Looking back at the days that I spent in Canada, it probably has almost been 10 years since we immigrated. And up until today did I realize one thing, the one thing that's SO incredibly significant and should be dear to my heart. I am shocked and quite ashamed that I've only just realized it now.

Today, Dad cried. I can't say I am shocked but hearing him talking to me as a human was a first and I certainly didn't expect such a fit from somebody who I once thought so tall and strong. I can imagine there must be millions of reasons that made such a person shed some drops of tear, but most of all, it must be the pain and loneliness that he's been through the whole 10 years that we were out here on the other side of the ocean. (oh dear! Alas! God help me put back the tears in my eyes!) He's been lonely and so has mom and so have me and will. We've been through alot but not together and thats' the problem. We dont' understand each other and what we've each gone through and who knows how many nights we each cry ourselves to sleep and how many days we'd sit to count the suffering days away. We have been sad and unhappy as a family. Let's face it. We simply couldn't have afforded this expensive immigration. Until now, i am still wondering. I am wondering if it's worth it? This move not only removed lots of money, lots of precious relationships, and well-deserved happiness; this move has removed our love and longingness to be together.

We once loved each other and I am sure we still claim that we do. But really, what we want in life are so different now. Instead of a big happy family, we long for big houses with grand pianos and beautiful hand-sculpted decorations. We long for a decent career that's brightened up by the sight of money and status. We long for freedom and for a place that family can't reach to. Most of all, we long for our own very different forms of happiness. The different roads and different sands have shaped us differently. The ugliness that we needed to endure belonged to each of us solely and nobody else could ever understand the suffering that we each went through because they weren't there. Our legs are tired and toes calloused, hair coarsed and hands bruised, yet we still go on. Yes, we still do love each other but just in very different ways. As a family, we've grown apart from each other, drifted away from the fountain of happiness, each going in four very different directions to journey for our long-thirsted-after ocean of happiness. We each travel and grow in our paths like stem cells that bravely march on in the immense body, looking for our own destinies. It's true, we started from the same place, the very place of love. The very simple and pure love that wanted the better, well-being of our family and the building of our bonds has moved on and stemmed to become somethign very different all together. Without realizing, we've marched far and far away from each other in search of our own definitions of 'love' for the family. In the end, the love that was there in the first place, has been torn into 4 different pieces, mutilated and foreignized.

Dad cried today and I still can't stop blaming myself for having assumed that everything's okay because I've been fine. I've never seen him cry in my whole life but to my surprise, I don't feel that helplessness I felt when mom lost her words in front of an english-speaking bus driver when we were travelling 8 years ago in the foreign country that we now call home. The essence of crying is pain and i feel that. that's the same. What's changed is me. I realized how different i have become from the 14-year old girl that first came w/o a drop of knowledge in the head. I am so much stronger now. I guess I really have grown alot, so much I heard dad cried for the first time. I have learned so much about the world but he stood in the same place for 10 years, as if waiting for me to go back. What we dont' realize is when we do go back, nothing will be the same anymore. There will be gaps and knowing me, i will live as if nothing's different. I will try very hard to make up for the gaps and i will sympathize with them because I seem to carry a pain detector with me that hurts me whenever i sense pain. I certainly have learned alot but I've really got to ask myself am I better now? Can I still be the wonderful daughter dad has sent out to get a better education? Can I still love him like I did or more than I did then?

My heart was crushed. It was crumbled up and torn open by every mumbled word that came out of his mouth. The pain stammered right out of his mouth like a guilt-less man who have been in hell his entire life. This awful expression of weakness and suffering I almost could not stand. "But I need to be strong now", I told myself when in fact I wanted to squat down and hug him for the very first time in my life and tell him that everything will be okay. I didn't do this instead, I held back my tear and gather my assertive tone I learned at school to return his pain. I can't crash. Not at this time. It's time for me to look out for them now, now that they've got nothing to give. Now that they've given us everything. I mean everything. Oh God! We've lived this incredible life at the expense of their happiness! How am I ever going to pay back?

What better parents can I ask for? How am I ever gonna pay them back as a daughter? How much can I make in the future to bring back their youthfulness and their time wasted bawling their eyes out? How many houses can I buy them to bring back their well-deserved happiness? How many "i am sorry' can I say to return their self-less love that was ,... omg ...

Tonight, I cried. I cried like there's no tomorrow. But tear was not enough. I know it's not. I need to do something about it. I need to start remembering all the things they've done for us. I need to stop takign things for granted. We weren't the family that could take this on. I know we weren't meant for this challenge. We're not one of richest families that moved here because their sons or daughters coudlnt' do well at school in taiwan and we're certainly not meant to be here to enjoy the luxury. But what upsets me so much is the fact that I've only realized this 10 minutes ago. OH god, have I've been a spoiled princess who thought that everything thats' happened is meant to be and so petty I've been to think that I deserve all this. This opportunity and the broad outlook and perspective about life would have never been here in my head if not for them. My life has been so beautiful and Heavenly because Mom and Dad have been in hell. They've traded a life of quietness and peace for hell because they wanted something this beautiful for us, even if they knew they couldn't afford. I feel so bad. Every little bit of memory has now crept back to me and dumb I have been to defend this stupid pride. Up until now, i've been such a fool to have forgotten about my place. I've been living in such an expensive dream and I should wake up now. I feel like I've been a greedy child who loves to eat apple from the tree and would not stop reaching for it. I've grown so hungry mom and dad can only work their ass off to harvest energy in hoping that the tree doesn't die. I've been so blind as to only see apples dangling from my head and overlooked every drop of tear and sweat that was shed shovelling maneuver and watering.

Oh God, please help me to be strong at this crucial point. I know you will give me direction as to how I can find my way back to them. I know through stories that you are the shepherd for all lost sheeps.

I know I am a lost sheep now, please take me home.

I used to believe that everybody with a heart can feel and experience all human emotions in a way that each and every one of us goes through at some point, without having to really go through it. I used to believe that no matter how different we all are, we are made of the same atoms and chemicals and should be able to understand each other no matter how different we think and how hard we argue. We are all human beings capable of sympathizing with each other and with enough effort understand one another from their own angles. But going through the world hearing stories about broken hearts and lonely people made me have second thoughts. Is the world really filled with lonely, difficult people or are we just not trying hard enough?

When I first came to Toronto, I had quite a good impression of it because everybody seems nice and obliging. But layers of facade peel off as I look over my shoulder when I come around the corner for the second time. Everything all of a sudden is not so black and white and the nice qualities that I saw before became so fake I wonder why I thought it was nice the first time. If you live here long enough, or stay in school, and if you're lucky, you might get 2 or 3 good friends that will stick with you long. Most of the time, those 200 hundred people on msn mean nothing and very very few number of the people you 'chill' with at student clubs can be buddies that you can borrow a shoulder to lean on when you're sad. The 21- cold-ass weather seems to pull a pathetic fallacy on us, laughing and mocking at us with beautiful snowflakes mixed in with the icey wind that creeps into every part of our body and gradually attacks the heart - freezing every human emotion. Cold breaths mixed in with cold words come out of mouths and nobody talks personally to anybody anymore because nobody seems to have time for anybody anymore.
But still, we try. No matter how cold winter is, we still walk in the cold bravely and back straightened, chin-up and hoping for a better tomorrow.

But on the contrary, life doesnt' have to be this way. People don't need to be impersonal and fake. I still want to believe that we as human beings shoudl still all have that mirror of humanity in all of us waiting to be uncovered. IT's a part of us that reflects others in a part of us. It's a part of us where we have common knowledge and common understanding with each other. If people can use it when we are about to have arguments, would life be any easier? If life can be simpler, can we bond together and warm each other up with hope and understanding? If life can be simpler, is it easier to discover truth and beauty? If life can be simpler, can we all love with more passion and sincerity?


Aas, what a pathetic outlook on life. If life is this cold, it's no wonder we'd get frostbites on the fragile hearts. =(

Sadness can be so contagious.

I have a bottle.

Like men having a container that gradually gets filled up with coins, I have a bottle for tears. Sometimes it gets filled with other people's tears but sometimes mine. I guess this is the most passive way of letting things go or dealing with frustrations; one drop at a time into the bottle, drip .. drop... drip.. drop...collecting at the bottom of it. The sound of it echoes in my heart as empty as the first drop of rain that touches the cold surface of Arctic ocean. The contact of sadness is seizing and painful; the heart does not know to deal with it. So it waits. It waits and waits until it starts to pour, until a layer of sadness hovers over the eyeball, until a waterfall of tear comes running down.

Sadness can be so contagious. It is like an aerosol spore that grows in people's bottles. I carry my bottle around, like a beggar does with his pouch of spare coins, to collect the food of life - inspirations. But now all i get is sadness. meaningless sadness taht exists because I can't make out anything from it. I seem to like this collecting job. The vitamin c that wipes up dangerous reactive species, I scavenge thoughts and things and swallow it down as if it was mine. That's how the bottle gets collected so fast and how the episode comes and goes like flu epidemics. Or so I think.

I wish someday when the sky's clearer and no more rain in the forest, I can capture some happiness instead.

http://fanaticcook.blogspot.com/

Quite an interesting blog!

Is it cus I studied too much?

My eyes seem to be all over the place today: what a day filled with stories!
A girl walked by with her blond hair flowing in the air right out of her black hoodie - so graceful and cold that I mistook her Aphrodite.
A student limped across the traffic intersection became somebody else altogether for I saw Terry Fox in the way he made his way across without hesitation and fear. It could be just me but I saw a hero in him.
The MAaRs building became a bird that was ready for take-off.

What a difference today was. Indeed, "the mind [really] is it's own place. And in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven." (J. Milton). I become so much more appreciative of days that start out with sunshine and end with colours and oh.. how I doom those days that start out gloomy and end miserably. I am completely out of control when it comes to this.

But regardless, I guess, such is the life of me. It's woe or wow, i've gotta accept it. don't i?