On a winter night of 1995, a week before Christmas, I was born. I heard of stories about my early life that I don’t remember, and all that nebulous dream is covered behind a screen of faded laughter that I saw on cartoon television. I had little recollection of my childhood, other than an abusive grandfather and his constant beating. All I can remember is the scream of my fear and the screech of his stick. My parents weren’t there most of the time, driven by their dreams and dedicated to their careers. It wasn’t until my grandfather, along with the first decade of my life, had passed that something started to change.
It went quiet for a while, but there’s always trouble in paradise. Shortly after his death, my mother, somehow struck by the her conscience, quit her job and came home to raise me like what I had long yearn for, only to be greeted, upon first blush, by my grandmother’s relentless verbal abuse. My grandmother was a tough woman but also a hurt one, torn by the war that brought her here in the first place. She ruminated the past and lamented the present, and all that rage and angst, she taken out on my mother. I watched as yet another grandparent ruin almost another six years of mine, until old age started to take the toll on her and dementia set in.
However, it’s not sunshine and rainbows from here on out. I had hoped for only a simple and happy life, but at the heart of my family was the clash between my parents. My high school years were marked by discord, the end of a broken family, amidst which they may have finally found in distance the redemption for a new life. As for me, the collateral damaged goods that neither had ever cared for, found solace in the freedom of college where I had explored and grew so much more than I would have ever thought of. Yet, every year, on my birthday, I still think to myself - Christmas is just a week away.