Monday.

My neighborhood and the coffee shop are both dead as a doornail. I asked the barista if there is a holiday I don’t know about today. He said the holiday is next week. He also says Mondays are usually pretty dead for some reason. No one really knows why. It could just be the fact that it’s raining. It is what it is.

I did not do much after writing yesterday. Sat at the brunch place for awhile drowning myself in mimosas, then went home and finished Running Point on Netflix. Sent out more job applications. Creeped on a bunch of Facebook groups to compare my CV to other people’s to see where I can make improvements.

It’s shocking to me how many people just cram their CV with as many words as possible. So many of these pages look so crowded from a visual standpoint. If it were me doing the hiring, I would throw those in the trash and go for something with a more minimalistic style. I myself prefer a more minimalistic style. The less work the person on the other hand has to do, the better.

I’ve made so many versions of my CV now. It’s exhausting. I’m not getting anything back! It’s ridiculous. Like, I have an HKID card. I live here. I lead with that in my cover letter. It shouldn’t be this hard.

I know, I know, the job market everywhere is cooked. Everyone is getting laid off. No one can find a job. Blah blah blah, blah blah blah. Okay, well, I don’t have time for that shit. I need a job, fast. I’ve been at this for months and the only offer I have on the table is an unpaid yoga work trade in Cambodia that doesn’t start until the end of July. That’s ridiculous. What is wrong with the job market right now?

Networking is getting me nowhere. It’s literally just going into rooms full of people who are doing cocaine and only care about getting more cocaine. It’s exhausting. I’m starting to feel like the only person in the world who has no interest whatsoever in doing cocaine and/or drugs of any kind. Alcohol is bad enough for me. We don’t need to add additional things to the mix.

Well, I can’t go back to the States because there’s nothing left there for me. I sold my car, I don’t have a place to go, the job market is even more of a hilarious joke, healthcare and education are impossibly expensive. It’s just not a realistic option.

I need to just be insanely positive to the point of being delusional and focus on manifesting good outcomes. I made it this far in life. I’ve got my first year abroad behind me. I’ve made all the dumbest mistakes out of ignorance I can make. It’s only uphill from here. Just get on that escalator and head on up.

Someone tried to say to me the other day, “If your father was here, he would be so proud of you.” I laughed in their face. I hate that fakeass shit. I get that you’re trying to be nice, but with all due respect, you’re completely wrong.

My father would have thrown a hysterical shit fit, screamed at me, and tried everything he could to stop me from leaving. Then if I left anyway, he and my mother would have given me the silent treatment until a random, important, crucial moment in my life (like a meeting or a class or something special) to call me up and unleash a full tantrum over something completely insignificant that I had nothing to do with, just so they could sabotage my special moment and make me feel bad for ever leaving.

How do I know this? Because this is what they did to me when I wanted to study abroad in France. I wanted to go for a whole year. They let me go for one month and refused to speak to me the entire time I was there. I had to ask for money one time and I got screamed at. Yes, heaven forbid you make sure your child isn’t starving to death while she is away at school. It must be such a burden to you to make sure your children have groceries!

When I went to the Paris Writing Workshop, my mother didn’t speak to me for the first two weeks I was there. Instead, she waited until the day I had my first critique and spammed my phone with messages and phone calls, screaming at me over an emergency purchase I told her I had made two weeks prior.

She also pulled this same tactic when I was living at home during the pandemic. I was taking all these different classes and attending online writing conferences. She spent the entire weekend of AWP constantly barging into my room to scream at me, completely unaware that she was live on camera and the mic was on. I had so many messages from people asking me if I was safe. I didn’t even know how to respond because the answer was no.

Then when I was taking a dance class, she cut off the internet on the day of my recital so I couldn’t perform. Then when I tried to fix it, she was just screaming at me and berating me. I had to leave the group. It was so humiliating.

They had a long history of this. She used to pull the same tactic with me around midterms and finals. Every finals week was a battle of survival for my mental health.

When I wanted to transfer to another school because I was unhappy, I got screamed at. When I wanted to quit to take a break and figure my life out, I got screamed at. When I was offered my jobs at the resorts in Utah and Montana, I got screamed at AND threatened! She said that if I took my car to drive out to either of these jobs, she would report it stolen to the police. Then she would come back in later and scream at me to get a job and move out. Like, I literally would have done that at age 18, but you didn’t want that. In fact, you have literally done everything you can to prevent me from doing well in school, finding a full-time job, and surviving on my own.

This is about the time my father would join in and start screaming at me that I’m an embarrassment and he is ashamed of me and that I make him look bad in front of all the important law people. Well, dad, you’re the one who insisted on making all of my important life choices for me. Now you’re surprised that I’m unhappy and unsuccessful? Well, maybe if you had let me choose where I wanted to go to university and what I wanted to study and let me live the life I wanted to live, you wouldn’t be stuck with a child who makes you feel so much shame.

Do you know why you feel so much shame? Because YOU made these choices for me. YOU chose wrong and it’s not in your programming to be wrong, so now you’re blaming me for the bad choices YOU made. You feel shame because you should be ashamed. You were a terrible father. You failed me every single step of the way. Now you are projecting that shame outwardly onto me, and I’m not going to go along with it anymore.

The logic is not there with these people, okay? They’re not happy for me. They’re not proud of me. They’re mad they lost their scapegoat. I am and always have been a human whipping post for my family in general. I’m not going to pretend otherwise just because my dad is dead.

Anyway, enough about that. That part is over now! My dad is dead and I have permanently cut contact with my mother and the rest of her psychotic family. They cannot hurt me anymore. Every step forward I take from this moment is another step further and further away from them. Soon I will be completely financially idepedent. I will have my own phone plan. I will have control over my own identity documents. I will have my own place. I will be completely free from their influence forever.

The only thing preventing me from achieving my goal of absolute freedom from my family is this shitty fucking job market. Get it together, world. Stop snorting coke and outsourcing your brain power to AI and voting for Trump and just do us all a solid and make the world a better place.

Just reminding myself of all the reasons I am extremely motivated to get my shit together. My priorities are simple: Masters Degree, successful writing career, fabulous apartment, husband/partner who doesn’t suck, travel the world. Okay, okay, done. Your wish is my command.

Okay, I’m done with reflecting on how shitty my parents were now. I have real shit I have to do today, like stop off my clothes at the laundry and clean my apartment and figure out where to buy deodorant because I finally ran out of the year-long backup supply I brought with me from the States with exactly two weeks left to go. Not bad, right? I know! I even have three or four razors left, which is especially surprising. I use the Intuition kind and wasn’t sure if I could get those here, so I brought a backup supply. Somehow I calculated it exactly right, which is awesome. Go me.

Ugh, I just looked over at the book the lady next to me is reading. The page she has open is all about the Thai tradition of taking care of your parents and giving back to them in gratitude for bringing you into this life. LOL, ha ha, yeah right. There’s nothing to give back to them. My mother can sink her claws into someone else and manipulate them into taking care of her in her old age. I have finally broken free from the chains of abuse. I don’t owe her, or anyone else in my fucked up family, jack shit.

Someday I hope to be free from the anger I feel towards my parents. That day is not today. It may never come. Whatever freedom I find from my anger will be for the sake of myself, not for them. I am on a healing journey for me. It is what it is.

Off for real now. Have a good day!