The Day I Was Supposed to Return to Taiwan

Today was the day I was supposed to return to Taiwan. When I left on December 28, 2025, I had a return ticket booked for August 31.

The stated plan was that I would spend time with my dad and find out whether I could secure any kind of future in Canada. I needed to know whether I still met the contribution requirements for CPP disability, whether I could qualify for provincial disability support, and whether I could begin working and contributing to a Canadian pension again within my limitations.

If I could not make those things work in Canada, then Ireland or Europe were never going to be possible for me.

But the entire plan was impossible.

I could not return to Canada temporarily, obtain Ontario disability assistance, and carry it back to Taiwan.

ODSP is a residency-based program. Each month, I must confirm that I am still living in Ontario. CPP disability is a separate federal program based on my previous contributions. It cannot provide medical care and med coverage.

This was never some pipe dream I had invented. I laughed when I heard it and said there was no way it could happen.

And while I have accomplished extraordinary things in eight months, one thing has become crystal clear. There was no way to establish medical care, secure disability support, protect my pension eligibility, rebuild my capacity to work, and reconstruct an entire life during an eight-month visit.

I left Taiwan with a return ticket for August 31, 2026. Within a few days of arriving in Canada, I knew I could not go back.

After twenty-three years together, I had no meaningful financial security or workable plan for my future as a disabled woman.

I held substantial assets in non-redeemable GICs that would have passed to him if I died. That money already existed. I had accumulated it, but I could not access it.

Yet the only security he identified for me was life insurance. This was something that could do nothing to protect me while he was alive and I was already disabled.

Coming home was the only way I could try to secure any kind of future for myself. And I tried to make it happen on time.

I was approved for ODSP in record time on August 4th but it still hasn’t started. I remain trapped between systems. I’m surviving on Ontario Works and receiving only slightly more than the small amount I had each month in Taiwan. I’m working as much as I can within strict limitations with both my health and how I can actually earn money.

I have also learned that I met the CPP-disability contribution requirements just barely. The medical decision is still pending. Because I am still caught in administrative limbo, I have not been able to begin building my working life and contributing to my pension.

This is another substantial loss for me. But it can also be partially blamed on the Canadian government creating administrative uncertainty that has delayed me being able to work within my means.

Approval on paper has not created security, by the way. It has created more waiting.

Despite being approved for ODSP in early August, I am still waiting to be transferred officially from Ontario Works. This week, staff could not locate my file. I was later told that it was sitting somewhere in a backlogged transfer queue. It might remain there until mid-September or later.

Even the date on my return ticket became something I could be punished for.

When I booked August 31 without first obtaining approval, I was informed that was not convenient. I would have to get myself from the airport to the new apartment alone, in my wheelchair, with the cats and my luggage. I had never seen that apartment by the way.

That was the welcome waiting for me after eight months apart.

Today, the return ticket expired and I am not on that plane.

I came home hoping with all my heart that things could still be salvaged.

Within three days, I heard the answer with my own ears. His remorse over the circumstances that had driven me to leave turned into fury. There was one remorseful phone call. Then there was a New Year’s Eve call when he would not appear on video and made the kids carry the emotional weight of my departure. Finally, there was a 51-minute call that severed what remained of my love for him.

When I told him directly that he had broken his vows, he yelled at me. Then he told me I had to make the next call. He would not be calling me.

After everything I had endured, from my final cry for help through six weeks of packing up my life, something in my brain finally clicked into place.

NOPE.

Today is not the day I failed to return to my life. It is the day I can finally say that the life I was supposed to return to was no longer survivable.

I did the impossible part. I got out.

Now I am rebuilding an entire life at 51 while disabled and surviving on $698 a month. If my writing has helped you understand chronic illness, disability, abuse or what it takes to begin again after losing nearly everything, please consider helping me through this next part.

HELP ME CONTINUE REBUILDING.