As the dust settles, I find myself in a quiet space. Not closure, exactly—but something close. The version of the future Anh and I imagined when we started this journey has shifted. What remains is something harder to define, but no less real.
I think back to who I was when we left Vietnam—someone who saw technology as a tool, something outside of myself. Practical. Contained. But over time, that boundary dissolved. Somewhere along the way, the systems I built began to shape me back.
Our app started as a side project, a distraction from the uncertainty. Now, it feels like an extension of my body—one that logs, predicts, translates the things I can’t always say out loud. The support forums, the encrypted chats, the DM threads—they’ve become part of my processing. Like a neural net stretched across time zones. Women I’ve never met, somehow woven into my nervous system.
Even the medical side—the injections, the scans, the bloodwork—left their imprint. Not just on my body, but on how I understand it. Sometimes it feels like I’ve been pulled apart and reassembled by algorithms, protocols, and legal code.
I remember studying Donna Haraway in college, her idea of the cyborg—neither fully machine nor purely organic, but something new. Then, it felt abstract. Now, it feels... lived. I’m no sci-fi character. But I am someone whose sense of self has fused with the systems meant to regulate, assist, and constrain me.
And it’s not just about tech. It’s about identity. About motherhood, womanhood, autonomy. What I inherited from my family, from my culture—those scripts feel distant now. Rewritten. Not erased, but altered, folded into this new configuration I carry.
I sit at my laptop, fingers moving through lines of code, and realize—this, too, is a kind of creation. Maybe not the one we prayed for, but real all the same. Maybe even life-saving, in its own way.
Anh finds me staring at the screen, lost in thought. He rests a hand on my shoulder, gentle and steady. "What's on your mind, em?" (Em đang nghĩ gì vậy?)
I glance up, meeting his eyes. He’s the same man who stood by me through every high and low—but I see the change in him, too. We’ve both been altered by this. "I was just thinking about how much we've changed," (Em chỉ đang nghĩ chúng ta đã thay đổi nhiều như thế nào,) I say. "How much I've changed. Sometimes I hardly recognize myself." (Em đã thay đổi nhiều như thế nào. Đôi khi em gần như không thế nhận ra chính mình nữa.)
He doesn’t say much. He doesn’t have to. Just a quiet nod, the kind that carries years of shared effort, grief, and resilience. "We've been through a lot. But you're still you, Mai. Just... an upgraded version." (Chúng ta đã trải qua rất nhiều. Nhưng em vẫn là em,Mai ạ. Chỉ là… một phiên bản nâng cấp thôi.)
I let out a breath. The idea lingers—this version of ourselves, reshaped by everything we’ve endured. In tech, we’re always refining, debugging, pushing toward the next release. Why wouldn’t we do the same for ourselves?
As I turn back to the screen, fingers hovering above the keyboard, a strange calm washes over me. This journey has rewritten me—sometimes violently, sometimes with quiet precision. I’m not a cyborg in the science fiction sense. No wires, no metal. But still, something hybrid. Something changed.
Part woman. Part system. All human.
Whatever comes next—another attempt, a new kind of family, or something else entirely—I’ll meet it not as the Mai who left Vietnam full of plans, but as this version: tempered, adaptive, quietly resolute.