Actually, I have come to understand my story was much simpler, where my mother was working abroad and my father was doing his best in silence. In the separation from my mother at age 3, my younger self thought "I had no place to belong", "I was really scared", "I would rather be invisible like my father, and just be nice so I will not be abandon altogether", and "I felt like a nobody" for many years. 

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When I was 9 years old, I moved abroad reunited with my mother and started secondary education in an International School with diverse multicultural friends. While “Vietnam - the first culture” was my birth place, the other country I was brought up in, with international friends I grew up with shaped me into a “Third Culture Kid” who struggled with alot of anxiety around adjustment issues, lost of relationships, lack of  belonging and confusing sense of self. The question "Who am I?" was loud and difficult to answer.

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At age 14, I became a Top 5 performer in class. My mother and others started to acknowledge me. I found the cure from being a "nobody" to a "someone outstanding". Who am I? I am impressive and exceptional. So in the next 10 years, I kept winning competitions, scholarships, valedictorian, and leading projects. Yet subtly deep down, I never felt good enough and continued to fear my nothingness which drove my excellency.

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My first life crisis hit at age 24 where I hit a burned out. I hide in my room only to find a small girl feeling unworthy, lost and extremely scared. Asking for help meant I was officially a failure. I was screaming all alone.  This place of aloneness is the most depressive place anyone can experience.