Avatar

Angel took the kids out for a mini vacation so I finally had time to see a late night movie with a nonstop massage chair. I finally got to see the new Avatar movie—it was so awesome, so worth it. The story line is still very complex and deep, touching on issues about race, differences, family and love, nature vs nurture, depression, shame, trauma etc. It’s got too many things I need to think about and I’ll probably watch the first Avatar again. It’s a real good movie that I haven’t seen for a while.

Then after I got back home after midnight, I saw an email from Angel’s dad. Here goes it:

Dear Kendra, thank you for responding to my email.  I am grateful for your explaining how you see yourself and your concerns, and I appreciate the thought and care that went into your saying it.  I would not presume to doubt any of what you say about your own feelings or the sincerity of your perspectives on things.   I am sorry to learn that I am a "trigger" for you.  To my way of thinking, you have deep strengths and talents, and you have been given many gifts.  If you want to, you can use them to make yourself the person you would like to be.  But it will not be fruitful to consume your energies constructing fantasy grievances about debts you think that others owe you and have not delivered on.  About myself, my own experiences, and how I regard my family, including yourself -- your note is full of assumptions and projections, but you have no understanding.   Perhaps someday things will be different.  I don't expect that it would be helpful to address these things further in the circumstances where we find ourselves now.   C

****

The “fantasy grievances” and his overall tone triggered me again so I replied:

Wow. You apologized for being a trigger to me and then you called my real pain “fantasy grievances” and relational responsibility “debts I imagined”. You are dismissing my reality and telling me I should transcend my suffering alone with my gifts. This is actually very classic American isolationism and exceptionalism, which explains why no single country in this world likes USA. Only fear, no real love.

I feel sad this is how you relate to others, for decades. It also makes me see that you probably don’t understand Owen as much as his therapist, which makes me feel sad for Angel too. To this day, at age almost 50, Angel is still afraid of you. You’re right; let’s stay silent after this. Any defense or moralization or intellectualization you have will probably, no, definitely, trigger me more.

***

Then I added one more thing in a second email:

And you’re right that I have no understanding of your own experiences and your views, because you’d only talk about random facts about your birth family in the ten years I’ve known you and only events that barely had emotions. Over the years I’ve learned to see you and your wife blended as one because when she takes over you’d become silent, so to me, her view is your view. I should have separated the Ls and the Ss. I have wondered over the years if your upbringing could be somewhat related to my experiences, but then, you have chosen not to share those things with me.

If you’re a trauma survivor like myself, then I’m sorry that you haven’t got help and that you had to grow old in that kind of system.

***

Now it’s past 3am and this em exchange has overstimulated me so I’m not sleeping yet. Totally not worth it. But why can’t I just be like others and just drop the thread like that? Why am I destined be a teacher explaining things nonstop?

Ending 2025

I ended 2025 by having a quiet intensive physical exam, and my period just started yesterday and I was bleeding a lot. I’ve been suffering from iron deficiency anemia since I gave birth to Little N because the c-sections had structurally changed my uterus and now I bleed too much every time when I menstruate. I thought I’d pass out after they drew almost 50ml of blood from me. I also had to run while they took my ECG and that was always the most challenging part. Basically each physical exam is just really tiring, plus I could barely sleep last night because I had to get up to change my tampons every two hours. The massive blood and anemia really make me want to reach menopause ASAP.

While I was waiting for my exams, I got an email from Angel’s dad:

Sorry

Dear Kendra, Angel told me yesterday morning that you have said I am not longer welcome at the apartment when you are there. If this is because I teased you Monday evening, I am sorry for it. 

I replied: 

Hi Angel’s dad,

I am not sure how Angel delivered the message to you because most of the time he has trouble processing what I tell him and relaying the ideas to others, but it is not simply about the teasing. It is about my 10 years of invisibility in the L family. 

It’s no one’s problem really; it’s merely a matter of capacity. No one in the L family knows what it feels like to live with abandonment, abuse, survival upon birth; no one in the L family knows what it’s like to be financially independent (with zero dollars in the bank account) since 18 (except for you) and to work as a blue-collar worker. 

However, the major difference between your path and mine is that you’re a male WASP born and raised in the US, whereas I was born illegitimately, Asian non-English speaking and female, outside of the US and tried to make my American dream work with my bare hands and failed. To the L family, I am low-class, because when I argue I get loud; when I am aggressed on the streets, I curse. That’s what you do on the streets, when you’re trying to survive as a blue-collar worker, and that’s how I had lived before working for my current job since 18.

I’ve spent my whole life trying to find a new family of my own, and I projected too much hope into the L family because you called me your daughter, because you told me you loved me. Finally, after so much time and money on so many sessions of therapy, reading and writing, I’ve learned my hard lesson that the way I define “family” and “love” is at a totally different depth. For example, it’s obvious that if your daughter or granddaughter were placed in my circumstances upon birth, you would have a totally different reaction to whatever was happening to them from your reaction to my circumstances. I believe you wouldn’t simply say, “Daughter, I’m sorry your life is so difficult.” Over the past ten years, I have exhausted myself by explaining myself constantly to Angel and the Ls, with both my words and actions, only to learn that no one has the capacity to see me and hold me, and that capacity’s limit can rarely be changed in one person. 

By writing this long email, I am still engaging in the labor of over-explaining myself, and maybe that’s because I still have a slight hope to be understood just a bit more. I don’t know why I still do this because no one has asked me any question to try to understand me more. Maybe it’s a process before I can finally just interact politely, superficially, emotionlessly by simply saying, “how are you,” “did you have a nice meal/walk/sleep/massage”.

As for our home, it should be a place where I feel safe with my kids. Even my father is not legally allowed to come near to my home, and I only have two people in my family now—Nolan and Owen. Whoever comes into our home should be someone who understands and protects us, not someone who triggers me. Honestly if it weren’t for logistical reasons I would not want my own mother in my house either. 

So, you are free to go into the house to hang out with the kids when I’m not there. If you need more time you can take the kids out. When can we both be present in the house? I guess when I finally achieve being emotionless when I see the Ls, however more inner work I’ll need to make this happen. 

Oh one more thing I need to clarify is that Angel said my emotions come before others because I have so much trauma, and that’s absolutely not true. I believe that in any connection, two people are free to express whatever emotions they have and they also have the freedom to walk away if they don’t like the emotional reciprocity anymore. There shouldn’t be any hierarchy in people’s emotions. If we vibe, we freely choose to stay and if we don’t vibe, we freely choose to leave.

*** 

I sent that email while I was having lunch at the hospital, with a view of the mountains in the rain. I felt moved and cried when I saw the mountains in the rain, because that’s actually my favorite image. I love the rain, and the clouds surrounding the mountains are the best view. I tried to take a nap after I finished my lunch and was waiting for the doctors to explain my numbers. Somehow, and I really don’t know why, I called out Ivan’s name while looking out the window. I kept trying to figure out why I did that. Maybe that dream of me stayed with me, because it was a very soothing feeling, and that smile made me feel very safe. Maybe it’s because he was the one who got me hooked to How I Met Your Mother, which has hugely impacted my view of love, and to this day I still think back to some of the stories in HIMYM. 

Every year I wish there could be a surprise on NYE, but there has never been one. Maybe the fact that Ivan broke up with me a few days before the NYE of 2010 traumatized me too much and left an imprint in my body that only a surprise/miracle could reverse that pain. No. It’s never happened, and no matter how much I wish for one, the most the universe would give me is some fireworks in my neighborhood in the mountains. I wake up in the morning and everything is just the same as every other day—the same feeling of hyper independence, hyper vigilance, aloneness, and not being understood. 

After my physical I met up with Tony to catch up. He works at that hospital so every time when my kids or myself go there I’d give him a holler. We’ve known each other since 15 and he’s just turned 40. Never married and never had kids. It’s an ineffable feeling to see how our lives have evolved for 25 years.

Happy New Year Kendra. I hope the divorce settlement can be signed soon. I hope to be free again. I hope to be able to find my chosen family and find love again in 2026.

No need

Yesterday Angel’s parents wanted to pick up Little N from his school and I offered them a ride. While I was almost at his school, a food delivery scooter surpassed me very fast in a very narrow space and I had to brake before I’d hit him. Then I said to myself “if he wants to die he can die by himself.” I absolutely hate it when people are driving aggressively on the streets because it simply means they’re not afraid of dying and yet if they do get killed even if it’s their wrongdoing, whoever kills the still has to compensate. 

Then Angel’s mom and his dad exchanged a look. I knew they were judging me. After my IEP meeting with Little N’s teachers, I got home and said to Angel: what trigger me most are men who represent criminality, violence, impose authority over me, and provoke me on the streets. Then his dad said to me, “Kendra I’m sorry your life is so difficult.” I asked him, “are you being sarcastic?” He said yes. Then I asked to talk to Angel privately. 

He fucking triggered me because he, an elite privileged WASP is telling me sarcastically that my life is difficult. I asked Angel, “has anyone in the L family kneeled down in front of the whole family at age 5, slapped on their face twice, face swollen immediately but they couldn’t drop a tear because they wanted to spare their mother’s guilt and sadness?” “Was anyone in the L family born abandoned and near death?” “And he’s asking me sarcastically that my life is so difficult?” 

No one in the L family understands how difficult my life is; even if they know the stories, they cannot imagine or fathom my pain because all of them were born so privileged and sheltered. They were never left in a situation where they had to survive without any safety net. I tried for ten years for them to understand me because I hoped to find a new family of my own so badly and failed. They have always looked down on me for my circumstances and have never admired me for what I have had to endure and survive. My therapists have finally helped me see through their condescension—they told me people should be impressed by my resilience and strengths, but it turns out all these elites look down on me. I don’t want them to be near me anymore.

I talked to Angel for almost two hours last night trying to help him verbalize where I was coming from because he wants all of us to get along so that they can continue to see the kids, but deep down I’ve given up because that’s just who they are. I told him from now on I only want people who understand and protect me under my roof. Anyone who doesn’t understand or appreciate me should leave me alone. I also told him that I am building my own community of people so that I am surrounded by people who understand me and can support me.

Angel tried to talk about all the things we went through last night with his parents. His parents only say, “we’re sorry that Kendra has such a tough life,” without sarcasm this time. It was 100% predictable to me but a part of me was longing all day long that maybe they could say something that would surprise me, such as “ooh poor Kendra, what she went through was inhumane and she deserves to have a new family that embraces her”. Nada, of course nothing like that. They said, “but the abuse that happened to her was such a long time ago,” and then Angel tried to explain how trauma works, and I just felt absolutely numb and hopeless about all of the L family when Angel relayed the conversation to me.

I felt so hurt and unprotected last night before I went to bed, and I had an interesting dream. I saw Ivan in a pretty big house, surrounded by lots of greenery and landscapes. I don’t remember talking to him but it was rather quiet. He was smiling at me and I noticed that there were a few snacks in his house that were imported from the City of Rain.

I’ve been thinking about which part of me longs for Ivan’s presence. It was a part of me that once felt safe when being with him, because he was the only competent man I had been with. When my life was hard, he gave me surprises and kept trying to cheer me up. Most other men I had dated were much less competent than me, especially Angel. I married him because I knew if I kept being useful to him, he’d never leave me. 

It’s already the last day of the year. I am going to end 2025 with a physical exam while having my period. There’s really no need to try so hard anymore to explain myself and make myself understood. Whoever vibes with me can know me very easily.

Pre-verbal memory

Recently I’ve been working on Janina Fisher’s Healing the Fragmented Selves for Trauma Survivors, and I have been connecting the dots of my life upon birth.

My mom’s water broke, and she went to a catholic hospital that would not give a c-section unless absolutely necessary. 3 days later she had an emergency c-section because I was ingesting meconium already. When I was taken out, the doctor asked her if she wanted to hold me, and she asked the doctor: is it a boy or a girl? The doctor told her I was a girl and she refused to see or hold me. I was then taken to the incubator for treatment because I had severe jaundice as a result of meconium. She couldn’t walk for 3 days and finally she came to see me.

Obviously as an infant I would not remember or understand what happened, but she has repeatedly told me about my birth throughout my life. And now as a mother myself, I think she was fucked up, inhumane. When Little N was born, he also had too much amniotic water in his lungs and couldn’t breathe properly on his own, so immediately after I held him he was taken to an incubator, which was on a different floor from my ward. I couldn’t walk for 24 hours after my c-section, but despite the extreme pain that even fentanyl couldn’t subdue, I willed my body to walk to him on a different floor while carrying my urine bag (because I was still on a catheter) and I was entirely alone at the hospital. I wanted to hold him so badly every moment but because of his medical treatment and this was during COVID, I could only see him twice a day. I had cried my eyes out every day and yes my post-partum depression was over the roof. On the third day he was transferred to a medical center because of his heart condition and I rode in the ambulance with him. At the medical center I could only visit him twice a day, 30 minutes each time, and my post-c-section body really couldn’t afford to commute twice a day to see him every day, although I tried in the first week, and I even drove on my own to see him on the fourth day after my c-section. I had so many tears every day when he was not next to me, and I cannot forgive my mother for doing whatever she did to me, and to actually tell me about it casually so many times throughout my life. Whatever her traumas are, her beliefs, they should not take over a mother’s instincts to protect her baby. If anyone cannot do that, they’re lesser than an animal.

Anyway, ChatGPT thinks this is a major course of abandonment that still lives in my somatic memory, and on top of this, I have been abandoned repeatedly by my mom before the age 6, e.g. leaving my suitcase on the front porch of my grandma’s house after I went to the beach with my uncle’s family and I ended up living with my neglectful and abusive grandparents for six months. Her not protecting me when my dad abused me caused me unable to tell her how my teacher at my kindergarten slapped my face at age 5 because of a misunderstanding that I couldn’t express well due to my speech impairment. I also never told her how our babysitter would beat us because I was afraid that my parents would beat us again. All of these events connect—they have made me afraid to be vulnerable or incompetent upon birth and they have made me unable to ask for help or support, and whoever offers me support can quickly become someone I attach to. I want to break these chains and start to make choices for my life, rather than let my trauma make choices for me (whenever I heard this in the book my tears immediately rolled down my face). 

Can I really achieve it? If I could go back in time, I’d protect and cherish my infant self like what I do to my two kids. I would never use her to win a game because I was born a love child  and my mom lost her game by not having a boy. I want to give her so many hugs and kisses and cuddles whenever she cries and she can just be herself; whatever she wants to be it’s ok, just like how I have been raising my kids. I’d give her so much protection and take her away from anyone who is abusive or traumatizing. She’s so smart and thoughtful because she learned how to survive on her own upon birth, and she minimized her own pain to spare her mother’s pain. This child deserves all the love in this world, just like how I feel with my children. Whenever my kids start to work on what they’re supposed to work on when they see me upset, I’d feel so much love and sweetness, and yet none of them could do what I did at age five: telling my mom that my swollen face from being slapped didn’t hurt to make sure she didn’t feel so guilty; telling my mom that I didn’t miss her when she left me at my grandparents’ house to make sure she didn’t feel guilty while pushing down my own tears.

I would never let my kids suffer anything remotely close to this. I want them to be fully who they are and never need them to spare my feelings. I did not deserve the traumatic childhood and adolescence, and can I really be healed one day?  

Christmas 2025

 I just had a 3-day trip to the East Coast with the kids. We went to a lot of places, but we were free. I mean, sure when we dined and visited public spaces I’d still have to keep them in line and intervene repeatedly every two minutes, but at least most places we went to were almost empty except for at our hotel restaurant. We came back last night and I’d have to set up for Christmas—the kids had been waiting for a year for Santa’s arrival, and I want them to keep believing in Santa until they’re too old and rational to do so.

Angel and his parents also returned to the City of Rain from Tokyo, late afternoon. By the time the brought the gifts that I had ordered on Amazon, it was already the evening. The kids were too excited and went to bed at almost 10pm. I’d have to wrap all those presents after they had gone to bed. I finished wrapping until after midnight, and then I felt upset. I went to Angel’s room to return the suitcase to him and I asked him why they didn’t wrap the presents in Tokyo. The answers were simple: 1. It’s always been my job and he wouldn’t do a good job and 2. They (which means he and his parents) didn’t think that bringing the presents late on Christmas Eve meant I’d have to sacrifice my sleep to wrap them up.

This triggers the same wound in me again and again. Of course they didn’t think all the work was on me and of course they didn’t think whatever they did or didn’t do would mean me sacrificing my sleep. All their small minds can think of is: we do what we were told, which is to transport the gifts to the City of Rain and the rest of the work is Kendra’s, none of their business.

Whenever their actions show this kind of thought, it enrages me, because it simply meant that my feelings, my wellness, my time my energy my emotions never matter to them, even if they say so with their mouths but their actions indicate none. I asked Angel if he’d give an assignment due at 6am next day to his students at 9pm tonight, and he said no, so I asked him why he didn’t think that bringing me the presents at 9pm the night before Christmas would be a fair task for me to complete. He would never do such things to his students or coworkers, and yet he’s been doing shit like this to me for the past ten years. Even the day before I asked for a divorce, he claimed I was the most important person in his life but I made him see that what he’s done to me meant I am much less important than his coworkers and students. He used to say he’d die for me, as in, if there’s a hypothetical killer who had to kill one of us, then he’d offer his life and I told him to die for someone means your offering your energy to spare the other person’s. His understanding of love and care is completely wrong and shallow.

I ended up going to bed at 3am and the kids would wake up at 6am so I decided I’d give up seeing their excited faces in the morning and I’d just watch the surveillance camera footage afterwards. When I got up at almost 11am and checked the footage, I saw that Angel was blocking the gift area the whole time, telling the kids that they couldn’t open the presents until mommy got up. This totally enraged me again. What I wanted to see was their faces when they saw that there was magic in the house, not when they saw what the presents were. To this day Angel still doesn’t understand why I put in so much effort to decorate for Christmas, to set up for Santa secretly because the whole point to make the kids believe in life’s magic. Him blocking the presents from the kids totally ruined it.

Then his parents came to our house to hang out with the kids. The more I see them the more I feel triggered, because they don’t understand me, never understood me, and they won’t try. I took Little O out for lunch and after we came home, his dad asked me, “did you have a nice lunch?” I asked, “how do you define nice? Are you talking about quiet fine dining or me having to intervene with Little O’s stomping and noise making every 120 seconds?”

I am very fed up with their casual chats—like everything’s nice; everything is interesting but in fact, they just don’t see my suffering and they don’t try to understand it either. I’d stay married if Angel’s family could actually offer any compassion or the feeling of holding me when I went through all those abusive events with my kids all alone, but none of the could. All they think is that I love the kids and the kids make me happy and every mother has to go through that anyway. Therefore the more I see them, the angrier I get.

So yes, this Christmas, almost everything has gone wrong, although I do remember the moment when the kids opened my door and told me “mommy Santa came to our house!”

How deeply can one believe?

I’ve been sick. Angel got on a plane to Tokyo to meet his parents and he’s going to vacation there for almost a week. As a 47-year-old man, he still has his parents pay for his trips, and yet he’s incredibly stingy with child support. I can’t sign our divorce settlement yet because every time when I negotiate for something, he takes something else down from it. All he’s thinking about is how to live off dividends after he’s retired and he’s planning to live somewhere overseas and still has money to travel all the time. But as a mother of two special needs children, I’ve never imagined my retirement that way. I don’t know how functional and independent they will be and having to spend the rest of my life living with them might be a possibility. Every back and forth with the divorce settlement is re-opening my trauma wounds repeatedly; they keep reminding me of how transactional he’s been with my labor—he basically married a poor competent woman to do the work for him and every gift he’s given me has never made me feel that I’m important, that I matter, or that he understands how tired I’ve been. He gives the same gift every try holiday and his budget for each gift is the same every year. I got so tired of it so eventually I told him to just give me cash. And then, because he owed me so much money—for a lot of major purchases I’ve paid everything upfront with my own savings so that he doesn’t need to sell his stocks and he pays me back very slowly with zero interest—those cash gifts just became additions to the money he owed me. Therefore, the financial arrangement in the divorce settlement is just a reminder of all the shit he’s done to me.

So I’m gonna be without any help these days—absolutely no helpers or aides or tutors for the kids. I asked Angel why he didn’t take the kids to Tokyo with him, since he keeps talking about “maximizing” his time with them, and he said he and his parents , 3 adults in total, cannot handle our kids’ traveling, whereas his parents often babysit his sister’s two kids all the time. That’s how difficult Little N and Little O are, but I can take them anywhere all by myself. 

This morning I had another talk therapy with my EMDR therapist. Since I’m sick, I can’t really do EMDR, but I’d like to dig deeper with words and feelings. Towards the end of the therapy, she told me repeatedly to be kind to myself, and if there’s any voice in my head that tells me, “who’d wanna be with me given my kids’ special needs and difficult behavior”, “I’m gonna be alone forever,” “I’m too old,” “men just wanna be with someone young and sexy” etc then I need to stop those voices and tell myself those voices are not mine. I need to believe there’s someone out there for me, but I’m not interested in online dating. I need to believe there’s someone who loves me enough and also loves my kids, because she’s also a stepmom now. I want to believe in these things so bad but there’s a part of me that still doubts it a lot, and yes, I’m aware that the doubtful part isn’t my real voice.

This afternoon Little N had a play date with someone from his school. Little N is 5 years old and this kid Simmy is 4, but I think they’re maybe just six months apart. However, Simmy’s verbal and social understanding is way more advanced than Little N and Little O. He’s so independent while Little N still needs to be told to use the toilet on his own. Simmy’s dad just dropped him off at our place and went back to work, so basically I experienced what it felt like to be a single mom to 3 boys, but Simmy barely behaves like a boy—he’s so thoughtful, independent, obedient, reserved, and socially aware. He told me he has a baby sister who’s zero years old—so there are three kids in his family and he’s the second one. Little N hates girls and only wants to play with boys, so Simmy asked Little N: would you still hate girls if you have a baby sister? A baby sister is so cute!

OMG having a little boy who can talk like this is basically a dream come true. No wonder his parents are fine having a third child. It also makes me wonder: if both Little N and Little O are like Simmy, would I still be awaken and want a divorce? Would  feel that I’ve got my happily ever after? A well developed child like this first, makes it easier to find sitters who can watch him while the parents go on dates, second, offers lots of emotional attunement to the parents so that the mom doesn’t feel emotionally starved, and third, saves a lot of money because you don’t always need an adult to supervise him and also he’s doesn’t need all those tutors and therapists.

Snapshots

In my talk therapy today, my talk therapist asked me if I recall my entire 2025, where would I stop?

I told her it would be last Saturday because I hadn’t laughed that hard for too many years. Maybe the last time I laughed that hard was when I was 21 and visited my friends in Manila. We were playing Taboo and we tried so hard to guess Pavarotti but it turned out the word on the flash card was paparazzi. I don’t know why word jokes would get me so hard. My therapist told me she was very moved that I could laugh like a little girl again, at something so simple and silly. I told her that I laughed so hard that I was tearing up and I think I almost pulled my stomach muscle. 

I also told her I don’t remember anything from this year before I went to Bali, before I reconnected with Jes. She thinks I had a psychologically rich year and at age 39 my life experiences have already doubled those of others. I agree, and I’m finally stopping feeling ashamed of my life experiences. Before this year, I carried all the shame that wasn’t mine. My birth, being a love child, being abused, being broke, being dismissed, being libeled, being a virgin before Angel, being a street teacher, being fat, failing the American dream, being abandoned, being forgotten, being the third wheel, my kids getting attention in public, apologizing for my kids’ behavior, everything that wasn’t mine—I don’t feel shameful anymore. I am proud of what I’ve overcome and I’ve survived. 

So where would I like to stop, besides all the teppanyaki jokes on Saturday? I guess there was the first time Eric and I hugged when we met up in June. That long, safe hug, from so much longing for both of us. I’d also stop at various moments when it was just me and the two kids having a good time, not having to worry about anyone else. A few days ago, I said to Little N, “mommy is scared.” He asked, “what are you scared of?” I said, “I don’t know.” He asked, “prisoners?” I said, “maybe, or some bad people.” He immediately hugged me and said, “don’t worry. I will take care of you.” That moment made my tears drop. Little N being autistic is able to say such compassionate things to me and I think it’s a miracle. Even Angel can’t express such compassion to me.

I’d also like to stop in the moment when I was standing on the cliff alone, looking at the ocean waves under the humid cloudy sky, breathing in humid air feeling so much protection.