​6.45pm

Today I made the most radical decision of confronting my mum for her toxic behaviour. The tremble in my voice is the pain I’ve felt for years. While attempting to translate and annunciate my mandarin skills, the response I got from her were elusiveness and inability to grasp empathy at a basic level. To her, everything she said was “just words” and it meant nothing.

But what I was trying to convey to her was that it can’t mean nothing to me, because she’s my mum, and whatever she says I listen. Doesn’t matter if it’s a stranger I met in the streets or a colleague as their words don’t matter to me at all. 

She stared point blank at me - all detached and jealous, “perhaps you don’t have a good Heart at all, when you kept using derogatory words and is dismissive about it each time I confront you”. I said. 

Empathy can be learned. Nobody was born knowing how to show compassion and say kind words. My Mother could never understand that her own past have moulded her into whatever she is right now. 

And perhaps I might have told her her problem straight to her face. That she was never happy in this life, being married to my dad and bearing 2 kids when she could’ve turned around and lived another version if she could turn back time. Now I understood that she’s never happy, which she would never dare to admit that part. 

Things don’t change after all, all it takes was an opportunity to open up past trauma and wounds. 

And her heart will always be that cold, dismissive and small person.