"THE WORLD"
A deeply personal narrative, based off my own experience and life. It's a part of a book I'm planning to write.
---
First, the world is not kind.
To preface, I was born with a functioning body and mind. My parents were not poor– far from it, in fact.
That’s the funny part.
They were overseas, building something impressive. Titles that sounded expensive. Contracts that required flights and photographs and polite applause at banquets. There are pictures somewhere of them smiling under chandeliers.
Meanwhile, I learned the price of rice.
We were raised, briefly, as a unit — my brother and I. A matched set. A comparison chart. An investment.
He was disciplined. I was dramatic.
He was promising. I was difficult.
If he succeeded, I shrank. If I excelled, he hardened.
It is remarkable how easily children can be turned into rivals with nothing more than praise applied unevenly. Praise was distributed like funding — strategically, unevenly. It is efficient to compare children. It is economical to let them sharpen themselves against each other.
Affection, applied selectively, becomes a weapon. Again, an investment.
Adults love efficiency. Two children is wasteful unless one can be leveraged against the other.
Competition is cheaper than affection.
We learned quickly. We became careful around each other. Then strategic. Then resentful.
–
By the time my parents left, the damage had already been itemized.
This time they took him.
There were reasons. Immigration paperwork prefers simplicity.
I remained.
There were reasons. Logistics. Opportunity. Paperwork.
I was left behind with a caretaker who smelled faintly of cooking oil and impatience.
She was practical.
Food was conditional. Silence was rewarded. Questions were not.
There are many ways to neglect a child without ever raising your voice.
There are many ways to make hunger feel like a lesson. She fed me in portions that suggested moral evaluation and locked doors in ways that suggested correction.
But the mind does something stranger — it begins to narrate.
This is temporary. This is character building. This is what you deserve for being difficult.
School was not better.
Children are excellent at detecting weakness. It’s almost evolutionary.
I was too thin. Too quiet. Too reactive. Too strange.
They pushed. They laughed. They tested limits.
I learned something important that year:
If you cry, it continues. If you break, it escalates.
So I stopped. There is a moment when fear ferments into something cleaner. Not rage. Clarity. Numbness.
I stopped reacting the way they expected. I stopped being interesting prey. When that wasn’t enough, I adjusted further. Violence wasn’t the question, it was the solution.
Still, adults prefer narratives that are tidy. So I gave them tidy ones. Documentation disappeared. Stories contradicted each other. Witnesses hesitated. Consequences require proof. Proof requires cooperation.
I became very good at discouraging both. Stories were planted carefully. Teachers were misdirected gently. Adults believe in documentation. Documentation requires consistency.
I supplied none. For the rest of the year, I was never picked on by my peers again.
And thus, I learned how remarkably effective politeness can be when paired with calculation.
—
Second, the world is not lenient. Eventually, I managed to get accepted to an international school at ten. New uniforms. New accents. Tuition that suggested safety. It felt almost ironic. The poor girl with wealthy parents. The scholarship case without a scholarship.
I was older by then. Old enough to understand systems. Old enough to believe in them. I called Child Protective Services the way other children call friends. Calmly. Logically. With dates.
I thought it would be fine. I no longer depended on her. I no longer needed the caretaker’s approval. The timing was efficient.
CPS came.
They assessed.
They nodded.
They left me where I’d finally run from.
There are phrases that echo differently when you are fourteen. “Insufficient evidence.” “Adjustment difficulties.” “Family matter.”
They drove away. The caretaker did not say much that night.
She did not need to. The world had spoken for her and against me.
—
The next day, my math teacher asked why I had blood on my face.
I told him it wasn’t real.
He did not believe me.
That, in itself, felt unfamiliar.
Adults usually do — not because they trust you, but because disbelief is easier. It closes the file. It preserves order.
He looked at me for a long moment, the kind that feels like being seen all the way through, and then he did something I did not yet have language for. His gaze had the kind of stillness that made it impossible for me to hide behind composure.
He stepped forward.
Not verbally. Not politely.
Physically — placing himself between me and the person who had escorted me back, as if the space his body occupied mattered. As if I mattered.
Adults are not supposed to do that. There are policies. Clear lines. Approved responses.
He ignored them and for a second, I was certain the world would correct itself. That someone would reprimand him. That I would be told to apologize for causing inconvenience.
The correction never came.
There are moments that divide a life into Before and After.
This was one.
He made calls that did not dissolve into nothing, documented in a way that did not allow reinterpretation. He refused to let the story close just because it would be easier.
It felt almost absurd. He also called my parents overseas. I like to imagine that his voice was steady. Not raised. Just unmovable.
And that for once– just once– the world did not choose efficiency.
It chose me.
I had always assumed that if mercy existed, it was reserved for better children. Quieter ones. Less complicated ones.
The world didn’t fix itself, but perhaps it simply looked away.
Either way, I was spared.
—
My teacher taught me that surviving was not the same thing as staying.
He sat at his desk after school and drafted a recommendation letter that did not read like a formality. It read like a thesis and with it, he wrote about endurance, “intellectual clarity under pressure,” and precision.
He did not mention hunger. He did not mention locked doors. He translated suffering into language admissions offices respect.
He handed me the envelope as if it were paperwork. It was an exit. He helped me apply to schools in the United States. He reviewed drafts. Corrected grammar. Circled phrases and wrote, “Be specific.” He treated my future like a solvable equation.
When the acceptance came, I did not cry.
He did.
Only briefly.
He paid for the plane ticket.
He said it was an investment.
I recognized the word.
The difference was that he meant me.
At the airport, he stood slightly apart, hands folded behind his back like he was supervising a field trip.
“Promise me something.”
I turned toward him at the airport terminal, waiting for his next words.
“Don’t give up halfway. Not when it gets difficult. Not when you’re tired. You don’t stop at survival. You keep going.”
He paused.
“And when you’re where you want to be– when you’ve built something– come back and visit me. I want to see it. Promise me this.”
It sounded reasonable. Procedural. I agreed.
I am very good at promises.
—
Third, the world does not wait.
The United States was larger than I expected.
Quieter in some ways. Louder in others.
I studied. I performed. I constructed a life that would have satisfied any admissions rubric.
But there was always another deadline. Another exam. Another competition. Another justification for postponement.
I told myself there would be time. There is always supposed to be time. I thought about visiting him often.
Cancer does not respect scheduling.
I learned about his diagnosis through a message that used careful phrasing. I learned about his death through a message that did not. There are moments that divide a life into Before and After.
This was another one.
I never got to visit him back in my old hometown.
I never showed him the version of myself he insisted was possible.
He once translated my endurance into resilience and if I were to translate his life into academic language, I would call it intervention.
But that feels insufficient.
He wrote a letter that moved across an ocean and demanded I live forward.
And then he left before I could return the proof. The promise remains technically intact. I did not give up–
I just arrived too late and the world moved on.
—
The world is still inconsistent.
It continues to harm children casually, almost administratively — as if damage is a clerical error that can be amended later. Children are still categorized. Ranked. Measured. Dismissed. Some are deemed promising. Others are deemed complicated. Complicated is a polite synonym for inconvenient because adults still confuse provision with presence.
My parents insist they did their best.
I believe them.
That is what frightens me.
The caretaker is probably still caring for someone.
That frightens me even more.
Still, children survive in astonishing ways.
They compartmentalize, compete, calculate, and learn.
They learn that love is logistical, that safety is negotiable, that you must stop asking twice. And that you are not guaranteed sequels or second acts.
I used to believe survival was the objective.
Now I understand survival is only the entry requirement.
Continuation is the obligation– and I suppose that is a heavier thing than rescue. There’s a quiet pressure in knowing someone wagered against probability for you. In knowing that a plane ticket crossed an ocean because he believed you would not squander it.
Sometimes I do think about what it would mean to fail spectacularly. To stop. To disappear.
It feels mathematically impossible.
Not because I am fearless.
Because I am accounted for.
He converted my existence into investment. Into expectation.
And I have never been careless with expectations.
I do not want to die.
Not in the dramatic sense. Not in the adolescent collapse that once seemed like an exit.
There is too much evidence now. Too much documentation. Too many people who rearranged themselves on my behalf over the years. To vanish would feel like fraud.
—
I still live in the US.
I eat without counting.
Doors open from both sides.
My brother and I speak in careful increments. We are polite. We are almost strangers.
We were children once.
That feels theoretical.
—
Lastly, the world does not forget.
It does not forgive either — but forgiveness, as I've realized, should not be the objective.
Prevention is.
If the world insists on assigning value to children – calibrating them by grades, temperament, ease of management– then I will insist, stubbornly and without apology, that they are worth saving before they prove it.
Even the difficult ones.
Especially the difficult ones.
Because difficulty is often just damage in formal clothing.
Because some child, somewhere, is calculating whether the world would notice their absence.
Because someone once noticed mine and on my behalf, went against the world.
