Novel

 I began reading the novel around five months ago. A beautiful semi-autobiographic novel about the story and hardships of a young girl's to build a better life with her mother in a new land.

The book spoke to me personally, because, despite the relative ease and comfort I have had growing up and adapting to a new country as a child, there resonates a sense of being "lost in translation", a search for identity and belonging, and a struggle for acceptance that I could see in my own experience growing up.

The character's struggle to learn English and excel in school was of course much more difficult. She went to school along side working part time after school in sweatshops in order to repay the debts of going to America. Together with her mother, she lived in an unheated apartment crawling with insects, and toiled to make literally cents in order to make ends meet. Ultimately, through hard work, resolve and wanting to give her mother and herself a better future, she excelled academically and became a doctor. The hardship she endured, the humiliation, and ultimately the triumph of being able to succeed  on her own is moving and inspirational, and written in a clear and accessible way as if the girl is talking to you personally.

I began reading the book, but never finished the last chapter. I don't know if I left it unread intentionally, but I did know that it would be a difficult chapter to read. Through, or despite of, the hardships of growing up, the main character recounts the story of meeting the love of her life, and describes vividly their sweet, brief and beautiful moments of intimacy. They both know they are deeply in love, and would be good for one another.

But circumstances, unsaid and undeclared feelings and truths kept them apart. The last chapter is the closure and coming to terms with difficult decisions we all face and have to make in life... happiness now or the possibility (though uncertain) of coming together again later with the one true love... stability for the present, or a possible life of hardship and sacrifices to be with the one true love?

Ironically, I received the book as a gift just a week or so before my break up. And finishing this novel now, five months after that shows how far, and in some ways how very little, how my friend and I have progressed from those tumultuous days of tears and being afraid to let go and to be alone...

We all have to make choices in life, and some choices take us apart from the happiness and comfort we have grown so accustomed to and are so reluctant to let go off. We may live with regret and remorse for the rest of our lives, and keep on imagining, thinking and torturing ourselves with what could have been...

But eventually, one day, we come to realise, things are the way they are, and they are just the way they are. Nothing more, nothing less.