INTRODUCTION

Hello dear Vocal's readers. My name is Kyan, and this page is all about who I am and why I want to share my stories here.

I was born, raised, and growing up in an Asian's culture, Indonesian's culture for more specific, which put your parents’ need as the top of priority. I mean, I do not mind with that, as long as the parents or the elders also respect the younger’s right as well, as individual being, but most of the cases I encountered while living in Asian’ society, the elders I have known so far, they abused their right as the elders and do as they like toward the younger ones. In Asian culture, seniority is playing main part in society, which is refer to the age rather than the experience itself. No matter how smart you are, no matter how much experience you had, you will still need to submit and obey to whatever the elders told you. In some conservative families, the children often have no choice to make decision toward their own future.

I have done my own observation and my own research toward most the family I was growing in my country. What I heard and what I have witnessed, most of the parents planted the dreams they never had, put it into their very own children, for example; if a father wanted to become a doctor when he was young, but he failed to become one, the father usually will direct their children to become doctor. In some extreme cases, sometimes you cannot marry someone you love also because your parents dislike your partner, or if your parents dislike your spouse, you probably should divorce your spouse in order to make your parents happy again, or at least, that is what happened with my mother’s marriage which I will tell you later.

This, somehow made me realized that most of the parents in Indonesia are actually, having the pattern of toxic-parenting toward their children.

A little info about me, I am an Indonesian living in the UK, joining my British husband since April 2020. I, joining my husband in the UK, left everything I had in Indonesia also a part of me trying to un-tie the toxic culture of Asian’s society.

Most of the story I will share here is dedicated to my resentment toward the woman who gave birth to and had raised me under her toxic parenting, since I am unable to tell her myself. That is why I am sharing the stories of my life hoping it will release my deep sorrow and pain I have been holding all this time without telling her what I have felt. Anyway, I am still in the healing process.

Somebody said “I have found that growing up means being honest. About what I want. What I need. What I feel. Who I am.” So here I am, trying to be honest about what happened in my life, acknowledged the mistakes, embracing the journey, becoming more aware with what happened with my surrounding. This is all about me being honest to myself, to tell people how it would be to be born in a broken family and take the courage to still be alive knowing your future was going to be bleak.

At this point, I know that I cannot blame anyone for what had happened in my life. Being a single parent to two daughters was not an easy task either to my mother, but that was her choice of life with the risk she needed to bear after trying to steal someone else's husband. And it was not solely her mistake that I was born in this world as my father also took part in everything that was going on when he was still lost in his journey.

All the stories I will share here are based on the memory I have from the past and by confirming the fact to some people around me. The memory of me when I was young, when my mom kidnapped me and my younger sister from my grandparents, and we had to move from one place to another, stranded in one orphanage then to another orphanage. I will share the stories chronologically as I was growing up.

I also hope by sharing the stories of my life, I can help some people out there to deal with the unfairness of life. I know there are more tragic and sorrowful stories in other people’s life, and my pain is just nothing compared to theirs, but there is nothing wrong in sharing our stories to others so we could have different point of views of this life and we could be stronger to face the problems we are dealing with every single day. Thank you for reading this introduction. I will be back with my first story in the near future.

Kind Regards,

Kyan