It will soon be my younger brother’s wedding day in less than a week’s time and everyone at home
(i.e. my mom) has been busy for the last few weeks buying wedding stuff, distributing invitation cards,
calling and texting friends and relatives to inform everyone about the wedding party,
personally doing up the guest list and seating arrangements of the banquet, buying the strange items one
might need for a traditional Chinese customary ceremony, basically everything the couple does for a wedding, and amidst all that,
doing regular groom’s mom stuff like shopping for new dress and shoes.

It gives me mixed emotions when I see my mother like that.
As much as a wedding will soon be happening in the family, I can’t feel any happiness or thrill.

Instead, I am overwhelmed with frustration and disappointment thinking about how self centered my brother is, how he has done absolutely nothing to help my mother.
He is rude to my mother when my mother asks him for his opinion on things or ask him to help out.
He says that he is busy and does not want to be involved in the planning of the wedding,
or fork out a cent because this whole “banquet thing” was my parents’ idea, not his.
My mother asked him to shop for or order a hand bouquet for the bride on the wedding day,
and his excuse was he is too busy and has no time, plus, there is no need for a hand bouquet.
When requested by the bride’s side (that a hand bouquet is required), he told my mother to get it for him.
And when Mom said she is busy too, he threatened that he won’t go for the ceremony then.
“No flower, no groom”. His exact words.

My mother forwarded me the voice message she received from my brother.
The thought of him makes my blood boil. She is my mother too.
Why does he even deserve care and concern when he is not a single bit appreciative, is pompous and rude,
is so unbelievably self centered?

I am afraid of having children because of people like him.

At the same time, I hate it but I wish I was half as fortunate as him.
Because why is everyone fussing over his wedding even when the groom is not interested,
but not one family member has asked me how my wedding in America was like?

I am not complaining.
Because I know it is not easy.
We have never once tried to hide who I really am but I know it is still not easy for someone in my family to come up to me and ask me with glee how the ceremony in America was like.
Not even easy to talk about it.

How will it ever be easy?
I mean, sometimes when introducing A to strangers, I don’t even have the balls to say she is my girlfriend.
Or let alone now, my wife.
“My partner”, I would usually say; hiding behind the ambiguity of business partner / life partner.

How do I expect people to be brave when I am so timid myself?

But then again, I won’t know whether it is good to be too brave too,
because I don’t want to be “out and loud”, because behaving that way might make
some people uncomfortable or awkward. And because I care (very much) how people around me feel.
Am I such a shame?

Back here, people always ask heterosexual couples who have been dating for a while
“when they are getting married?”
But even when two persons of the same sex have been seeing each other for years,
they will always be introduced to relatives and friends of the family as, “good friends”.

There is no doubt that I am considered very fortunate compared to a lot of people like me.
At least my parents did not disown or forsake me, nor send me to a shrink or priest thinking I am sick.
I always like to think that our families have accepted us.
But deep down, I know that is not the entire truth;
I know it might still take a very long time for them to accept us, for us.
And that day might never come.
Every time this thought comes to mind, a part of me dies.

But I do not blame them. Not one single bit.
Because how can I ever blame them?

It is easy to have a gay neighbor, easy to make a new gay friend,
perhaps easy for some to realise that a brother is gay,
but how many parents can come to terms with a gay daughter or son?

I am not trying to be out and loud and proud, or a fierce activist of any sorts.
I am just a girl who looks forward to being married to someone I love.
I also dream of nice wedding dinners, spending a wonderful night celebrating with people who are happy to celebrate with me.
I am just trying to be myself.

A says that the world is so big.
We should not limit ourselves.
We might be nothing here, but one day, if we move to America, damn, we can buy a house together and it will be ours.
We can have a child and we will both be legal parents.
The world is how big you want it to be, and always just see the world as this small small Singapore world.

Why has this small world created so many small people?