Give Me All Or Give Me Part

It seems to me time has been passing quicker and crueler. It is September and I am still mourning last year. There's a certain stillness that has passed into my life over the past few months. I’m still deciding whether I like it or not. It rains almost every night. I live paycheck to paycheck. I wake up past noon. The air outside is sweet smelling. It feels nostalgic in the way it makes me think I’ve smelt it before. Perhaps it smells like a boy I slept with more times than I should’ve, or the backroom of a dive bar I don’t really remember being at. I’ve been feeling a general sense of emptiness lately, something brought along by the stillness. I don’t write, and I barely ever read. There was a moment, sitting on a bench at the park with the first chills of fall creeping across my bare arms, where it seemed the world had shut off. I retreated so far back into my body, my mind so quiet, it was as if I had melted into that very bench and at last, become completely, fully, taken and one with the city that now dictates my life.  

When I’m not feeling empty, I feel anxious. And when the anxiety is shoved aside, there is hate that remains. 

I hate how I think about money all the time. How I can barely afford to live in New York, but definitely can't afford to move anywhere else. How the money I do have is spent on cigarettes and cheap beer and my friends. How the money I don’t have is owed to the college I dropped out of and the credit card I maxed out. 

I hate my age and what I have to show for it. Part of growing up meant realizing all the things I thought made me good and special and kind are not as sincere as I had been taught to believe. It meant hiding from my 21st birthday, because all the things I should’ve been celebrating are things I’ve been doing for the past three years, and now know are definitely not things to be celebrated. 

I hate how much I miss my dad. It comes out of nowhere, this feeling and grief and anxiety over the possibility that I can forget. That’s the part that scares me the most. That I can forget how gentle you are, how much I love you. And shadowing over all this is the looming thought of how pathetic it must be, to let this loss still drive my life and my mind the way that it does. Three years, it's been since I lost you. How much longer until people stop saying “I'm sorry” and start saying “get over it”. It feels pathetic to still be blaming the mess of my mind and the sum of my mistakes on your death. I should be doing better, and you deserve to be more than an excuse for missed deadlines and full days spent in bed. 

I suppose when you died, you took a piece of that fragile framework of youthful ignorance down with you. Without it, the entirety of the structure and foundation in which I’d been raised came crashing down, splintering through the years I’ve had with you, and bruising the years to come without you. I miss you so much it aches. 

So in the end, I suppose it’s just grief that remains. In its ill fitted costumes of emptiness and anxiety and hate, it remains. How can I abhor it when really, it's what remains of you? And in the way I approach money, and youth, and the memories of you, I take what I can get.

To Build a Home

Far too early on the morning of January 8th, I found myself drunk at Gate 26 inside JFK. I was out late the night before, and crutched on less than 1 hour of sleep and 2 bites of a stale $13 turkey and cheese, I still felt the whispers of last nights inebriety as I crossed my fingers the plane hadn’t left without me. I still have positively no clue how I even got there, but I seem to have an affinity for blacking out the night before a flight, so my subconscious must be properly trained to handle the situation at this point. I don’t know whether to feel grateful or not for the fact. Once I was safely strapped into my seat, I closed my eyes and hoped sleep would overtake me quickly. Though the plane was yet to move, I felt the tremors of motion staking me awake. When we finally began our ascent, the man next to me uttered a quick prayer and I joined him silently, though I suspect we were praying for two very different things. 

It was the first time that this journey didn’t feel like a homecoming. Though the flight felt vaguely familiar, it was met with a sense of nostalgia that was as new to me as it was alarming. The view out the window enchanted me enough to ignore this small anxiety. The hard lines of mountains and canyons felt so different from the soft green patchworks of the East Coast. California is a place of its own, as I’ve come to realize the longer I’ve been away. As we got lower, I tried to pinpoint where we flew over, but the landmarks had escaped my knowledge and I doubt they will ever return. When I landed in San Diego 6 hours later, I let the idea wash over me of how I probably lost the right to call this place my home the first time I found New York to be beautiful. In doing so, I forfeited my claim. 

Hailey and Sabrina came to pick me up from the airport. Sabrina had been abroad for 6 months and I hadn’t seen Hailey since that November over a year and a half ago. When I was first reunited with them, I was startled by the feeling of being greeted by strangers who I once knew in a past life. Though the feeling disappeared quickly, it was unsettling nonetheless. I texted my mom to let her know I had gotten there safely and promised to send photos. She told me to say hi to the girls and sent me pictures of her new boyfriend and the dogs. Sitting in the back of that Subaru that had been through the drive-thrus and breakups and football games right alongside us, everything seemed to fall into place. 

The next day, Hailey and I went to the beach. We shared an American Spirit and buried the butt of it in the sand, the closest funeral we would have for our shared childhoods. When I laid back and let myself rest against the graininess of my favorite beach, I thought to myself how badly I wished I could stay in that moment forever, wanting to hold onto that moment like a hand. It was quiet save for the steady drift of the ocean and the hum of the mosquitoes hovering around my cheekbones. I let my eyelids fall and when they opened, Hailey was no longer beside me. I sat up and watched her in the distance walking along the shore, stopping here and there to search for seashells. Watching her make her way further down the coast, I promised to love this girl always. When she rejoined me on dry land, she passed her findings to me. I ran my fingers over the ridges of crab shells and the smooth sides of purple and gray stones. Trophies of a good day.

“I feel like I’m going through a second puberty,” she said to me later that day. We were in the hot tub near her house, and I wore a swimsuit of hers, blue and white striped. I had forgotten how warm San Diego remains in January, and attempting to pack drunk the night before didn’t help my mental checklist of necessities. We talked about her boyfriend, her favorite podcasts, her relationship with her mom. My plans post-graduation, my friend group, my anxieties. We laughed over texts from her ex, and comforted each other about the future. I made a silent promise to always find a home in her.

We had chili and cornbread with her family for dinner. Afterwards, we sat on stools and listened to her dad’s stories of Chicago and Baltimore. We brushed our teeth and read our books before bed, and she told me how happy she was in her relationship. It is so easy to be with her. Days like this make it easier to withstand the growing pains of this second round of puberty. Nobody tells you this when you’re little, but that monster under your childhood bed? It’s really just your 20s. 

Our birthdays are 9 days apart. Come this summer, we will both turn 21, first me and then her. I’ll call her on the 31st and ask what she did, who she celebrated with, what she wished for, and if she felt any older. I’m sure the answer will be both yes and no. Things are changing so quickly and there is less and less to grasp onto, but I will always manage to grasp onto her, onto this day. It is a comfort to know that at the very least, I can always to cling to her, even from opposite coasts. When school wraps up and summer begins, I’ll write her a letter and send it to Orange County, or that house on Ednaleen Lane. When I move into my new apartment, the first thing I will tape to the wall of my bedroom will be the letter she wrote me on my 18th birthday, a month after my dad died. Words on paper, written by me (21) and her (17). We are growing up, together, across the country. If I were to have a sister, I wonder if this is what it would’ve been like. I surely love her like one. The first love I had to fight for, and the first love I felt was mine to hold, before any boy or girl I’ve shared a bed with. 

A couple days later, Hailey, Sabrina, and I packed up the Subaru and drove up to Orange County to spend the night at Haileys apartment there. We spent the day window shopping and singing to Tears For Fears in the car. We talked about marriage and religion and the best ways to stalk people on Instagram. Her bedroom in her apartment was exactly what I imagined it to look like. Photos covered the walls, corner to corner, and I recognized myself in many of them. Us at the beach, at prom, with old friends we all outgrew. I had seen most of them before, even the ones I wasn’t in. We drank beers and shared snacks from the gas station while trying to convince Sabrina to go on a date with somebody new. We watched a lesbian comedy and when the edibles kicked in, Sabrina laughed at every joke I’m sure she only half understood. And when it was time to sleep, we all piled into Haileys full size bed, side-by-side like an army unit. I was sandwiched in the middle, yet I’ve never had an easier time falling asleep. 

Making a home through people rather than a place is something I’ve learned to do since moving from California. At first, nothing scared me more. It felt disturbingly unstable, to commit yourself in that way to something so fragile, so wavering. There was a period of time when I first moved that I didn’t speak to Hailey for months. The growing pains, they got to us. I remember feeling guilty seeing photos of her on Instagram, feeling small when my mom asked me how she liked her new roommates. I remember feeling scared in the way you would when you lose your house keys. It was, essentially, the same. With time we learned to adapt to the new format of our friendship, but I will never forget the fear I had of losing her. Addresses come and go but the people you tie yourself to have a way of sticking around. I found my people, and with them I’ve found my home. With them, wherever they are, whatever bed we squeeze into, I will always have a home. 

I spent my last night in San Diego with Hailey. We sat on the beach pressed up against each other and watched the sun sink below the water. She recounted moments I had missed, stories of her life in college. I could listen to her talk endlessly and be happy. The way she speaks, it manifests into pure joy. Sitting there with her, I imagined the two of us in 30 years, sharing a blanket and watching the sunset in this very spot. I’d be shocked to witness any waver in the conviction I hold for our friendship. 

My return to New York left me rather apathetic. Mostly, I was excited to be back in my own room, to have a cigarette in my own bed, and cook something in my own kitchen. Halfway through my return flight, we were hit with a bout of turbulence from a storm in the Midwest. I wondered what the weather would be back in New York. I had forgotten to check before boarding and prayed the sweatshirt in my carry-on would keep me warm enough. I passed in and out of consciousness throughout the remainder of the flight. I remember being mesmerized watching the baby blues out the window fade into hues of pink and purple. It would be dark by the time I landed, and then I would still have another couple of hours on the train to suffer through before being home. We passed over a long stretch of clouds, running thickly where they hovered. I wondered where we passed. I had no way of knowing. I wondered what type of people were below, what music brings them to tears, what they might have for dinner. 

The clouds stretch thinner and thinner, and soon enough it was too dark to see them at all. It felt lonely up there, but perhaps I was just homesick. 

Notes App II

A Goodbye Not Said 

The thing about your childhood is that it doesn’t pay you the respect of letting you know when it’s over. It will be there, countless golden days, until it isn’t, before you could understand the end has always been right there. 

Sober Curious

I left the bar wishing I could put that night into a metal box, and dig a hole for it 6 feet deep. All I did was talk to my friends but I can’t help but feel I messed up again. I know in the morning I will hear things I don’t want to and I will wish I am the one to crawl into that hole. For now, nicotine and sleep will hold me into the night as I wait to feel like myself once more. 

Places I Could Be Anywhere Universally

Chipotle

A track field

Target

Public restrooms

Movie theaters

Are you mad at me?

It got colder and I’m wearing a Marlboro jacket everyday. I cut bangs and dyed my hair black to distract from the chills but now I scare myself every time I pass my mirrors. I should probably just take those down. Every time I feel myself slipping into another depressive episode I worry everybody hates me because I’m no fun to be around. I would know because sitting in my bed alone with her is the worst but there is nowhere else to go except the places I should be and god knows I cannot do that. 

The Worst Years Of My Life 

The pain is small when it has pretty things as company.

“I am anxious all the time, but look at all I have!”

Fear

I used to believe nothing was worse than death, but now nothing scares me more than going home.

Metro North

We left the house while it was still dark out, and caught the train just moments before it left. It’s empty and silent and filled with stale air and paunchy lighting. My fingers are sticky from the cereal bar I’m eating. From out the window I can make out the first line of buildings, tall and unassuming as they descend upwards into the misty morning. Soon enough the buildings will dissolve into blurs of greenery or perhaps just more of those cloudy blues. 

Keith is bent over in his seat, writing. I want to tell him he’ll get a stiff neck but I won’t do that because I know it’s silly and the Metro North is just as much his as my own so I will let him sit hunched and I will keep eating my cereal bar. 

Blocked Number

Do you keep blocking me because you are mad or because you know what I am saying is true and you can’t stand to hear it?

When you went home for two weeks and I told you to give your dad a hug, you didn’t talk to me for the rest of the day. I never know what to say to you anymore, where to draw the line.

I’ve got less and less of an excuse to say anything at all now that it’s been over a year, but I always find myself with the need to say something. I don’t miss you and don’t want to see you but I hope something cool happens to you today and if that’s not what you want to hear then you can block me again.

I’ll still be here with more to say when you come back, and I know you always do. 

God help me (I’m 20 years old)

Can’t you see I am changing myself for you??

Bridge over Troubled Water

I feel more excitement about today than I can remember feeling in a very long time. The idea came quickly and Keith was quicker to agree which is one of the things I love about him. He’s a good friend and I am glad to have a good friend with me for this day. Cold Spring was about the thirteenth result on Google, and the first place I’ve been upstate. We left at the time we planned to leave, 6 a.m, which would’ve surprised me if I was less excited. I’ve been sick for almost a week and half but besides a lingering cough, I feel much better than before. The commute to Grand Central was an easy one, and I’ve said perhaps 4 sentences since waking up this morning. I’m in my head yet entirely conscious. I was nervous we would miss the train but the kind lady let us on just before it departed and I took that as a good omen for the rest of our trip. 

I could write a million love letters to riding a train and I probably already have. So I won’t waste time on it again but I will take the liberty of reiterating my love for it once more, here and now, before I continue. I was hoping for a sunny day, but seeing the misty grays and blues through the window somehow feels even better. I think it’s more in line with what I have been feeling, so it is almost a comfort to me as I attempt to rein in my excitement. I feel good and grounded. I’m drinking a Celsius which I’m not sure will do me any good but I am confident today cannot go badly and my anxiety has no place here. I’ve got another one in my backpack, along with a ziplock bag of rainbow Goldfish, a plastic water bottle, cigarettes, and five peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which I wrapped the same way my mom used to when I was in elementary school. Safe to say, Keith and I will be indulging in the finest today.

I have the whole row to myself, yet I’m curled up against the wall with my knees up and my feet hanging above the ground. I took my headphones out three stops ago, but I must’ve forgotten that because they’re laying tangled in the seat next to me and probably will stay there until we reach our stop and I put them away once more. I’m thinking I might’ve forgotten something but I am not worried because it could be more fun that way. I haven’t thought about the way I look or how my hair is sitting once since I’ve left the house. 

With a few stops left, I can see the water on Keith’s side of the train and I’m a little bit jealous that I chose this seat. The thing about the water is that it reminds me of home and I never miss it until I do. I hope I can swim today, even if it’s freezing, and I know Keith doesn’t know how to. If Mom were here, she would tell me not to do it, but it’s sort of awesome knowing I can do what I want. Keith will get high and scared, and I will go swimming. I am happy to be considered grown up and still allowed to be stupid. My headphones are plugged in now and I’m listening to Simon & Garfunkel’s rendition of Bridge over Troubled Water. There’s water on my side now too. All is well on the Metro North. 

We got off the train at 8:03. The sun has cleared away some of those morning blues and it feels good to breathe in air outside the city. Some of the trees up here have begun to turn golden, which makes me think I haven’t seen that in Brooklyn, but perhaps I just don’t see trees like these in Brooklyn at all. I am thinking of my mom again, and hoping her backyard is a beautiful gold and she is happy.

Cold Spring is a small town. Porch lined houses with olive green shutters, antique stores, a Catholic Church. The hiking trails were just outside the towns perimeter and we walked along the edge of the wide main road to get there. Maybe three cars passed by the entirety of our walk. Once we got to the park, we headed for the water and then looped our way towards the mountains. 

The earth is louder here and gives way to you. We walked for around three hours, making our way up the hill following the river upstream before turning around and retracing our steps back down. Halfway through, we stopped by a lightning shelter next to the water for lunch. I took my shoes and socks off and waded in the shallow water, which was as much swimming as the environment allowed. It was cold, but not painful, and the force of the stream kept me in touch with my weight on the slippery surface.  I sat on a flat rock and let the water pull past me as I outstretched my hands against its current. I was so happy to be there. 

We walked around 12 miles all around Cold Spring before making our way back into town. The town consisted mainly of a single street lined with antique shops and cafes and bookstores. I couldn’t stop remarking how it felt like we were in a fake town, like a coming of age movie set, or one of those fairytale villages in Disneyland. It reminded me of when I got too high in Boston and convinced myself I was in an uncomfortable alternate version of New York. Keith found our friend Kyle an old Beatles record from Hamburg, a very young John and George smiling on its worn cover. Afterwards, we settled down at a tavern by the train station for lunch. I had French onion soup and two gin and tonics. Before boarding a 4:20 train back, we stopped by the river once more, where I stripped off my outer layers and took a swim while Keith sat and heckled me from the rocks. When I resurfaced and sat to dry, there was a cut on my knee, freshly wet and searingly red. It seemed so inconsequential in the moment, even as the blood mixed with the lake water and trickled down my calf in crimson trails, staining the boulder I occupied.

The train seemed to take its time in arriving, and while I soaked in my last moments before heading home, I kept thinking, “this has been the best day in a very long time.”

Though I ought to have been uncomfortable, with my still damp clothes and aching joints, I found sleep quickly once boarded. As pulled back into Grand Central, I let myself shift into autopilot and made my way home in a drowsy stupor. All the while, I remained in Cold Spring, where I continue to breathe deeply and find more gratitude and kindness in my approach to the world.

Something of Our Own

I was in Tompkins on Thursday evening having one of those revelations of a perfect moment. 

I was sitting on a bench in silent companionship with a good friend. There were too many good things around us to list on both our fingers combined. Good weather, sheltered by the evening, the kind that foretold summer days soon to come. A gathering of friends surrounding us, those with two legs and those with four. An inconspicuous sunset, not quite vibrant enough that everybody needed to photograph, but just enough to admire with quiet appreciation. “A Hugging Spot” etched in yellow chalk, just in front of our spot, watching strangers do just as it said. It was, in short, a perfect moment. Just good things to hold in my mind throughout the night. 

Throughout my perfect moment, there was a man. Old, Asian, soft lines worn into soft skin, soft gray blazer, a soft demeanor. He sat criss-cross-applesauce in the middle of the pavilion. Just sat right there on the concrete ground. He was praying. To what higher power I could only guess, but he was praying with such care, such heartfelt emotion that his soft body trembled with it. In witnessing his joy, I realized that perfect moments are unique to each of us. There are endless good things in this world, but the joy they give is ambiguous between one another. Having grown up in a Godless domain, I could never derive the certain facet of joy the man in the park seemed to cherish from his prayers. I would not experience joy in an identical way to my friend who shared the same park bench as myself. I couldn’t explain my joy to another, in the same aspect that I could not relate to somebody else’s unique joy. These good things in the world are not part of a perfect equation. These good things do not equal joy and joy is not encapsulated in a singular sense. 

I am witnessing this mans joy, adjacent to the joy of countless strangers, in the way a foreigner approaches her travels. Recognition leads to falsified understanding, and I am experiencing what could only be described as a shared moment in an utterly personal way. What becomes of a girl who allows others joy to manifest into her own? I could feed off that feeling in that park for the rest of my life, and never be left wanting for anything more. I could seize that personal-impersonal happiness and place it under a pretense of being solely my own, and carry on for the rest of my days in a state of bliss. What could be so great about knowing yourself, after all? Must we really distinguish joy in such scrutiny? To trample over such a delicate thing with a pretty foot, what could be a bigger sin? 

The most joyful moments I’ve experienced have been those created within the realms of my own jurisdiction. Moving to New York, finding handfuls of these perfect moments in a life I built. They creep up quietly, in times dictated by no one other than myself. It is the type of joy that feels justified in a way childhood joy could never compare. The type of joy that feels earned. Empowering. Personal. Moments that belonged to me, in ways unobtainable to everyone else. 

It’s a fickle thing, joy. The king of happiness and all its subjects. Rarer than its friends in contentedness, gratitude, and all hedonic entities. It cannot be found or replicated. In its absence, you will still stand tall, but in its company, you will be greater than the Earth you stand on. It’s hard to imagine such a force as delicate. It’s reveals itself to you, passes over you, washes you over in a way all too sudden to comprehend its nature. Joy, in the plural, seeks a lonesome friend. In finding its companion, it warps in ways to compliment its suitor, tailored to fit perfectly within the bounds of their existing identities. And as we change, our joy changes with us. 

Going back to that night in the park. Yes, I could see that man’s joy triumph. I was witness to my good friends joy emanating towards me. I felt the simultaneous joy of strangers pounding through the plaza like a heartbeat. But I knew none of their joy quite as well as my own. It’s a sacred thing, to be able to own such a feeling. To call it yours. In the way the God-fearing man claimed his, and my companion claimed his. In between the lines of that moment, where we were so close to humane perfection, we found our own divine perfection in joy. Shared, culminated, attested through each of our own desires and pride, yet so personal. A moment of our own, a feeling of our own. That night in the park, it belonged to everybody who shared it. But our own memories distinguish it in the capacities of own unique joy. What that night meant, that is what will always belong to us. 

Nobody can take our joy away from us. Nobody can replicate it. Nobody can claim it as theirs. Truthfully, it is one of the few things we will always have as our own. I cannot speak on what joy is, or where to find it. I believe it hides in different places, places that might only be found by a single person. To know yourself, I suppose. That is your answer. Not where to find joy, but where you find your joy. How you find it. How you create it. I could tell you about mine, in tales measured by lifetimes. And you can listen and relate and understand but even after it all, your joy may only be recognizable to you. There’s something to be said about that. 

Observer of My Life

It’s Friday night and I’m alone in my room having conversations with myself. It’s not the loneliness that will kill me, but rather the waiting for release. Like the part of myself that ties me to the world has been ripped unconsciously from my being and put away on the top shelf just out of my bodies reach. Sentenced to an eternity as an observer of my own life. Watching as things happen, but not being able to live them. Sitting back as I lose myself to the moments that pass me by. It comes easy, this yearning for something new. Discontent stirs like a monster under a childhood bed. But it’s the excitement, the passion, the willfulness that I am seeking and just can’t find. In my willingness to have time of my own, I’ve eclipsed into a space no longer attached to the greater sum. My knack for slipping into the tight corners of the world has led me to believe I no longer imposed a position among it. Loneliness has become a good friend of mine, and I’ve learned how to hold onto it like a hand. But when does this silence become too loud? 

I spoke of my fear of being alone with a good friend of mine the other night. This period of my life that feels like I’m stuck sitting alone in a waiting room. Something great and fulfilling creeps around behind closed doors and spaces I’m unauthorized to enter. The TV screens replaying moments where the people in my life are finding success and happiness and creating relationships with one another, while I am forced to watch and feel guilty for my pent up envy. The chair I occupy is stiff and curves unnaturally. There’s an ache in my back that I can’t seem to shake, no matter how I twist and stretch. 

This twisting and stretching is futile in my search for something to grasp. It leaves me empty handed, and even more so alone. Alone, in this big world of mine that continues to expand without my warrant. Every slight shift, every pull around the corners, it feels monumental and without anything to fill it with, the emptiness grows deeper and deeper. My self-imposed isolation has begun to feel more like punishment than righteousness. The control I felt over it has slipped out from under me. I am left to stumble around in the darkness trying to escape this fate. And what I found was not an open door, but small cracks to pick and scratch at like a blemish on a soft cheek. Pinholes of light from small things I’ve been able to reconquer. Dads on the bus, old letters from friends back home, texts from my mom, easy dinners with good company. Laughing on the train, 60 degree weather, a good outfit. Smoking out the window of my bedroom, making plans with friends and following through with them. Being told something reminded them of me. Small progress on a small canvas. Chipping away through the darkness with things that seem inconsequential, but are really the only things that can keep me full. 

I’m still in the dark, and it is all still overwhelming, and the yearning has not gone away. But little by little I am back in control. I am choosing everyday to keep chipping away at these walls. With enough patience, I will be able to give way to a window. With enough care, I will be able to feel the light. With enough forgiveness, I will be able to conquer this silence. Those little moments where I feel like myself again are what allows me to bear it all. The weight of it still burdens me, and it hurts and it is hard. But I have verbalized it here and now. I say it with everything I am. This lonely game of waiting is hard and I hate it. I’ve said it with conviction, unwaveringly so, and so when the silence descends once more, it feels comfortable. And I continue to sit in bed and speak to myself. 

Notes App I

Table For One 

My emotions are wired like a light switch, with an invisible hand that likes a game of flipping it in my oblivion. 

Craving time alone, where I feel I can finally breathe, to being suffocated by my loneliness and desperately searching for somebody, anybody, everybody to feed my appetite for living. 

A perfect balance, never simultaneous, but somehow symbiotic. 

Penciled in between the lines of my solitude is a reproach for the stillness and a longing for shared moments. I can’t help it! I am lonely and I love it until I can’t stand it. I am surrounded by others and it brings me to life until it drains my very being. 

It is the most black and white thing you will find entangled in my emotions. 

Flu Season

I think I am drowning in this city. 

I think I watch too much television. 

I think I won’t make it past 25. 

I think I hate my job. 

I think I think too much, it makes my head hurt. Headaches are the worst but they’re better than being here and it’s winter and I miss my mom. That will go away soon enough but I miss being young and feeling beautiful for myself. 

It’s all so hard here, but I think this is the place for me, because I can never have an easy life. I wouldn’t be able to stand the easy life, it would bore me to death and so I choose to suffer everyday because at least I’m feeling something even if it’s just seasonal depression. 

Maybe that’s what causes the flu. 

Open Houses 

Insecurity leads me to open houses where I imagine a life where I am boring and happy. I would do nothing all day and dream in black and white. I would know nobody and nobody would know me, but I have brunch on Wednesday with Sarah and I talk on the landline with my mother in law. I would do yoga in the morning and tell myself I am happy over and over until my lips turned blue. I wouldn’t know anything about myself and then I remember and I am thankful I know who I am now and not a version of myself who dwells in a five bedroom craftsman.  

Woodside 

Maybe we all have something we regret but I am Thankful for our time and I will see you soon!

Childhood

I remember it in the way I remember summertime. It feels the very same.

You will miss it when it is gone, but oh how infinite it remains to you!

I worship it like a religion and carry it in the esteem of a loved one. 

I hold it in my hands and close to my heart. 

I drink it in my dreams and let it run wild through my being.

Lighter, lighter it floats away until you can no longer see it but I will remember it, that beautiful golden summertime.

Sunscreen 

Grief is a funny thing to feel when you’re sunburnt with the ocean in sight. You walked with me but it felt like you were already gone. My lips were sealed but I was saying goodbye. There was an inch of space between us and I missed you like a child. 

Come back, I’m scared, your hand is on my back, it says you are here, but you’re not, you can’t be, because why would I feel this way if you were? 

If only I had worn sunscreen.

(I guess I wouldn’t Know) 

They say good things will come but perhaps these things skip a generation.

I miss you, but you must’ve heard 

Summers at a standstill and this is my way of telling you everything I never could. 

I regret you but you are still the one I wish to come home to. I wish you would come back to me but maybe it is better for you to stay away. 

Let me feel this earnestly so that maybe I can reach you again later in life when we are both better and fuller and lighter and easier to love. 

My afflictions are as temporary as my very life, but my conviction to you will not waver, though sometimes I wish it did.

I wrote this on a Wednesday

There is hair in my shower that is not my own. I wrote a letter to my mom with the things I was too scared to say in Ohio. 

A month has gone by and I feel the same. I feel guilty all the time, for there is a part of myself I can’t accept in my body. I long for simple days of jellybeans and bare feet, somewhere in the parts I let eclipse me. I fear for the things in my life that feel replaceable. I want to tether them to me with words that have more weight than before. My world grows silent and I find it harder and harder to breathe through it. 

These are not Monday’s words and they will not be Thursday’s either. 

Perhaps it will be better if I wait it out. Perhaps the words will be of things that remain beautiful while everybody is looking the other way. Perhaps it will be the things that are beautiful to me. Perhaps one day I will be one of those things. 

But not on Wednesday. 

New Orleans 

I’m alone here on the other side of the country but I close my eyes and I can see my grandmother making tea. Why is mom always crying? Why is my brother so mean? I’m spiteful of what’s in my head but I guess I am selfish too because I stay here often with my eyes shut tight because if I open them and see these strangers in this strange city I think I might scare myself to death and I’m only 19 and I haven’t even gotten to see New Orleans yet.

Finding Hope

My imposter syndrome gives birth to a multiverse of fraternally linked selves, these fragmented mirrors of myself coming together to contemplate where we each might end up, and where our overlapped moments might be found. Wasting nights laying awake, twisted guts and heavy heads, until we discover the antidote to the simple truth lying amidst it all: growing up is hard and there is never a right way to navigate it. Until it is universally acknowledged, we find ourselves making fools of our youthfulness and chasing adolescent clarity that doesn’t exist anywhere in the realms we wander. As the hand of time continually finds new ways to stake its presence in my life, I find myself habitually battling with the anxiety riddled question of whether I had done enough that day. Yet who demands the answer is still unclear to me. Was it myself? My peers? Society? And what was their grading scale measured upon? In all my years of academia, never has there been a question so difficult. What was enough and could I even complete it? The pressure builds with each passing day and every hour spent aimlessly searching through the fog of the future to find a suitable scenario waiting on the other side for me.

The longer I endured the weighted whispers of a failed future, a failed daughter, a failed life, the deeper I retreated into the battering cycle of doing nothing all day and facing the anxiety of it as I laid in bed waiting to do it all again the next day. My depression deepened as I lost myself completely to the pressure of figuring it out. I no longer recognized myself in the mirror, becoming the truth of a girl with no passions or goals or sense of self, all of which had been muffled by screams for clarity and demands to succeed. Further and further the anxiety chipped away at my leaking tank of hope, carving out the best parts of myself and leaving me with craters of what could be and what I’ve failed to reach in my few years on this Earth. 

And just when it seemed I had nothing left to give, a miracle happened. Within a city haunted by the ghost of my upbringing, I walked the tight line of expectations stretched fatally high. It seemed only inevitable I would take the fall, yet the concrete waiting at the bottom was but a mirage. Instead I found in the depths below a space I could be suspended, where time slows and my body becomes weightless. A place where the present is all-consuming, pushing the past and the future into the furthest corners of relevance. I call this place “Somewhere To Figure It Out.” I’ve spent the past month within this place, allowing myself to get to know its space intimately and at my own speed. And in doing so, I’ve adopted its gentle ways. Kindness to myself paid first, reassurances next. A charging port for hope. Echos in this void of “it’s okay”s and “you have time”s. I am only 19, I don’t have to have my life figured out right now. I’m confused and anxious most of the time, but that is normal and part of growing up. And within this space of my own, my life belongs to me, and I am in control. Selfishly, I want to stay in this place forever, existing silently and slowly, shrinking into the shadows of the world where I am the only breathing thing. But this space is somewhere to rest, not somewhere to live. Eventually I found my way back into the light, and as harsh and overwhelming as it is, my time away had given me the strength to bear it with grace. 

As my mindset adjusts from day to day labels to this infinite stretch of time, it becomes easier to forgo the idea of wasting my youth. In this world of my own, nothing is at waste for there is nothing to waste -- time is endless, and this period of my life has no parameters. It’s a stage that will lead to the next, and the passing of presence will come naturally and on its own terms. The proverbial struggles of reaching independence will continue to exist, but it is easier on the mind when the deadlines are disrupted.

To put it bluntly, this period of my life sucks, but I am grateful to it, for it makes me live and gives me something to live for. This time will yield itself to you, and you have countless slow days and long nights to simply live, breathing in the air and letting go of the expectations. It is cycles of nothing and everything, miles walked or run, ideas ignored and explored. It is waking up and going to bed and continuing to put yourself out there, in the light, in the harsh landscape of reality. It is coming as you go and please, learning and recessing, making your mark here and there. It is to be everywhere and nowhere all at once and living, living, just living. It’s a beautiful thing, figuring it out, because it is powered by hope, and you’ll find that as long as you are living, you have endless amounts of it. 

“Growing Up As An Asian American In The United States”

Growing up as an Asian American in the US is a unique experience. We are taught to suffer silently in the face of struggles deemed greater than our own. We are taught that Asian features may only be fetishized and never simply admired as beautiful. We are taught to normalize micro aggressions against us and our families. I remember making my mom cry one night when I came home from school saying I wished I was white. I remember watching Disney Channel and wondering why none of my favorite characters looked like me. I remember being in second grade and already grappling with my self identity as I searched for belonging among my white classmates. I remember looking through Justice catalogs and noticing none of the girls had small eyes like mine. It has long been a part of Asian American culture to allow these slights to go unnoticed. To not bring attention to ourselves. To pass these situations off as normal. To stand in solidarity with other minority communities yet never feeling like we had a space of our own. 

It’s a sad truth to grow up and see that these are issues that are not discussed. It becomes difficult to find your voice when it feels like your whole life has been dedicated to suppressing it. The quiet struggles of the Asian American community have long gone unnoticed, but it doesn’t mean they were invisible. As the spotlight is finally shifting to our community, I hope with it sheds the realization that this is not a new phenomenon. I have grown up in a world where “white is might” and I have done everything in my power to blend into the background of society. Forfeiting my own heritage, mimicking my white counterparts, never feeling proud to be Asian. Believing with all my heart nobody would find me beautiful unless I was white. Feeling determined to disassociate with my Asian roots as a way to fit in. Learning to hide my discomfort in situations of appropriation and objectification that happen right in front of me. 

Seeing the recent rise in violence against Asian  Americans and Asian American women have left me feeling ashamed, hopeless, and terrified. I’ve struggled my whole life with shaping my identity around the white community I’ve grown up in, my white father, my white friends. Hearing and seeing the news has made me feel sick to my stomach with guilt for the ways I’ve silenced not only my own struggles, but the struggles of the Asian American community as a whole. I’ve been complicit in the narrative that these struggles don’t exist. I’ve been a bystander to the injustices me and my peers have faced throughout our lifetime. I’ve been too scared to come forward about my own truths out of fear of being targeted as different or being called invalid in my thoughts. I’ve misinterpreted appropriation as appreciation and allowed it to become acceptable. 

As I hope to see change come, I hope to find that change within myself as well. While I work through the process of my upbringing and the indoctrination of my self preserved biases, I urge my fellow Asian Americans to analyze their own experiences growing up. We’ve all likely been victim to racial slights more often than we’d care to admit and while we hope to see these numbers lower, we must start by acknowledging our own pain. Your frustration and discomfort and grief is valid. Your experiences are valid. Your voice is valid. You yourself are just as valid as the next person. I am still learning to love myself and I hope you are all learning to as well. It is a long processing of unlearning the things we are taught and it will be hard and awkward and confusing and painful. However, it is something we must do in order to craft a new narrative for it means to grow up as an Asian American, not as the silent minority, but as proud citizens of our country and our culture. 

By Lili Mckissen, 03/18/2021