Hi Trang,
I find it really difficult to write to you, and I’m not sure why. Maybe I feel an incredible sense of guilt about how unfairly I have always treated you, or maybe I feel that acknowledging you and your feelings will be me acknowledging my weakness.
The other day, while walking, I suddenly remembered how you were desperately trying to remember your classmates’ birthdays back in primary school, how you always asked mum to buy you tiny notebooks from the bookshops so you could stockpile them and give them out as birthday presents on those birthdays. I remembered how you spent a lot of time imagining how much these classmates would be surprised that you remembered their birthdays and even brought them a gift, and you daydreamed about how you would become friends with them. I’m not sure if it worked – probably it didn’t, as far as I remembered – but you really tried so hard. Do you remember how you stole mum’s money that she kept in the closet so that you could buy your classmates little presents? Do you remember how mum found out, got incredibly upset at you, and made you sit down and write a list of things you bought for each friend? I can’t remember what you bought and for whom, I just knew there was a list. Did you want to show off to your friends? Did you want to be approved by them? Did you want your loneliness to go away somehow, and that was the way you believed would work?
Do you remember leaving notes for mum all over the house? I admire you. You had the courage to show her you love her, but I don’t have that courage. Somehow I felt as if gestures of love would make me vulnerable and weak. I know I just didn’t have your courage, but I am not sure when I have lost all this courage you gave me. I’m sorry.
There’s a lot that happened between primary school and leaving home for uni in the UK. A lot happened where you were not sure why it happened to you, and how much it could affect you. Maybe if it did affect you somehow – it could be a small part, it could be a big part – or it could just be nothing.
In the second high school, you found such a great group of friends, but it wasn’t easy at all. Do you remember when the whole class all agreed with each other to ignore you, just because you moved from state school, and you were not good-looking enough for them? Being ignored has always been the worst punishment to you. Being forgotten is so painful, isn’t it? I know adults are different from children, they usually don’t ignore you out of spite, they probably just forget because they can’t possibly know when you need them, and they don’t act thinking about how their every action would make you feel – but it hurts nonetheless. Do you feel as lost back in childhood as I do now in this world?
I remembered how you always tried to join conversations as an undergrad, a postgrad, and maybe even now. You adapt well, you learned that being relatively vulnerable can help to fit in easier, and you do it. But every day, every moment, even the enjoyable moments, feels like you’re just trying hard to push the pain away, or turn away from it and ignore it. You learned how to hang out with people, you were able to hold hotpots, parties, dinners, and you truly enjoyed people’s company. But somehow the pain is still there.
You always wanted to be a part of something, while trying desperately to pretend that you are different from them and wouldn’t have fit in anyway. You tell yourself that you’re better at observing, at looking at things from the outside, but I know how much it hurts. Your solution is to avoid all that hurt for good, and I get it. I wish I could be fully with you, but somehow I don’t have the strength nor courage to treat you right, to talk you out of this shell. I’m just somehow always exhausted, and cowardly most of the time.
Do you remember the excitement every time a new school year started? Do you remember the stockpile of miniature notebooks you had? What was all that anyway? It’s the same as the excitement I have when I daydream about a new relationship, when I thought I finally met someone with whom I could feel safe. Same excitement, same giddiness, and I can’t remember how you felt when none of the miniature notebooks worked the way you wanted or imagined for it to work – but it might have felt exactly the same as when each relationship fell apart for me. What exactly do we do?
I am sorry. I shouldn’t feel lonely when I’m with you, but I do. Isn’t it the ultimate irony, that others ignored you, and I try to ignore you too?
A part of me knows that you are an incredibly caring child, and you have remained this caring for a long time. I just don’t know if being caring will ever have the same effect that you imagined in your mind every time you daydreamed. Is it possible to be caring the same way you have always been, but somehow accepting that reality without an incredible sense of sadness every time?
You know, I was voted by students last week as the most caring lecturer. They came up with the wording themselves, how strange. Maybe they knew, maybe they realised how caring you were – I am – but you didn’t know because they didn’t react the same way you imagined it all this time. Is it alright that way? Will you accept their own way of knowing?
People notice your effort, your good qualities, but they will have to move on with their life. Why do we constantly have to chase after that one moment of recognition again and again? Is it okay if you and I take a break? I’m not sure how to actually take a break, what that break would look like, but I am sure that you are exhausted, just like me. You and I somehow can’t remember a moment in which we weren’t running away from the unexplained pain, and I think we have been running on borrowed energy for a while now. I’m so incredibly tired, I don’t know if I am even making a lot of sense, but it’s hard sometimes to get on with “life”.
So what do we do now?
the forgotten one 