Hello! How are you? For those who are new to Mathilda’s, let me introduce myself.
This is always a challenge for me. Where do I start? I was born in Indonesia where I never felt safe. So when I was 12, my parents informed me that they had plans to send me overseas where I would have a better chance at building a brighter future. I gave it a thought. A year later, I got tired of the school system that wasn’t helpful for my learning and I told my parents I would take up their offer. We surveyed Perth, Western Australia in February 1997 and in June that same year, I moved there by myself, at the age of 14. I didn’t know a single soul there. I stayed with this host family who had two kids of their own and a few young male students living downstairs and a few female students living upstairs.
I was an awkward child growing up. I had a lot of anxiety and was extremely shy. I never fit in. So you can imagine how I felt, being in a house surrounded by strangers, trying to navigate my new life far away from home. My anxiety was debilitating but I kept it hidden from the outside world. Nobody could know because I might not fit in even more. There was surely something wrong with me and I was the only one who could know that. I developed some coping mechanisms to get some relief: Trichotillomania and nail biting. I would only stop after I freaked out looking at the big pile of hair I pulled out from my head, or after the tips of my fingers hurt to the point of bleeding sometimes. The nail biting effected my teeth and jaws and I only got it improved this past year with Invisalign.
Due to my insecurities and anxiety, I focused on my studies and managed to be one of the top students despite the language barrier. I won many awards and even bursaries to help with tuition. Tuition as an international student wasn’t cheap at all. I got a job as soon as I turned 16. I just couldn’t ask my parents for an allowance. I was always a very mindful daughter to my parents. In 1998, Chinese people living in Indonesia were being brutally attacked, raped, and churches, businesses, and houses were bombed and burned down. I wrote a paper about this in University. Being away from my family and not knowing if they would be safe or even alive terrified me. I would wait for their phone call and if I didn’t get any call, I wouldn’t sleep much. So a few months later, my father sent my mother, younger brother, and baby sister over to me in Australia. We stayed at my father’s friend’s house for a couple of months until we found an apartment to move into.
The next few years were a struggle. We didn’t have any furniture. We slept on mattresses on the floor and our dining table was someone’s old kitchen counter propped up unto a cardboard box. My school mates were well off. They had fancy cars, a few cellphones to choose from, and they flew home a few times a year. I had nothing. We would wait at the supermarket at closing time on Saturday evenings and waited for the meat and vegetables to be marked down as they would be closing the next day. We used my baby sister’s $10 stroller (that we bought from a yard sale) as shopping carts to carry the sack of rice as we walked home.
I was ashamed of who I was and my situation. I had no self confidence. In order to save money for my parents, I pleaded with the school principal to let my brother skip two grades. I promised that he would be a straight A student under my guidance. I was taking advanced Calculus and the next grade’s math courses. Seeing my track record and how well I did in math and chemistry, they agreed to let my brother skip grades 7 and 8 and went straight to grade 9. Despite my lack in many areas, I never felt shame for my brains. I also excelled in languages. I was the top student in Japanese class and won awards for it every year. I might not have much but what I had, nobody could take away from me. And that was my only confidence.
We couldn’t afford to live in Australia anymore and my father stayed in Indonesia this whole time in order to send money to support us. In order to unite the family, we needed to move. Australia wouldn’t accept our immigration application as my parents had no asset worth mentioning. My aunt who had been living in Calgary since she was 18 persuaded us to move to Canada. After a couple of years of waiting, we got accepted and as soon as I graduated grade 12, we packed a total of ten boxes of belongings between the four of us and left for Toronto, Canada. That was December 2001. I was accepted into all the major universities in Ontario and even got a scholarship for York University. I chose University of Toronto, majoring in Cognitive Psychology. Hey, if learning psychology could “fix” me, it would be well worth it.
Come to think of it, everything I ended up pursuing has always been self-driven, meaning, my intention has always been to heal MYSELF. Not to make money or be filthy rich, but to heal myself. Hypnotherapy, yoga, NLP, nutrition, etc., the original intention for all of them was to help myself. As I helped myself, I simply shared my journey. This is all I’ve been doing and how I’ve lived.
I worked as much as I could throughout university to pay for tuition because I couldn’t qualify for any loan with no history in this country. Looking back, I was grateful to be denied the OSAP loan because I graduated with no debt. I worked 2-3 jobs at any given time and all hours of the day and saved as much as I could after helping my parents with the bills. When I was 24, I bought a tiny old house in Oshawa, far enough from my parents in Scarborough. Oshawa was affordable for me because with my low income, the only way I could qualify for a mortgage was by putting down 25% down payment, with a B lender. I made a lot of sacrifices in life. I’m truly an expert at sacrifices and delayed gratification. I see that as a strength now. I didn’t (still don’t) have much social life and am very low maintenance. I get my hair cut once a year and I don’t get my nails or face done. There was even a period in my life where I cut my own hair. I never had my hair professionally “done”. I stopped putting chemicals and dyes in my hair since 2014.
Even now, having my own business, I am always the first one in and the last one out. While everyone is still sleeping, I’m already working. My days are long and breaks are very few, but my heart is full. I’m doing what I love, and I’m making my visions and dreams come true. Stay tuned on my post about my visions and dreams. They fuel me on the best days and inspire me to keep going on the hard days. It’s been a roller coaster of a ride and I have been told countless times that I make it look easy. Ha! If you could get inside my head and shadow me, I think most of you would quit and choose to stay where you are. HECK, if I knew how much work would be required, I think I wouldn’t have started! Start a business, they say. Work your own hours, they also say. I think they forgot the next line: Work ALL the hours so you could give more to the government. Back in Indonesia, you fend for yourself. There is no free facility or free health care. But this is a topic for another day. I digressed.
Here I am, at 40, a stronger, more resilient person, after all I’ve been through. We’ll get into my dis-eased years (mid 20 to early 30) sometime in the future. I believe this is why the three years of restrictions and lockdowns we just went through barely effected me. My mental, psychological, and spiritual muscles have been well trained to overcome any obstacle. I believe I will always rise above them all.
So anyways, this is getting quite long. Let’s continue this another time. I don’t want to bore you to death. I need to go to bed as I have a packed two days ahead of me while the restaurant is closed Sundays and Mondays. What did I say? Breaks are rare.
Ciao for now, friends. Stay strong. Stay well. You have the power to change your life.
Namaste.