i am the way i am because my counselling teacher gossiped about me in high school....

After my parents' divorce (every US app essay's first few sentences ever...), I followed my mom to her hometown in Kelantan. The move happened so abruptly that it took me a month to even start at my new school. I still remember the day everything changed. It was the first time my mom had ever picked me up from school. She came with my uncle. I did not think much of it at the time. Later that night, we left Kuala Lumpur and drove to Kelantan. All I had with me was my school bag, which I still use to this day. I was still wearing my school uniform. I never got to say goodbye to my friends.

As an orang luar (that is the exact word they use to describe people like me, who would have thought they really mastered the concept of immigration), I struggled at my new school. It did not help that Bahasa Kelantan is almost incomprehensible if you did not grow up speaking it. Imagine spending your whole life speaking standard Bahasa Melayu, only to be dropped into a boarding school where everyone suddenly sounds like they are communicating through encrypted messages. To make matters worse, several of my teachers were older men with such thick Kelantan accents that I genuinely had no idea what they were saying half the time. I would sit in class nodding along as if I understood, when in reality I was just hoping they wouldn't pick on me to answer the question on the board.

One story that I love reminiscing about is how people in high school would make fun of the way I spoke. Growing up in Kuala Lumpur, I used the word "kita" to refer to myself, which is common in some contexts. When I moved to Kelantan, every time I was in the toilet, someone would knock on the door and ask who was inside. I would confidently reply, "Kita." 

And without fail, they would respond, "Mana ada kita, awak sorang je dalam toilet tu."

(Translation: "There is no 'we'; you're alone in there.")

I can laugh about it now, but at the time, I was absolutely fuming. We call this menganjing, which loosely translates as "taking the piss". And frankly, I was not in the mood. Especially because I was already dealing with a much greater challenge: tandas cangkung. I did not know how to use a squat toilet. Correction: I DO NOT know how to use tandas cangkung to this day. And here I was, trying not to lose my balance, trying not to question every life decision that my parents had made that led me to this moment, and people were outside making jokes about my pronouns. Please. I was fighting for my life in there. I remember being so pissed at my parents' divorce because now I have to spend 5 years in a boarding school with tandas cangkung. 

Note to myself: Check if my son/daughter's school has tandas duduk or not.

To this day, whenever I enter a public toilet in Malaysia and discover that the only option is a squat toilet, I immediately accept defeat. I am not your strongest soldier. I would rather hold it in until I find a sitting toilet. I am generally optimistic about my ability to survive difficult situations, but there are two things to which I willingly surrender: learning how to ride a bicycle and learning how to use tandas cangkung. If I were ever to be in a coma and during the time I was unconscious, and the world decided that tandas cangkung was gonna be the only toilet option and that bicycle was gonna be the only transport available, just kill me. I am not kidding, I can't take it.

Back to the whole point of this essay, it has been almost a decade since my parents separated, and writing about it feels a little pointless because I am over it now. 

Or am I...

I mean, I can always resurrect a dead horse if necessary.

What I am trying to say is that I have always hated it when people looked at me with pity after finding out that my parents were divorced. Okay, and what exactly does that have to do with me? Why are you acting like I personally filed the paperwork? I know I sound like an emo teenager right now, so let me get to the point.

Without exposing myself too much, the divorce was only one of many things that happened within the span of a single month. We moved from Kuala Lumpur to Kelantan. I transferred to a new school. I left behind my friends without a proper goodbye. I entered an unfamiliar boarding school where I barely understood the dialect. My entire world was uprooted. Looking back, I do not think I ever properly processed any of it. But then again, can you really expect a thirteen-year-old to sit down and say, "Right, let us unpack the emotional ramifications of my family restructuring"? AND ON TOP OF THAT I HAD TO USE TANDAS CANGKUNG?? GOD GIVE ME A BREAK PLEASE.

Anyways...

During that time, I became close to my English teacher, who also happened to be the school counsellor. I trusted her. I remember opening up to her about how sad I was about moving to Kelantan and everything that came with it. I talked about missing my old life, my old friends, and the confusion of trying to make sense of so many changes happening at once. For a thirteen-year-old, that conversation felt deeply personal. It was one of the few times when I felt like I would not be judged, when I felt comfortable enough to share about my sorrows. 

The following week, several teachers began asking me about my parents. I remember being stunned. I had not told anyone except that one teacher. Yet somehow, information I had shared in confidence had spread across the school. Suddenly, adults I barely knew felt entitled to ask me deeply personal questions about my family situation. That was the moment I learned that adults do not always deserve the trust children place in them. That marks my villain era muahahahaha. But anyway, I was mostly upset because they were interested in my story the same way they treat celebrity stories; it's the story that they care about, but not me, a literal child who had to live through all that. 

They asked invasive questions, but they never asked whether I was okay. Sure, I might benefit from proper counselling, but what I needed most was adults who could treat my feelings with care and my privacy with respect. Instead, my vulnerability became another sensation in the staff room.

And as I am writing this, I am filled with anger. I cannot imagine hearing a child share something so personal and deciding that the appropriate response is to tell other teachers for no clear reason, then doing absolutely nothing to support that child afterwards. If you are going to spread my business, at least have the decency to ask if I am okay.

And now, as I do more advocacy working with young kids and children, I keep coming back to my own experience. It taught me how often adults dismiss children's boundaries. How easily they assume that young people do not deserve confidentiality, autonomy, or dignity. How comfortable some adults are with treating children as objects of curiosity rather than human beings with inner lives. As a child, I noticed everything that adults did. I notice when they break my trust. I notice when adults talk about me instead of to me. I notice that teachers who were supposed to protect me instead invaded my privacy.

And perhaps that is why I become so defensive when I see adults disrespect children. Because I know exactly what that feels like. I know what it is like to be young, overwhelmed, and trying to hold yourself together while the adults around you treat your experiences as casual conversation, an entertainment event.