Existential Angst

Sometimes I wonder why I do what I do. I am a little aggrieved that I still experience this level of adolescent angst about my place and value in the world. Surely I would have (should have) grown out of this? Surely one reaches a point in one's life where one can say: Righto. Here I am and this is what I do and I am content.

Part of my problem is that I just don't like full-time working. It's not that I am innately lazy (at least, I hope not).

There is so much that I want to do, and learn, and read, and write, and observe, and muse, and create - and full-time work does not allow me the time to do very much of it, and sometimes, it does not let me do any of it.

And sleep. I resent sleep too. Why do I need so much of it?

Made in Viet Nam

Today I am wearing all clothes made in Viet Nam (with the exception of underwear, socks and shoes). My t-shirt, which I've decided is fancy enough for work, is a turquoise North Face t-shirt and it has a label "Made in Viet Nam." My suit was tailor made for me in Hoi An.

I and my sisters had a ball getting clothes tailor made for us. The lovely tailor was surprised to discover we were sisters; the three of us are a sample of the different-ness of the girls in my family. Though I am youngest and brought up on nutritious Aussie food (har har), I am also shortest, and darkest, with a mop of unstyled long black hair usually pulled back and away from my face in a pony tail, although wisps escape to pester me and dismay my otherwise tidy appearance. My eldest sister is willowy slender with lustrous black hair cut in a becomingly jagged way. My other traveling sister has quite pale skin and light brown hair, also layer-cut as is the fashion.

I am a bit casual about my appearance, and even more so when traveling. My two sisters are much more coiffed and presented. It took us a couple of hours to get ready in the morning: I showered first and was ready in about 15 minutes: I put on one of the three quick-dry trousers I had packed and whichever t-shirt came to hand. Each of my sisters spent what felt like a lifetime getting ready, while I itched to go exploring. I found myself doing stretches and exercises to kill the time while I listened to the shower, then the hair-dryer, then each of my sisters crossing the other's path back and forth from bed to bathroom.

It was quite a revelation for me. I am separated from my sisters in the family by a brother. Until we were teenagers, I shared a bedroom with my brother. Until my brother got embarrassed by his younger sister hanging around, I spent most of my play-time with him. I briefly shared a bedroom with my sister but she could not stand my untidiness and sleep-talking. One of my elder siblings (I can't remember which) saved her by marrying and moving out: then she and I got our own bedrooms. I was about 12, my sister about 15.

Our travel photos are perfectly illustrative of our differing styles. Like good Viet-Kieu tourists, we took a photo of all of us outside every monument we visited. In most of the photos, I am in exactly the same outfit (especially in Ha Noi, where it was cold, so I am in jeans and the one jumper that I brought with me; and in Hue, where it was raining, so I am in jeans and my red raincoat). Each of my sisters, however, were in different outfits, in different pictures. I trawled the thousands of pictures we three had taken: only rarely are my sisters wearing the same clothes twice. Although, one of my sisters took greatly to an outfit made for her in Hoi An and wore it quite a few times.

When we got to Hoi An, we went hunting for a good tailor. The decision of which tailor was made randomly, I think, and based upon who was nicest to us. The tailor we chose was so nice that her brother drove us to a restaurant for dinner, where I forgot that I was not supposed to give money away and promptly gave some to a young girl who asked and we were then accosted by a whole bunch of kids, one of whom became tearful when I said I had run out of coins (it was true, I had no more coins). The restaurant proprietor shooed the kids away, and my sisters and the proprietor looked at me very disapprovingly. I looked ashamed, and felt a bit silly, and then secretly pleased because I'd fallen for a trick that was written in the Lonely Planet Guide! I'm a sucker like so many other people, which makes me kinda in a book!

We spent about three hours at the tailors, getting measured up and choosing fabrics. I was a great disappointment to the tailor. I wanted three trouser suits in conservative fabrics (black pinstripe, navy-ish and beige-ish) with conservative cuts. I wanted one matching conservative dress and one matching conservative, slightly above-the-knee skirt.

The tailor kept trying to persuade me towards a more fashionable cut, a more revealing skirt, or another item that was funky and young. In the end, she chose to cut my clothes rather tightly, and slit the dress either side so that it was halfway up my thighs. I asked her to let out one of the trousers, and had every intention of asking her to let out the others as well, but her brother rushed my trousers to their factory out of town, and rushed it back again in minutes. I felt bad so I just took the other trousers as they were. I'm yet to wear the dress, although the suits are worn in random rotation every day of the working week.

Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood

I don't know why, or how, I came to Margaret Atwood so late in my life. She seems to be the perfect author for me and, as prolific as she is, I seem to have read much more of her non-fiction, than her fiction. I read Cat's Eye on holiday.

One of the things that struck me most about this novel was its insightful portrayal of relationships among girls and women. The protagonist, Elaine Risley, is a successful painter who returns to the town of her childhood, teenage and early adult years to attend a retrospective of her work. Alone in Toronto, she begins to reminisce about her life, and in particular her friendship with Cordelia: her nemesis, or a foil, or the example of what the protagonist herself could have become.

This post is not a review. Atwood's work is excellent, and I highly recommend her if you haven't read her already. Like much else on this blog, this post is about ME.

Cat's Eye got me thinking about my relationships with girls and women. I was a resilient child; I grew into a resilient adult. I had a large family and network of siblings and cousins of both sexes. At home, I was closest to my brother in age and, as a child, in games. I don't remember my very early childhood years but my mother's anecdotes tells of a brash, outspoken, cheeky and rather confident brat. I haven't changed much. I am hoping any child I may have will not be like the young me (I'd like her to be much better behaved!).

The first primary school that I went to had kids from a mish-mash of many and varied cultural and ethnic groups. I formed friendships with almost everyone: Indigenous kids, Islander kids, fellow Viet kids, Chinese kids, Lebanese kids, Greek kids. They were all girls.

Even in early primary school, I knew we weren't 'cool'. We were generally excluded from games of 'tiggy' (a chasing game) and I, in particular, was banned from 'catch and kiss' (I had punched the last person who caught me, before he could kiss me, because he grabbed me around the waist. I did not play by the rules.) We spent our lunch hours in one corner of the playground. There must have been a reason for that, beyond mere choice. After all, the monkey bars and the swings were in the diametrically opposite corner of the playground. I remember playing on the monkey bars and swings AFTER kids had left school for the day. So there must have been someone preventing me from doing so. I have no recollection of who they were, nor why. Although I'd be quite happy to take a racialist stab in the dark.

In grade five (aged eight), we moved from inner city, mixed class, multi-cultural, to outer suburbs, blue collar, mono-cultural. I and my brother were the only two Asian kids the school had ever seen. The school I attended was a very small school, which was a shock to me. Previously, there would have been more people in one of my classes, than in the entire school. It was not large enough to form cliques, so most of the time, everyone played with everyone else. But there was the occasional spat. I got into fights a lot. I have previously posted about one particular not-quite fight.

Grade 5/6 was when the social outcasting bullying set in: I would have been 10/11. My brother was in grade 7, the last primary school year, at the time. At that age, everyone was at markedly different stages of physical development. I was still small and weedy and childlike. So was my brother. Some of the girls who were my friends had begun to develop breasts and hips, and a giggling interest in boys (still germ-filled in my eyes). Some of the boys had a swagger and were heads and shoulders taller than everyone else.

One rainy lunchtime, I came out of class to sit with the usual circle. As I fought for a space between two people, they turned their backs to me, shuffled forwards and closed me out again. I got up and went to sit beside someone else, also in the circle. The same thing happened. I persisted and sat there eating my lunch in a strangled silence. A few of the group got up and moved. Then, one of the girls came over to me. She had, a few weeks earlier, declared that she was my best friend. She whispered that everyone was unimpressed with me because one of the boys, whom another of the girls liked, might have a crush on me. That boy was my brother's best friend, and he was, of course, full of cooties. While she was talking to me, her head swiveled back and forth; she was watching how the other girls were reacting to her talking to me. "I hope you don't mind," she whispered, "but we've all agreed not to hang out with you", and then she scuttled back to the group, who were by now all facing towards me, hands menacingly on out-stuck-hips.

I remember being bewildered, and not saying anything, but feeling that it was absolutely necessary that I did not move; that they move. So I just stood there, looking back at them. I may have looked sad or fearful or confrontational. I don't really know. It did feel like I had done something wrong, but I was definitely not going to say sorry. And they had not exactly done anything to allow me to lash into them, as Craig had. They whispered together, giggled together, and then left. After they had gone, I deflated, and slunk off into the library.

The next day, I did not bother. I went to join the kids in the junior school and sat with kids 2 to 3 grades below me. I played on their swings and monkey bars and fortresses. I played chasey and skipping rope games again, instead of sitting around gossiping at lunch.

Though my friendship with the older girls re-ignited, it never felt true afterwards. I was wary. And if they shut me out, I defended by disappearing off to have more fun with the younger kids. Some days I just played their games, which were much more fun anyway.

In high school, three girls one grade older than me decided I would be fun to pick on one term. Wrong choice. They gave me a nickname (midget), because I was short, and I hung out with girls, one in particular, who were at least a head taller than I was. One of my friends became quite friendly with them, which was fine by me. The three would be sweet as pie to me when my friend was around and horrid to me when she wasn't. My friend did not understand why I didn't want to spend time with them, like she did.

I had quite quickly developed a reputation at high school for being arrogant - I presume because I was reasonably confident in my abilities, and tended towards cold silence when angered. I do recall being hurt by them, but I always did my utmost not to show it. When they taunted, I stared at them and waited until they left. If I was walking by, and they would begin to taunt, I would stop and look at them, stubbornly standing still until they went quiet. Then I would move again.

I broke my silence, once.

I was walking along the crossover area between the grade nines and grade eights, going to class, I think. I was by myself, as frequently occurred. Ahead, I saw the three girls, surrounded by a bunch of guys, one of whom was my friend's boyfriend. One of the girls called out: "There goes lonely little midget. When is she going to get a friend?" I stopped. I turned towards the girls. My friend's boyfriend said: "Oh, leave her alone. She's alright." I spat at him: "I don't need YOU to defend me. I'm FINE on my own." I started to walk off when one of the girls began laughing: "I know what gets midget. Someone CARING about her. Not so tough now, are you midget?" I straightened my probably already ramrod straight back and kept walking.

The girls moved on from taunting me; they probably found another target.

University was different: there were no obvious cliques at university, and the cool girls who would have done all this alienating stuff just did not seem to be around. But they were back again at the very first job I started. Silence and staring does not work so well when you have to co-operate together on projects. I just pretended I was part of the group during working hours, and ate my lunch with other people or by myself, and let the sniggers behind my back be just that: sniggers behind my back. My clothes were not as nice, and I did not like the same movies. If they couldn't be my friends, they were nevertheless work colleagues. They might not like me, but they were definitely going to respect me.

The cliquey work girls did respect me: they sought my advice and assistance when things went wrong. And I would give them my advice and assistance, and raise an eyebrow and sigh when they excluded me from invitations to lunch or nights out.

In a moment of blogosphere coincidence, Minor Revisions has a wonderful piece on this intangible form of bullying, called "Why don't you like me?" I like Post-Doc's mum's advice: (paraphrasing): There are too many people in this world and they can't all like you. And there will be worthwhile ones who do like you.

That's good advice.

I can hear my defensiveness as I proof-read this post. I am defensive. It does hurt to be excluded. But if people don't like you, that's their problem: just as long as they respect your work. Now, I figuratively stand still and stare people down: I stare them down with my work.