Dear Auntie Millie,

I’m a twenty-year-old college student. My parents divorced when I was six, and both of them went on to remarry. I grew up with my mum and stepfather, who later had two other children, but I spent some weekends as well as part of every school holidays with my dad, stepmother, and the child they had together, a son who is now twelve. My dad has a very highly paying job, and as such could afford to take his wife and me and my half-brother on expensive holidays overseas. Growing up, I always knew that my mum was insecure about my relationship with my dad and his family because she felt that they could win me over with the expensive gifts and holidays that she couldn’t afford. Over the years, we've had our share of fights when she has accused me of being disloyal or too easily bought over, taking their side, and so forth. I used to get angry about all this as a young teenager, but after I learned that my father and stepmother were already having an affair long before my parents divorced, I started to empathise with my mother a little more, although I still find her neediness and insecurities quite tiresome.

When I started college in KL, my parents agreed that I should move in with my dad and stepmother because my mum and stepfather live more than an hour’s journey from my college. At first, everything was fine. I was busy settling in and getting used to college life, and I didn’t take offence when my dad and stepmother took my half-brother on outings without including me. I thought that made sense since I was busy with my own life, while he was still a young kid. My mum asked me a few times if they would bring back anything for me when they went out to eat on their own, and I even stood up for them, saying that there was no reason for them to do that when my dad was already giving me pocket money on top of paying my college fees. I said that given my age, they surely expected me to use my money to buy whatever I wanted for myself. Even when they went on trips without me during the weekends, I told myself that it was probably because they didn’t want to get in the way of my studies and my own social life. When my mum started with her “how can they do that, they only care for their son, they just can’t be bothered with you,” I told her that a college-age child living at home should be treated more like a tenant, and that I was glad they respected my independence.

I guess I first started to have trouble believing my own justifications when I came across the photos my stepmother likes to post on social media. Even for Christmas and Chinese New Year, they’ve been taking family photos without me, and on every trip they take, my stepmother posts entire albums with long, long captions about how family matters to her more than anything else, with hashtags like #familyfirst, #happymum, and #buahhati. To look at those photos, anyone would think she, my dad, and their son are the perfect nuclear family. I shouldn’t have kept stalking her on social media, but I couldn’t stop my obsession even though I felt more and more hurt each time I saw her posts. Then I slowly started to notice more things, as though I had been blindfolded before. I overheard a fight between her and my dad over the amount he is paying for my college fees, in which my stepmother sai,d “as long as later you don’t tell me you cannot afford to send your own son overseas.” It was the words “your own son” that really stung, as though my half-brother is somehow more his child than I am.

Recently, I was one of five students selected out of a few dozen candidates at my college to participate in a youth conference in a foreign country. Our room and board will be covered by the conference, but parents are required to contribute the air fare. Naturally I was very proud to have been selected, and told both sets of parents right away. I had assumed that my dad would have no problem with the paying my air fare, because it’s not a large sum compared to what he spends on entertainment and holidays. However, that night, my stepmother waited until my dad was asleep and then came to my room. She told me that she had been meaning to have a serious conversation with me for some time but hadn’t got around to it until then. She then said that she was tired of my “Daddy’s little girl attitude” and that I had grown up taking my father for granted because I’d always had him wrapped around my little finger. I protested that this wasn’t at all how any outsider would see our relationship because I had never asked him for anything much, but she was really angry and forceful and I couldn’t manage to get out much of an argument because I felt cornered. Finally she said that I was not to expect my father to pay for my plane ticket to the conference because that was a luxury, not a necessity, and it was not my father’s responsibility to “cater to your whims.” Before she left my room she said, “you are not the centre of his universe now, please remember that he has his own family.”

I know that I should have kept all this to myself rather than dragging my mother into the fight. Anyone could have guessed that I would make everything much worse by telling her, but I couldn’t help it because I was extremely upset and I didn’t have anyone else to turn to. I felt I was being treated so unfairly; surely parents are responsible for taking care of their children’s needs to the best of their ability, so how could my stepmother say that I’d always taken my father for granted or expected too much? The plane ticket is the first time I’ve expected more than basic necessities like food, shelter, and education ( I never asked for the holidays, gifts, etc.), but I guess my stepmother counts my education as a luxury because I’m at a private college. Anyway, my mother unsurprisingly flew into a rage when I told her what had happened, and she then claimed that my stepmother had always been jealous of me because I’m my dad’s only daughter and fathers and daughters have “a special bond”. According to my mother, my stepmother was hoping for a girl when she was pregnant with my half-brother so that I wouldn’t have this supposedly unique claim on my father’s affections anymore. But I don’t feel very special right now and I don’t feel like I have a claim to anyone’s affections in either of my two families. My mother always says she cares about me, but mostly she uses me as a weapon in her neverending vendetta against my father, so I’ve played right into her hands by carrying tales to her.

I’m miserable staying with my father and his wife now, but I know I would be just as miserable in a different way if I went back to my possessive, jealous mother — not to mention I would spend hours on public transport daily. I feel completely alone and abandoned. I agree with my mother that my father is a weak and spineless man whose can’t stand up to his wife even for his own daughter, but I don’t know how it helps me to know that. I wish I could disappear forever from all these people’s lives and never have anything to do with them ever again, but I can’t do that until I have an income of my own. So what am I supposed to do, and where am I supposed to go? And do I have to give up my chance to go to this conference?

Sincerely,

Unwanted, Bandar Utama

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Dear Unwanted,

I have often wondered what powerful anaesthetic men use on themselves when they cut off their own balls to hand them out as gifts. Perhaps you can ask your father, and the formula could be patented to provide the income you so deserve?

Apologies for my dark humour; like your mother, I am furious. I thought about putting aside my own emotions in my reply to you, but in the end I decided that it may help you to know that anger is fully warranted in this instance. You do not deserve the parents you were assigned in the lottery. A man can choose to follow the directives of his loins, but his children are still his children. Any man who allows himself to forget or overlook this is a feckless, selfish fool.

First things first: you must not be intimidated by your stepmother’s underhanded tactics. If she were really confident that your father would listen to her, she would not have waited for him to go to bed before approaching you that night. So go to your father yourself, and tell him that you will be deeply disappointed if you have to forego the conference just because you can’t pay for the plane ticket. If need be, play on the masculine pride I’m sure he has in spades: tell him that the college and your friends will wonder what kind of father with a career and a lifestyle like his won’t stump out even the small amount of money his daughter needs in order to claim the rare honour bestowed upon her.

Secondly: your mother is still a parent, whether she likes it or not and however much she may have tried to put you in the voice-of-reason role that should be part of a parent’s job, not a child’s. Going to her with problems you cannot solve by yourself is not “carrying tales.” You are supposed to be able to trust your parents to help you when you are in need. So do not allow anyone — neither your stepmother, nor your father, nor the voice in your head — to accuse you of carrying tales when you are only trying to get your needs met as a dependent of your parents. Were your father struggling financially, my advice would be different, but a man who would have no difficulty providing extra opportunities for his own children should simply do it. If your father hems and haws when you approach him yourself and tries to make excuses about not wanting to upset his scheming wife, do not hesitate to ask your mother to talk to him. If that too fails, tell the college that you need them to convince your father of how important this opportunity is to you. I suspect he would feel suitably shamed if they contacted him to discuss the matter, and the shame would open his wallet.

As to your larger question about where you’re supposed to go: nowhere, for now. You need and deserve an education, and building a life in which minimal contact with your families is possible will be that much easier with a good education and a stable job. You are absolutely right that the best education they can afford is something your parents owe you. You can be grateful for it, and you can recognise that not everyone is lucky enough to have parents who can afford private college fees, but you must not allow yourself to be guilt-tripped, manipulated, or tormented into walking away from that. Trying to leave impulsively may only tether you to your parents forever. So do whatever it takes to stay sane while you are at their mercy: study at a library or bookshop cafe; make friends in whom you can confide; spend as much time as possible away from them. Finish your studies no matter what it takes, and then walk away and look back only when you want to.

Yours ever,

Auntie Millie