Sudden changes

I dug this out today. It seems that I have been working on why I came back from China since 2017, and of course much earlier as well, and sending little messages to myself about them, in an auto-fiction kind-of way.

And I have always written about my granny.

A shift happened on my birthday, on 18 August. My 33rd birthday. The shift happened when I realised that I essentially no longer wanted to be there or liked to be there. The whole ‘good girl’ thing had become a sort-of performance, and I was definitely playing a role.

I don’t know when this role thing started, or how, or why I was doing it, except I had found out slowly. I was doing it for her: If she wasn’t still around, there would be no way that I would pretend that I was happy in a home that was essentially abusive and didn’t contribute to my own image of myself, or my own happiness.

I had gone so far beyond the Chinese family — which engulfed everything EVERYTHING — that I was at some sort of stasis, homeostasis, the way that I have always been. And it made me feel lucky.

Update on my granny

The last few weeks have been tough, as I have taken on a more care-taking role for my grandma. I didn’t know that it would be this way but probably on some intuitive level I knew as well, that during a period of time I might have to stay in Beijing to take care of her.

I thought it would be fun, but the truth is it is not fun. It is a slog.