Murder!

Esmie Tseng..


The American-Chinese 16yr old girl from Kansas who stabbed her mum to death. She committed murder.. She is now serving time at a jail (Note: an adult jail, not some juvenile detention centre jail thing). In a non-sadistic, purely analytical way, I've always wondered what death is like, along with other things such as committing murder, rape, experiencing death of a family member, or contracting an incurable disease. Recently, I had the chance to experience the death of a family member, my grandmother. I can say that I never want to experience that again.. Sadly, I have parents, so I'm going to have to go through it at least twice more.. unless I die first of course.


But anyway.. A 16yr old killed her mum! Now many would be horrified and shocked that a person could do this, but to be totally honest, I'm not. Being raised in a very Asian family (especially Chinese/Korean) in a Western environment is very difficult, especially if you are the 1st generation abroad. Everybody you know, is going out, having fun, doing what normal children in the environment do, but you are confined to the spaces of your room, doing reading and studying.


When I was younger, I had a lot of fun, and I can confidently say my life was happiest from Year 2 to Year 5. Bring academic competition and girls into the picture, and life quickly becomes very bleak.
My grades were always excellent. Not many students can say that they were top of the class from Year 1 to Year 5, in a big school too (ok fine, it's primary school, but still, let me bask in the somewhat dim lights of my glory). I was also top of the class, all the way to my IGCSEs, often topping the class in terms of exam and test results, and in general intelligence. I even performed on the violin at school concerts.. but was this EVER good enough? Not really. I was always told "well done, proud of you". If only it'd stopped there.


After that, always followed a "but on the bigger stage, you're gonna need to work harder and get better results, you're not always going to be on top, etc. etc." Which was very true. But did I really need that constant reminder? It was like having a broken record, playing in the back of my head, telling me I was never gonna be good enough.


Many times I have felt the urge to tell my parents to shut up and go away, I never did. Admittedly murder has been on my mind. This was back when I was about 12/13. Thankfully, these thoughts have all vanished, and I can happily say that it's just a part of my history.. but I guess it shows that at some point, everyone snaps. Esmie just had a lower breaking point than I did, and was probably much more mentally abused and given impossible targets to match by typical oriental parents.



After my somewhat not so great A-level grades, I think I pointed out to my parents that I'm not as intelligent as I once was, and managed to lower their expectations. I am a little disappointed that I did not get the grades that I could have gotten, but this has somewhat made my life easier. I no longer feel hatred towards the whole Asian race for their ignorantly demanding lifestyles and blind hard-work.