2 Questions Every Girl is Asking Herself

Chapter 80

About ten days after I got fired, my friend Kat messaged on me Facebook asking me to be a bridesmaid at her wedding.

Her wedding?!

This came as a total shocker because just a year ago, she was the one nudging me to come to London. Together with Annie, we were plotting world domination. We had dreamed of the adventures we would take together, the flat we would share, the afternoon teas we would drink, the dashing European gentlemen suitors we would conquer. If it wasn't for her, I'm not sure I would ever have thought of coming to London. She never applied for a London visa because right after I got mine, she went back to China for Chinese New Year, and at the family dinner, she met this cool, suave guy from LA. They clicked. Long-distanced for a while, and apparently, he just proposed.

Which is a happy thing really, which is just about the happiest thing your friend/confidant could be saying when she's not saying "I'm coming to London with you!" I felt envy. Jealous even. A little let down. They are not here to share in my distress. To share the rent. To share the triumphs and trials of trying to make it in the big city. I'm sad that out of the three girls, I'm the only one who even came to London. Annie stayed in Vancouver with her stable job. Kat went off to L.A., and got hitched. I am the only one who had taken a risk. And it doesn't look like it's paying off at all.

Am I the only idiot who actually went through with all this?

When contemplating my future in Bali, one of my biggest fears of choosing this writing career was that I would be left behind. All my friends would be moving up the ladder, into the corner office, and I would be left behind in my parents' basement, bussing tables to make ends meet.

Or, it may have already happened.

I look around my apartment, with my three housemates, consisting of an American HR professional, an Italian farmer, and a starving Polish actor who literally looked like he was starving because all he ate were beansprouts. Raw. He was only 30 but his hair was nearly half grey. When I first moved in, he welcomed me by suggesting this house is haunted. I have steered clear of him ever since. The only thing that haunts our house is its intermittent access to hot water. On some days, I took cold showers.

Why do I have to make life so difficult? Where would all this lead?

I remind myself not to compare myself to other people. Especially not against other people's glossy outsides to my messy insides. What is security anyway? Having a rich husband? A stable job? At one point I did have a stable job, but I felt empty. At another point I also had a stable boyfriend, yet still I felt insecure.

I remember at the FCWR Canadian edition show, a lot of contestants have serious jobs like actuaries, doctors, investment bankers, big data analysts. I could just see myself opening a brochure in high school, my teenage eyes gleaning off the careers with the listed salaries. What do I want to be when I grow up? No problem. I want to be the person with the job that makes the most money. Coming from immigrant families, my sentiment is not uncommon among my peers on FCWR. Our primary concern in a new country is to squeeze into the ranks of the mainstream middle class. No matter what the cost. Little consideration was given to whether I'll actually like the job.

While that certainly had been my pursuit in my late teens and early twenties, and I pursued it wholeheartedly, with my business school friends in tow. But by the time I was 26 years old, it no longer felt right anymore. It never felt right to begin with. It took me three years into the job to finally do something about it.

I realize not everyone goes through this. Not everyone feels the need to gut their lives to make way for a new pursuit. Driven naively by "I want to live my purpose", "I want to love my job" and all that new age wannabe twaddle. And I probably took the long way, as I usually do. But for me, until I did something about this yearning of mine, I would always be lost. I just didn't realize being true to one's self sometimes means losing connection with one's community.