Malaysia

(Trigger Warning: mentions of grooming, eating disorders, drug use, depression.)

“So tell me about Malaysia.”

I don’t think my therapist fully understands the complexity of that question. Malaysia was two years of my life when I didn’t know whether I had truly lost or found myself. I was teaching at a school that did its best to ignore me. I still vividly remember one day trying to sit with all the other teachers at lunchtime, and they genuinely moved away from me. Like grown 30, 40, 50-year-old women moving tables to escape little 21-year-old me. You honestly couldn’t make it up. After a while, it didn’t bother me; I didn’t really care to hear about their useless husbands and brain-dead children anyway.

The kids were far more entertaining anyway, except maybe one time when I had to sit down with one of my six-year-old students and ask him where he got the idea to draw a Nazi flag on an aeroplane and run around the classroom with it, shouting "BOOM". Actually, that was a problem I never got to the bottom of, but he never drew it again, so I will continue to count that as a win. Or there was also that other kid who kept trying to bite me and would chase me around the classroom, laughing like some demonic creature, and it's in moments like that where you have to remember the consequences of pushing children. I still have his teeth marks on my arm, just one of many permanent marks from my time served.

I became so depressed that I started living like a hermit. The highlight of my week was getting 2 portions of pakora on a Friday night after work and playing Fortnite until midnight, with just the light of my computer screen in an otherwise dark apartment.

“I know that probably seems like a big question, so why don’t we start with Lila?”

“Wow, okay, well, I mean, if you want just to dive right in, then yeah, I guess we can do that. I met Lila about 6 months into moving to Malaysia. She was my tattoo artist.”

“She did your leg tattoo?” I nodded. “It’s amazing.”

“Yeah, I have to give it to her if she wasn’t actually psychotic, I would recommend her.”

“So let's expand on that.”

“Well, Jesus, where to start, should I cover how we got together, the relationship, the break-up?”

“Just what you think is relevant.”

“Well, I would say the grooming and the husband are definitely relevant.”

“Let's start there.”

Looking back made me feel nauseous, at the time everything felt so normal, you know I’d even stretch it to nice. But being groomed by your 38-year-old tattoo artist at the age of 21 isn’t actually a fairytale, but hopefully you didn’t need me to tell you that, oh and don’t forget her 51-year-old husband, yes, he was there too. Craig. The first time I met him, he said he liked me so much because I had ‘no ego.’

God bless Craig. If only he knew that there was a secret competition between us on who could be Lila’s favourite. A competition I was clearly winning when Lila admitted to me that Craig was starting to get jealous of us because they hadn’t had sex in months.

Our lives became so intertwined that it was like I became a part of their belongings, living to please them, which I think I enjoyed at the time so much because it meant I didn’t have to make any decisions about myself, and I was already depressed and withdrawn. I think it's safe to say that, just like a dog, I let them groom me because, at the time, my owner told me I needed it, even though it always felt a bit rough.

Don’t get me wrong, some of the stories I have from that time are worth telling and not just as a public service announcement:

The Worms.

One day, I was sitting in Lila and Craig's kitchen, pretending I didn’t know how to cut a butternut squash because I knew she liked to help me, like a parent helps a child. I learned that because one time she zipped up my jacket for me, it became a routine: I wasn’t allowed to zip anything up myself; that was for her to do. Now, if that wasn’t weird enough, she looks at me, stroking my hair and tells me all about how she and Craig were going to take their yearly worming tablets that evening. Of course, at this point, I was just listening, innocently, of course, just how she liked it, that was, until she asked if I wanted one too, because she always wormed Craig, so why wouldn't she worm me too? You should have seen the look on her face when I declined her kind offer; it was like my very skin itself was diseased, and her response was, " Well, I’ll just have to do it when you're not looking”.

Now you will come to learn that, to this day, I am a person who will ignore every red flag, and even I am surprised that I just went on about my day after that. Like, what was I thinking? Yes, I will happily be involved in your strange cult-like worming ritual. Do we all have to drink a strange liquid that will make us shit and vomit all over ourselves as well? Excellent! I still have no idea if I was wormed.

LSD.

The first time I ever tripped on LSD, I was with Lila and Craig, because, I mean, of course, why wouldn’t I be? And when I say first trip, I mean they were tripping. I was watching them, I thought that, oh, for some reason, I must have a strange natural tolerance for psychedelics, found out later that if you take acid and don’t feel safe, your brain won’t allow you to trip, so I did have a survival instinct buried deep, deep down, apparently.

Anyway, the whole day I watched Lila lying on the floor staring at the ceiling, she was apparently meeting her ancestors, and at the same time, as this was going on, there was Craig. Dear, dear Craig, sitting in the corner eating cake really loudly. Like a slurping noise and then a moan, slurp, moan, slurp, moan, slurp, moan, for hours. And I mean hours. It was the most disgusting thing I have ever been witness to, and as if to make matters worse, Lila got a call from her family that evening saying that her family dog had to get put to sleep. Before you know it, Lila, Craig and I are all in a big bear hug, cuddling together, the LSD still hadn’t worn off, and I had become hyper aware that cake entrails were covering Craig's face. The pair of them were wailing, and it felt like they were devouring me.

Good Luck, Babe.

I broke up with Lila over text, which I know is bad, but I had moved back to Scotland, and she had moved back home to Germany. Plus, it was a four-month headfuck of a time, so looking back, I should have just ghosted. Of course, she had a lot to say; she was crying, she was devastated, she couldn’t believe I would leave her. For context, let's bear in mind this woman has a whole husband at home, it was Craig, to be fair, but still a husband! After her rant, which included telling me that I was going to die of an eating disorder. Lovely, isn’t she? 38 years of age, can I remind you, 38. She sent me a YouTube video link to the song ‘Good Luck, Babe’ by Chappell Roan, to which I gave a mandatory heart react in the message, and that was the end of that.

“Well, that sounds like a lot to go through at 19.”

“Funniest part was she messaged me a year later to tell me she had divorced Craig.”

“Did you give her the attention she was demanding from you?”

“No, but I did swiftly put on my hinge profile that I once had a woman leave her husband for me.”