The other day I wrote a little account of how my night went. It’s just about one night and it’s written in present continuous tense because I thought it was fun and personal, and I’ve been seeing some poems and stories online that are written in this style. It’s rather interesting and poetic, but I don’t think what I wrote really works as a poem. Maybe it reads like rambling instead, but oh well. This blog is an exercise in vulnerability anyways, so nothing really matters. Here it goes:
“I sit and stare at my phone and an Instagram algorithm tailor-made to find my guilt and self-hatred and depression and poke it with the soft sting of other people's stories and lives. I eventually can't take it, and I put on some sad music and lean against a cupboard in my kitchen and slowly start blinking a few tears. My mother is cutting fruit 2 feet in front of me, and my father sits on a couch behind a bar 10 feet in front of me and neither of them notice. Good. It's the first time in a long time and I'm relieved to know I can still cry, but I'm ashamed because I can't explain my feelings, so I retreat to my room. We go to an awkward dinner with good friends and good food and bad conversation. We fight in the car and I wish I knew why. I go home and I sit. No phone this time, no music. Just thinking about work and death and family and life and the future and the past and the past and the past and I'm crying again, a few slow tears that I wish were more, but my body stops me because it knows I don’t really want to be better. I try to distract myself with Destiny, a dying game. Fading, fading, and dragging me with it. Every movement feels empty. I shut it off in the middle of an activity. Shift + esc, then the windows button, and before the screen is off I am crying again.
My chest tightens. I know I need to text someone, but there is only one person left, and I text her entirely too much. My chest tightens more. I text her. Dancing around it at first, but then admitting how I feel. I tell her she doesn't need to respond but I know she will. We talk a little. It's midnight and I can't trust my feelings. Neither of us know exactly what to say. I try to get ready for bed and catch my grandmother in the bathroom. We both can't sleep. She's recovering from surgery and her blood pressure is too high and her heart is beating so fast and she cries and asks God to take her. She is 86 and leaving life and I am 18 and entering it. We've both been crying tonight. She speaks broken English and I speak fluent English. I do not know any of her three dialects of Chinese and I am a traitor to my heritage, so all I can do is hold her hand and murmur that it will be okay even though I don't know if it will be because she is 86 and I am 18. I reflect on our quiet kinship and realize I will one day soon have to write that dreaded Asian American manuscript about not being Asian enough and not feeling loved enough and all those things you've heard a million times before. So once she has calmed down and can go to bed, I crawl into my sheets and start writing this post until my eyes shut and my fingers stop working. Tomorrow will be better, I’m sure. Until then, my feelings have nowhere to go but here.”
Other than that, small life update. I did quit my job and I’m currently searching for a new one. Here’s hoping Costco accepts me… The great migration of my friends has also begun, and I went to my first mission farewell on Sunday. I showed up a few minutes late wearing jeans, which was absolutely embarrassing, but thankfully I had a dear friend there who helped me not make an absolute fool of myself. I’m going to the Redwoods and buying my cousin’s car this weekend with my parents, so hopefully that’s a good time. I think I mentioned it before, but the Redwoods have always been on my bucket list because of how much I love big… things. Big old trees (did you know one of, if not the heaviest organisms on Earth is a colony of quaking aspens called Pando?), whales, elephants, planes, trains, etc. There’s something so awe-inspiring about anything that dwarfs me, and massive organisms are just a testament to how incredible life is and how much they have persevered to reach their size. I also think the smoke is impacting my brain, and maybe it's why people have been so disagreeable to me lately? Either way, see you when I have a car!
