An Australia-based Singaporean teenager with autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) said she can no longer live in Singapore, eliciting predictably indignant — as well as encouraging — responses from netizens.
“I will always be proud to call myself Singaporean,” said @ahlianlia in a TikTok clip posted on Dec 6, wryly noting that “you don’t appreciate a clean toilet until you leave”.
The 19-year-old admitted that while there are many “things about me that are very Singaporean”, such as her accent and the way she continually presses the button at traffic lights, the pressure to succeed and her neurodivergence make it untenable for her to live here.
“I’m an insatiable bitch with a s***-ton of anxiety now,” she declared. And while she thinks the Republic could still be a great place to live, “it’s just not for me anymore”.
Pressured in school and at home
The teen asserted: “Singapore is an elitist and classist machine. If you’re rich, academically elite, and play by the rules, you’ll be rewarded. If you’re different without the money to fit in, you’ll fall between the cracks.”
She lamented how her parents “emptied their pockets because they were so scared their kids were different and left behind”, and that she now has a complicated relationship with her mother.
Since the age of three, her whole life revolved around “tuition, piano, ballet and swimming” from 7am to 8pm each day, and she was “caned almost every day since the age of six”.
