last call for better days!

the email subject says. like better days are behind us. only bad or questionable days ahead! last call! closing up shop. play that bad song from the 90s, the one about the bar closing. you can’t stay here.

it’s october and while not much has changed that sort of says everything. my radar is broken. i’ve forgotten how to human. when you realize you might not be on the same page as the majority of people flying to various delayed vacations, hugging folks in the street and eating inside restaurants you start to come to the conclusion you might not have entered into this new agreement that everyone else has. once again, last to the party, standing outside on the front porch because you don’t think anyone has your best interests in mind.

I am several steps removed. I have to walk several blocks to the mailbox tomorrow and I’m terrified I won’t make it there and back. it’s mostly my right knee and my stiff hips. i’ve spent so much time lying supine. this i my new normal and i have fears that the old me is hovering around like a ghost judging me and calling me lazy. drugs have made life a little easier but zoloft hasn’t solved the ever present problem of anti-fatness. when laurie talks about putting skin in the game i wonder how much more skin i have left to shave off. most likely she’s not talking about me but all the leos in my chart tell me she is. for someone with so much leo in them i sure don’t like being the center of attention.

i have unresolved feelings about San Francisco that i’m still haunted by. six years later and i still haven’t forgiven the city but will go back and visit like an old ex i can never say no to. taking the 5 fulton to the closest edge of outer richmond at midnight to see someone who only loves me under certain conditions. who will spit me out the moment i am unpalatable. it’s familiar territory. the city doesn’t care that i have feelings about it.

portland doesn’t ask much of me. sometimes i don’t think it knows what to do with me and lately hasn’t had to worry about it because i’m not really leaving my house. it’s my preferred state of being really. who needs to leave the house when i’ve got 13 more Wheel of Time books to go through?

i pulled a tarot card today. the first in months. i think the first in 2021. listening to someone else read in class, i shuffled the deck, feeling called to do so because the deck had started to slump and slide to the right, like it was tired, like it was telling me something.

all signs point to this cosmic level-up. a mario mushroom. an extra life. i’m still unsure.

i have a tiny acorn jeff brought home to me from one of his dog walks several years ago. it hasn’t decayed or shown any signs of aging or decompose. when i’m anxious i hold it in my hand and try to remove it’s tiny hat. when the hat starts to move, like i might finally take it off, i put it back down. i don’t want to know what’s inside and i don’t want to destroy this thing that has helped ease some excess stuff inside of me.

wednesday and not everything is a poem

it’s wednesday. this is what i know

the trail mix is in a mason jar so i can see clearly there is not enough chocolate and too many seeds, the small kind that get caught in your teeth, the kind that come back throughout the day reminding you you’ve been eating bird food and you prefer something sweet. expensive honey in your tea. real butter.

it’s wednesday, and i know nothing but that seems to be ok for once because people who claim to know everything are making mistakes. my old naturopath is closing down her business because she refuses to get vaccinated. i had sat in her office 4 years ago in a gown too small it wouldn’t close, crying because i admitted to having an eating disorder. she told me her mother handmade the gowns from deadstock fabric. she told me she handpicked all the paint colors herself and did all the decor. She took my blood pressure twice without saying, “ I’m sorry. Let me help you. It’s ok.”

It’s wendesday and I haven’t had coffee in three days. I haven’t noticed. the one time I’m not purposefully trying to quit I just forget. It makes sense that my guts have been feeling better. That doesn’t mean I’ve bought into the healing power of tea, though the honey helps.

***

I forgot to tell you…I haven’t written in forever and it’s like…awful? This feeling of trying to pry the door open but what I really want to do is kick it down, karate chop my way through but I’m not a karate chop kind of person, too polite, like manners were beaten into me, like repeating scales at the piano, again, not fast enough, again, not in sync, again. an hour is three days and i’ve decided to stay in my pandemic cocoon. I turned my closet into a magic cave out of a wes anderson flick, all fairy lights and alibrijes, magical creatures from an artists fever dream. I’ve filled all the rooms with pillows and comfortable places to lie down. lying down is the new shiz. lying down is the new plank. i bought a hammock. i started anxiety meds. i spent three months rocking myself in the hammock after the shootings this spring, after nightmares of my parents being pushed in subway stations or sidewalks in broad daylight. i want to kick down the door but it’s cozy in here and i have more blankets than anyone should own and i keep knitting, knitting myself in, because this is the way I know.

it's a bad day to be in here

“Soy horrible.”

“No”, she said. “That’s not correct. “It’s estoy. Remember, it’s temporary.”

“But you don’t know that. What if it’s forever?”

minimizer

I remember watching Tricia do a cartwheel during recess in third grade.  I found a grassy spot and tried to do one and the results were not the same.

“You just do it like this!” She did another cartwheel. Hands up, arms straight, fling body to the side and throw legs over.  “Just watch me.  Just do it!”

I raised my hands over my head. I looked to my side and I tried to will my legs up and over but the moment my hands touched the ground my legs decided they did not want to cartwheel and I crumbled to the ground.  I remember sitting there for a moment to get my bearings, to see if anything hurt.

“That’s ok,” Tricia said, standing over me. “My mom’s fat too and she can’t do cartwheels either.”

Wait.  What.

This is my earliest memory of having a body.

It’s was surprisingly easy for me to stuff this memory away.It was also surprisingly easy to say “I’m not hungry anymore.” when I was definitely hungry but I didn’t want to finish a meal.I don’t know if I ever put two and two together.A set of rules I had not even been aware of entered my life and revealed themselves in these tiny actions.Don’t clean your plate.Don’t ask for seconds. Some foods were good and some were bad and if you wanted the bad stuff you have to eat that in the bathroom or at night when everyone is asleep, where no one can see you. If you can get away with it, don’t tuck your shirt in because then people can see the shape of your belly and how it poofs out.

And then one morning I woke up with boobs and every inch of my body was uncomfortable, like my skin wasn’t big enough, stretchy enough, to keep all of me in.My breasts were so big that I skipped training bras and went straight to minimizers.The word Minimizer in italics on the box.Clothes became items that told me to stuff it back in, all of you, you’re clearly too much.

**

Currently, as I am writing this I’m hungry.I need lunch but this need to keep going compels me to ignore everything.My body is tired of this argument.We have this argument every day.My brain thinks it knows what is best for me.My body begs to differ and has found it’s voice ever since I started to entertain the idea that my body is not a creature that can adhere to rules that go against her own survival. She will no longer be ignored.

“Remember what happened when you decided not to listen to me?” she says.

Two knee surgeries. Mountains of anxiety and unhappiness spawned by so much internal fatphobia, fear and self -loathing.It was never ending and I was sure this was the rest of my life.

She is right.I need to feed her.When I don’t, bad things happen and they spiral very quickly.

EDNOS 2017 - A Revisit

 Boil it all down to only the most important words, the most important parts.  Everything else is just fodder.  Everything else is just ego and explanation.  See, this is why I did it, this is what happened, it’s not my fault, really.  All of that becomes white noise.

What’s important is I am sitting here, existing in this body, this mass of blood and bone, the only thing holding everything inside, a thin layer of skin, and the heart, beating quietly in the background, each pulse telling me, “I am here, I am here, I have always been here.”

*

Stay in Your Lane

My sister and I used to sneak downstairs after we were supposed to be asleep in bed and go through the kitchen cabinets while our grandmother watched the television on full blast.  She would never hear us, the volume so loud. We’d go through the cabinets looking for snacks.  Cabinets full of large ziplock bags full of lipton tea bags and sanka and sugar packets.  This was back when our parents were consuming real sugar.  These days the ziplock bags are full of stolen fake sugar packets in a variety of colors. splenda yellow, pink sweet and low, green stevias, white truvia packets. Back in the 80s, real sugar was easy to find in our kitchen.  No one was diabetic just yet, just our grandfather.  We had lots of diet coke on hand for him while we drank full sugar whatevers we could find.

We had tins of international coffees and my sister and I would sneak spoonfuls of the sugary powdered Café Frances or Café Italia and try to find ways to boil water without grandma noticing.

Sometimes the international coffee tins were on a higher shelf and we’d settle for spoonfuls of ovaltine.

There were usually nilla wafers around but for some reason we stuck with the powdered drink mixes. They worked quickly.  We were wired and silently vibrating with energy long into the night.

We’d run back upstairs to our room and our two twin canopy beds and kick the canopies off the top and giggle and talk about our favorite television shows.

Giligan’s Island.

She was Ginger.  I was Mary Ann. I was always more drawn to Mary Ann. I thought she had the same kind of sweet quiet innocence as Olivia Newton John in the beginning of Grease.  Sandra Dee.  A proper girl.  Ginger was dangerous and I couldn’t imagine lounging around a deserted island in a sequined ball gown.

In my minds eye Mary Ann had a crush on Gilligan.  He was the right type for her to be with.  They were in the same lane.  Ginger would have an affair with The Millionaire and his wife Lovey would never know.  The Professor would want Ginger from afar.  He’d never do anything about it and wallow in his wanting and despair.

The Skipper was fat and so he was alone.  No one would be romantically interested in him.

Because that’s what the show inferred.  Fat people were jolly and good natured and alone.

I wasn’t aware of my own body and it’s fatness just yet.  I think it’s because I wasn’t fat.  I wasn’t a woman. I was a kid.  I was all scrawny arms and legs and flatness. 

Nothing prepared me for becoming a teenager.  I had no idea that my body would expand and change.  Catholic School health class didn’t tell you about underarm hair.

Everyone had jobs and everyone was busy.  No one had the time to explain to us any of this.  School will take care of this right?  That’s what it’s for, right? We’re paying them for it so…

No one told me we were Filipino in the same way no one told me women shave their legs and armpits and grow hair between their legs.

No one told me.

*

James was busy mansplaining to me what a granita was while I shoved crème brulee into my mouth. 

It’s basically a fucking slurpee. I know dude. You’re talking to a professional here.

I hated him.  Sort of.

I had no idea why we were dating. 

I was so unhappy.  I had talked myself into staying in our relationship-non-relationship thinking it was better than nothing.  This was incorrect thinking.  Nothing would have been more liberating than this.

He had insisted I order two desserts.  One was a granita that sounded interesting, strawberry and basil and balsamic.  I thought we were sharing so I said ok but he had both desserts placed in front of me.  I had thought he would have started on at least one of them but he didn’t. I picked up a spoon and went for the creamy custard.  The slushy wouldn’t wait but I didn’t want it and apparently neither did he. 

He wanted me to eat both.

I should have known right then and there what the second most problematic thing about our relationship was but I chose to ignore it.

I liked eating but I loathed being fat.

He liked me eating and he loved me being fat.

This is not how it was supposed to work.  I was the Skipper.  I was supposed to be jolly and alone.

post past-closet explosion clean out

“eew. i don’t even want to say the word.”

my therapist waited patiently as i probably made faces and struggled to make the word come out of my mouth.

“it’s just…unnnngh. these clothes i found, the ones that i’ve held on to for so long, they made me feel…precious.”

"precious?”

“precious. i know. i KNOW! i know. gross.”

“why is it gross?”

“because that’s not me! it’s never been me! and i wanted it to be me SO BAD.”

at this point i had no idea what my face was doing but I let it contort and go through the motions as i felt my throat tighten and let the waterworks and snot machine kick into high gear.

“these clothes made me fee so precious, so, so…small.”

”ahhh,” she said. “i see.”

“i mean it just feels very asian,” i continued. “this kind of asian i never was.”

“was this in san francisco?”

“yeah. and i was never ‘asian enough’ for san francisco. or filipino enough for daly city. or the ‘right’ kind of asian.”

“right for who?”
”i don’t know. people who really wanted me to either be mainland asian or mexican.”

“oh, so you mean ignorant people.”

“you could call them that, yes.”

“go back to where you came from.”

it’s not like any of this is new. it’s not like this hasn’t been said many times by many people to others who were actually born and raised here and honestly, it doesn’t matter if you were or not.

i have had to earn my right to exist for my entire life and i am fucking tired.

this has led to continuous burnout in various jobs, an eating disorder and the constant persistent fear that I am not ever doing enough.

that if i am not bleeding out every day of my life i haven’t earned my right be here. to exist. i can never just BE as i am. i must always be performing and improving and sweating to prove that i have worth. that i am good. that i can stay.

this, coupled with the myth of “bootstrapping” has led to chasing a forever moving finish line. that acceptance and love and safety are right there for the having if only i try hard enough.

and i was never trying hard enough.

because i couldn’t maintain an impossible schedule.

because i couldn’t maintain an impossible weight.

because i couldn’t perform at 110% 24 hours a day.

i took personal responsibility for failing to live up to an impossible standard.

i would never be thin enough, successful enough or white enough.

in my teens and well into my adulthood i always believed the idealized, perfect version of me was thin and white. and this is 100% soul crushing to admit this, to say it. it makes it all so real. this is not a mistake.

this is the end result of consuming so much media in the 80s that shaped these thoughts. to not see yourself reflected in the media and art creates this dysmorphia.

my entire life i have believed that acceptance, love and safety had to be earned and was never guaranteed.

even as a little kid.

i remember having a complete meltdown on the way home from school after seeing i got a C in a math class. it was unacceptable. that meant i was unacceptable.

love and acceptance and safety were things that could be taken away from me.

for a C.

in one math class.

living with this kind of heightened fear and anxiety day in and day out you get used to it. you start to believe it’s normal. you accept that life is meant to be this fraught.

this was always constantly running through me in the background of my everyday life.

so when I read yet another article or see another video of a white person telling someone to “go back to where you came from” i run through all these feelings and thoughts 100x over.
we cannot ever “perform” enough to earn our right to be here according to these people.

and while i think i’m generally an amicable person, everyday i have the thought:

”humans are simply burning piles of hot garbage.”

i don’t want to believe this but there’s just so much proof out there right now as people are emboldened to be hateful, to be self-centered, to be racist awful skinbags of literal trash.

and i don’t want to be nice anymore.

like, who the fuck hurt you?

but don’t answer that. i don’t care. i just want you to be less of a dick.

every spanish class the questions “what did you do this weekend” or “what are you going to do this upcoming weekend?” are asked.

i don’t have the vocabulary to say, “processing trauma. you know. the usual.”

so I just say

“nada”

somedays

somedays it’s all a struggle.

food stops being pleasurable and it’s an all out chore so i make a smoothie with everything.

the color of brown slop, it might as well be dirt, just so i can slide it into my gullet to make sure i don’t die or pass out while i’m busy trying to figure out what i want to be when i grow up.

somedays, nothing that comes out of me is clever, funny or interesting, like i open my mouth and reality television comes out, like i open my mouth and daytime talk shows appear so i close it and i crawl back into bed and tell myself i can come out once this malaise is over.

somedays i have conversations with my plants when i water them and compliment them on their new leaves, like they’ve put on fancy new outfits for the day.

i practice spanish with my dogs. they’re chihuahua mutts, they must understand on some ancestral level.

somedays i step outside right when my neighbor walks by with their dog and their yorkie runs up to me to say “hi! hi! hi!” panting and excited and it feels good to be completely loved by a stranger.

application for a release from the dream is a poem by tony hoagland

i signed a petition to advocate for the the use of psilocybin in the treatment of PTSD. It arrived in the mail with a 19 page booklet outlining the program in the tiniest of fonts with no margins, to save as much space and money as possible to mail it. Attempting to read it is like drugs, is like deciphering a new language. it’s like realizing we needed to break up after doing mushrooms on a random thursday after work, just because. just because you scored them from a co-worker and it didn’t matter that it was thursday at 5:30PM and the sun was still out and the buses were full of people on their way home from work. just because you spent all day on my couch watching television and used my only towel and left it on the floor of my room wet and useless. we crushed them in the blender with orange juice, your suggestion, like a mushroom smoothie was a good idea, like our relationship was a good idea, born out of a handful of nights drunk at the Hemlock and the Page, like “Hey, you might be fun.” but you were really just ok. like the kind of person who does psychedelics to sit on the couch in front of the television when all i want to do is go outside but I don’t remember what shoes are. “outside is where the oxygen lives!” i told you. “outside is where life lives!” but you looked around me to watch a progressive insurance commercial like it was the most fascinating thing in the world.

Day 61 Proof of Life

When I eventually go and someone inevitably goes through my phone & opens the Notes app:

May 12, 2020

The Genetic Memory of Migrating Monarchs to Mexico

Started watching a Stephen Fry doc about traveling through Mexico and Latin America and I walked away with making up this tongue twister and wondering if I’ll ever go to Mexico again so my brain can freeze and forget all this Spanish I’m paying someone to teach me.

May 10, 2020

Once this season of Survivor is over I won’t know what day Wednesday is anymore.

May 1, 2020

Note to Self: I am a 42 year old woman. Do not under any circumstances let me buy a Nintendo Switch so I can play Animal Crossing.
Note to Self Actualized Self: There’s nothing wrong with it, buy it and play games with your friends. It’s ok.

April 20,2020

Despite the pandemic, my blood pressure has dropped by 15 whatever unit of measurement I cant’t be bothered to look up or know. 15 whole whatevers! It’s because I left my job. It’s because of cereal and half a 1:1 gummy for dinner. It’s because I stopped wearing a bra. It’s because time is now a nebulous blob. It’s because I’m now a nebulous blob. It’s because I think my double chin is cute. It’s because I do whatever the fuck I want now. Except go outside.

April 15, 2020

The plant store had a re-stock that went live online at 10AM. At 10:20AM they were sold out of everything but those little succulents that look like brains. The plant store sold out of plants. The plant store sold out of plants in 20 minute and people started to complain online.

Plants are the new toilet paper.

April 11, 2020

“Do I actually look like this?” I said out loud on our video call.

“Like what?” J. asked, completely amused.
”Like…thiiiiiiis,” I gesticulated wildly with my right hand over and around my face.
”Yes,” he answered. “For most of your adult life actually.”
”You are all horrible people,” I said and we laughed, not quite sure if we found any of it funny at all, but it felt good to laugh.

April 10, 2020

Good Friday.
I want to Postmates easter candy or slurpees from 7-11 to my door but I don’t want to be “that person” whoever “that” person is. Like I don’t have enough redeeming qualities to forgive myself for being “that” person.

I guess I have to keep going to therapy.

April 1, 2020

April Fools is cancelled this year. Don’t be an assface.

March 28, 2020
E. left the video call without saying anything to anyone and we all assumed someone said something to make him mad.

He came back 15 minutes later. He just needed to buy cigarettes.

Is that the new Irish Goodbye?

March 25, 2020

It’s Jeff’s birthday. I made a construction paper banner. It keeps falling off the wall because I only have this weak-ass reusable good-for-the-environment compostable scotch tape and only he knows where the good stuff is hidden, the stuff that smells like chemicals and sweat and our dad’s toolboxes. But I want to surprise him. Like he can’t smell the chocolate cake in the oven. Or hear me curse over and over as the banner falls. Like I hadn’t asked him the night before if we had any construction paper. Like you can even surprise someone you’re quarantined with.

the good news - day 34 in quarantine

the good news is that you’re alive

and you’re resourceful enough to find flour from a commercial resource, a boatload of it coming your way, enough so you can feed all your neighbors starters, the ones that will surely die when they go back to work and you’re still at home, figuring out what you want to be when you grow up.

that there’s time and most days you’re lucid because there are no emails and no deadlines or unhappy stern white guys shaking their pointer finger at you in disappointment.

that you are lucky, born with a mole on your right hand, between your thumb and your forefinger. so lucky, your relatives cooed and asked you to rub their necks with this hand when they swallowed tiny fish bones. lucky as a rabbits foot, red envelopes and shooting stars.

that you know you are temporary.

and it’s only frightening 1% of the time.

that there are more books than time, that you will never run out, that you make a mean baked ziti for an asian, that beds exist and naps are plentiful and mostly people are friendly, stepping aside and smiling with their whole face as you pass. smiling so big and so hard, to make sure you can see, even with a mask on.

day 20 of quarantine

here’s what i want you to know.

i want to be frivolous. i want the $100 face cream that won’t stop time. i want a closet full of linen and wool, a capsule wardrobe befitting of a gwenyth paltrow or one of those other rich white women. i want to live in that tax bracket that knows what adaptogens are, drinks $8 mushroom teas for wellness with private yoga teachers. i want their carefully planned out days in quarantine, each hour mapped out for them to be the most productive and mindful version of themselves. i want whatever version of life that has enough money, enough food, enough of everything good and green and whole and beautiful.

here’s what i want you to know.

i want to know if there will ever be enough for our lot and when will it happen and who will i know that will be our first casualty and when can i leave my house?

ghost

it’s wednesday and today i feel like a ghost. that nothing i touch is really moving though i’ve managed to feed the dogs and drink some water. it doesn’t feel like me, this hand is not my hand lifting the glass to my face, not my mouth swishing around mouthwash, not these feet standing on cold tile.

it is not my parents calling at 4AM and i stare at the buzzing phone and decide not to answer. i spoke to them yesterday. i called the landline and when they didn’t pick up i facetimed because i know one of them would be playing slot machine games on the ipad. i didn’t answer because they can’t remember the actual numbers of my phone number anymore and they’re calling it because they don’t know who called their landline and they don’t remember time zones and how they work, even if they knew where 415 is, even if they knew it was me.

but i’m not me today. this isn’t my sore body that lifted weights and did some aerobic moves dug up from the bottom of the brain of a chubby 12 year old doing vhs tape jane fonda exercises with middle aged aunts in the living room. not me who remembered some yoga, who cursed the fact that there are no window treatments in the house, not me who has been living with a clear view to the outside world, forgetting that everyone can also see clearly in.

chopped

i can’t stop scrolling.
i have the list of how to do it. i know the only way is to choose to stop. sit in the closet. hide the phone. give the laptop to my husband. don’t let me have it if i ask for it. sit with my own thoughts and not the billions of thoughts of other people. they can’t tell you what you need.

put your phone in the toilet. make the decision to read a book. that one that’s like if harry potter was a nigerian girl in africa. you read it already but it was really good and it made you forget it was 2am as you turned page after page after page. center down. play chopped in your kitchen. make mystery baskets of random food and set a timer. you have 30 minutes to make a meal of 2 different kinds of beans, parmesan rinds, spring roll wrappers and a banana. your husband tells you you watch too much reality competition tv. you tell him better a cooking show than american ninja warrior and ask him if he’d like to judge your meal. he eyes the banana on the counter and says no.

i have faith in what hands do

he wasn’t drunk but he was slurring a little and he fell asleep fast, like a thunk and a snore, but he held my hand, as we usually do when he puts me to bed, arms woven through the tangle of sheets and dogs that we should have never let onto the bed, through unbrushed i-had-three-beers-and-i-cannot teeth, through unruly hair i kept swatting away from my face with my free hand. at least for the next 15 minutes or however long before one of us loses blood circulation, i have this hand in mine.

i have faith in what hands do. that 3 beers doesn’t make him forget. that we have muscle memory to do the things we always do.

my friend b. meet dolly parton once and all he could comment on where were her hands. "it’s one of the only parts of the body you really can’t get good plastic surgery on,” he said. “she even joked about it, her ancient paws, the rest of her pulled tight, porcelain white, but her hands, her hands…”

they’re insured, i’m sure. i wonder the cost to insure the only things i trust to be there for me, 3 beers or not, large knuckles and tiny wiry hairs, they’re not the prettiest things but their fingers fit through mine and put me to bed every night and it’s a wonder that anything can be so tender.

the camera had it

i sent sadia a text with a photo of a photo from an old album I found at home, at my parent’s house.

Look at this.

I look like I’m 40.

the picture was from my 16th birthday party. my plastic frame glasses were too large for my face, large and round and that kind of pink that was popular in the 80s. i wore a long white denim skirt that hit almost at the ankle and an ill fitting white button down shirt 3 sizes too big because i hated my body.

oh but my hair. my glorious hair. it was permed and floated around my had like a frizzy cloud with no clear boundaries, like black mist. with the signature bangs that had 2 layers, the one that curled up to give you height and the flat layer underneath, perfect to cover the zits on your forehead.

and white point flats. flatter than flat flat flats, because i had surprisingly large flat feet for a teenager.

i was never dainty and my mother had given up on trying to find me clothes in my age group so sears women’s wear became my friend.

it’s a miracle really that i went to a catholic school and had to wear a uniform. i wouldn’t have survived high school without it.

things i might be afraid to write about

that i’m scared that i’m selfish. that whatever good things i have in my life i didn’t earn. that i’ve worked hard but was only mediocre in a carer that ate up half my living years. that i care too much about the lives of make believe people and this is what happens when you grow up with too much reality tv masquerading as real life.

that i will never be cool enough.

that i care.

that i’m actually frightened of some of my friends. and that makes me a bad judge of character.

that the more i read about hand washing with soap for 20 seconds, avoiding public transportation and how to make your own purell the more i want to ride all the buses and hug all the people and rub my eyes and touch my face. that i’ve all but memorized my script about why i’m unemployed that includes a lot of possibly false information about going back to school, about becoming a doctor of pt, about becoming an acceptable version of success because it’s not ok to find success in fully realized rest or free time or day dreams or boredom. that you are only celebrated if you can work 80 hours a week while volunteering at a shelter, while holding down a daily meditation practice, while raising kids and recovering from trauma with a full schedule. that i will always think the impossible is real and if i’m not going for it, then i’m lazy. and the worst thing you can be today is fat and lazy. godforbid you be both.

let this be the year

let this be the year of learning to actively adjust the seat instead of sitting in it in whatever position i find it in, contorting my body to face the table.

“you can move the chair you know.”
being stubborn gave me a bum hip and a stiff neck so i adjust the chair now.

let this be the year i have my best interests in mind. i’ll say no to chocolate that’s over 75% because I like sweetness in my life. i’ll give up austerity and suffering for all the wrong reasons.

let this be the year i take the last serving of mac and cheese without asking anyone.

let it be the year i stop bumping into doorways and tables and errant unexpected chair legs and apologizing to inanimate objects.

at least i’m trying.

the bathroom door has a handle like a dull blade and i still said “Sorry!” as it stabbed me.

let this be the time i stop rifling through my backpack because I’m bored or pick up my phone because it’s 5 minutes into a conversation about tech or world politics or how to clean bathtub grout.

i can learn a thing or two.

or i can leave the table and look at my phone on the toilet like a polite person.

anything can happen

anything can happen

i can be swallowed whole by the sea

i can be the wave that does us all in

the fish that nibbles on your flesh.

anything can happen

you will forget me and i’ll be under the boat

watching you grieve and then try to decide which is the least touristy taco joint for dinner

“they’re all touristy!” i gargle underwater. “you can’t escape white capitalism!”
i’ll learn spanish now that i live here.

the barracuda that inhabit the waters will expect me to.

i’ll hunt for coral. i hear it’s pretty.

i’ll bemoan the loss of my legs as they eventually form a fish tail.

i’ll vaguely remember that 80s movie with tom hanks and the mermaid.

anything can happen

maybe my husband will remarry.

maybe he’ll grow old and gristly with weathered leathery hands gripping the wheel of an old boat he named after me, looking for me

maybe fish people don’t age. especially asian fish people.

maybe i’ll come to him in a dream and tell him to let me go

because anything can happen.

i don’t like to talk about it but maybe I do. maybe i do too much. i’m a watery cancer, born in the warm sun of july, us watery crabs like to talk about it and cry about it and cry when you talk about it and we want to wrap our awkward crab like claws around you and tell you ‘you’ll be ok’ and that ‘you are beautiful’ and ‘you are resilient’ and even if we just met, waiting for the same bus, this 5 minutes together has meant so much to me, i’ll never forget it.

i drown in my astrology. i read about the moon. i pull a tarot card. if i don’t like it i pull another. i hear a voice tell me, ‘that’s cheating.’ it can’t be cheating, you don’t know my game and i keep pulling and pulling because my favorites are the hermit and death.

i bring my cards home when i go see my parents in new jersey. my mom has given up and in not so many words, thinks i am a heathen. like pulling cards is so different than saying 10 hail mary’s or praying the rosary, looking for forgiveness or love or a promise.

she’s on her way home to the philippines. back to the mother land. they go every year, like a pilgrimage, like this is where they go to refill their batteries, to draw from the well of familiar, to remember where they are from. they don’t understand why i don’t do the same. it’s like they forget. me. i am from new jersey.