Zhee, Malaysia

I’m a freelancer, but it’s quite hard here to find something. I’ve been trying to do anything I can do on social media, but there’s not much, and the monetary offer is always so little. You know, the pricing is quite hard to get arranged here. My parent’s business got affected by the pandemic too, so right now I’ve been trying to help them as much as I can. As they do services to a lot of people I’ve been trying not to expose myself.


I guess what I’ve struggled the most during these times is to deal with the feeling of being stuck. Neither my career nor my family are going great so, it’s been stressful. Especially with my family. We are kind of going through a rough path. And my mom blames herself and thinks that she is the reason that I’m not “normal”. I was quite close to a trans friend, and we kind of had a thing and my mom thought I did it just to irritate her. So, she thinks I’m a lesbian, and she has been having a hard time wrapping her head on that idea. And my dad, well, he doesn’t really say much. And it’s not like I can move out, you know. So, I have no choice but to confront all these conflicts.


I think my parents expect us (me and my sisters) to behave in a certain way, but we are pretty artistic and we’re not so much into the “corporate” thing. Honestly, to this point I’m just grateful they haven’t kicked me out. Because I do know friends whose parents made them go to a conversion therapy. But don’t get me wrong, I do feel grateful to them.


About my career, I’ve been trying to get into the model industry. I do like editing and all, but I don’t see myself doing it my whole life. I think I should try my own ambitions about modeling, even though I would have to open my horizon, because some say I’m too old to start, or too short.


From this whole experience I’ve just learned to live in the moment. I remember in March 2020 thinking about what I was going to do with all my free time, and all of a sudden, I’m not able to do anything. Even now, we should try to adapt and enjoy ourselves as much as we can. About myself, I do listen more to my body, to what it needs. And mentally, I feel stronger. I feel like nothing can really beat me now. I’ve been learning a lot about myself, really. And you know, life is really short, and we never know when we are going to leave it, so we shouldn’t be scared and go for it.