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Book Cover for: cardigan, Aileen C. Shen

cardigan

Aileen C. Shen

Just one day out of the blue...

I opened up Weebly, my favorite, easy-to-use, drag-and-drop, web design editor. Within eight hours, a rough outline of a website was published, ready for people to look at. Navigating to my about 440 follower Instagram page at the time, I posted a story of the simplistic and organized web page in an attempt to become a popular kid (but not actually because I ended up deleting that account).
I still remember what the day before building my website was: a historic moment where I fired back at my dad for yelling at me. That day for me was a wild ride-the first reason being that I had never yelled back at my dad in a situation where he was just plain wrong and I was plain right, and the second reason being that I haven't yelled back at him ever since.
But that yelling, the expulsion of my negative emotions extending from the tv room through the living room through the kitchen, without a door in sight to block it, gave me insurmountable confidence that I had never been granted before. Even though that confidence didn't really last while standing up to my parents, the energy from that moment flowed through my veins as I released all my pent-up catharsis through paragraphs and essays and blog posts.

Just one day out of the blue...

I wanted to change my family's dynamic. More precisely, my dad coming home from China left me crying lakes into an abnormally large face towel in the dark, silent night. After an hour into my coffee-frenzied self, I finally decided to talk to my cousin. And that short text of a cry for help turned into a confrontation with my parents about their problematic behaviors and a request for them to give me space.
On the day of confrontation, intervention, or whatever I choose to call it, I booted myself to a friend's house. After one dead phone and another at 2% that needed to be saved for my driving friend who lived in the city next door, we successfully navigated to meet with my other friend. Sleeping after a midnight blasting of Conan Gray throughout a giant house was a new experience, but I couldn't help but cry from jealousy, for the people in this house talked to each other like friends and family, while my normal days are spent filling the silence of my room with rhythm games to first-person shooters and anime and Chinese dramas, but never a second person to talk to.
The next day, I went home, only to be called over by my mom first thing. She said, "We found your blog." My blog has been down since.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Independently Published
  • Publish Date: Aug 9th, 2021
  • Pages: 216
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 9.00in - 6.00in - 0.49in - 0.71lb
  • EAN: 9798654589262
  • Categories: Personal Memoirs