I come from a very small place with limited development. My family was always poor financially, my parents didn't have much education, and most of our relatives have spent their whole lives in the same fixed environment — very few people ever actually left. I have a younger sister.
My father used drugs for as long as I can remember, and he was also violent. Sometimes he'd bring other people who used with him into the house and get high right there. I had no choice but to live in that same space as a kid. People talk about secondhand smoke from cigarettes — sometimes I think what I grew up breathing was secondhand drugs.
He rarely took responsibility for the household, and the money for daily life was never stable. When my mother needed money, she'd often send me to go ask my father for it. I was just a kid, but money problems between my parents kept getting pushed onto me. I really didn't want to do it — I never knew how he'd react, and I didn't want to be caught in the middle — but my mother would send me anyway. When he needed money for drugs, he'd ask me for it too. I never had much money to begin with, just whatever allowance I'd saved or been given. I usually refused, and every time I did, he'd look at me with a kind of hostility.
I always felt, as a kid, that he saw me as someone who'd eventually get married off, so I wasn't worth much investment. To me, it felt like he was calculating whether raising me was "worth it," rather than seeing me as a child who needed care. He rarely showed interest in me or talked to me. Sometimes before he left the house he'd say he'd bring something back for me — maybe food, maybe a small trinket. I'd remember it and wait for him to come home, but he often came back with nothing, and never explained. This happened more than once.
As I got older, my relationship with him got worse. I started openly showing my resentment and stopped going along with what he wanted. Whenever I refused him or pushed back on his behavior, he'd sometimes bring up things from when I was little — like the time he bought me a tape recorder at age six so I could learn English, or how I used to ride on his shoulders when he took me out. Those things did happen. He'd use those specific memories to argue that he had "done things for me" before, so I shouldn't be refusing him or resenting him now. When I wouldn't give him money, wouldn't go along with what he wanted, or brought up the past, he never seemed to understand it as me making my own decision — instead he'd frame it as me deliberately defying him, or "forgetting" what he'd done for me. When he talked about the past, what he kept bringing up was the tape recorder and being carried on his shoulders. What I thought about was him using drugs for years, bringing other users into our home, rarely covering household expenses, asking me for money, and my mother sending me to ask him for living expenses.
I was a heavy kid. My mother would call me things like "sow" or "elephant." It wasn't just words, either. When adults took a group of kids out somewhere, they'd buy snacks or drinks for the other kids but not for me, saying, "You're already so fat, you don't need to eat." So the other kids would all have something in their hands, and I'd have nothing. I usually just stood there and watched — I wouldn't ask again. At school I got made fun of for my weight too — kids joked about how I looked, treated me like I was beneath them. My grades weren't good as a kid either. Teachers paid more attention to the students who did well and had little interest in someone like me. At home I was rarely asked how I felt; at school I was often mocked or ignored.
Our family's financial situation also shaped how I related to other kids. I preferred spending time with kids whose parents had respectable jobs and better family circumstances — being around them felt like we had more in common, and it felt closer to the life I imagined for myself. On the other hand, I used to look down on kids from families that were just as poor as mine but who acted, in my eyes, more "rough" — kids who'd roll around on the ground or do things I found distasteful. I'd deliberately keep my distance from them.
But when I did spend time with kids from better-off families, the gap would show up in a different way. Sometimes they'd walk me home, or see me go into my own house, and after seeing where I lived they'd just ask, "Why is your family so poor?" I didn't know how to answer. I was just walking back into my own home, but after they said that, I'd suddenly realize what they were seeing wasn't me — it was the kind of house I lived in, what my parents did for work, what kind of life my family could provide. Those words affected me a lot at the time. I wanted to be around kids from better families, but I was also afraid of them finding out what my actual home life was like. Any time they saw where I lived, I felt like the gap between us had been exposed.
Some kids didn't hide what they thought either, didn't care whether their words hurt. Someone once told me straight to my face, "You smell bad." I didn't know if that smell came from my clothes, from the living conditions, or just from the air in the house — our living conditions were bad back then, and my father brought drug users into the house, so I had no control over the environment I lived in every day. But at school, people didn't care about the reasons — they just pointed out that I was different from other kids. When a kid told me to my face that I smelled, I felt deeply humiliated, didn't know how to respond, and didn't know how to make it go away. That experience also made me hyper-aware of whether people were getting close to me, watching me, or noticing something — my clothes, my smell, any detail — that might reveal my family's situation.
At school, family financial circumstances also shaped how classmates and teachers treated a kid. When classmates found out someone's family was poor, they weren't necessarily willing to get close to that person — some would show contempt, or make jokes about it outright. Teachers treated different students differently too — kids whose families were well-off, whose parents had respectable jobs, who did well in school, usually got more attention. Someone like me, with a poor family and mediocre grades, rarely became someone a teacher paid special attention to. So as a kid, I wasn't just affected by my weight and my grades — I was also constantly aware of whether people knew about my family situation. At home, I knew our finances were bad; out in the world, I worried that classmates and teachers would spot that gap from my clothes, where I lived, or what my parents did for work.
I have a younger sister. When we were kids, she used to steal money from me. When that happened, I'd tell my mother, hoping she'd stop my sister from taking my things. But my mother wouldn't really deal with the stealing — instead she'd blame me, saying I should have kept my money somewhere safer. The problem was, our living conditions were bad — there was no cabinet in the house that locked, and I didn't have anywhere that was truly my own, truly safe, to keep anything. No matter where I hid the money, if my sister found it, it could still be taken. But after it happened, what my mother demanded was still that I take better care of my own things — not that my sister stop taking what was mine.
I also rarely had a real birthday growing up. Some years, my mother wouldn't bring it up all day. By evening I'd deliberately ask her, "What day is it today?" She'd say, "Isn't today your birthday?" She knew — she just wouldn't do anything about it. The birthday I remember most clearly was when I was around five. My sister hadn't been born yet. My parents bought a cake and brought it to my kindergarten, where it was shared with the whole class. After that, I basically never had a proper birthday again, and gradually I stopped celebrating it myself.
I also had a conflict with another kid once when I was young. My mother was there and saw the whole thing happen. Afterward, the other kid went and told her own mother a completely different version of events, and that mother came and yelled at me, blaming me for something I hadn't done. My mother knew the truth — she'd seen it all — but she didn't speak up for me and didn't stop the other woman. Afterward, she never asked me what had happened, or whether I was okay. She kept visiting and eating meals with that family like nothing had changed. Because of that, I didn't go to a place I usually spent time at for several days. It was a neighbor who noticed I hadn't been around and came to ask me directly: "Are you still upset about what happened?" She told me the other mother had handled it badly, and she comforted me. She wasn't family, but she was the only person who ever asked how I felt. For years afterward, I didn't think about this at all — it wasn't until I cut contact with my family that I started remembering it, along with a lot of similar fragments. The specifics were never quite the same, but there was a recurring pattern: whenever I was in conflict with someone, got blamed, or felt hurt, hardly anyone in my family ever asked what had actually happened.
Once I got to high school, I started studying extremely hard, and my grades slowly improved. When people found out my grades had gone up, some reacted with open disbelief — one person said, in a tone of clear surprise, "How did you manage to score like that?" I don't remember her exact words anymore, but I remember she clearly didn't believe I could have done that well. Even years later, I still think about her expression and tone in that moment.
Around fifteen, my mother wanted me to eventually marry a construction worker who lived nearby. That was never my own plan — I was still in school and just wanted to keep studying, and eventually leave. My family didn't support me continuing my education, but I still made it into university, and later took the graduate entrance exam. When my mother found out I'd gotten into graduate school, her reaction was extreme. She verbally abused and insulted me repeatedly, kept saying that if I left, something terrible would happen to me — that I'd be scammed or killed in a big city. She even brought up someone she knew who had gone to a big city and was later murdered. I cried for a long time that day — cried until I couldn't breathe properly, until my hands went numb, and it took a long time to calm down.
But I still went to graduate school, and around that time I decided to rely on my family as little as possible. I took out student loans, and with a small scholarship and occasional money from my parents, I got through — barely. Life was always tight, and I had no savings. Later I went on to do a PhD. For me, continuing my education was never just about academics or career — there was a very practical reason underneath it: I wanted an education to give me the ability to live independently, so I wouldn't have to go back to where I came from, or keep depending on my parents. I don't think I'm especially gifted — I just put in a huge amount of time and carried a lot of pressure the whole way through.
As I kept studying, my father's attitude toward me started to shift. He'd barely paid attention to me as a kid, but once I was doing a PhD, he started bringing me up to other people — sometimes on video calls, he'd suddenly turn the camera to me and introduce me as his daughter doing a PhD, mentioning my school and my degree. But that never translated into any real closeness between us.
About four years ago, I finally decided to cut off contact with my parents. When I made that decision, I had no savings and no stable income — if anything, it was one of the most financially and academically stressful periods of my life. My parents had never given me much money anyway, but once I cut contact, I stopped counting on any financial support from them at all. I haven't been in touch with them since.
For almost a year after cutting contact, my income couldn't fully cover my living expenses. I had no savings and no financial cushion for anything unexpected, and during that time I ended up in debt. I kept trying to finish my degree while cutting my spending as much as I could, but I couldn't pay it off right away. At the end of that year, based on my academic performance, I received a fairly large scholarship, and I used it to pay off what I owed. After that my finances improved a little, but for a long time afterward I still had essentially no savings — even with income, it usually just covered whatever I needed at the time. My studies and jobs kept moving me to different places, and a lot of the work contracts were temporary, so every move and every new lease meant new expenses, and it was hard to ever save. It's only with my current job that I've started to maybe have a little bit put aside. Even during the roughest stretch, when I was already in debt, I never reached back out to my parents for money.
After cutting contact with my parents, I also gradually pulled back from other relatives. I used to be fairly close with an uncle and a cousin, but after stopping contact with my parents, I tried not to stay in close touch with them either — partly because I didn't want my situation getting back to my parents through other relatives, and partly because I genuinely didn't want to get pulled back into that whole family dynamic. Over the years, studying and working in different cities and countries, I've felt myself growing further and further apart from my family in terms of how we live, how we handle things, and how we understand "family" itself. Sometimes I describe this distance as "we're not even in the same class anymore" — and I don't just mean income or education, but boundaries, and how you understand relationships between people.
After finishing part of my education, I went to the US, to a small, fairly conservative college town. The school itself was good, but I often felt like I didn't belong there. I'm introverted by nature and not great at socializing on my own. As an Asian woman, I sometimes felt like I wasn't especially desirable in the local dating and social scene. At the same time, the academic pressure was enormous. I was constantly worried about finishing my degree, finding a job, what my future would look like — I didn't know if I could actually make it through, or whether I'd find decent work afterward. I was chronically anxious and tense, and it was hard to ever really relax. I had no family nearby, no stable social circle, no close friends. During the day I could go to class, read, get work done, but by evening the loneliness would hit hard. That loneliness wasn't just boredom, or not having someone to talk to for a bit — it felt more like something overwhelming, something that could swallow you whole. Sometimes I felt like I'd fallen into a deep pool, water rising around me, with no way to climb out.
That's when I started using dating apps constantly — endlessly swiping, talking to different people. Any time someone replied, I'd feel happy. If they replied slower, or suddenly stopped replying, it would hit my mood hard. Looking back now, I don't think I actually liked most of those people — a lot of the time, they were just about the only emotional connection I had there. When someone replied, I felt connected to the world outside; when they didn't, that connection felt like it had just been cut off.
I met a guy during that time in the college town. He was a genuinely good person — optimistic, upbeat, and generous with support. When I first got to the US, there were a lot of English expressions I didn't know how to use, and he'd patiently teach me, never once making fun of me for getting something wrong or not understanding. When we were together, he mostly just kept me company — he never once pushed for sex, never made me feel pressured about it. I could tell he really liked me — he'd hold my hand while driving, kiss my hand, and he was very direct about how he felt. I never had to guess whether he wanted to be with me. On our third date, he asked me, "We're dating, right?" I told him not to put it that way — that he could keep seeing other people too, and I wouldn't mind. I could tell that surprised him. He probably hadn't expected that answer, because he was already taking us seriously.
But I had my own reservations about him. He hadn't gone to college and worked a blue-collar job. At the time, I cared a lot about degrees, careers, and future prospects — I felt like being with him might mean my life stayed stuck in that small town. I was afraid of losing the chance to keep studying, find a better job, or go somewhere else. I'd already told him I didn't know where I'd end up after finishing my degree — that I might leave the US, might go somewhere else entirely. He said he didn't understand why I had to leave at all. He told me we could get married — that way I could stay in the US, and we could build a life together. He even told me what he earned, said it would be enough to support both of us.
For me, dating always served more than one purpose. On one hand, I wanted someone's company, because I'd already cut off my family and had no one stable to rely on in most places I'd lived. On the other, I genuinely wanted to leave my hometown behind for good and build a long-term life somewhere else, in another country. I know that lumping marriage, immigration status, and feelings together like that can sound calculating. But for me at the time, getting long-term status outside my home country really did mean I could put down roots somewhere else, without having to go back because of a visa or job issue, without having to reconnect with my family. But when this guy actually proposed marriage, and offered to cover our living expenses, I said no. I believed that building my legal status and financial life entirely around another person was too unstable. I also didn't want to stay in that small town forever. I wanted to keep studying, find work that would actually fulfill me, and see how far I could go on my own. So even though he was good to me, and clearly wanted a real future together, I didn't take him up on it. Eventually he sensed how cool I'd become toward him, and stopped reaching out. The relationship never really went anywhere after that.
To this day, I still think he was a genuinely good person. That doesn't mean I'd marry him or stay in that town if I got to choose again — just that, looking back, I can say for certain he gave me something real: direct affection, company, support. I can also see that, at the time, I desperately wanted someone to stay, but couldn't accept a relationship that might limit my future — I wanted to put down roots abroad through a stable relationship, but I also didn't want to hand my whole life over to someone else. I wanted to leave my original family behind, but I also wanted independence through my own education and work, not just a way to stay through marriage.
I eventually left the college town for a job in New York, and things were a lot better there — I had work, colleagues, places to go. The loneliness was still there, but life had a lot more in it. I met different people there too — some I liked, some I didn't. Different people wanted different things — some just wanted something casual, others never showed real interest in building anything.
In New York, I met someone I genuinely liked a lot. He was smart, accomplished — I've always been drawn to intelligence. We went on about six dates. The more we saw each other, the more I liked him — I liked talking to him, liked being around him. We had a lot of moments in New York that made me really happy. But through it all, small details still made me anxious. He didn't text often — usually only at night when he had time. The restaurants we went to were pretty ordinary. I kept turning these details over in my head, wondering if they meant he didn't like me as much, or wasn't taking us seriously. But I never asked him directly, never said what I actually needed — I never told him I wanted him to reach out more, never made it clear I wanted something long-term. Around the sixth date, it seemed like he wanted things to move further, including sex. I knew I might be leaving New York soon. I wasn't sure if he wanted something long-term, and I didn't know what would happen to us after I left. I never talked any of this through with him. In the end, I just cut contact — ghosted him completely. Before I left New York, I later apologized, telling him I shouldn't have disappeared like that, and told him how much I'd miss my life there, how hard it was to leave. As I was getting ready to go, I really thought about how so many of my happiest moments in New York had been with him — the places we went, the things we talked about, how it felt to be with him. Those are some of the clearest, most beautiful memories I have of that time. But after I apologized, the relationship didn't pick back up.
After leaving New York, I still thought about him often. Sometimes, walking alone down a street, I'd suddenly wish he were walking beside me. I've wondered whether things would've gone differently if I hadn't just disappeared — if I'd told him directly that I liked him, but that I was scared of leaving so soon. Of course, the practical problems never went away — he might not have wanted anything long-term, and I really did have to leave. Even if we'd talked everything through, we might not have stayed together anyway. But even now, I sometimes still check in on him — I'll look up his research group online, see if their work has progressed, look for a recent photo of him. We haven't been in touch, but I still find myself keeping tabs through whatever's publicly available, just to get a sense of what he might be doing now.
After the US, I moved to Europe to live and work. On the surface, I'd left my hometown and stepped into an international life of study and work, but things still weren't stable — jobs, contracts, visas, residency, all of it came with expiration dates. I was always thinking about the next step, and it was hard to really put down roots anywhere. Just as I'd start adjusting to one place, I'd need to prepare for the next move. Even though I'd left my original family behind, I never had a fixed home — I was really just moving from one place to the next. During that time in Europe, I kept using dating apps, still hoping to find something long-term, but with my own work and location always uncertain, a lot of my relationships and life plans ended up feeling temporary too.
After living in different countries for a while, I noticed I was more drawn to Western men — not because I think Asian men are somehow lacking, or that Western men are automatically a better fit, but because, for me, Asian men, the Chinese-speaking environment, certain familiar ways of relating — all of it too easily brought back memories of my original family and upbringing. In English-speaking environments, I sometimes felt like a different version of myself. When people met me abroad for the first time, what they saw was someone who'd gone through higher education, who'd studied and worked across multiple countries. They didn't know that as a kid I'd been called a "sow" and an "elephant" because of my weight. They didn't know I used to watch other kids holding snacks while I had nothing. They didn't know I once asked my mother, on the night of my birthday, "What day is it today?" They didn't know that after I got into graduate school, I was verbally abused until I cried so hard I couldn't breathe and my hands went numb. In a new language, in a new environment, I could sometimes set that old identity down, at least for a while.
Eventually I came to Bangkok for work. On a practical level, I've become a lot more independent. I've only just arrived in Bangkok, and I'm still settling into the new job and this new life. Overall, I like the work, and it feels like a fresh opportunity.
But today, something happened at work that left me upset. It probably isn't the most serious thing I've ever dealt with, but after feeling upset, an intense wave of loneliness hit me out of nowhere. It felt a lot like the loneliness I remember from that college town in the US — not ordinary boredom, not just missing someone to eat dinner with. It's more like being in a deep pool, water rising, about to go under. I opened a dating app — barely any matches. The Western men here all seem to be short-term tourists, not looking to build anything real.
I've been to a number of different countries by now, and I've dated a bit, but the relationships have all been short — the longest maybe not even two months. Some people were only ever passing through, some only wanted something casual, and some things ended before they ever really had the chance to become stable. I have a job now, a place to live, maybe even the start of some savings — a lot of the practical problems in my life have gotten better than they used to be. But when something at work upsets me, or when I get to the end of a day with no one to talk to, that same old loneliness still comes back.
I know what I've been looking for was never just a dating partner. Part of me wants companionship, wants someone stable to build a life with; another part of me wants to put down roots somewhere of my own, outside of family, through my own studying and working. I don't want to go back to my old life, and I don't want to lose my own choices by depending on one person. But between constantly relocating, temporary work contracts, and relationships that never last long, I've never actually managed to build a stable life.
I still don't know which country I'll end up settling in long-term, or whether I'll ever have a relationship that's actually long-term and stable. Today, when that huge wave of loneliness came back, I realized it hadn't really changed much from years ago. I've left my hometown, finished my PhD, worked in different countries — and there are still moments when I feel like I'm alone in the water, with nothing to hold on to.