Ironic loneliness

Happy Chinese New Year. I wish you a happy and prosperous Year of the Boar.

As my sons and I celebrated this year with some friends, I realized that despite having the people around me, I was feeling quite lonely. Immigrants like me live through a totally different kind of loneliness during the holidays. If you're a local, you can rest assured that your roots are firmly planted here; you have parents, siblings, relatives and friends to help you if you got into trouble. Immigrants don't have that. We depend on friends and if we're fortunate, we eventually marry into family. As I painfully rediscovered recently, marriage is not always forever so even that is no assurance of stability.

But that loneliness, that fear that you will be all alone, desolate, with no-one to help you is always at the back of our minds. It's not rational. I guess it's the emotional cost of being separated from your roots.

All immigrants made the decision to leave wherever we originally came from. The less charitable will question why we came here and tell us to go back, usually not politely. But oftentimes, migrating somewhere else isn't an option. I didn't come here looking for a better life - my parents sent me here ages ago, very young, all alone and barely able to take care of myself because they *knew* there was no hope for a better future where they were. I understand that they originally wanted to send me where my brother was in a neighbouring country but there were some major complications that prevented that. So they sent me to the next best place, halfway around the world.

Now, as I look into the gently snoring forms of my children, I know exactly how my parents felt. While I may always be feeling that loneliness, the main thing is that my children won't because I will be here for them. They are locals, with roots like parents, siblings, relatives and friends. And *that* is the "better future" that we immigrants sacrifice for.