Allowing drama to flow around you

I allowed a stranger to stay in my apartment for four days last week.

I was at the request of my housekeeper who I’ve known for over 2 years now. My housekeeper is from Myanmar, and she’s been interested in the books that I write. I told her the stories of my grandmother and how two generations ago, my grandmother was a housekeeper in a big country house before she got married.

And how my grandmother became a single-parent due to war and had to get a job delivering milk with a horse and cart. I explained that despite us being from different cultures and ages, all that separates us economically is two generations of hardworking sacrifice by my parents and grandparents.

There are many people from across Asia working in Singapore doing all the low-paid domestic, labouring, driving and construction jobs. Often the money that they send home supports many of their family members and their children. What I learned from my housekeeper was that her cousin needed a place to stay for four nights as she wasn’t in a safe place. To me that sounded like drama.

This was two days after I had realised just how much my overly entitled ex-friend had been taking advantage of my goodwill and kindness, and I was extremely reluctant to allow any more drama into my life.

My housekeeper asked for a favour to allow her cousin to sleep on a mattress on the floor in the study until she had to leave. I set some hard boundaries about behaviour and duration and she agreed.

Very late that night my housekeeper came over with her cousin to settle her in and help decompress from her situation. Over the next four days I learned a lot about how coercive control was being used against vulnerable women here.

Her cousin had followed her husband to Singapore from Myanmar to find work, but he had a gambling problem and had left her when the debt collectors began chasing him. She and the family haven’t heard from him in over two years.

Her cousin is a professionally qualified nurse but the financial demands of supporting her family by herself had forced her to look for work that paid more than nursing. In this case, the high interest rates being charged by the debt collectors is what had got her trapped in this situation.

Looking at the situation from my new perspective about addiction-to-drama, I felt like this was a real test to see how self-benevolent I could be, and to say ‘no’ if I didn’t like what was going on.

Over the next four days I learned that my housekeeper’s cousin is a single-mother with a five-year-old child, who lives with her parents in Myanmar. She had willingly chosen to work in a massage parlour in Singapore where she was expected by the boss to bring in revenue by upselling ‘extra services’ to clients. She had allowed herself to be s3x-trafficked, expecting that she could make a lot of money in Singapore.

Singapore closely cooperates with law-enforcement in other Asian countries to stamp this out, and last week two Singaporeans were arrested in Thailand on charges of s3x-trafficking. But it still happens.

From an addiction to drama perspective, I could feel the pull to be massively outraged by the situation. I too could feel the desire to rescue and offer support and advice, and the desire to blame someone for this. All of these are the traps in addiction to drama - anger, rescuing and blaming.

Interestingly, what I also noticed having just been through the drama with my entitled ex-friend - that I held back and instead of jumping into the drama, I chose instead to listen. I definitely didn’t want to jump into being ‘the smartest person in the room’ and straight into judgement. What I heard was highly confronting.

My housekeeper’s cousin wasn’t getting paid for working in the massage parlour, she was expected to pay the boss for working there. If she didn’t meet the minimum revenue, then her work visa would be cancelled by the boss. She wasn’t allowed out at night, and worked 14 hour days, seven days a week. Any money she did make was being sent back to her family in Myanmar.

The shop wasn’t attracting many customers. The boss was controlling and abusive and had finally become really unhappy and aggressive when the law finally caught up with my housekeeper’s cousin. The authorities had instructed her to leave Singapore within 5 days and not to return ever again without getting permission. She feared for her own safety with her boss and had nowhere to stay - so she had asked my housekeeper, her cousin, for help.

Despite being appalled by the situation, I held back and just allowed their drama to flow around me as my housekeeper came over each night to support her cousin. There were lots of tears and loud phone calls with family overseas, but there was also laughter.

Four days of having a stranger sleep in my study wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

Each time it did get uncomfortable I just thought about how that so easily my grandmother could have ended up in a similar situation where she was coerced and s3x-trafficked due to being in poverty. And there was a four night limit to the extension of my goodwill and kindness.

My housekeeper’s cousin has now returned to her family in Myanmar safe and well, and she will get work at the hospital where she worked before. It won’t be easy for sure, but she won’t have debt collectors to deal with.

For my part, I’ve expanded my quality of consciousness in terms of recognising my own traps of addiction to drama and not falling into them. I’ve also increased my capacity for consciousness in terms of directly witnessing the human cost and impact of s3x-trafficking.

It also put all the drama with my ex-friend’s entitled behaviours into a new perspective of triviality.

This month is men’s mental health month and I saw a poll that stated that 57% of men believe that “no one cares if men are okay”, and the statistic that 75% of suicides are male. I was told by an Indian friend during the pandemic that there are 3500 suicides due to poverty each week in India, and almost all of them are male. In contrast, a Ukrainian website has more than 100,000 missing young men registered by Russian families who have no idea what has happened to their sons in the war. These people clearly do care.

It appears to me that no-one cares what has happened to the husband of my housekeeper’s cousin who has disappeared. No-one is coming to f*cking save him. He will have to save himself. Let us hope he chooses that.

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