My previous therapist had told me that I was a child being raised by an entire village, being raised by everyone around. My current therapist tells me that I was a child raised by no one, that my many mothers did not equate to a single, whole mother. 

List of mother’s I’ve had: my biological mother, my aunt Kico, my mother’s assistants Antonella and Joanna, and my nanny Meijing. 

Meijing is beautiful, despite how often she calls herself ugly. She has a sharply carved face and a huge mouth that widens into a booming laugh so big, it grows into her eyes. She is brimming with joy, always, like a glass of water filled a little too full, that rumbles and spills her happiness everywhere she goes. But when she’s sad, she’s very, very sad. Her tears flow uncontrolled and her losses are felt heavy in the air. Meijing knows this, so she hides when she is sad. The first time I saw her cry was when I was eleven. 

She had just gotten off the phone with her daughter, or maybe her husband, or maybe her sister. I’m not sure. But it was someone from her family, in her hometown. Meijing is from a small, countryside village somewhere in Fujian, where there is no electricity or running water. I think the person on the phone with her was her husband, because he was telling her to come home. Meijing later told me that this wasn’t the first time he had called, begging her to return. Meijing had left her small village to come to Xiamen, when I was two months old. Her daughter was eight years old. She had come to make money to send back home, to take care of her family. But now, it was over ten years that Meijing had lived in the city of Xiamen, mothering and loving a privileged, mixed girl, that she said she loved more than her own daughter. 

I always knew that one day I would leave China, and therein fact, leave Meijing. I spent my life fantasizing about what America would be like, while simultaneously fearing what would happen to Meijing after I’d gone. Meijing and I would dream together, about how I would convince my parents to get her a plane ticket to New York to visit me, or when I made enough money myself I could buy her a little apartment in Xiamen. Xiamen had become her home, and I, her daughter. 

My mother mother was a busy woman. As a child, I watched her rush from work to home to a dinner party, from the airport to the kitchen to my study. She moved through everything quickly, places and emotions alike. I remember admiring this quality of hers, the swiftness in which she lived. I called her supermom at times. 

My mother mother wanted me to be famous. Heck, I wanted to be famous. She built me a makeshift stage at home, in our living room, so I could carry out my singing and dancing performances in the most dramatic fashion. I was always singing and dancing, it’s all I wanted to do, all the time. I would spend hours singing at the karaoke television, fantasizing about how one day I would go to a performing arts school, and be discovered just like Tori Vega from Victorious. I would google “Disney auditions for tweens” or variations of that. I read somewhere that the lead actor in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie got the role because he sent a letter to the book’s author. So I emailed the author of my favorite fairy-related book series Rainbow Magic and said that should the series ever become a television show, to please consider me, Isabella Chan, to play one of the Fashion Fairies. 

Despite my own unending belief, I was not a talented child. I couldn’t sing, nor could I dance. I had terrible grades. I never could and still cannot read music despite playing the piano almost everyday for seven years. I had out-of-school lessons for everything. And I sucked at most of it for a long time. 

I still sing, all the time. And my brother, as brothers do, often told me to shut up in many different ways. Sometimes he would just plainly demand it, but usually that would result in me spitefully scream-singing the song, further annoying the shit out of him. He later became more calculated in the way he told me to shut up. He made fun of the breathiness in my voice and how hard I tried to sound good. To be fair, from his perspective, he was a twelve-year-old boy that had to hear his nine-year-old sister belt out the entire Avril Lavigne album The Best Damn Thing, for several hours on end. 

Things I was put in classes for from the age of two to twelve: ballet, piano, painting, French, and cello, on top of the extra tutoring for school-related classes like math and Chinese. 

Even when I was a child, when I would ask Meijing why all the other kids would have their parents at every holiday assembly, every band performance, every science fair, I was asking in genuine curiosity. No part of myself felt like a martyr, nor did I feel a single ounce of self-pity. I only knew that if you wanted people to come to your performances, it had to be important enough and you had to be talented enough. 

I started learning ballet at the age of two. I have the memory in my mind of me learning for years, yet my body has completely forgotten, with no idea how to move in those ways anymore. I wonder what I learnt in all those years, if I had even progressed at all. Or what a two-year-old could possibly even learn in ballet class. They’re already fleshy and flexible, balls that bend into a complete split.

a diary that didn't last

September 25, 2022 

Today I decided to make a ‘what I eat in a day’ video on TikTok because I’ve been eating really bad lately, and I thought that maybe filming myself might motivate me to eat better. It really works for some reason. Well I know the reason. I like good content, and I suppose that might be more motivating than to just eat well for my own sake. I also decided to start writing everyday. Starting today. It’s just a little paragraph so I hope I keep it up. I am not so sure though. 

Trying to work on yourself is hard. I am gonna go to the gym today for sure. I am stoned right now but to be fair I just finished some work I had to do. I think that even if I’m being a lazy ass, as long as I’m doing something while being a lazy ass means that it’s okay. I am also not sure if that’s true because I’m pretty sure you need to be a whole bunch of things to be okay. Like talk to people and do activities for your soul and stuff. Which I have not been doing because I’ve just been doing the things I actually need to do. And I can barely do those things already. 

September 26, 2022

I am so productive today. I showered and did my hair and everything. I even got up at 7:45am to go to LA to pick up fabric. I was back at my apartment literally by 11:30am and even got In-N-Out and picked up some stuff at the Italian market. I feel nice. And cute. My outfit is cute. What else… I am gonna go to yoga today to stay on my grind of working out. I worked out yesterday which is kind of awesome so I think I’m gonna try to keep doing it to feel better about myself. 

self portrait #1, 2020

rachel ly, march 2022