Hardest goodbyes aren’t always for what you think

I’m not good at saying goodbye. Some people say that and walk with elegance away while my goodbyes equate to tennis ball sized swollen eyes from crying and snot bubbles dripping down the sides of my mouth.

My goodbyes aren’t pretty. When I’m placed in that position to have to leave something behind and know in my heart that I’ll never see it again, I start to call back every memory I’ve had. The ones where I am transported and I can still remember the smell of my surroundings. The ones where I can see the exact shirt I was wearing and how that person made me feel.

Today, by a text message from a friend, I received a Redfin link to a posting for a house. The url already told me everything I needed to know before I even clicked on it, but like any masochist would do, I tapped on my phone to open up the listing to my childhood home to further affirm my dad was putting it up for sale.

The one where I finally had my own room and had to stop sharing with my mom on nights she couldn’t stand my dad. The one where I had my sweet sixteen party – however sad and pathetic it was to other people, that party was the best thing my parents could have scrounged to afford.

This is the house I snuck out at midnight when both my parents were asleep so I could be cool and thought I was badass to go up the mountains car racing with other high school kids. This is the house where my mom left.

The house that had an empty room I’d go in and remember how broken our family was. But this house was where my dad raised me and I so fondly remember everything he sacrificed to ensure my life was one of luxury, and even if we were just faking it, I could at least feel equal to my peers at school.

The bones of that house kept me safe. Made me feel things were going to be okay when I was all alone restlessly sleeping on the couch closest to the front door when my dad had surgery so I could run out at mach speed to the hospital once he was out of the OR.

This house persevered a kitchen fire. This house outlived each one of us leaving.

First, my mother after she filed for divorce.

Then I packed up for college and barely came back.

Now my father’s remarried and moved on with the wife.

But I always felt that I could go back if I wanted to one day. My dad had rented it out all these years, probably for the same sentimental emotions I seem to have attached so much to.

2020 has taken so many things away. It took away kindness from strangers and replaced their eyes with judgement and uncertainty. It took away our way of life and replaced us with a box to live in 24/7. It took away the ability to see family and hug loved ones. It took away the plans I made to travel and see Europe for the very first time. It took away a hopeful future while we all wait unsettled without a target date to reach for a sense of normalcy. And now, it took away my past. The one place other than my dinky little apartment where I remember life when it was good. So damn good that when I think of it, I can see my dad in the kitchen donning his never-emasculating checkered apron nursing a sweet aromatic chicken stew while I’m upstairs in my heavy eyeliner from the early 2000’s banging out to some Avril Lavigne until he calls me down for dinner.

Good times.

Gone.

If I could speak my truth to that house, I’d like to thank it for protecting me and putting up with me. The days when I yelled and cried for having to deal with curfew to the days I just needed a nice warm shower after a long day of ballet practice. Maybe one day, I’ll pick up my kid from ballet and cruise by the street and show them, “Look, that’s where mommy grew up. That’s the house that saw all the good with the bad and kept standing tall to protect its family.”

Did your idea of love change as you got older?

Butterflies and goosebumps are fairytales. None of it lasts and so doesn’t love. At the end of the day we’re just living our lives with a roommate whom we trust and maybe decide to commit to a marriage license with as a tax deductible.

Except that latter part isn’t even something to consider in this day and age. Tax benefits for married couple doesn’t actually ‘benefit’ unless you one of you is making significantly less than the other. If you’re both at an equivalent base salary, the tough truth is you’ll end up in the same bracket as if you filed individually. How do I know this? Simple trip to my friendly trusted neighborhood CPA. She filed both my taxes and my partner’s. By the end of the 2 hour session we booked her for, I wanted to float the idea of possibly getting hitched with my partner in the next 5 years. With over 30 min left of the time we paid her for, she pranced her fingers around the calculator, played with numbers on a blank white sheet, and discovered we’d be paying more if we filed jointly. HILARIOUS.

So, back to the original subject, did your idea of love change as you grew older?

I’ve been really lucky to have felt the phase ‘in love’ longer than most during their puppy love stage. Somewhere between the transition of year 1 to year 2, my partner and I slowly but comfortably became more individuals but as a unit. I remember being glued as a siamese twin the first year. That part doesn’t last and I think we all know that. For us, it went on for almost a year and half before we fell back into our separate entities.

It is still love though. Not the same roller coaster highs and lows, but a safer sanctuary where you learn the perfect curvature of how they sleep and where you fit right in. I do miss the rampant need to cling onto my partner as a koala does on a eucalyptus tree during the early phase but its nice to fall back into a groove where I can work on my own craft and know sitting barely 12 feet away is someone who loves me doodling on his iPad and sipping his tea.

With COVID-19, A New Wave of Racism

Date: July 22, 2010

Mr. Martinez, University of California Riverside Professor in Sociology

He had said during one our very last lecture in class, “We are not all different races; we all belong to the human race.” The quote really touched me. I had never thought of it like that. With the lack of the right education from our childhood, we’re not taught that we’re all the same. We learn in history about World Wars and Civil Wars separating peoples and confining them to their races, but nothing teaches us about the takeaway. What was it all for? Every little fire started from xenophobia. Why haven’t we been properly educated to understand that despite the wars that have created racism, we are all part of the human race and if you truly trace back our roots, we’re just all from the same place?

Date: March 26, 2020

A decade later, a world pandemic spreads from Wuhan, China where the Coronavirus outbreak started and it seems a new wave of racism towards Asians have emerged. With research concluding that this was a result of natural evolution, it seems the rest of the world is looking to blame the Chinese, further exacerbated by Trump calling it the ‘Chinese Virus.’ Unfortunately, it resulted in not just scapegoating the Chinese, but other Asians alike: Japanese, Vietnamese, Koreans etc…

As the coronavirus upends American life, Chinese-Americans face a double threat. Not only are they grappling like everyone else with how to avoid the virus itself, they are also contending with growing racism in the form of verbal and physical attacks. Other Asian-Americans — with families from Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, Myanmar and other places — are facing threats, too, lumped together with Chinese-Americans by a bigotry that does not know the difference.

In interviews over the past week, nearly two dozen Asian-Americans across the country said they were afraid — to go grocery shopping, to travel alone on subways or buses, to let their children go outside. Many described being yelled at in public — a sudden spasm of hate that is reminiscent of the kind faced by American Muslims, Arabs and South Asians in the United States after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

But unlike in 2001, when President George W. Bush urged tolerance of American Muslims, this time President Trump is using language that Asian-Americans say is inciting racist attacks.

-NY Times

I woke up to this article and immediately started messaging my family, reminding them to not travel alone anywhere during this time. Reminding friends to tell their beloved to brace themselves for this new hate wave. I’ve noticed when I go out once every few days to pick up groceries, there’s a larger gap between myself and others waiting in line than other queues without anyone of Asian descent. I’m actually thankful nothing worse has happened to me or anyone else i know.

I’m realizing how very real and terrifying this disease has taken form from something that gives us daily hypochondria to fear that we can’t even walk outside alone or in the dark. It’s scared everyone else away from Asians even in the time when we all need to move away from racism and fight this disease for all human kind.

It seems we’ve forgotten:

that all men are created equal.

I’m deeply terrified for the younger kids who have to go back to school and face bullying. I’m painfully afraid of my parents who are much older now to defend themselves when they decide to take a stroll outside.
I’m disappointed that despite all the fake news we’re aware exists in the interwebs, there’s a stain and fingers pointed because it’s easier to have someone to blame than accept something else. Something the media hasn’t been broadcasting. Something media should educate people on but don’t.

The novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that emerged in the city of Wuhan, China, last year and has since caused a large scale COVID-19 epidemic and spread to more than 70 other countries is the product of natural evolution, according to findings published today in the journal Nature Medicine.

-Science Daily

Fast Love

I thought it was okay for us to act so juvenile.
I thought it’s what people starting out in relationships do.

Puppy love starts out great and giddy.
First and second dates turn from bashful to exciting.
Casual dating grows quickly to mutually exclusive.

If we were both chasing love and happiness,
then the goals were clear.
No matter how many differences, we’d get there somehow.
Because the sex was animal.
The lust was ravenous.

But alas, like oil and water. You can mix and mix and mix.
Go as fast at it and as hard at it you want in the beginning,
In a matter of a short while though, the two always separate.

Because fast love isn’t real.
They’re out as quickly as they came in.
Leaving you still pulling up a bra strap, when they’ve already called a cab.

What Forgetting You is Like

Forgetting you is like rolling down the window driving on the coast and not smelling the musky salt water.
Forgetting you is like tapping on the table with my fingers and not hearing a sound,
it’s biting into an apple and not having a memorable sweetness explode on my tastebuds.

Forgetting you is like waking up and not seeing sunlight bleed through my curtains,
it’s touching cotton without feeling the soft warmth of a coat in an autumn night.

Forgetting you is forcing myself to forget the 5 senses. If I can smell, hear, taste, see and feel – you are there.

The way your scent is everywhere on my pillows and old jackets.
The way your old records are sitting on my shelf giving me a glimpse back into our old life when you’d take my hand and swing my body around to the tunes.
The way your silent breathing through the night calms me and helps me sleep.
The way your body felt in the morning when I climbed closer to steal your warmth.
The way your tongue tasted minty and aged after you’ve brushed your teeth from drinking whiskey all night.

Even when you aren’t here, all my memory stayed.

Forgetting you is like holding onto what’s familiar,
It’s expecting what was there to always be there.

My five senses will always hold you in memory, even when you aren’t here.

adult affection bed closeness — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

TIT-Today I Tried…(Yes, it’s a funny acronym)

I’ve been a chronic, serial, addicted, whatever-you-wanna-describe-it, face picker. It started probably in college. Should I blame stress? Or maybe it was just my own obsession with these moon size craters on my face but picking at these gross yet hypnotizing gems that oozed out was rather satisfying and intriguing.

Fast forward a decade, my face is now a battlefield plagued with scars. Hence the entry of my newfound obsession: trying out any new technology of the modern age to make my face as smooth as those Korean pop stars.

Groupon has been a huge supporter of this obsession. On the daily, I’d get newsletters curated to my needs, begging me to enter in my credit card and get a new voucher that promised a beautiful face after each session.

This week’s tryout? The Microcurrent LED Light therapy facial. The Blue light kills bacteria that spreads my gross acne germs while the microcurrent tightens your face muscles with electrical currents and gives my face a natural face lift.

The verdict? At Groupon price, I’d come back once a month for 6 months to see what great changes my face has but retail is $175 and I can hardly afford that to try it for half a year for a noticeable difference.

I will say though, the experience is totally painless opposed to previous facials I’ve gotten that include extractions where the esthetician will poke, prod, squeeze, and drain until you’ve felt that even your soul has left your body.

What we’re like to be in pain

It is so easy to feel bad for yourself
To wallow in self pity about everything that is wrong in your life and blame external factors for it

To feel as though an injustice was placed on you,
and you yourself is singled out to be worse off than everyone else.

It is so easy isn’t it ?
To listen to sad music and relate to the heartbreaking vocals
To sit outside watching rainfall while you light one up
To ponder at the same sky we all do and ask, “why me?”

When we’re at our worst, nothing feels better but hurting ourselves further
Testing our pain threshold more
Gauge how much more we can take.
Marinate in pain and sorrow.
Feeling sorry for ourselves.

It’s so wrong but feels so right to hurt

If I’m already in pain, what’s a little more ?