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Taiwan Diary: You Can’t Go Home Again
Dec. 21st, 2022 11:25 amNot technically a Taiwan diary, since I am at home in Idaho this week, but ooooooof.
Do I regret my impulsive decision to come home? No, not entirely. I will get to see my best friend and I have seen my niece (nephew still has school through this morning but will be coming over tonight). I played (and lost) three games of Scrabble with my mom. The bed in my room here is so comfortable that I almost want to stay just because of it — I have NOT had good luck with beds since moving abroad.
But. Of course just because I am not up to speed on all the family drama and doings (my mom refuses to tell me because I will only worry, she says — joke’s on her, I’m gonna worry anyway!) but things are not good, especially with my brothers. Brother One is having normal not good, mostly due to landlords being Capitalist Pigs instead of his own actions, which is kind of nice? Brother Two is having a horrible horrible time still, Sister In Law is Not Helping (in a sort of understandable way because it is, unfortunately, exhausting to support someone in crisis, especially when you have two young children to also raise and try to protect from the worst effects of the crisis). I’m really working to banish thoughts of if you had just done something years ago, before you had kids, which is useless and also cruel to say to someone because we all wish we could do something different, make better choices earlier and not when our hands are truly forced. And there’s not much that I can do to make any of this better. Brother Two is looking for better jobs, but despite all the “People don’t want to work” BULLSHIT that is spewed out, this isn’t translating into jobs or employers making changes to make things better for employees, not as long as they can wring that last bit of blood from people before discarding them and moving on to the next desperate person with an ounce of blood to spare.
So everything is basically awful and some of it is from our own choices but a lot of it is from things forced on us and having to choose between eating a glass sandwich or a shit sandwich.
Happy Holidays.
And so as not to end on a COMPLETELY downer note, I am very much enjoying spending time with my niblings. Yesterday, my niece took about 45 minutes to drink a cup of hot chocolate because she “drank” it with a spoon. Quite a lot of it ended up dribbled down her chin. I was impressed with her dedication to the process, though. I don’t want to share pics of her here but trust me, it was darn cute.
Do I regret my impulsive decision to come home? No, not entirely. I will get to see my best friend and I have seen my niece (nephew still has school through this morning but will be coming over tonight). I played (and lost) three games of Scrabble with my mom. The bed in my room here is so comfortable that I almost want to stay just because of it — I have NOT had good luck with beds since moving abroad.
But. Of course just because I am not up to speed on all the family drama and doings (my mom refuses to tell me because I will only worry, she says — joke’s on her, I’m gonna worry anyway!) but things are not good, especially with my brothers. Brother One is having normal not good, mostly due to landlords being Capitalist Pigs instead of his own actions, which is kind of nice? Brother Two is having a horrible horrible time still, Sister In Law is Not Helping (in a sort of understandable way because it is, unfortunately, exhausting to support someone in crisis, especially when you have two young children to also raise and try to protect from the worst effects of the crisis). I’m really working to banish thoughts of if you had just done something years ago, before you had kids, which is useless and also cruel to say to someone because we all wish we could do something different, make better choices earlier and not when our hands are truly forced. And there’s not much that I can do to make any of this better. Brother Two is looking for better jobs, but despite all the “People don’t want to work” BULLSHIT that is spewed out, this isn’t translating into jobs or employers making changes to make things better for employees, not as long as they can wring that last bit of blood from people before discarding them and moving on to the next desperate person with an ounce of blood to spare.
So everything is basically awful and some of it is from our own choices but a lot of it is from things forced on us and having to choose between eating a glass sandwich or a shit sandwich.
Happy Holidays.
And so as not to end on a COMPLETELY downer note, I am very much enjoying spending time with my niblings. Yesterday, my niece took about 45 minutes to drink a cup of hot chocolate because she “drank” it with a spoon. Quite a lot of it ended up dribbled down her chin. I was impressed with her dedication to the process, though. I don’t want to share pics of her here but trust me, it was darn cute.
