, so they stayed with us.

It sucks that everybody in their life has seen the mental health problems as something that just “happens”, something that they would just pray would go away naturally. Something that just “is what it is”

It took these extreme situations for something to finally change. Are they in a better mental space now? I’m not quite sure.. but I do believe that change is better than doing the same thing over and over again and wondering why things aren’t working.

Without going into more detail, this situation really made me sad. I watched a lot of bluey to cheer myself up. And I am so endlessly thankful for the people I have that I can talk to, that have my backs when I’m not okay.

Moving on. There was a night that just went so normally, then all of the sudden, everything turns upside down, because a friend lost her husband.

Nothing really prepares you for moments like this, any terrible moment to be honest.

And again I’m thankful for my friends groups, we all stuck together and helped out this friend where we could.

I wasn’t too close to the husband, but I wanted to make a book for his children about his life, so that they can remember the person that he had become, to know that people really loved him, and all the good he had done while he was alive. I’m not sure how much they’ll actually remember about him, but hopefully they can remember him through the book. It’s something that I’d want for my kids if it were me.

I cried a lot making the book, and had to watch even more episodes of bluey 😆

And cause I drew most of these pictures, I was able to print them out for the kids to colour in as well 🙂

My friend that had a mental break down. I had been seeing signs of things that weren’t going well mentally, one of the bigger signs being an untidy house. Please don’t get me wrong in saying that I have a problem with messy houses, because my house is a mess, and I honestly don’t care for messy houses, but when it relates to mental health, and not laziness/lack of time, it’s a completely different story.

And I had contemplated helping her clean the house, because I didn’t want to sound offensive, like “oh your house is gross let me clean it”, or “how can you let your house get this bad”, in no way did I wish to make her feel that way at all, because it honestly wasn’t that. It was seeing her light start to go out, and the things that use to be manageable around the house just took a lot more mental spoons to do. Sometimes we start to drown in these things, and we just start to accept the new norms.

Then she told me she was on stress leave, after watching her slowly decline for a while. I thought it was a perfect excuse to come over and help her clean up!

There was a moment when I was cleaning her period bin, while she was organising other things, and she felt bad and mortified (which I completely understand, I would be too) and I told her it’s okay, cause it was. There’s a lot of gross things I can tolerate. But she mentioned that her husband wouldn’t clean it, and so she felt shameful about it. Which I guess makes me feel sad that women feel ashamed of something that they can’t control.

We ended up cleaning her bedroom, and ensuite, and she continued after I had left to pick the kids up from school.

And I know it really helped, because it pushed them to continue to work on the house, and even her husband finally did something he had put off for 15 years!

I’m not saying it was a clean house that got them to do everything, but it’s the change I mentioned before. Instead of the endless loop, just a little change. Even if it means an empty period bin, or clean sheets. Little steps, little things at a time. It’s better than nothing.

So I’m really happy to see it going better 🙂

I had a call one day where my friend was frantic about something that happened with her partner. She came over to vent, and have a cry.

I feel like that’s the usual story I’ve had this year.

But what was really sweet to see was that when Nefflen saw that my friend was sad, he went over and gave her a hug.

I just love the person he’s growing into, there had been moments where I would just stand there, and tell him I felt sad, and he would just come over and give me a hug, and ask my why. I would try to lightly explain it to him.

I hope he continues to be this sweet.

I had another call about my friend who fucked up at work, did something that made a couple of women uncomfortable, and is now facing the consequences of his actions. And it sucks so much because I’m close enough to him to know that his intentions weren’t bad, he just doesn’t understand boundaries.

He’s also been dealing with a lot of mental health problems throughout his life, and also an undiagnosed case of autism, not that I’m saying that autism makes it okay for him to do what he did, but it would explain why he didn’t understand what happened, or that people are uncomfortable with his words or actions.

He went to get a referral to get diagnosed, and the doctor dismissed him, referred him to a speech pathologist to learn to speak to people? Then he asked if he could write up a mental health plan to see a psychologist because he has thoughts of self harm, and s*icide. And the doctor said “one problem at a time, next”

So it sucks that our health care system fails us here sometimes.

Imagine if these people ended their lives because they couldn’t get the proper care they needed, after trying for so long.

It’s been such a long time since I had my battles with mental health, and since having children, I know I’ve really advocated for better mental awareness for our children and the people around us.

Learning, and recognising that most of our problems, and trauma stem from childhood, I try now to be at my best, watch the language I use with the kids, apologise when I am out of line, try to set a better example. And be kind to myself in front of them.

It’s bloody hard. And maybe they’ll still grow up to have problems, most likely seeing how Nathan and I have our skeletons of issues.

But hopefully we’ll equip them with enough life skills to be able to move past the problems, see the light, and help other out as well.

So, onto Nathan. He has been having a rough time at work. He came home stressed, he came home later than he wanted to, started earlier than he should have been, barely got enough sleep, didn’t get to eat or exercise properly, that his physical health was taking a toll, he was constantly sick, he even fainted at work twice.

We fought a lot because he was just always so angry. And I didn’t want that around the children or my family. He was mentally abusive, and it got so bad. He started thinking about self harm, and s*icide, thinking about jumping onto the train, or just not waking up.

He was out of control.

He got to a point where he did something terrible as well. he ended up calling lifeline after.

And after that, something needed to change.

I told him he needed to quit, or leave. Because it was getting so toxic. Our friends didn’t realise how bad it had gotten until I showed them the videos/photos. (No one got hurt, I promise)

And they also told him to quit too. And they were endlessly supportive and understanding. and as week after, he had quit.

He went on a weekend retreat away that I had booked for him. and it really sounded like a life changing experience. He was able to let go a little of the restrictions people had put on him/he ended up putting on himself, and just finding his voice.

I kept telling him that we are okay financially, that we have a lot invested, we are making our mortgage repayments, we are still eating the rainbow. Our kids are fine. And we set a date for when he should start looking for work, but for the time being, the goal is his mental health.

He would go to the library during the times he would normally go to work, to write in his journal, to write in a journal for healing the mind, to work on his resume, and apply for jobs. he started seeing his psych more often, and so the exercises that his psych would set out for him.

Nathan’s got quite a lot of bad history with his dad, and at one point during his healing journey, had hated the way his dad was to him in the past. Maybe that our son was now the age he was when he started to remember the trauma, maybe it’s that he’s put so much pressure on himself about working because it’s just what he grew up with, that he isn’t able to let go of something “so good” financially in order to save his sanity and physical health because of the pressure.

There was a moment when Nathan called and ended up telling his parents that he was having s*icidal thoughts, and they quickly got off the phone soon after that without asking how is he. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and say that maybe they just didn’t know what to say.

But imagine being the child who just told his parents he wanted to end his life, and have them pretty much ignore that.

It really brought up a lot of moments in his life where he didn’t feel heard. That the words that he spoke seemed so silent. Which now, makes him feel like he can’t have his own voice or opinion.

He talked to the psychologist about everything, even about the trauma around intimacy from his past, which, I won’t go into. But after that, and seeing a different side to things, he was able to let go of that trauma and things really have gotten better since.

Nathan got a call from a place he had applied to in Feb, saying that the person they hired didn’t work out, so they’re looking at Nathan to come and fill the spot. It just really seemed like a sign because it’s in relation to a passion of his, it’s so close to home, and it came at such an amazing time.

He ended up taking the job after 2-3 months off, and we ended up booking a holiday away for the fam.

And then we got punched in the face with a debt, which i wont go into because its still ongoing back and forth. But there are still silver linings. That if we had this happen to us before Nathan left his high paying job, we wouldn’t have gone on holidays, he wouldn’t have taken a break to work on himself, and we wouldn’t be where we are now mentally and as a family, because of everything that we’ve been going through, we’ve come out as a stronger unit. so even though things might suck a little for us financially, its not the end of the world.

enough of that, here’s a recap of how my year went in the world of productivity

This year i’ve read/listened to a couple of books that i really enjoyed. to the point that its made me a lot more interested in Buddhism that i’ve added another thing to my life goals. I was able to read a few “self help” books this year, that i’ve also put them on my “highly recommended” list. I’ve also been listening to A LOT of podcasts. But i guess this all comes down to where im sourcing my entertainment from because everything has been free for me. The books are library books, (thats why its a lot of self help/non-fiction books, they were available through the apps the library uses) and podcasts, cause they’re pretty much free.

I wrote and created the book for Amelia and Vincent, did a couple of paid photoshoots, finished 21 digital drawings, sold a few line art drawings, made a tiny animation, 2 watercolour paintings, 5 acrylic paintings, and i started painting the wall mural.

with help from Deb i was able to make a pillow for them as well.

Did a boudoir shoot

Esters drawings have been looking pretty good too.

I made her a piggy cake for her birthday because she currently liked pigs, im not sure if she still likes pigs, but it was funny when she did.

And here are some photos to end the year with.

i lvoe ducks. but ducks dont love me.

Anyways, so now for my new years resolution.

1. lose weight and get fit. I haven’t been concentrating on losing weight or getting fit over the past couple of years, i allowed myself a break from worrying about it because i dont want to put that pressure on myself when my body was still recovering (i also only stopped breastfeeding at the beginning of this year) So now that im not doing all that anymore, i should put in a plan to being healthier. And not just because i would love be able to wear clothes and know they’d look good (i miss that) but mainly because i want to be able to turn 50-60 and still be healthy. just seeing all my uncles and aunties in such amazing shape really inspired me to have that type of life by that age. I want to live a long and healthy life.
2. Obviously to draw and paint more. concentrating on traditional mediums this year because i will have a little more time to do so.
3. spruce up the house. I started changing a few things around this year, but i want to continue to fix a few more things and turn the house into a place to be proud of. But this will take up some time.
4. Create a book for the kids.
5. Connect with Nathan a lot more. I dont think i’ve ever been this happy with someone before, and its still going very strong. I want to be able to have more moments with him where we’re learning something new together, or go on more dates, have more movie nights.
6. Take more photos and videos with everyone i love. I was putting together our yearly photo album, and this year had been filled with photos. We’ve done so much this year, and its just wonderful to see. so i want to take more photos to remember these moments.

Well, happy new year everyone. thank you for reading this far.

Chapter 14 – Driving on the other side of the road

So a few things happened this year that made me decide to book a holiday away for the family.

It’s just been such a big year, so many moments this year that led me to believe that we need to live ‘now’ ~ we need to make these moments count, and not just wait for the future to be able to enjoy our lives

I mean, it’s already how I live my life, but it just felt like it was on pause a little since having kids.

But the kids are older, they understand so much of the world already.

So why not let them explore the world a little, and take my parents out to explore as well. To let them visit their family (because we don’t know when that will ever happen again, we aren’t sure if this will be their last trip or not).

So, I decided that we were going to book flights to Vietnam, while stopping in Singapore for a couple of nights to explore.

Because Nathan had just started his new job, he didn’t have any leave, but I made sure to tell him to get some time off for the trip because we need a getaway.

A couple weeks before we flew, my uncle had a stroke. And he wasn’t doing so well. So now instead of going to Vietnam to explore with him, we had to go and visit him in hospital.

And because I’m so fucking dyslexic, to the point that it affects numbers and dates as well, I booked it wrong, so instead of having 14 days holiday, it was 12 days. The 2 days makes a massive difference because of the flights and layover.

So I was so panicked. There were so many things that made me anxious.

What if the kids can’t eat? What if they get sick, what if my mum gets sick (when she gets sick now, she’s pretty much hospitalised) what if we lose the kids, Ester is a runner at the moment, what if the kids get kidnapped, or get run over (my brother was run over by a motorbike/scooter the first time he went to Vietnam as a child) what if I get sick, or Nathan, what if we are so sick we can’t even enjoy the holiday?! What if everything bad that could happen, happens!

It’s scary, it’s so scary with kids. at the moment, they’re still a little bit unpredictable, Nefflen is a picky eater, Ester is a crazy toddlers, my mum is literally missing parts of her brain, and whatever wasn’t taken from surgery, was destroyed from chemo, she barely has logics on her side these days.

So we prepared as much as we could for the worst. And hoped for the best

And you know what. It really was the best trip ever.

The trip went so well that it made us so excited for our next trips. The only thing that didn’t go well was our spending, because we overspent. but, honestly, I would rather have overspent a little, and lived the moments well, then be stingy and half arse everything.

We left Sydney at 8pm, had an overnight flight in the fancy seat at the front of the plane.

The kids slept relatively well on the flight. and i brought enough activities for them to enjoy on the plane.

The adults did alright. Landed in Singapore at 3am Singapore times, got through customs, kids didn’t wake up in a tantrum, thankfully. Got all the airport stuff sorted, then went to our hotel room at 5am and slept til noon.

And we started our exploration there by walking around looking for the merlion. Found it, took photos, bought the kids an expensive merlion ice cream each that they did not finish, walked around Chinatown, had THE BEST DURIAN OF MY LIFE. and went home cause it was too hot to be out.

We swam in the hotel pool. My dad didn’t bring bathers but was watching the kids have so much fun that he ended up joining us in his boxer briefs. He hasn’t gone swimming in decades, so he was really enjoying it.

Ester jumped in before I could catch her, so she fell straight under. I was right next to her and got her up in time, but she was quite scared after that. At least she was able to learn that she needed us to be ready to catch her (or learn to swim)

We then went to the hawker market Lau Pa Sat to eat. Had some chilli crab!! And black pepper crab! God, food was amazing there. The kids had Hainanese chicken and rice, they really enjoyed it. Was such a great food experience.

Then we explored a little and went home to rest.

The next day we went to a shopping mall, played at an arcade. Rested back at the hotel, then went to explore gardens by the bay. It was wonderful.

The day after we went to universal studios, which I would’ve done differently if I knew, all the rides I wanted to go on were closed, which were the ones that both the kids and my parents could’ve enjoyed. It was too hot to enjoy it really, and the kids were too tired. We did go on a rollercoaster, which Nefflen loved, and Ester cried, she only just made the cut for height, but she was still too young mentally for it.

We left earlier than expected and walked to the beach to check it out a bit.

Then we went home to rest before going back to Lau Pa Sat to eat again, and having MORE DURIAN!!

The next day was our flight into Ho Chi Minh City.

Through out our trip in Singapore, we were able to meet such wonderful people, the drivers there were just so friendly, and talked to us about their life story.

Really showed how much their country loved their people, and how much the people loved the country.

They were also fascinated by Ester, lol.

We make it into Saigon and going through customs and airport stuff was horrible. Especially with children.

Our kids did really well, but there were other kids on the verge of getting a spanking because they just weren’t having it.

And off of the plane, straight away, we were ripped off 🥲

We got to our hotel, which was so much more spacious than Singapore, and hung out with my cousin and uncle who flew in from the north to visit my sick uncle too.

The next day we visited him again then explored an old war building, after that we went to explore the city a little before having a restful time at our hotel room. I rented a bike for my cousin to take me out to do some errands for my mum, and he ended up taking us all back to the hotel on the bike. Nefflen loved the bike ride, and Ester was so scared. She was scarred from the roller coaster still.

The next day we fly to Hai phong.

That night we have a massive dinner with my relatives at a hotpot place where Nathan got drunk with the boys there. There was a very small indoor playground that had kids playing in it, so once the kids had eaten a little, i took them over for them to play. I stood there watching over them cause it looked dangerous. there were so many pointy corners that if a kid fell and hit themselves on it, they would really be hurt, and the slide looked like it was about to fall off.
But while i was there, the other kids had noticed that my kids were “outsiders” and was yelling at Nefflen, asking him “where are you from”, and he was put on the spot because all the kids surrounded him in a circle, and he couldnt leave. so he cried and i had to go in and get him.

My cousins from Hai Phong, have grown so much, and are now self sufficient, which makes my family and i feel more at ease. I met them when i was 15, i think he was 12-13 at the time, and only a few years afterwards, that family lost both their parents.

I look back at their lives, and think about how they had gone into difficult spots in life because they didnt have much, and it made mum and i mad at them, like “why are you turning to drugs!” but, now as a parent, i see the world so differently, with so much more compassion. I cant imagine losing both my parents at the age of 15, i still need them in my life now, and i wish i could give my cousins the world.

The kids had such a blast with my cousins, made core memories that they’ll remember forever.

There was a moment back in 2005 when my little girl cousin Su, (who was 3 at the time) met my mum, and spent 2 weeks with her as we were living with them. My mum and Su bonded so much that Su just loved her from that moment onward, every time my mum called, Su would be right there talking to her for ages. They would be on the phone with each other everyday, even if they weren’t talking just because she wanted to be with my mum. And now, 18 years later, when they met again, Su just squealed and ran to her. There is just so much love between them and its just so wonderful to see. BUT! its an example for me to remember that children remember everything.

On coming back to Aus, i sent my cousin/aunts/uncles photos and videos of what i had back in 2005, which back then, i was the only one in our family that had a digital camera. Everyone had the old nokia phones with no cameras etc. So here i am, sharing a blast from the past with them all. I showed my cousin photos of their late parents, they probably didnt have many. So im happy that i got to give them those memories back. But the videos i took were only a few seconds long, and im kicking myself a little that i didnt record a lot more.

I guess it just means i need to record and take more photos now right.

The next day, we went to the big shopping mall, where the kids played in the massive (super cheap) kids cafe, where my cousin watched them. while my dad, Nathan and i went and did a bit of shopping. We ended up buying heaps of alcohol to share with the family for dinner.

We celebrated both my uncles birthday and my dads birthday there

Then we left for my dads area the day after.

My dads area was spent eating and drinking, and the kids started to get a little home sick by then. My cousin took me to get THE BEST MILK TEA OF MY LIFE. and i was also able to pick out some viet dresses as well.

And after another 2 days, we leave for Singapore, then home to Australia.

Overall, it was such a wonderful trip. It really made us want to travel a lot more with the children, just seeing them exploring the world, and trying new things with us. It made us closer as a family, and made my mum a lot happier to be alive.

Chapter 13: My house is a mess

“Sorry for the mess” is a common thing I say to everyone that comes to my house now. It’s just always a mess..

“I’ve been cleaning” is pretty much the second thing that I say, “even if it didn’t look like it, it looked worse before”

And I’m going to be honest with you. I do spend quite some time cleaning.

But there’s just this lingering feeling that I just can’t keep up with my adult responsibilities of keeping my house tidy, and clean. I just can’t seem to keep up at all. Theres just always seems to be mess, and filth, and poop, and pee, and toys, and roaches, and endless and endless amount of junk.

It’s just so overwhelming that I can’t shake this feeling of being judged for not working, yet still having a house in such a horrible condition.

Yes, I know I shouldn’t let what people think bother me, not that they’d ever say it to my face.

And to be truely honestly. Most of me doesn’t care, because if I did, it would be tidy 😆

But here’s where I need to remind myself to be more kinder to myself.

That while my house isn’t tended to, my family and my friends are.

I just spend 6-7 hours consoling a friend.

I spend hours of my day pretty much every day talking to loved ones about their problems, talking to Nathan about his

Lots of loved ones too.. all different people..

The guy I use to have a crush on, now only ever comes to me for relationship advice 😆

My house is a mess because I take in loved ones clothes and sort it out for others who need baby clothes/maternity clothes/just clothes in general to bring to them, or sent through mail, so that it doesn’t end up in landfill, to repurpose, to sell sometimes, to donate the rest.

My house is a mess because I take in loved ones items they need stored for a moment or longer

I keep a spare mattress for loved ones who needed a place to stay, for a safe space to go to after a divorce, a mental break down, a domestic violence episode, for holiday plans, or because they just don’t have anywhere else to go.

My house is a mess because my children are free, too free? Yes sometimes. But my dad just mentioned to me that when I was younger, I “owned” this house, I took over the living room as a child, I lived in this house, it was mine. And that someday I’ll see my children occupy the space just the same. That this is their house, not just a house they occupy space in. One that they are free to roam wild in, one where they don’t need to apologise for being children in. One where eventually, they’ll also learn to keep tidy when it needs to be as well 😆

Our house is filled with extra toys for children that come over, extra car seats for group car rides, and park trips with extra friends, extra bikes and scooters.

Our house is filled with gifts of gratefulness, friends who appreciate us, and give their gratitude and kindness through gifts.

Our house if full of emergency items, in case we or anybody else needed something, for moments where a friends sink is clogged, or when a friend needs a printer, if a loved one needed flowers, Tables, chairs, carts, tarps, tools.

Our house is full of art supplies, and games, and items to be used for gatherings, and events that bring people together to laugh, and hang, or create something beautiful.

So maybe my house is a dump, maybe it’s a little messier than I wanted.

At the end of my life. All those friends will be cleaning up my messy house anyways 😆

Jks jks.

At the end of the day, I know that my family is looked after, and my friends are okay. And maybe that’s more important than having a tidy house.

I genuinely love in abundance. And I’ve never been more happier.

Chapter 12 – The end of 2022

Another year, another blog post about how the year went.

This year has been very wonderful to be honest, other than a few minor health related problems for everybody around me, myself included.

i just read back on last years entry and i realise i didn’t write any new years resolutions. But i guess it doesn’t matter too much because this year i was able to do quite a lot.

At the end of last year, my mum got shingles, and because of that, it ended up spreading to me, who has never had chickenpox, and had no idea if i was immunised for it or not, and there wasn’t many ways to find out because no doctor wanted to see patients if it weren’t of an immediate concern during this time of covid/omnicron. Literally, the doctors just said “you should’ve been immunised as a child” and shooed me off. And my little daughter who was 16 months at that time, was 2 months away from getting her first shot for the chicken pox, was denied getting it earlier because of computer system reasons, not because she was too young (I asked, you can give them the shot after 12 months) So she ended up getting the chicken pox too.

But man, it really really made me believe how well vaccines work because my son, who has had one dose of the vaccine, did not get chicken pox at all. I was really waiting for it to hit him, even just a little, but it never did.

I ended up having arguments on the internet with strangers because i said getting the vaccine is better than getting the chickenpox as a child. but the strangers only read the last part, and argued about how “it is better to get it as a child than as an adult”, but that wasn’t my point, just get the vaccine and you won’t get either 🤷‍♂️

People would argue “getting it as an adult is worse”, which, i was doing relatively okay, it did get super unbearable but i lived, i ended up having to get Nathan to buy numbing cream to numb my vagina because it was just all over my cooch. Man, it just spread everywhere.. in my ear canal, on Esters eyelids.. just everywhere.. but seeing her get the chicken pox, I wouldn’t say I had it worse. I thought it was quite equal, you just don’t remember it if it happened to you when you were young. (But honestly though, everyone that did have it as a child, remembers the trauma of it)

But I’m not even concerned about the chicken pox part, I’ve forgotten it just like how I’ve forgotten the pain of childbirth. But now i’m at a risk of shingles, and my mum whose had shingles in dec 2021, is still suffering from the pain of shingles a year later. it just sounds so horrible, and its preventable (if you’ve never had the chicken pox)

i also feel guilty and a little sad that Ester is exposed to it, and would have to worry about that later in life too. she had it pretty bad, and its left her with a lot of scars on her face. I also think that everything people say about chicken poxs is like a myth, like “dont pick it, or it will leave a scar”, they all varied depending on where in my body/face it was if it left a scar or not, not because i picked it or not.

Anyways, enough about that. here’s a quick run through about everything that’s happened in life in 2022.

So a lot of life was delayed in the first part of the year due to 3 months worth of chicken pox (cause it spread slowly)

We did manage to go to Nathans sisters wedding though, it was very beautiful.

Names and faces of our kids are changed to keep them both privacy from the choices we make to use social media for ourselves.

Both Nathan and i got Covid earlier this year. it was quite mild, we wouldnt have known it was covid if we didn’t get a PCR test, it pretty much felt like getting the pfizer covid vaccine.

Paused on business related things with my candle business, I guess mainly just not promoting sales at all because that was a shitty part of the job.

But I was still getting some bulk custom orders, and a few photography gigs this year too, including a wedding

These are unedited photos.

I had such a blast at the wedding. It was just so nice to be able to meet new people, and be around so much love and kindness. I was so high on happiness while I was there.

The kids had fun too, Nefflen really enjoys weddings, he loves to dance, and take photo booth photos. (we’ve been to about 4 weddings this year)

This year, I was able to really start to enjoy motherhood, and enjoy spending time with the kids. I know it sounds weird to say out loud, that I didn’t enjoy being a mother before this. I feel like nobody talks about it enough, as if it’s completely normal to transition from women to motherhood so easily…

It’s not easy.. it took me 3 years to finally be okay, and love it.. and I know a lot of other parents are still struggling with it, but they don’t think about it or talk about it because of the mum guilt.

Why is it so hard to say “I love my child, but I am finding this very hard”

But the past 6 months or so have been so amazing.

The kids are a lot more independent, they are able to express their needs better, but also, we’re getting more use to understanding how they work.

I’ve been taking them on more adventures everywhere, that I wonder if it’s too much because they have too much fun that they don’t want to go to school the next day.

They are both growing up so fast, and they have such a cute relationship with each other. It’s just the cutest thing to see. I think they have a better relationship than my brother and I because Nefflen is more loving and kind than I was as the older sibling.

He would let me know if Ester is upset, and tell me what she wants when she’s crying too much. Ester would come and get milk for Nefflen when he’s upset too because she knows that’s what comforts him.

They both have their own secret language, and can’t be apart from each other for long because they go looking for each other. They’re both always hovering around the fence next to each other at daycare instead of hanging out with their own friends.

I’ve also started to feel the burden of cleaning the house up so bloody often that it’s just really ridiculous. Like it’s just never ending.

We got a new puppy this year too! Which was completely out of the blue. But it already feels like we’ve had him for so long.

I wanted a little buddy for our fat dog, she just seemed like an old lady and didn’t want to do anything. But now she’s a lot more energetic. She hates him though because he annoys her constantly. But shes finally lost the weight, and you really can see the life in her eyes now compared to before.

This year was quite a productive year for myself in the art world. I was able to complete about.. i’d like to say 40? digital art pieces, one watercolour, and 2 little acrylic pieces, as well as write through 3 books. (usually one book takes me about 2 years or so to finish.. but this year, 3 books) i think i also read a novel or two this year too? so its been quite productive.

I’ve gotten into the routine of drawing almost every night that i can, some nights i’m not able to if the kids aren’t feeling themselves, or i’m just really exhausted. but i realise too that if i don’t have my creative outlet, i usually feel pretty awful after about a week of not drawing or writing.

i did my first art print

did a collab with Thuy to create this frame for Debbie and Zee

I’ve also spent a lot of money buying art books, prints and even commissions now too. and redid my shelf and wall space so that i’ve finally been able to hang most of the artworks up.

This year also marks 10 years since i started writing too. 10 years, 13 books later. Stories i’ll probably never show the world.

And the rest of the time had been spent with a lot of friends and family trips, and 2 anime conventions dressed up

I should start to get into the habit of taking more photos with my friends like I use to. Although it’s really strange to do these days, I’m not sure if it’s because I’m older, or the times have just changed that no one really takes photos like they use to 10 years ago.

I was also finally about to get the kids dressed up in a group costume with us! We did a monsters inc family costume, and Pokémon group with Shirley. The kids grow wayyy too fast though that the costumes did not last long.

I don’t remember what else happened this year that was significant enough to write about?

2023 New Year’s resolution:

– continue to draw/write/create

– paint a mural for the kids in their room

– do more traditional paintings (watercolour/acrylic)

– create something to sell as a print or sticker

I can’t remember what else I said was on my New Year’s resolution.. I guess I’ll leave it at that for now.

Oh but maybe I’ll write down a life goal as well

1) create a children’s book

2) have an exhibition for my art (create artworks for the exhibition)

I also can not remember what else I mentally wrote down as my life goals, but I know these two are something I def want to do one day.

Anyways, hope you guys all have a wonderful new years. Thanks for reading

Chapter 11 – what is success?

There’s been a question that’s plagued my mind lately.. and to be completely honest, I don’t actually know how to answer it.

What does it mean to be successful?

And by this, I don’t mean it in the way of money, because that’s quite obvious right..

But at the end of our lives, what does it mean to have lived a successful life?

The dictionary defines success as an accomplishment of goals, an aim or purpose. But other internet sources say that living a successful life means to maximise a persons potential or overcome negative aspects of life.

But the reason why this is on my mind starts off with the fact that people around me, my friends with children, they are starting to talk about schools for their children.

Some people having to baptise their child in order to get into a specific school, some having to fork out 10k per year; per child for a certain primary school, some being on wait lists, some changing/faking their address just to get into a certain school, and others just going with the flow and choosing ones closest to them.

And here I am thinking; “but what is the outcome these parents are hoping their child achieves?”

Like don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying these parents are odd, or wrong. I completely understand why you’d want a better school. I’m actually looking into a more expensive school too, but the end goal for our children.. Isn’t necessarily get into university. I mean, if that’s what they want to do, then that’s awesome. I’d be happy either way. But my way of parenting our children has always been more about emotions than education.

I value fun more than I value money.

But maybe that’s ignorant of me to say because I’m in such a fortunate position in life where I didn’t do much with my life, but I’m married to someone who gives me financial stability; enough for me to not work, and do the things I want to do in life (granted, it would be nice to have more time now but I’m not complaining)

But I look at the lives my brother and I had/have, and how we turned out, and look at the people around me who have accomplished so much; career wise, and wonder if I would be happier in their shoes..

But the thing is; is that the grass is not greener on the other side, because there is such a massive fallback for the more successful people that I know, and that is that they are quite mentally unstable. not all.. not everyone.. but.. i do know a lot of people who I admire so much for their career path, who are just not happy..

(But then we also get into the question of “what is true happiness”)

I have a friend who was making the most in the group of friends I have, who was making 3-4x more than me when I was working, who felt so inadequate still..

I have friends who chase jobs after jobs, pay rises after pay rises, get to the salary they wanted, but still didn’t feel like they’re “there..”, didn’t feel like they won just yet, they need to keep going.

I know someone who, even though they have had a pretty good successful career, envious of people who get close or reaches the same salary as them.

While I’m here.. doing my thing.. wondering if I should feel bad about not having that money/success mindset..

And wondering what path I want to lead my children.

For me, at the end of my life, the stories I’ll leave behind, the people I’ve met, the experiences I’ve had, the art I create, and the people I’ve helped. My overall happiness in life, and the mental health of my children; those are the things that will define who I am, and my success. And honestly, if that’s all forgotten, then I wouldn’t care.. I’m dead. I don’t need to leave a legacy.. I just want to live a continuously happy life.

I don’t want to straight up say “this is how I define success, so here, be a hippy, a crappy contribution to society, and not worry about uni/flashy jobs/fancy life style etc etc”

I guess what irks me a lot at the moment too is that people have been asking me if I’m going to return to work. but I asked why?

At the moment.. we are paying more than we need to for our mortgage ever month, we are looking into getting an investment property, we make all our payments for bills, we splurge on the kids quite a lot (not with toys, but with outings, and yet, still have an abundance of toys and clothes for them), we have savings and other investments, and we aren’t on a strict budget.. even enough to splurge and spoil friends. And this is without me needing to work.. I don’t understand why I would need to work

Is it because I’m not contributing to society? Is that why people get so weird about it? or is it because other people are busting their asses working so hard while I sleep all day?

People say I need to go back to work, or at least study so I can go and find a better job later..

But why?

Why can’t I just be a dish washer? Or a food server? Or work as a check out chick?

Why study for a job that I know I’ll hate..

Let me be real for just a moment. So job/study wise for me. This is my “can and can’t” do list. I am pretty badly dyslexic. Bad. Sure.. I’m typing all this out right now, and it’s taken me a long long time to learn to read and write properly, and that literally happened after high school. but it still means that it’s a masssiiveee limitation for me on sooo many job/study things.

My dream job 100% would be psychology. I fucking love peoples fucked up shit, the mind, and all that medical crap. Love it to bits. But do you really want a girl who can’t read to be learning medical stuff? I don’t think so… I can’t bloody spell “chloe” in one go. It took me 2-3 types. I have been offered jobs for receptionist, I am blind to names and faces. Blind. I will meet people like 5 times and still not remember what their names are. I can’t even read names, there has been many moments where I read books, and blank on their names, and then I watch the movie and hear the name for the first time, and am baffled. It’s that bad. I have a phobia to answering phone calls. It comes with the ASD. So.. phone stuff is not for me. That rules out a lot of jobs already 😀 ~ words + tech. I thought about IT, but if I can’t read words, I def wouldn’t be able to read codes. Well what about the jobs I would like? Like design, creative things. I don’t want a creative 9-5 job, inspiration doesn’t work on a schedule.. ever. I use to do hairdressing, and thought about make up, but.. that involves looking at people.. in the face.. and.. that is a limitation for me, I mask it well, but It does honestly make me so uncomfortable. And as for physical jobs I actually do enjoy ~ food related, it’s the hours. I can’t do that anymore, not with children.

So.. what do I do? What should I study?

I was studying English literature in uni before.. (what a laugh right!! This dyslexic bit thinking she can study English harharhar) and I loved it. But wtf am I going to do after that?

Do we as a society value the senseless degrees more than garbage men? (And I am not bashing people with an English literature degree, but for me to have one, it would be senseless, what was I going to do afterwards?!) garbage man would be a cool job for me, the hours work for myself cause I don’t sleep on the same schedule as anybody else

I also know so many people who have done uni, racked up some uni debt, and have not gotten into the careers that uni degree would get them, by choice, because they just changed their minds. I know a bunch of people, who after 10 years of their careers they studied for, wanting out and changing careers. I have friends who did multiple uni degrees who didn’t finish those degrees, and now have a debt and no degree..

I also have friends who didn’t get a degree and still landed 100k+ jobs. But also lots of friends who did what every parent wants, got a degree, and got a very good paying job.

While I’m here, twiddling my thumbs onto my phone.. typing out words, letting autocorrect correct my spelling every second or third word lol.

I know people.. who died before retirement. Who worked so hard in life, for it to be wasted on someone else because they just died. People who got sick and became disabled before life even started for them..

“A healthy man wishes for a thousand things, a sick man only wants one”

I look at my friends lives, and I wonder “what are you working so hard for?”, Mainly the friends who have children.. are you waiting until you retire to be with them? To be truly present in the moment with them, to enjoy their company and laugh and play with them..

I look at our parents lives, and wonder if they did it right, raising all of us the way they did.

And I look at my children and hope that the lessons I’ve learnt translate towards them.

Am I wrong to believe that I am living a successful life? Is it wrong for me to believe it? Does that discount everybody else around me? Making their lives feel wrong? Do people think that I’m wasting my life because I’m not working?

If you had a magic wand, and made any wishes you could, to do anything in the world, to have anything in the world.. would you be wishing for the job that you have? the things you bought with the money you make? Would you want to be doing the 9-5 grind.

When after your mortgage is paid off, and everything is paid, you have enough money to live a comfortable life, what happens next? What would you do? What are you working for?

I would wish for immortality lol. because I want to live forever. I want to continue doing what I do forever. Just sleeping, and drawing, and being around the people I love.

Then watch them die. find new people. Show people a cool party trick be stabbing myself in the stomach and not dying. It would be heaps fun.

Realistically though, I do wish we had a nicer house. That’s about it. Everything else I want, I know I’ll eventually get it, like travelling, paying off the mortgage, the sailor moon wands. Or I’ll die, so it wouldn’t matter any ways.

But mainly, I want the kids to grow up happy, kind, humble, and able to overcome my obstacles they face. Add value to this world with love and kindness. And for them to find a way for me to become immortal. That would be nice.. so I can sleep 🙂

Chapter 10 – My Identity

I’m going to start off by saying hi! How are you all, your hair looks really nice today.

So the last 2 posts I wrote started in the last 2 blurry years, and I hadn’t finished them, but I wanted to just post them anyways because there is something that’s been in my mind a lot that I wanted to share.

I am [insert sexual orientation and gender]

Here is how I’ve come to that conclusion.

So, I’ll start from the very beginning. if anybody has ever read my blog entries from the beginning of time, I have always, always made a post about my gender and my sexuality.

I had always felt like I didn’t want to be a female, that I was born the wrong gender, and I had always always been attracted to women since literally, the age of 6. Before that, I was into cake.. really I can remember my 5th birthday cake. It was a chocolate mud cake, the neighbourhood Asian parents were saying that it was so “black”, “why didn’t we get an Asian fruit cake instead.” And from that day on, I hated them for telling me I was wrong for liking what I like.

I wasn’t going to go anywhere with that story, but it works in the whole sexual orientation context.

I was always into women, I fucking loved boobs, this is going to sound awful, but I would perve on womens boobs as much as I could, and as a young girl, I could.. I was in the same change rooms as them.. it was easy access..

But I grew up with the notion that I will one day get a boy friend, have sex with men, get married and have kids, all that hetro stuff that was the only thing they show on tv. It was the 90s, there was a lot of straight white erotic thrillers on tv (wild things, sleeping with the enemy etc)

My parents didn’t purposely expose me, and they did try to keep all that stuff away from us. But I knew my way around it.

I would tell my parents that it’s only a cartoon, cartoons are for kids, but really, it was anime that had tits in them (ninja scroll)

Anyways. So that’s my childhood. + the things my friends and I use to do with each other that I shall choose not to talk about because of our age at the time.

Another thing that really messed with me from a young age was that I was raised as the first born male, in some Asian cultures, it’s quite a big thing.

So because of that, honestly, that’s probably the biggest thing that messed with me. Because I want my dads approval so badly, but I know that no matter how hard I tried to do anything that made him happy, the fact that I wasn’t a boy made me feel like I’ve already lost the race before I even started it.

He would always tell me that it didn’t matter what gender we are, that we should know how to do everything, and threw a lot of the hobbies he loved at me.

this isn’t to say that he didn’t want a girl, and he doesn’t love me for who I am, and doesn’t accept me for who I am. But just that the tiniest part of him that wished I was a boy really stood out. Even though he doesn’t mention it, and that he is proud that I am who I am.

So as primary school comes to an end, high school starts, I move schools from a girls only school to a mixed school, my sense of identity was just something I had such a big issue with because I didn’t want to be who I was, I wanted to be like the people I saw on the American tv shows I watched growing up.

I remember just being depressed for so long. Being anxious about getting my periods and what that meant to me as a person, not just for the fact that I will now have to deal with bleeding every month, but that it was concrete that I was becoming a women, and that thought haunted me so much.

It was one of the reasons I wanted to die all the time. I just didn’t feel right.

But I ended up getting them, and for the most part I was okay.

Then came the boys.

I would get crushed on boys, there was a guy I had a crush on for a long time, that I ended up dating. And the reason I had a crush on him was because he was just so confident. I had a lot of issues with my reading growing up, and I remember listening to him read, it just made me so envious of the amount of confidence he had in himself, the way he presented himself, the way he spoke. Maybe that’s why I had a crush on him? He was the person I wanted to be, more than the person I wanted to be with?

But, I did feel like I forced myself into dating men, and dating in general because that’s just what was happening around me, and I longed to fit in so badly.

I would also joke about how I am the man in a lot of situations with my female friends. When I was in primary school, because I was taller, I would be the man when we slow danced. When I was in high school, similar thing, that I was the man in situations when we played mums and dads. I even went to our school formal as the “man” with my friend from school, I made myself a suit dress so I could fit the part.

But as I got older, new terms got introduced into my vocabulary, words like lesbian and bisexual.

And I always knew I was into women, so I labeled myself as bisexual, even though I had never dated women.

I would hang out with a few boys groups, and we would talk about women and swap pornos. Yep.. we swapped pornos, it was burnt onto a cd. lol ahh high school before the internet was a huge thing.

I ended up with a lot more male friends than I did female. I went to a lot of strip clubs and made out with a few girls at parties. I rejected the idea that I was “like the other girls” who did their hair, and got their nails done.

So, after I dated one of my longer term boyfriends, to the end of it, I just felt like things just weren’t right. I can’t remember what it was, but I had come to the conclusion that I was a lesbian! And I threw myself a coming out party!

I was also constantly angry about the ideology of patriarchy and the double standards and all the downfalls of being a women in a man’s world.

The songs “like a boy” and can’t hold us down” were the sounds of life for me. That it wasn’t fair that I was born the gender I didn’t want to be, but to have all these rules set on my life as well.

I started to find so much piece with women, it was so different meeting women outside of high school life. I met women of all walks of life, and connected with so many of them over so many wonderful things. It was just such a blessing.

But then I ended up dating another man after that. Mainly because it was easy and I did feel something for them. I honestly didn’t know where to find women to date? And the women who were lesbians that I knew, just weren’t my type.

This was before dating sites got really popular.

I started going to gay rights protests, marching in the Mardi Gras parade (honestly, that was one of the most best and craziest experiences I’ve ever had, just people cheering you on while you walked your walk)

What resonated with me a lot was hearing the speech Harvey milk, I can’t find the speech/quote atm. But there was a line in it that said something along the lines of “people would rather die than come out of the closet”, and I was just so saddened by it because I couldn’t imagine it being the same for anything else, that you’d rather die then face a day knowing that you’re a certain race, skin tone, etc, something you know you won’t be accepted for but you can’t change.

But. in my heart, I knew I had to marry a man and give my parents grandchildren. That was the purpose of my life for them. My brother wasn’t going to do it.

So I would go on with life the way i would, and just reject the fact that I was anything other than “a women dating a man”

I loved my queer community so much, but at the same time, also reject them because although I do identify as queer, I started to feel like I didn’t fit in in community because I was a cisgender women, in a heterosexual relationship. And I know that’s nothing to do with the community at all, just everything all in my head.

I also started thinking about the fact that I absolutely loved being a women, that I had grown into the body I was given. that I am so happy to be who I was, and I was so lucky to have the body that I do. I embraced it with open arms.

And with that thought, the thought of anger when it came to transitioning. The thought that if I had told a professional I didn’t feel comfortable being a women, and they just gave me hormones to transition, the same way as some people get treatment to transition, that I would be making a mistake.

I was so angry at the idea of me transitioning, and my train of thoughts was a bit angry at the queer community, honestly, I don’t even know why, maybe because I was so afraid of the thought that I just still didn’t know who I was, but I was one step closer. I know I am not trans, and that I did not what to be a man.

And again, nothing at all against the community or trans people. I absolutely love my trans friends and loved hearing about their journey so much. It just wasn’t the same journey I was on.

I still don’t fully accept the women gender roles, and gender stereotypes though.

Anyways. So live goes on.

I start dating a man that I’ve had in my life for a long time now. We get along so well, we ended up getting married and having children.

I am super attracted to him, emotionally and to my surprise, sexually.

So here’s the thing that I love about our dynamic that makes me know I can’t just date any other man, and that he is the one for me.

He accepts me for who I am, really.. who I am.

That I am the dominate one in the relationship, that because I was raised as first born male, that my role in a relationship isn’t going to be typical, that I won’t be taking the males last name, that our children won’t be taking the name of the man just because he is a man and that is how society does it. That I am not going to be the housewife, that cooks and cleans just because I am a women. And that I am independent with my own individual thoughts and feelings that doesn’t have anything to do with the person I am with.

My belief is that women and men are quite different, and their differences are absolutely beautiful in their own way, the way men and women look and think, i love both dynamic so much. But also that men and women can be equal in so many other ways also. That a lot of the gendered stereotypes don’t need to be gendered stereotypes.. like why is it that does the women have to cook and clean? All genders should know how to do that in order to survive..

But at the end of all discussions, he is happy to let me be who I am

I try to be fair with it too.

I cook for the both of us because I enjoy it, and he cleans up afterwards, unless he’s tired, then I clean up.

There are a lot of typical gendered stuff that I am willing to take a back seat with because it’s also something he needs as well. Like that he needs to be the bigger earner, and honestly, no complaints there. I am not going to complain that my partner wants to earn more than me.

But it does make me so thankful that I have chosen someone who really allows me to be authentically me.

He isn’t embarrassed or ashamed about anything I do or say. He adores me so much and I feel endlessly secure with him.

We even joke a lot about how I’m the man in the relationship and he’s the man that complains like a Karen. Even my brother the other day said it’s kinda gay that Nathan I hug cause it’s two men hugging.

So I always talk to him about my sexuality. He knows that most days, I’m perving on women, my phone is full of sexy/nude women images etc, but during my pregnancy to my daughter, I felt really really straight. I was also perving on men, which is such a new thing for me. A lot of the hot men I saw, I would be like “damn.. I would go there” (but really, I wouldn’t cause I’m in a committed relationship, and even if I wasn’t, honestly, I’d be too shy to go there lol! But in my dreams I’d go there)

I also always joked about how my ideal person would be someone with boobs and a penis, (cause I’m too lazy to be a lesbian) But then I stumble upon some trans porno online, and I added that whole category to my list of things I love.

My gender and sexuality ended up being put behind me because honestly, I am happy with who I am, who I’m with, where my life is. I don’t need to justify to anybody about anything that I am. I’m not here to impress anybody. I am just content with living my current life.

Anyways, so non-binary had become a thing, and I joked about it a lot. Joked about being “non-binary” for the lols. But honestly the more I thought about it, the more it makes me feel calm and clear.

This is it, this is what I’ve been feeling. I didn’t feel male nor female.

I didn’t fit the stereotypes of interests that women and men were into. I don’t like getting my hair, nails, getting pampered etc I don’t care for cars or sports. These are quite stereotypical stuff.

I joked about the idea to Nathan and a couple of friends. But the more I thought about it, the more it really sat well with me.

I follow a few non-binary people online, and I have to admit, it was a bit weird for me at the beginning. Just seeing a face and body that wasn’t male or female, it was so fascinating. But I was just a little bit iffy about the pronouns of “them/they” only because it could be a bit offensive calling a trans person “them/they” because it disassociates them with a gender, when they had been fighting so hard to live with a gender. But that’s a completely different thing itself.

I was thinking about my life and my reproductive system. I’ve always wanted to get my tubes tied, because I really didn’t want kids, alas, I’ve had two beautiful healthy children, and I wondered if there was a way I could just stop getting my periods, and just not worry about all those things because it’s hella annoying, I can handle the bleeding, but the hormone changes are a fucking bitch.

I looked into a hysterectomy, what it would do to me hormonally, I talked to someone who knew somebody who’s had a partial hysterectomy. I thought if these women could live it, maybe I could. Then I thought more into the subject of removal, and thought that it would be such an amazing idea to remove my breasts once I stop breastfeeding.

I wouldn’t need to worry about bras anymore, I don’t need to worry about my giant fucking nipples sticking out everywhere. I don’t need to think about holding my boobs when I run. And everything surrounding my boobs that I never needed to worry about pre-pregnancy. Like sagging.. cause they fucking sag now.

Everything else regarding body image, and appearances, I stopped caring about ages ago. I love the flat chest look. I don’t need boobs to feel feminine, I don’t care if people think I look weird flat chested or not, or big boobies or whatever. I don’t care at all. (And I partially wished a lot more women didn’t care neither, you are absolutely beautiful, and feminine regardless of your booby size)

Although there’s two things. One is that my husband is such a boob guy. And I have a deal with him, I’ll keep my boobs if he kept up his appearances too, it’s only fair. He tries to be attractive to me, I’ll try to be aattractive for him. And two, I would then need to work out a way to wear clothes without boobs.. (I don’t know if you got the jist of this, but I want life to be as effortless as possible)

But I thought that because I had quite good conception/pregnancy/birth/healing/breastfeeding, that it would be a shame if I didn’t use my reproductive system to help somebody else out. So I asked a friend if she needed a surrogate, that will be her baby womb.

So in conclusion.

I am a female leaning, Non-binary, Pansexual.

I say female leaning because I’m not going to deny the fact that I was born female, I lived my life as a female, I have a lot of female experiences that a lot of my male friends don’t do through, for example sexual assault (not that men can’t be sexually assaulted, but that it’s different, the assault women have is uniquely women, the ones men get is unique to them, the trans community has their own assault they worry about too, nobody is above another, just that every one’s experience is different)

as female, I’d have to worry about my drinks being spiked, reproductive stuff, all the sexiest cultural stuff like not going to temple while you’re on your periods, people calling me a slut for the people I’ve slept with, getting raped and falling pregnant, and that no matter how hard I’ll try to fight a man off me if it were to ever happened, it’s a much higher % that I will lose. + all the number of things women have to deal with.

And honestly, I love that it’s an experience and life that I am able to share with other women, so I’m not going to stop thinking and referring to myself as female. It’s also much easier to check the female box on everything too, and I also believe in keeping as much of your real identity out of the public eye as possible, so going by female on social media and everything on paper is completely fine.

But to myself, alone, personally. I am whatever gender. It doesn’t bother me. I don’t care. Call me whatever pronouns, just respect me enough to call me by my name. And respect me enough to understand my history.

So thanks for listening to my Tedtalk.

I hope that after you’ve read all this, nothing has changed for you because it hasn’t changed for me. I am still the exact same person I was before you read all that.

I just wanted to add my little story into the ocean of experiences people have. And hope it resonates with someone out there one day.

I’m actually quite envious of the children that are growing up today with so much inclusivity, sure, there’s so much more that can be done, but it’s such a big difference from when I grew up.

100% if I grew up in this time, I might have come out differently.

But I don’t know, maybe also because I’m in my 30s and I don’t give a shit about anything anymore that’s made life a lot easier.

Also, I’m using the blog app, and it’s lagging. So don’t mind any writing errors.

Chapter 9 – Another year gone

So a part of me cant believe that i went a whole year without posting any blog entries now because i use to blog like crazy before. but the other part of me isn’t that surprised because i have been filling up my time with a lot more productive activities that i really do enjoy.

this year has been an endless stream of bitter sweet oxymorons. There has been many terrible moments, laced in between many many many beautiful moments.

im going to be honest here and say that i do not remember much of the beginning of the year, its been quite a blur, but also because i dont think i document things down as much as i use to that my memory of everything just fades.

but the beginning of the year wasnt eventful. We’re still in the middle of a global pandemic, and everything else around that.

Nathans parents came down in February and we took the kids out to see the aquarium. Nefflen loved the sharks so much, and its pretty much been his first few words he started to repeat.

We were able to celebrate Nefflens second birthday though which went very very very well! i was able to make him a cake with a shark and turtle on it, he had also gotten really into the short movie/book “the snail and the whale”, so the cake also had a whale.

in the middle of the year, around June, NSW went into a long lockdown for 107 days. Those days were insane.

i went through several mental breakdowns because i just could not handle the kids being home with me 24/7 and not being able to do anything. It was a rollercoaster of emotions, The thing is though is that if they were at home with me without being in lockdown, without covid being around, and my mum being susceptible to getting ill, then we would be out enjoying life, learning new things, i’d be able to take them on adventures, and let them play with friends. But i couldnt, and it really made me hate life so much.

This isnt me trying to be over-dramatic to fish for anything, its just the ugly truth that i just wasnt handling things well.

I missed my friends, i missed being around people, i missed working, i missed who my mum use to be, and miss having quality time with Nathan. I didn’t know who I was anymore.

i hated being a parent, i hated that there were these two little needy children that would not let go of me, that would have meltdowns, and would get bored so easily, and wouldnt let me have just one moment to myself.

And the two people, who said they’d help me raise the kids, were busy. Nathan works a lot, having to work overtime a lot, and my mum got so sick that i am now her full time carer.

Im not ungrateful for them though, they help as much as they can still, its just not how i pictured life with kids.. and well.. covid just made everything so much harder.

i would complain to my friends and tell them im at my wits end, but they didnt understand it, and i would tell Nathan, but he tells me that i am too deadface for him to believe that i am suffering as much as i actually am (this will come up later)

But then i started working on my business again, we sent the kids to daycare during the lockdowns (Yes, very big risk) but because the daycare was being extra strict, the kids actually hadnt been sick for a long time, literally until the day lockdowns ended, they started getting the cold/flu again.

I was finally able to let go of a lot of creative energy, and found the understanding that if i dont do something creative, i will go insane. I need the outlet.

So this brings me to something else i’ve discovered this year, that like, if you.. my readers choose to believe or not is completely up to you.

So when Nefflen turned 18 months, he had an assessment done that was a part of a study done at some university to see if Autism could be detected early. there was a few things that he didnt check off the list, so we had another assessment when he turned 2, in order for them to continue with the studies.

It was quite interesting learning about all these traits and little signs, but as i was reading and watching the person assessing/playing with Nefflen, i realised that i had a lot more traits than he does.

So i started to look into it a lot more, and i realised that i may be on the spectrum, and that i fall into the category of Asperger (which is an old term they dont use anymore, but i still say it because its easier)

The only thing is that i dont think anyone would believe me because im quite a social butterfly. But i’ll get into that next time. Theres a lot to unravel there.

Anyways, so honestly, with that new information, my relationship with Nathan had gotten a lot better because he understands why i am the way i am towards him. There’s still a lot of road bumps here and there, but we’re getting through it, and our relationships gotten a lot stronger for it.

So during the lockdowns I decided to relaunch my business, but I had quite a lot of setbacks still because of transit issues.

It sucks, everyone that still had a job, were overworked, and underpaid for the amount of work they had to take on.

I shall also stop this here because it is a couple of months late.

I will elaborate on things later. I mean, hopefully I do.

Chapter 8 – I wish it were only a stroke

It is early January 2020, I am dressed up for the first time in ages in a dress I found for $10, my hair is curled, I got my heels on, and I am out without my baby boy to a lunch for one of my girlfriends birthdays.

I meet her other girlfriends, we mingle, we chat about our babies, and her upcoming baby, and I run back and forth to the bathroom wondering if I had just gotten my periods. I am 3 weeks late, and I am never this late.

I had suspected that I had fallen pregnant again, and to my surprise, after 4 weeks and 8 negative tests, I finally get a positive one.

Almost immediately I was hit with the first trimester fatigue. My mum had been super tired too because she was working a lot of overtime. She started working 12 hour days, 5-6 days a week. She loved her job, but what she loved more was providing for her family.

She kept complaining to me that “if you were able to make dinner every night, I can work overtime”, hinting that she wanted to work more.

I didn’t reply. Part of me was lazy, part of me just wanted to look after my son, and a part of me just didn’t want her working so much. But she ended up doing it anyways, coming home, buying groceries every day, then cooking. She did it all. Not to mention, driving her friends to and from work.

Mum started to get really tired, I figured it was work draining her. She would fall asleep sitting on the couch before she even got changed out of her work clothes. Nathan had, on multiple occasions, walked her into her room so she could sleep.

She came home one day, telling me that her friends said that she looks like she’s having a stroke. I told her to raise both arms, and she did. They seemed fine, her motor skills were still there. But she said that they had told her many times that she looks like she’s having a stroke.

She ended up going to the doctor, and the doctors made her do a small physical assessment, he made her walk a certain way, move her arms a certain way, follow his finger etc. and he said she seemed fine.

I didn’t think much of it, and we all went to bed as usual.

At 4am I heard someone walking in our hallway, they sounded like they were drunk, just stumbling all over the place. I tired to ignore it but I know I shouldn’t.

I woke to find my mum stumbling down the hall way, dragging her left leg, unable to lift it. I tell her to sit down because something is wrong. She doesn’t listen to me and continue to tell me how much her head hurts. I tell her that there’s something wrong! Not able to communicate to her that she’s having a stroke, I don’t even know what that word is in Vietnamese.

She kept insisting that she was fine, I would argue back with her. I had to walk her to sit down, get her Panadol and water, help her drink it and try to yell out to Nathan to come and help me.

He is a deep sleeper so he doesn’t hear me. I tell my mum to sit there for a bit, but she needed to go to pee, and won’t wait for me to come back to help her. So I help her walk to the bathroom and help her where she couldn’t move her left side. She still has no idea what’s happening.

I sit her down again and run to wake my brother up. Banging on his door because there’s no time not to be urgent. He gets up and mum is on the move again, my dad hears all the commotion and comes up as well to check on my mum. My brother carries her to the car, and my brother and I head to the hospital.

We get there and they do a CT scan for her. I stop at the entrance of the radiology ward and tell the doctor and my brother that I can’t go further because I am pregnant. So my brother goes in to translate for my mum while I sit there thinking that this wasn’t how I wanted to tell them.

Afterwards. We get the news that there is a mass in her brain, and that she will be transferred to a bigger hospital because they don’t have the facilities to help her. The doctor is then on the phone to the bigger hospital, arguing with them for a while about how mum needs to go ASAP, that if something happened, they won’t be able to do anything; “she’s 63…. I know she’s not old enough to have blah blah blah”, it got to the point that nurse had to also call and talk to someone else to help with the transfer.

That was the start to our journey. Two weeks after we had found out about our wonderful news. This happened.

Mum was so delusional at the hospital. She kept pointing to the side of her, and telling me to turn the candle on, that it smells so bad in our house. I kept telling her that we aren’t home at the moment; we’re in the hospital.

Two weeks after this, covid lockdowns happened.

The following month had been absolutely crazy. Mum was discharged after a week because she had recovered fairly well after the stroke. They had also given her some steroids to help ease the mass in her brain. And we set off to do all sorts of legal paperwork’s, and arrange the next step in the progress

Videos had started appearing in the internet about this mysterious bat virus that had been killing heaps in China. We didn’t know much about it, but we just knew that it’s something we don’t want mum getting because we know she wouldn’t make it with everything else going on.

I took Mum to her appointment with the neurosurgeon, and there I sat down with the surgeon, my Mum and an interpreter for my mum, because I don’t know many of the medical terms to talk to her about it all.

The surgeon looked younger than I thought, she was well spoken, and came off very confident. It was honestly really cool to see. She pulled the scans out of the envelope and pressed it against her window to examine it. And told me in English that the mass is a tumour, and from all the scans she has seen in the past, that this one is most likely malignant too, and that it’s in such a bad spot that she wouldn’t be able to cut all of it out, but that her plan was to cut about 60-70% of the tumour out, get it examined to find out what type of cancer it was, and see an oncologist for the next process. But she said that a brain tumour like this most likely will come back, and when it does, there isn’t much she’d be able to do about it then.

I sat there pinching the side of my leg, trying not to cry; texting Nathan and my brother what’s she’s saying while the interpreter translated most of it to my mum. Telling me later that he’ll leave it up to me to tell her that it’s cancer.

At this point, everything had gotten super difficult to do because of covid. There was kilometres long lines for Centrelink. We went from 3 incomes in a household of 6, to 2 incomes of a household of 7. My mums income paying for the mortgage.

We had so many difficulties here and there with time restraints for so many things. We needed to make a will for my mum, and a power of attorney for me to take over everything for her. We needed to prove that Mum was of a sound mind when she signed all her forms, and also tell her work that she can no longer work anymore.. in person! I don’t know why we needed to go in in person to tell them during COVID. But we had to. All this before she had her surgery.. just in case something went wrong.

We celebrated Nefflen’s birthday early, just in case. And just as I went to buy him a cake. I get a call telling me that mums surgery has been pushed earlier than originally planned, this scared us all. We weren’t sure if it was because things had been getting worse in that time that that’s why the surgeon wanted to push it forward? Afterwards I had realised that because a lot of elective surgeries were cancelled, all the major surgeries got pushed up.

I had to take Mum to a lot of appointments to prepare for the surgery. One of them being a scan that I’m not able to go to because of the radiation. That I shouldn’t be around her for 24 hours just in case. So during lockdowns, I asked Ajay if I was able to come to stay with her for a night. Yes. Okay we did break lockdown rules for a bit, but I don’t think I was able to take Nefflen to a hotel/motel for the night.

The day of the surgery came, and I took her in. We went there early and waited for quite a long time in the surgery waiting room. I was sitting next to my mum but they told me I had to sit a seat away from her because of COVID.. even though we came from the same house. Covid rules.

I was dressed in scrubs, which were surprisingly warm. Mum was starving because she’s not allowed to eat anything. I think the surgery was suppose to be about 11-12, but she didn’t go in until around 3pm. We get to the prep room, the nurse gave me a chair and we had a bit of small talk. An anaesthetist came in to put in a catheter and prepare her for surgery. I think a surgical resident came over and spoke to us as well. I can’t remember what I asked, but I remember he told me that the surgeon preforming the surgery was really good. He sounded so confident in her work. And that made me feel really at ease. Everybody was so lovely.

My brother went to visit my mum after surgery. And he came home telling us that she just seemed crazy, that she kept telling him that she hadn’t gone into surgery yet, she just went to sleep, and woke up in the rooms as if nothing had happened. She felt her head but she didn’t notice anything different, she still had a lot of hair. My brother was saying that he can literally see the bandages and blood from where she had her surgery, and if she wanted him to take a photo of it or not. But she kept insisting she hasn’t gotten her surgery yet. She is quite stubborn though.

It didn’t take long for Mum to recover from surgery either; and she was home within a week. A occupational therapist came to see her, and asked me “if you have any questions, please ask her”, so I asked my brother and Nathan if they had any questions.

I laughed so much, and I was going to ask the OT but I couldn’t stop laughing so I told her I didn’t have any questions. But man.. that would’ve been funny. And hopefully the OT would find it okay that we’re trying to have a laugh during a hard time.

The results ended coming back as non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Something that was treatable, and may possibly be curable (honestly, I can’t remember now but I remember being quite hopeful)

Mum started her chemo treatments. She did 4 rounds of it, once a month, it would be 3-4 days of treatment, with a few days of recover, then home. It was quite hard for me because I was pregnant, and as the time went by, was getting heavily pregnant. So I wasn’t able to go near Mum, or help her do much. there were moments when I had come to visit her and had to help her shower, and the nurse would come in and tell me off, saying that if I’m pregnant, I shouldn’t go near her because she would be sweating the chemicals. And in hindsight, I should’ve just waited. But my mum is so bloody inpatient, she was such a risk to herself with her inpatient, and her thought process that she’s still capable of doing everything herself that she has had a few falls in the shower.

Mum started getting these chest infections quite often after chemo, and because of covid, she had to be isolated for quite some time. They weren’t sure what was happening and couldn’t find anything from the scans that she had, but for some reason, her fever was still high, and she was still sick. They eventually started to just give her meds and rule it out with that. But in the end, still didn’t manage to find the source of the problem.

Eventually I stopped going into the hospital because of covid and chemo. Plus, I would usually have a higher temperature and not be allowed in on a couple of occasions anyways.

Nathan and my brother had to go in. But jaz was quite lazy, And it fell on Nathan most of the time. And Nathan had to continue to work full time, took quite a lot of days off to take my Mum to appointments, to drop food off for her, to do a lot for her. Then he looked after Nefflen and me when I needed anything. He did so much for all of us, and it was really burning him out.

So there was two options of treatment Mum could have, one was radiation after the chemo but that was not recommended by the doctors because of mums age, would put her in a high risk of dementia and memory loss. The other option was a stem cell transplant that’s relatively new. It had only been used as a treatment for lymphoma for 2-3 years in Australia at the time. But as the haematologist has said, it has been used for treating other things before.

We didn’t really get to choose, we just went with what they recommended. And gave us this massive booklet full of all the side effects. It was quite scary.

I’ll keep it at that for now, because this post is already 2 years late. Maybe I’ll continue it, maybe I won’t.

Chapter 7 – The end of chapter 2020

It is the end of another year, my third decade on this earth, and what a crazy year it has been.. seriously.. nobody would forget this year…

Especially me.

So I haven’t been able to blog as much as I wanted to this year because of everything that had happened. I have so many drafts of posts I just hadn’t had time to finish. Hopefully in the new year I might be able to go through them and write again.

So this year had been quite hard for me and my family. I’m not going to speak about our struggles in the way to make anybody else’s struggles seem unimportant, or incomparable. It has been quite a hard year for everybody, and I guess these were just what my family and I had to go through.

So the end of last year was the start of a hot summer that caused australia to be on fire. We had days in NSW where the sky was not a sky, but just smoke and red.. we couldn’t go outside because it was dangerous to breath. And it continued to the start of this year.

I felt a bit lost at the beginning of this year, I guess I was lost because I had realised that my life had completely changed since having a child. I mean, I knew it would, but the reality of it all just hit me in the face when I hung out with people that weren’t mothers to young children.

I felt lost too because I felt so disconnected with my friends in so many ways this year. And I’m the type of person who needs my people close to me some way or another.

In January my periods were late. Very very late.

I had taken 8 pregnancy tests in the period of 3 weeks. All negative.

My periods had come back a month after giving birth, and had been regular since. So for it to be late without any reason was very strange. But I didn’t think much of it.

Then the week after that I got a positive test. I had fallen pregnant again and was due in September. It was amazing. We had been having such a wonderful time watching out bit grow that we couldn’t wait to go through all that again.

Two weeks after our good news, my mum had a stroke. And we rushed her to the hospital; something I would touch on in a different post sometime later.

It turns out that she has a brain tumour and that she had cancer. This was the start of our journey towards recovery and having to take care of someone living with cancer.

Two weeks after that.. covid hit Australia and we were put into lockdowns. Nathans parents were suppose to come down to visit us but they had to cancel their flights and hotel due to the boarders being locked.

Mum had brain surgery in March, but the few weeks we had before that, we had to rush around and get everything done, we needed to work out mums paperwork’s for her will, for power of attorney, for her banking and pension. It was so hard because of all the running around, all the mental stress, and because of covid! Like, what a year for this to all happen..

Mum started cancer treatments in April, and her last treatment would finish when I was due to give birth.

So throughout the process of her treatments, I was very quickly getting bigger.

In April, when we celebrated Nefflens one year, we also found out that we were having a girl! We were just overjoyed. But literally a few hours after we found out, I started bleeding… a lot… and Nathan and I rushed to the hospital. I had had a miscarriage before, and it didn’t feel like that.. but we were just going over with each other what would happen to our lives if we did have one right now.. would try again..? Were we going to give up the idea of having another child if something went wrong right now? We were going through so much at the time that I couldn’t imagine we would be able to have another child.

I had an ultrasound and our little noggin waves at Nathan. She was completely fine. But they couldn’t explain why I was bleeding. So for the rest of the pregnancy, I pretty much had a scan every month for a check up, and was seeing doctors so often because I was classed as high risk.

Mum had to go through 4 rounds of chemotherapy, then a stem cell transplant and another round of intense chemo. The first 4 rounds, she did so well that you wouldn’t even know she was going through them. She didn’t feel nauseous, she was eating so well, she was gaining weight, we started to take her for walks, she even rode a bike.

The last round was quite rough on her. It was everything people say about chemo. She lost around 15-20kg from it.

The last month Mum was in the hospital for the strong chemo meds, I wasn’t able to visit. The hospital had limited visitors and times due to covid, and it just made things so hard for us. It meant that mum couldn’t have her friends come to visit her, as someone from our family brings her food every day, and because I was pregnant, and I shouldn’t be near mum when she’s going through chemo, I wasn’t able to be there for her. So my brother and Nathan did everything, mainly Nathan..

He joked to my mum ages ago that when she got old, he was take care of her and wash her butt and change her diaper for her. It was all jokes, and kind of serious because he sees my mum as his own.. and he really has gone above and beyond for her. He brought her food almost every day, he made sure she had things to do and watch, he always sent her photos of nefflen and made sure she knew how to view them. He stayed there for as long as he could to keep her company and try to talk to her even though they don’t speak the same language. Then, he would come home and help me with Nefflen.. go to work the next day and do it all over again.

I really am lucky to have married such an incredible person.

The day I gave birth was quite a story. I started my first contractions at 6.20am, and gave birth at 7.45am, went home at 2pm. She came out in one push, very healthy, beautiful and completely okay. but I had tried calling my mums as she was still in hospital, she was actually due to come home that day but there had been a complication there.

This year, Nefflen also had quite a few small health scares due to his eating and digestive system.

A few more things I’ll quickly list down that had happened this year was that Nathan had started a new role at work.

We bought a new car

I started collecting art books from artists I follow! At the beginning of the year, one of my favourite artist passed away, and I was just broken from it. I cried a few times thinking about it. And it really made me think that even though I don’t know anything about this person.. asides from what she’s posted online about her life, her artwork moved me so much that the thought that she passed before her life expectancy made me so sad. So I wanted to support more artists, they are people just like me! (Only much more better) doing what they love, maybe one day I could be just as great and inspire other people too.

We were able to revamp the home a little. Bought new furniture for Nathan to work from home, to baby proof a few things and to turn the back area into a children play area for the kids! It had been quite an expensive year for us.

I can’t think of any other major events that happened this year asides from all the other global ones (Riots, explosions, floods, fires, Etc)

This year had had quite a lot of terrible things happen all around the world, and it was just seem to be never ending as well.

But my friend said that despite that; there have been some nice little highlights here and there too.

This year was the most my family had dinner together for maybe over 10 years. We all go our separate ways to eat, and we hadn’t sat together for dinner (besides mine and Nathan’s wedding) for such a long time. So it was really nice to have that again.

This year I was also able to connect with amazing people, I have a little mum group that’s just been so incredible. When covid hit, and all the supplies was non-existent, we all went out looking for items for each other, and continue to do so even after all the panic buying stopped. I’ve been able to rely on them mentally, and although they have children too, they have helped me out so much.

That’s also the same with the people I already have in my life. I had people drive me places that I couldn’t get to on my own at the time, people baby sitting for me when I had to help mum, people I could rely on to be able to take my mum to appointments, (although I was able to end up taking her anyways) it was just so nice to know that I had friends that could do that stuff for me. I had friends offer so much support in different ways, like food, toys and clothing drop offs. I had friends who helped move and build furniture for us. The list is endless.

anyways, I’ll end this post with my New Years resolution.

1) try to lose weight! I gained quite a lot of weight during both my pregnancies. 23kg altogether. So far, I’ve already lost 13kg, so just another 10 to go 🙂

2) try to be more forgiving and patient towards Nathan, and towards people.

3) try to think outside the box a little when it comes to creative things.

4) try to eat better. Have more of a plant based diet again. I really miss those.

5) try to save. Because this year has been pretty expensive; hopefully next year we can save a little more

And the usual, 5) draw, read and write more. I also want to make more candles.

So here’s a salute to 2020!

An end to a bittersweet year.

Chapter 6 – His broken heart

This morning I had received a message from Damian saying “hey” ~ just “hey”; not the usual “how are you? I miss you”. just “hey”.

It’s strange how a sudden change in people’s actions could portray so much. Something just felt off.

He was messaging me to let me know that somebody we knew had passed away.

I don’t know how to feel about the situation because there’s so many different factors at hand. I haven’t spoken to him in about 8-10 years or so, and our last interaction was a pretty negative one too. He has been ill for a very long time, and I guess it was bound to happen sometime.. death is all upon us, but I think he got the short straw when it came to his health. And for a long time too, he had been on a lot of hard drugs, but again, I don’t know how his life had been the last decade, I really hope he had a good and happy life before he passed.

I met him in grade 7; he and a few other guys were the first few boys to talk to me when I had just transferred to that school from being in an all girls school.

I had a crush on him in year 7 as well. He was just so charismatic and charming, he spoke so confidently, and did a lot to make people laugh. After the year was over, he left to another state.

He got in contact again after a few years and one thing lead to another and we were long distance boyfriend and girlfriends. It was back when home phone lines were a thing, and I remember having to hang up on him after 3 hours and calling again because after 3 hours the phone bill would spike, since it was an interstate call.

We were just a couple of hormonal teenagers, and the relationship only lasted a year. I wasn’t a good girlfriend, not that I cheated or did anything bad, but I was still figuring myself out; what I liked, and who I was, so I wasn’t great at the whole girlfriend thing.

I’m trying to remember some nice stories about him, but I can’t seem to think of many because we only really shares a year of our lives together, most of it being through the phone and messages.

I remember for his birthday, his parents bought him plane tickets to come and visit me. That felt like we had won the lottery.

I remember we were playing mums and dads, and he and I had a baby sugar bag names Lilac Sherry W. I even made a pillow with the words “sugar” on it. He had taken it home with him when he left. She would be about 15 years old now. I remember asking how she is, even after we stopped being friends for a bit, and spoke to each other again after we stopped fighting, he would just update me with random cliche kids stuff, as if it’s our little inside joke.

Everything else I remember, I think I will keep to myself, it can be our little secrets.

I do remember what type of person he was though.. he had a very sweet and gentle side to him, he was super emotional sometimes, sometimes I couldn’t bare that part of him… I also remember he had some fights in grade 7, but I guess that’s fairly normal for hormonal teenage boys right??

he was a very passionate person, he loved so deeply and so strongly. I remember he would always have a tune in him, always singing and giggling, when he was happy, he was just so full of life.

I use to call him my angel who lost his wings.

He got sick when we were younger, I remember calling him in the hospital a lot, and him calling me. I remember his mum called me as well, telling me about how he was.

He had a heart transplant when he was about 14 years old, I remember looking at the scars on his body, and just being horrified by the sight of them, but still loved him either way.

I remember after we broke up, he had tried to take his life a few times. And after that, I was a horrible person to him.

He ended up going into hard drugs. And I was always so angry at him for it, we use to fight a lot about it. I would talk down about him, saying that I couldn’t understand why anyone would abuse the second life they were given.. but I know that was a bit naive of me to think.. I do not know what his life was like, I can’t imagine what it would be like to have to take medication everyday, knowing that (and again, I’m still just assuming) that you may not live a long healthy life because of his heart. I don’t know the mental struggles he was going through, how hard it must have been.. I heard about people having survivors guilt.. I don’t know if it’s something he suffered from…. maybe he needed the drugs.. maybe he needed to get away from his reality..

we kept in contact here and there after that, I still cared about him for a long time.. a very very long time.. I remember crying to my friend once about how I thought I fucked up his life because I treated him so badly that he turned to drugs.. and my friend told me that it wasn’t my fault, and that I needed to cut that emotional tie I still had to him; because after I realised how terribly I treated him, I always felt guilty.

Our last interaction was so bad I had to block him, he wasn’t himself.. I assumed it was the drugs.. I remember telling him that I was going to block him, and that I sincerely wished he have a good life.

And I meant it. I remember hating him after we broke up, but I don’t even know why.. I think after I stopped being a bitch about that, I realised that he wasn’t bad. He was still the sweet old him, I was the one that was delusional.

So I wish he had a happy life.. I hope he knew that he was loved, maybe not by me, but by the people he had around him.

I hope that with his passing, that he is in a better place now… and I hope if he was suffering before, that he isn’t suffering anymore..

He was my first love, and I’ll always cherish the moments that we shared together.

But for now.

R.I.P. D.W.