Meranti – Life Journeys

Today is my brother’s birthday. I was very tempted to buy one of those Nixon T-shirts that I’ve been seeing around as a gift for him, and then leave this tacky note for him:

Time to come out and show the world who you are!
 
Haha. For those who didn’t get it, Nixon is his name. I didn’t do it though. I wanted to make a card for him, but I was very bo xim. I merely used half of an A4 white printing paper and wrote "Happy 29th Birthday" on it. I wanted to write a note, but I didn’t know what to write. Not that there was nothing to say, but there was too much, and I didn’t know how to start. So anyway, I slipped it halfway under his door and went back to my room to nap. When I woke up, it was gone. I’m just wondering how does he actually feel, what actually goes through his mind when he receives these little notes from me. Because there is no response, we tend to give up and let it go, and pretend that he doesn’t exist, which is what I have been doing. Does it really make a difference to him? Would it really help to get him to open up, or at least his door?
 

The weekend two weeks ago, we had this Meranti programme in NIE. It was a compulsory thing for all student teachers. It was a two-day event for each group of about 20 student teachers, eating up our Saturday and Sunday, which most people weren’t exactly pleased about. We knew that there would be team-building activities and a lot of sharing, plus sharing by a senior teacher from a random school. Most of us arrived the first morning dragging our feet and so reluctant to be there. But it wasn’t half as bad as we had expected, and on the second day, we were actually glad to be there.

There were a number of activities, but the main one was about our individual life journeys. The facilitator shared his own life journey in the form of his own drawings depicting his life so far and explaining to us about it. Then we were supposed to come up with our own drawings and share them over the duration of the two days.

It’s not something that has occupied my thoughts in the recent years, my journey since young. But because of this activity,  was forced to think back upon the family situation and what happened those years ago. And when I started, I couldn’t stop. My mind was filled with only the relationships within this dysfunctional family and nothing else. In the end, I drew this:
 

 
 (The name was merely for the facilitator as we all knew each other already.)
I had drawn a lot of stick figures and transitions. During my sharing, I talked about how the family used to be a happy one, at least in the opinion of the primary school girl that I was then, and how it changed after my grandfather passed away. How my father told us that my mum needed us more during the divorce period, and then marrying someone else a few months down the road. How negative my mum made the household become, always saying things like "Not happy here then go and stay with your father la!" whenever there are arguments of any kind. How once, when we were having a cold war, I found a letter that she was drafting in a notebook in her room to my father, asking him to take us away, and how I had felt like we were being kicked back and forth like a ball. It was at this moment that I started tearing, which explains the tissue in my hands. I forgot to share that after I had angrily written something back to mum in the notebook, she replied to me again and the one thing that I remember she wrote was, "Yes, I regret having the two of you." Well, I did say that our relationship has improved since those days, but not to the extent of being close.

I shared about my brother, and very briefly about the relationship between WL and us and what happened to her. I couldn’t be more elaborate as I know I wouldn’t even be able to say anything if I tried cause I’d start to really cry. But I felt bad for reducing our story to just a few words.

From the others’ sharing, I found a handful of people who had brothers like mine, just not to that extreme, and some have been diagnosed with depression and other stuff. And although it wouldn’t make anything with my brother better, but at least I know he’s not the only one, and these friends and I could support each other through our experiences.

On the second day, after everyone had finished sharing, we were each asked to share with the rest whose story touched us or resonated with ourselves the most. And honestly, there were a few other girls who had very bad family problems and mothers like mine, or even worse (I don’t know why it’s always the mothers), and a number of them had a tough life, although there were those who were generally pretty blessed (or they just weren’t comfortable enough to share the not so good parts). A few people mentioned my sharing, but the one that made me feel the most humbled was when Mazlan, the father of five, also my colleague in JYPS, spoke. He shared that he had a friend about his age in another group who told him that the sharing didn’t mean anything as most of the people were youngsters who didn’t have any real experiences at all, and that he begged to differ, that his own experiences were nothing compared to mine and some of the rest, and how much respect he had for us.

Later on, we had another activity where we had to rotate and speak to each other one to one and affirm the other party, telling them what we liked most about them and one thing we wish for them. And again, I was very humbled and touched by the things that many of them said to me.

When I shared that part of my life, I honestly didn’t expect this kind of response. To me, I have actually accepted the fact that many people come from broken families and I’m just one of them, and that the amount of hurt that I have in me is probably minute compared to that of many others suffering all around us. I even thought that it might seem silly or immature to cry over something that had happened so long ago, though I also know that these emotional effects last a lifetime — just look at my brother. So anyway, it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, sharing something so private with a big group of people that you know, but not well enough to pour out all these in any usual circumstances. And it was somewhat liberating. And very humbling.


At the end of it all, we stood in a circle like that, pulling this rope, and shared any last words we wanted to share with the group.
It was such an experience, and we could all see the type of teachers and parents that we DIDN’T want to be. And like I told them, I feel really amazed by the love and passion towards children and education this entiregroup has. People always say that many teachers join the profession not because they really want to teach, but because it’s a stable job with a decent pay, or other reasons that they couldn’t get any other jobs, etc. But this group here, although many of us are introverts and I don’t know if they are all excellent teachers when it comes to teaching as a skill, but they are definitely people whom I wouldn’t mind entrusting my own children to.