I don’t know if I qualify for the clinical definition of “survivor’s guilt,” but ever since I could remember, I’ve borne a guilt for simply existing. But there is no tangible evil villain to pinpoint the blame on.

Since I could process my first word, the adults around me have fondly reminded me of how lucky I was to be born at just the right time in 1987, when Vietnam’s economy was well on its way to recovery after a decade of post-war poverty, and my parents had rebuilt their careers from the ashes of oppression and destitution. “A child born under a lucky star!” - they praised with glee.

I never understood why I was spared the malnutrition that my older siblings had to suffer through, or why my infant sister had to pass in 1976 from the lack of medicine, but my birth was cared for with the most expensive pre-natal vitamins dad could afford.

I am constantly reminded of my unfair advantage every time I look at my eldest sister, who is 3 inches shorter than my already petite 5-foot frame, because her growth was permanently stunted from those early years of malnutrition. The only factor that determined our fates was the 12-year difference in our birthdays.

I didn’t understand why my cousin Mai Si (photographed here with me in the purple dress) had to succumb to Dengue fever at the age of 3 while I was protected. Or why did the “knocking noodles” girl had to sell noodles on the street at the age of 9 while I was comfortably sheltered in a loving home. Or why did the kind “broken rice lady by the river banks” had to lose her livelihoods to forced displacement, while I was handed what seems to be a life of opportunities on a silver platter.

I’ve spent everyday of my life pondering and torturing myself to find the answer to these questions, and I still don’t think I’ve found the definitive conclusion to the purpose of my existence. But in the meantime, I’ve resolved, even though I could not control their fates, perhaps it is my assigned task to tell the world their stories.