Don't Compare & Be Unique!!!

What is a “Home”?  How do you know where you are living is called “HOME”? What it has to do to be “HOME”?

To her, a HOME is somewhere she can be herself, somewhere she could feel the warm of love, somewhere there is care and love, somewhere she knows it is the right place and somewhere she belongs to.

But is every homes is a “HOME”?

HER? She lost her “HOME”; it is no longer the place where she thinks it is anymore, instead, it now has become a place where she wishes she could run away from. It ain’t got no love anymore, it has become a war zone. It ain’t a place where she can feel comfortable in anymore, it now has become a place full of pressure. It ain’t a place where she can be herself anymore, she needs to fake a smile, make jokes to show that she’s completely okay while she’s actually not, while she’s actually breaking inside.

Every time they come together, there is not once that they are actually spreading the love. It either war zone or debate challenge. Even if she wasn’t a participant in it, it did hit her badly.

Why do she have to care?

Because she thinks she could bring it back together, sticking all the broken pieces, finding the missing pieces and hopefully one day, there will be magic to help making it as good as brand new. But she was wrong, she was wrong all the time. There is no fantasy in the real world, there is no magic, there is no wishes come true and there is no happily ever after.

There used to be a time when she thinks that her wishes and efforts that she have put into bringing this together work, she thought “YES, I finally make it.” The place where it used to be broken has recovering bits by bits and she’s overjoyed to see those changes, but then ‘BOOMED’. This time, it is neither a war zone nor a debate challenge; it is much more worst then all of those.

It is just a typical day, she was in her room doing some stuff; immediately, there is this unbearable loud noises. She thought it was just like it used to be, a round of back and forth yelling and that’s it. But no, it stayed there, it keeps going back and forth countless rounds. Her head was packing with all those noises, their meaning; she can imagine their act above from her room, she can just picture it directly from her head. It’s gotten worst and worst, and her mind was crumbling things up like a huge bar of magnet.

Finally, she broke down. Right there at the corner of her bookcase and her bed. “I can’t handle this anymore” her mind screamed from inside. She couldn’t think of anything at all, her tears were falling down like machine guns, her legs were weak, and her body was trembling. She sat there hoping she could do something to help, to settle down, but she got nothing. Nothing is in her head, she can’t keep it together, and all she can do was sitting right at that spot listening to whatever happened.

I still can’t believe my eyes and ears that force marriage is still exist. What I’m implying is the force marriage in modern family. I’m not against the force marriage in old tradition family because I know that they consider it as a part of their culture and their children must have been aware of it. However, in this society from a modern family which has a father works as a Professor/Lecturer, a mother works as a wholesaler tricked and force their daughter to marry with a guy that she doesn’t love or not even closed to before. In just one month, the parents and the elder agree to marry their children in the next six month. What’s more, they stop her education while she is already in sophomore year majored in architecture. She has always been a bright student, top student among the class and even the school during her high school, but now look at her, being pulled out from school and forced into an arrange marriage from her parents that can destroy almost her entire life which in some point of her life, she can become a successful or even a genius architect.

How do you expect a healthy relationship from that?

I have no idea how a healthy relationship can be built from that. I’m not assuming anything, but look and think about it. Two people that barely know each other are going to live with each other for half of their entire life? Think about it, all they just know is their name, work, basic little things of their favorite, and that’s it. It is true that you can develop your romance along the way of your marriage life, it’s lucky if the two of you are getting along well, but what if the two of you are completely opposite? We all heard a lot about domestic violent, bullying, cheating, or even murder his or her own partner. You never know what could happen, what is he/she like deep down inside? Is he/she a devil or is he/she an angle? Are you, the parents are the one who are responsible for their future? NO! YOU ARE NOT. The couple, themselves needed to find their way through it.

Parent stereotype toward Force Marriage.

Parent usually say “Because I wanted the best for my children”, “I have so many experience in life”, “I know people, and I know who is good and who is bad.” Or “Because I am his/her parents.” All these talked, don’t make any sense to me. Why? Because you have so many experience in life doesn’t mean what your children is going to meet next used to be your experience too. Your experience was in the 90s and things changes, not little things but lots and lots of things have changed, and now it is in the 20s. It doesn’t remain the same anymore. Or even if it is the same, your choices, your experiences don’t always turn out good all the time then why not let your children have the freedom to choose what they want and independently responsible for their own mess, perhaps, their choice of life is even better than yours. Also, the best for your children is not from what you have decide for them, but it is from what have their life teaches them and what they want their life to be. Some people they don’t want to get married because they wanted to stay independently alone all by him/herself.

The force marriage that are happened from a modern family usually involve with business or the daughter/son walked the wrong path then got into trouble or because he/she can’t find one by her/himself. For these reasons, I’m not against at all, but the business thing? How do you think it is possible to put your own children future/happiness at risk just because to have a successful life by yourself? Isn’t it too selfish for you as a parent?

Have you ever felt like your life is being in control by someone else that is not you? Have you ever felt like you have no voice to fight in your life? or Have you ever felt like you are living just to full fill someone else needs?

Living in a society that has lots of norms, rules that you may sometimes find it nonsense or useless could make you feel small, and you might get lost with the meaning of your life, your life goals, your future, your dreams and so on. 

I’m living in Cambodia, one of the small little country in SEA. In my country we have lots of norms or here we count it as a tradition; one of them would be a respect for elderly people. Respect here doesn’t only mean to be polite, to be helpful, to be thoughtful or to be considerate. Respect here if we put it in to easy understanding, it simply means listen to every words they say and not only listen but also to follow through as well. Alright, so in normal Cambodian families, parents are the most powerful people; they have the biggest decision making, well let’s say it more accurately is that, they will tell you what to do and what not to do, so yeah they aren’t actually a decision maker but a commander to be exact. On the other hand, if we take a look in to another country or European countries, it is amazing how the parents are guiding your way when you were young and immature, and when you are grown up they will be supporting you, give you suggestions/advice, comforting and so on. However, it is a complete opposite to most Cambodian families. Sure, it is nice to have parents guiding your ways when you are a kids or not yet an adult, but here in Cambodia, they would even decide your major, your job, your life goals for you. It always happen to Cambodia adults that whenever they graduated from high school, their family members or their parents would constantly ask what do they want to study? What is their dream job? What do they want to become? In some cases, the parents even ask these to their children when they were in high school which could be bad for the children because they haven’t be able to see the outside world yet, they haven’t know what is good and bad for them. Beside asking them what they would like to do, if the children wanted some type of jobs that the parents think that it is not well paid, it doesn’t look high class, it doesn’t sound cool to them such as painter, freelancing, photographer..; they would denied it and tell their children to study something that they think that it’s good or that’s is well paid such as doctor, architecture, and what’s more intimidating is that their children don’t even have that type of skills or their children don’t even like it but still the parent would keep insisting about those type of majors that they think that are good. This type of example could destroy the children mindset and dreams easily because the parent don’t let them broaden their mind but instead they limit their children to some sort of standard that they, themselves are satisfied at. For my own experience with this, I had wasted one year on my college life because I chose the wrong degree that i thought that i would like it just like my family has been talking about. Then after spending a year with the major i started to realize that i don’t quite like it as much as i thought that i do. Along with the time of the year, i started to lost interest in studying and started to miss a lot of class. At the end of the year, my result wasn’t that good which made me decided to drop the major out. I had a very tough time dealing with my emotional breakdown at that time along with that i don’t know what to tell my parents and didn’t think that i could face them anymore because i made them disappointed in me. (I would like to include that in Cambodia, we encourage student to hold 2 or more degrees rather then taking 1. It’s become a norm that most parents always insists their children to studying 2 colleges at the same times but i did only one.) With the fear and the embarrassment, I decided to kept it inside me for a while until the start of the new term is around the corner, i decide to pull my guts out and tell my parent about it. My mother was very furious and disappointed in me (as expect though) and she couldn’t put it in to words then she wary off. I tried to talk to her about it like how i am supposed to do now for a few times but what she said is that i need to take supplementary and continue on with the subject. Every time i approach her, she kept repeating herself and i keep denying to do that again and again, and then there’s come a time when we decided to sit down and talk about it and I told her about what i wanted to be or to do, about what i like and how i would like to shape my life then we came to the conclusion that I’m going to pick up another major and with that i’m sure that i would like it a lot better then last one. (I also wanted to conclude that, for the first major that i chose to study, I also did the discussion with my family, and you would wonder why i still chose that subject if i had discussed with them already. Yes I did discuss with them but just like i have mentioned above, my family kinda keep insisted me to go for that more then i wanted, and because i just graduated my high school i don’t actually know what college is going to be like so i decided to follow the persuasion of my family as they already had experiences going through college.) So now, I am in Year 2 aka Sophomore Year and i am really happy with my choice. I am very glad that i dropped my last major out and picked this up instead. 

*** So what i would like to point out here is that, i’m not wining over my parent in order to make my own decision but i had gone through the norms that they believed that it works for me/adult, however to me it is a complete failed. In the end, my made my own decision and broke the norm and now that i’m doing well with my degree; my family is also happy with it. So here, i’m showing them that i don’t have to obey the norm to be successful but i can also be successful by my own way. They just needed to trust me.  ***NORMS that I had gone against in this article:

1. Studying 1 major (normally they study 2 or more)

2. Following my own decision of choosing the major (normally the parent will be persuading and insist their children to choose the major that they like and are well paid)

3. Making my own decision in dropping a major out (normally you need to follow your parent said to take the supplementary or drop it out.)