I started watching the pilot of The Bold Type last week or so, when AJ was out late or out of town. A kind of girly show about 3 young women in NYC – their lives, loves, and frustrations in their careers. I got quite emotional watching it.

Tonight I watched another 4 episodes to reach episode 5 of season 1. Some of it makes me smile, or laugh. Some of it gets me really emotional. Even though it’s a slick show, as is typical enough with American shows – it’s a bit smooth, simplistic, and obvious – it still resonates with me, I guess because:
(i) it’s a girl’s show (there are not that many fun, and funny women-focussed shows I don’t think… Or maybe I just haven’t watched much women-focussed show since Sex and the City and Gilmore Girls)…
(ii) I suppose the trials and tribulations feel… topical to me
(iii) And I love fashion, used to daydream (not seriously) of working in fashion…
(iv) I forgot how it has been to feel young, confused, chaotic, but oh so full of hopes and dreams. It’s a part of me that I buried for a long time, which is not healthy. All of this, it’s still me. I need to let her breathe, come out and live and play. And these girls seem to remind me of me now.. the fight, the fear, the confusion, the hope… I need that. That inspiration.

And so I’m finding it a bit cathartic.

And my boys… they understand. They understand, like I did with my mum. When she went away to Saudi when I was 8, and she said I didn’t cry at the airport. Many years later she said she was crying so much, but I didn’t cry, probably because I was too young to understand.

How wrong she was. I understood well enough. I understood that she felt she *had* to go, she had to leave me, her little girl, to go abroad to work. And I knew she was sad, and it was breaking her heart… so if I cried too, it would make her sadder, and more difficult for her to leave. And why would I do that to her? She had to go anyway. I should make her departure less difficult. And I knew she loved me. But she had to live her life, she felt she needed to do this. And she was not only my mother. She was also an individual, her own person. Before me, she was a real full human being, with her own hopes, life, and dreams… many of which she put on hold for me. But she was still herself, a woman with her own needs and feelings, not *just* my mother. And that woman needed to go abroad, or she would drown, wither, and be destroyed, petrified, by life in Malaysia with my dad and I. And so I didn’t cry. She had to do it for her. And in a way, she was doing it for me. She was a role model for me… a strong woman, and individual, who made difficult choices.

In some other ways, she was a different role model for me… maybe less good. But I remember every time she and my dad discussing divorce, I would interrupt their argument, and cry, and ask them not to divorce. And she gave in to me. Much later… much, much later… as an adult… only did I understand why my dad said he would never let her take me. I thought it was because he loved me that much. That’s what my mum always said, made me believe. But now I know it’s because I wasn’t hers, biologically speaking. And so he threatened to take me away from her. He threatened her (and me) from a financial standpoint. But more importantly, he threatened her emotionally, to take her daughter away from her.

Anyway.. this began as a little lighthearted post about a show I’m watching. Boy has it evolved into something else… oh well. C’est la vie.