21 - Resilience

This is the first time I am writing a birthday blog. I am writing this for my future self.

My birthday was on November 17, a day full of hardship. It was a life lesson for me: "Never consider outsiders as family.".

This birthday happened two weeks after the first death anniversary of my late father. It was a time of mourning and remembering the things he had done for me to be where I am today. It is natural for me to be sad and distance myself from people I know. But the majority of the ones I know did not go through these things.

Back in 2022, 5 hours after he was buried, I heard the news of his death. I called the president of ISS-BD UTM. He had also suffered this, but at a younger age, and knew what I was going through. A lot of students came to my dorm and gave me hope to go through this.

The next day was my presentation for the Programming Techniques 2 course. I did not take leave and attended the presentation as a way to cope with the trauma.

Months pass by, and I get a freelancing job from one of the founding members of SPEEDHOME in January. I did not hesitate to work and built an MVP with React Native and Apollo GraphQL that functioned as a vet-on-Call pet telehealth app. He was very impressed and decided to make me lead the development of this MVP that would later be part of the Furtory superapp. I had two other developers working with me; one of them was doing an internship and learned things very fast.

While doing freelancing, I was studying hard. I did the work on time and finished the programming projects for my team, as well as the project for four of my classmates, with whom I would be most of the time. I couldn't resist their request to help them, as without my help, they would have surely failed due to their lack of knowledge of programming. I gave them a treat at Woodfire JB with my first income from freelancing and gave a birthday surprise to one of the four with the most expensive cake I could find in the shop.

Later that semester, two of them requested that I stay at their apartment as they wanted to take a semester gap in order to apply to German universities, and they went back to their country. I moved in and continued my freelancing job until the third semester, where I lost over USD 1000 simply because I listened to the advice of one of the two, who also does freelancing but already dropped out of university twice. I was advised to take payment outside of Upwork, and I complied. Then the client vanished. My sister was against this from the beginning, but I just didn't listen to her. She took responsibility for me and my mother after my father's passing and is working day and night to run her business. I was too stupid to realize that I have a mother and a sister, both of whom have completed their bachelors, and instead of listening to them, I was following instructions from a failure who had 5 years to finish the degree on time and doesn't have any future plans.

They came back after one semester to give an interview at the German Embassy. The chances of them getting in were very low, and they got rejected simply because they tried to play the system, as told by the officer in the embassy. You are not supposed to be outside of the country you are applying from for 6 months. They did not even get a chance to attend the interview.

They enrolled back at UTM and took only 12 credits to barely pass. They had a lot of time to be outside and opted to do that. While I, with 17 credits, was busy studying and finishing assignments, Although they used to ask me when they hung out, I kept saying no, as I did not want to spend my money like that. It's not black money that I can just throw away and get more without doing a day's worth of honest work.

They later started to play cards, and that was when I decided to get away from them as soon as possible. I knew they would later start gambling, and they did so. People in Malaysia view it as a bad thing, and I did not want to be part of the people you would consider third-class, the ones who don't live their lives with honesty. I did not talk to them that often, not even a greeting. There is another reason why I didn't do that. They also started to distance themselves from me, as I would not be informed when they hung out.

On my birthday, they told me to pack my stuff and leave. I was devastated. I felt very sad that after all I have done for them, they decided to get me out of the house, two weeks after my late father's first death anniversary and on my birthday. Their reason? I was selfish. I accepted my fate and moved out. But it wasn't enough for them, as they are still trying to harass me in the courses I took with them.

A lot has happened in November. They tried their best to make every Friday of the month bad for me. But I have my mother, my aunt, whom I consider my second mother, my uncle, who is serving his country as a police officer, my sister by my side, and most importantly, Allah.