Mi Chaw

Around this time, ten years ago, Uncle John La Tsun gave me the name Mi Chaw. He says it means "cheerful girl" or "bright girl" in Myanmar. Uncle John says I'm one of the most positive and most cheerful girls he has met and he thinks that the name suits me really well.

We lost contact when I returned home and I never had the chance to tell him that after I left Yangon, I started to withdraw from the world and only talked to a few friends in person. I spent more days online and eventually lost interest in establishing new relationships with people. I was an extrovert for the first nineteen years of my life that even after I stopped being so, I can still fake being one. I'll laugh when something is funny and then try to come up with a joke so as to sustain the conversation. I'd smile to other colleagues and listen to their stories. But I was not as invested as I look like. It is as if I was running on autopilot. There's a joke--laugh! Someone said hi--say hi back!

In 2012, I started counting hours. I counted hours from sunrise until sunset. When night falls and I'm back on my bed, I'd wonder why I'm still alive. The days were all the same and I was only waiting---eagerly waiting---for everything to end. I will wake up each morning exhausted. And the cycle will go on. Growing up, I never understood what people meant by "not living but just existing" but that year, I finally got it. I cannot feel happy but I am not sad as well. I simply cannot feel. If ever there was an emotion, it would come in bursts. A burst of annoyance, a spark of joy. It will die as soon as it comes and what replaces it is the consistent hum of indifference. It was that year that I decided that I need to get out of the country or else... 

So I went to Indonesia. I went to Indonesia hoping that by immersing myself in a new environment and by meeting new people, I'd go back to my 'old self' again.

Indonesia helped a bit. And finding a job right away after my program made me so busy I found myself thinking about death less and less. I worked in conflict and the peace process. It was in seeing other people struggle to live that I found reasons to do so as well. I did not even think about it intentionally but, suddenly, I knew I need to stay alive. I need to stay alive because no one else will do my work. At 23, I have resigned myself to being a cog in the machine. I said, "well, it's not as if I'm going to live until 30 anyway so better make use of this life while I'm at it."

Before I knew it, I'm thirty. The last few years of my twenties made up for the slump earlier in the decade. I made new friends and been to many places. I found myself slowly becoming the Mi Chaw that Uncle John used to know. This does not mean that I am "back". I am here and have always been. I was the cheerful girl; I was the morose woman. I am all of them, at different times, and they were all me. I changed and I will keep on changing. But I promise that I will hold on to what will make me happy.

Earlier this year, I hit a slump. It was relatively bad, as some of you may know. But like before, things are falling into place once again. I have a job that pays me well and I am given the liberty to do things that I am interested in at the same time. There are still a lot of things that I want to do and I am taking things slow. I cannot say that I have truly recovered from the slump but I am doing my best. I am doing my best not to be bitter---and if I am, I will own up to it so I can let go of it right away. I am doing my best not to be spiteful and impatient. This year---or maybe this decade---I will try to be a bit more like Mi Chaw again. But I will not do so as a facade. 

It is still difficult to tell the story out loud without deflecting by saying a funny joke at the same time. I don't think I have shared the full account to anyone yet. Not even my family. Today, I write this here as my way of coming clean.

Thank you for reading and let's all live well together.