For the betterment of my mental health, I returned to Hong Kong after a year, I carried Toronto’s ghosts in my bones. It wasn’t my choice to come back, I didn’t even get to say bye to my friends at school in Toronto. It was all so sudden that I crashed into a way deep realm of silence and hatred.
I was then enrolled in an international school. There Naz stormed into my life—a hurricane in cool kicks who was quick witted yet caring. “Hi, my name is Maryam, everyone calls me Naz. Nice meeting you, let’s hang out!” she smiled. For the first time, someone who wasn’t judgmental.
With Naz and Virgina, I learned:
- Silence wasn’t safety—it was suffocation
- “Bad” girls built the most interesting worlds
- My body deserved joy, not audits
We used to dress up in provocative outfits (mini skirts and off-shoulder tops) and snuck into Lan Kwai Fong bars, underaged. It was a total liberation for me, a whole new world that I discovered at the age of 16. However, old wounds still lingered! And I started seeking validation through toxic relationships that mirrored my childhood dynamics. Every emotional abuse, gaslighting, ‘you’re too much’ or ‘not enough’ they felt like home—a twisted nostalgia for the conditional love that taught me affection required shrinking. I drowned breakups in tears, dated boys who criticized every single trait I possessed, starved myself when mirrors screamed “肥妹” (fat girl). Healing wasn’t linear—it was a war waged in trenches of self-loathing. I’d engage myself in project Academic Sabotage: Deliberately failing — punishing myself for wanting engineering.
Somehow, I managed to attend university in the States, San Diego. I chose business school like choosing a coffin: PowerPoint prisons, textbooks preaching profit as purpose but it was easy for me somehow as if I had a gift for it. Mother beamed: “Finally sensible!”. My rebellion shriveled into compliance. University was another cage: Business degree (“safe”), any corporate job (“respectable”).
The turning point came after college years, being in a 9-year long relationship with “the love of my life”. I met him during the lowest point of my life, when I had family problems. He was my white knight with shinning armor, and it is safe to say a “fast-burning love”, a romantic relationship that develops quickly with intense feelings and attraction.
