For Simon, who lit the road before me
South Asia, 2011
There is a scene from Forrest Gump, where Jenny walks up to her father's old house and suddenly starts throwing rocks at the house. How could you. How could you do this! I watched it over and over again and could not hold back my tears.
Many a night I woke up from my own nightmares, and wished I, too, had the courage to throw rocks. I was less frightened by the night I was beaten, naked in blood, than by the idea that I was to grow up to become the abuser: I was taught this was the way of masculinity.
I learned to mask my emotions and desires at a very young age. I knew that being girlish was lethal, and not being an aggressive bully was a source of ridicule. When I boarded the plane to Raleigh, North Carolina, I was relieved that I had escaped, not knowing that I had signed up for a long healing journey ahead.
A decade later, people asked me why I transitioned. Was it because of my fear of masculinity? Was it out of empathy for traumatized women? Was it in my genes? My answer was: All of them. Above all, it is through these events that I discovered who I am.
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It was a five-minute walk from D. H. Hill Jr. Library to my dormitory, across the plaza, through the Atrium dining hall, and a tunnel. The NC State campus always looked solemn at midnight, with thin clouds and scant stars. I walked this path every night in my freshman year.
I always thought my first year in college would be less solitary. I dreamt of becoming an American girl. It was not my origin, skin tone, or chromosomes that stopped me; it was because I couldn't erase years of displacement and insert belonging into my memory. After all the Halloweens, Thanksgivings, and Christmases I had to endure by myself, can I truly find a home anywhere?
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The archetype of grieving women has always attracted me. I spent nights reading literature from Woolf's novel to Plath's journal, and myths of Greek goddesses. I envied their right to grieve as a woman—an experience I never felt entitled to; my pain felt hollow, my courage felt false.
But what is courage but recognizing and honoring the heroine in myself?
It wasn't enough simply to know that my courage was no less valid than the courage of those women I admired; it took me many years to feel safe within, to accept my own journey without shame or guilt. With the acceptance, came my determination to heal and flourish.
Madison, 2016
Madison was a lonely city. Connecting my apartment and the CS building was a backstreet, with snow-paved sidewalks, street signs encrusted in ice, and the headlights of coming cars piercing the cold air. It was a city where the days felt bleak, and the nights fell fast. I stood by the shore of Lake Mendota, watching the state capitol dance with the waves, along with the myriad lights of homes. I knew I didn't belong.
I called home. Mom, please give me my childhood back.
When the snow began to melt, layer by layer, as the year turned around, I have learned to recognize the strange beauty in my new life, one that survived the snow; a beauty that my new memories would be founded upon.
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In the summer of 2016, Lake Mendota came alive. Festivity stretched from the Memorial Union to the far side of the lake: Sailboats in the distance, and nearer, cast iron tables, ice-cream and beer, people leaping on and off the piers, some sitting on the deck, its wooden planks cracked from seasons of shrinkage and expansion.
There is a small library in Memorial Union with a window that looks out to the lake. Centered to the window was a large wooden table, where I sat and, for the first time, read The Wild Iris by Louise Glück:
...
You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice: from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure seawater.
It was the moment when I fell in love with English. For me, learning a new language was an opportunity to become empty again, as a clean sheet of paper to be written on, this time with my own voice.
California, 2025
I met Anna at work, in a corner with a grand piano. For Anna, the piano was her companion in healing, a gateway to connection; for me, it was a way of resilience, of quietly reclaiming the lost memories. When we got together, she played Seventeen Moments of Spring and told me stories of living in Spain and Sri Lanka.
Anna told me about a moment between her and her once-estranged father, when she finally had the courage to ask him:
"All of us will depart one day. But while we are still here, are there things you want to tell me? What was the best gift I’ve ever made to you?"
"When your mother gave birth to your sister, I was in the army. But when you were born, I took you home and unwrapped you. I saw a beautiful baby girl. That was the most beautiful thing in my life."
While I do not expect a similar reconciliation with my own father, I could appreciate the story. We spend a lifetime searching for adequacy and acceptance, but our mere existence in this world is in itself a gift to those we love. It was a midsummer afternoon. I felt warmth from within.
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Yeung and I were born in the same country. Four decades before I left the country by plane, Yeung walked out of it, three days on foot. He did not plan to return.
We sat for hours when Yeung told me how he hid in the forest for three days—in trenches, watching armed soldiers passing by—and how he climbed the barbed wires and finally dropped onto the soil of Hong Kong. In the very moment, I felt years of tight grip over my head was lifted, Yeung added.
For many, The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus is written on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty; for some, it's written in their bones: "Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"... Yeung spoke about a small monument erected in Los Angeles in commemoration of those who perished during their escape.
Yeung likes steam engines and wanted to be a mechanical engineer. His living room has a display of brass pieces, carefully machined, welded, and fitted together. Belts, gears, cranks and shafts connecting power to a polished three-blade propeller. In his place, I could see no trace of regrets, no lament about parts of life missed; All I saw was a room full of machines, furniture, and small boats built from lumber—and an old man with his beloved steam engine.
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I once jokingly told my friend Alex that in order to call oneself Westerner, the first book one read must be the Iliad. (Neither of us is a Westerner by the standard.) Alex is a Jewish Ukrainian, and I am a transgender immigrant. We both dislike contemporary politics, but we have a shared affinity for the history of twentieth-century Europe. Alex gave me a copy of Master and Margarita, and introduced me to Akhmatova's poems.
I don't know if answers have ever been found for why humans suffer. But perhaps the right question isn't why or even how, but what it means for us. I have spent nights writing my diaries, hoping to find meaning through introspection. But the answer has been there all along—our life's events, however different from individual to individual, have allowed us to recognize one another on the other side; on my desk, there is a copy of Steppenwolf from Alex with handwritten To Sylvia, Nur für Verrückte! A.
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No, we cannot erase our displacement. And yet, we can learn to open up again, to heal through heartbreak instead of hardening, to sit together with another human being, to drink espresso and break challah bread together. Perhaps in the end, after all events life had for us, these are the only things that truly mattered.
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It is my understanding that only after I have made complete peace with the past—something I am still struggling with—can I attempt to capture the universal experience with the necessary detachment and warmth.
My sincere thanks to Anna, Yeung, and Alex, who let me use their stories in my memoir, knowing that I cannot possibly present their own experiences in fullness.
Sylvia