When I was growing up, my parents never seemed to take care of themselves. I remember rushing to Toronto Western Hospital in a cab with my mom in the early hours of one particular morning after witnessing her having a panic attack. This happened sometime in 2012, when home was just me and her—my older sibling had moved abroad, and my dad was working in a different province. Hours later, as my mom lay in a hospital bed, clutching a potassium supplement and a banana, I was relieved that she was still alive, but I was taken aback that she seemed more concerned about me missing class than her own well-being.
As a young girl, I shared a bedroom with my parents. My family immigrated from Hong Kong to Canada when I was nine, and for a period of time that seems both distant and familiar, we struggled financially. Sharing a bedroom with the people who raised me felt like living in a fishbowl; I yearned to recover a sense of privacy and the ability to carve out my own identity, which seemed lost in limbo.
