Decision, decision

What to do? I came home from an empty run to the consular affairs bureau, disheartened having done nothing to change my length of (legal) stay in the country. Of course I could always just overstay, and pay a fine upon leaving, but that may leave a mark on my records and complicate thing if whenever I come back to taiwan in the future.

What to do? Should I go or should I stay? Can I just leave in two weeks' time and leave with a mind at ease? I have options, and I must choose.

I can leave the country and come back in so I have three more months. I can go back to Canada and come back within a week or two, and stay here for as long as it takes. Or I can return to Canada and return to "pick up" my mum towards the end of May and take her home with me to attend my graduation. These are the options.

I'm just indecisive and scared of making a "wrong" decision, especially with mum's condition still being so unstable at the moment. I really can't decide and rest well, and feel really agitated by the uncertainties of the days ahead... Am I over-complicating and over-thinking things?

Again I hear voices telling me "Stay with your mum, do your duty as a child! Come back here and find a job here!" They mean well, I know, but to the outside it seems like it's the easiest thing to do to just return here and find a job. Doing what? Working with whom? What about working here without a visa? And my whole life, everything I've ever built up in Canada? Abandon that all, put everything on hold and come back to be with mother?

I can do that. Sure I can do that. It has crossed my mind before, for realistically there is nothing in Canada that is keeping me there. Nothing, no one, at all. I really have no attachment whatsoever to that place right now, and my major concern in life is my mum's ailing health.

But am I ready to put everything on hold and be with my mum? I am afraid that one day, I will grow so bitter and angry after everything is over. Old and bitter that I have given my youth and precious years in return for what? Sure, in the culture of my roots, it is a great honour to be able to take care of your parent when they are sick and old, and that is what I have been doing, or trying to do over the past few years by flying back and forth to be with mum during crucial periods of her treatment. But at what point do you say to yourself that you have to live your own life, make plans for your own future, even if in the process you are not fully able to be there for your parent?

I have read about people's lives falling apart once the person they have been taking care of, the person whose illness and eventual demise has overtaken everything in their own lives, has passed away. A friend of mine told me that of her sister, who gave up her studies just to take care of their mother. And in the end, after the mother passed away, the sister was devastated, and her future prospects much delayed, if not ruined. And I am scared of that... so scared that if I should decide to return here to be with my mum, I will grow bitter and angry at her, at the entire situation, at myself for years "lost". What mum needs right now is compassion, kindness and good quality care. Something I know with time, I am unable to provide for her, especially in the long run. 

That whole hopeless episode completely forgetting about the date of my return ticket... It again reminds me how I can easily become absorbed in the life of another and forget my own life and my own plans. I can remember all of mum's hospital appointment dates and times, I can (almost completely) recall by heart her treatments and prescribed meds, but I can't even bother recalling my own important date, and therefore a completely good ticket has gone to waste! I really need to pull my act together, get a grip of my own life and live my life instead of always prioritising the life and happenings of other people! Not that I should be selfish and centre everything on me, but I really need to start planning and living my own life better, instead of constantly orbiting around other people's lives...