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feeding my kid at 5am sets off a series of thoughtfeels that brings me back to being 12, being in singapore’s gifted education program, being the only tamil/brown kid around as far as i can remember, and being told that my failure would be a disappointment to my entire community
the stress i was under then was immense, crushing, annihilating. it really seemed like all the adults in my life- my family, my teachers, my government, my country - conspired to make me as miserable as possible. it’s so weird to talk about but it’s the truth of how it felt to me
sometimes people ask me ~“how are you able to post your thoughts so publicly so freely” and the truth of it is quite grotesque– it’s that i was always subjected to overwhelming scrutiny in every room i was in. took me ~25 years of corroboration to feel confident in my assessment
i was a v dramatic child yeah but my life circumstances incited and catalyzed that drama i remember being a silly lil guy when i was 8; everything changed when i passed that cursed test but here’s the hilarious twist to it all: i met my wife there. and we made this lil guy https://t.co/AegFbXLp23
i will do everything i can to protect and nurture and encourage him in all the ways i wasn’t https://t.co/hixXV0sNIr
more visa lore for those who are curious: https://t.co/1sf9FyqRKT
When I was 13, I flunked out of the gifted education program in my country. I was told that my failure was a disappointment to the Indian community. On retrospect that was a really shitty thing to say to a child, and also very myopic, and selfish https://t.co/1k7HYBLDAx
