Saturday, February 10, 2024

I need to keep writing.

Overwhelmed by raising an autistic child with ADHD, an autistic husband, borderline autistic younger son, abusive work environment, having zero friends, loneliness, exhaustion, depression, anxiety, chronic fatigue, short breaths. How did I get myself here?


I’ve been working so hard since I was a teenager, all for the hope of having a happily ever after, which turns out to be just a fantasy. In so many different cultures, people value hard work at a young age in exchange for an easier life at an older age. However, it does not exist for me. Life has been equally hard at every stage for me. Just when I thought my life would become easier, Little O’s disability throws me off the boat; sometimes I really want to end my life when he throws a tantrum whenever I carefully plan a new experience for him to learn and expand his sensory, cognition, and language. He loves to travel but he goes ballistic nonstop when he travels. He’s already 6 years old and physically I can’t just lift him up and stop him from rolling on the floor. But every time when he travels, his language expands so much and his drawing becomes much more advanced. I go through the pain of taking him to places for his sake only; when he throws a tantrum I just wanna die and I believe he’s better off living in an orphanage or some mental institution where he can do the same thing repeatedly every day. That way he’d be happy and throw no tantrums.

My marriage is almost non-existent at this point. Nobody shows me care; nobody listens to me anymore. I am absolutely back at ground zero. What’s worse is that I am trapped in a marriage for family duties; I believe staying married is better for the kids no matter what unless there’s violence between us. I am sacrificing every piece of myself that’s left. There is no more dream, no more hope, no more freedom in me.


I wish there’s someone who can listen to me; I do have a psychotherapist but I still feel that’s very different from someone who listens to me because they love me. Angel claims he loves me but he doesn’t really hear what I’m saying and he doesn’t not perceive my feelings. To me that’s just not love. I truly have no one who I can connect with. I love my children and they love me, but they’re too little to know how I feel. I am destined to be the feelers of others but no one can feel me.

Sometimes I wish I could speak to Jes again, because even though we’ve never met but every time we talked, we could feel each other. We didn’t have to be blunt and we could just know how the other person was feeling, despite all the denial. Sometimes I wish I could go way back in time and be a teenager with Ian. I wish the circumstances with our schooling could be different so that we could just fall in love freely. Then he would be my first love. Obviously it didn’t happen when we were only 15 and he was my first crush and I think I was his too. And life had to send us apart. The first time we kissed the circumstances were already too different in our lives and we were already 24. If it had happened when we were 15, how different would our lives be?


I’ve been binge watching some romcoms lately and I’m starting to feel really jaded. I don’t believe in most things in those movies and dramas anymore. Nobody would love anyone as much as in The Notebook, or Purple Hearts, King the Land, The Titanic, or even just Ted Mosby and Robyn Scherbasky. Angel doesn’t really make an effort in sex or in treating his impotence. He’s just in an absolute denial. In our 8 year marriage, we’ve only had sex less than 10 times and we haven’t had sex or done anything sexual since I conceived Little N, 4+ years ago.


Being in a sexless marriage is kind of a deal but not a deal breaker for me, because 1) he’s terrible and he’s never made an effort to try to please me, 2) I’ve never had sex with anyone else in my life so I don’t know how good sex can be if it was with other men, and 3) my vibrator and imagination have always satisfied me since I was a teenager; if I would live that way when I was single then I can still live this way today. 


On the other hand, what bothers me is that, if a man truly loves me, would they want to please me sexually too? Out of the single digit times of sex we’ve had, most of them were done to conceive. In the end I still had to use a vibrator to suck in the sperm to conceive because he was impotent. He couldn’t penetrate me fully. Other men have told me that if they were having sex with a virgin, they’d go an extra mile to relax her and do foreplay but it just never happened to me. Angel doesn’t have the physical stamina to do those things because he can barely function even if a tiny bit of sleep is deprived from him. He’s tired all the time, and sometimes bedridden when there’s an issue with his spine.


As I think about this, I begin to feel sad and pathetic. As I am almost 38, middle age, I have not experienced the most basic biology in human, and I’ve given birth twice already (both via C-section). Is this right? Do most women have the sexual experience that makes them feel loved, rather than sad? After most sexual intercourses with Angel, I usually felt angry and sad. I’ve never had the serendipity to be with a man who wanted to make my first time special. If I were impulsive enough and just flew to Kansas to meet Jes, would he have given me the best summer of my life, like The Notebook?


That sharp pain is back in my heart. The sharp pain of a broken heart. I met Jes at the age of 18, and he told me when I was 26 that he really did love me back then, but the distance made it too painful for him to tell me that. And he was already getting married back then. And I think they’re still married, and possibly no kids.


If I could go back in time, I would tell myself to escape from all the circumstances created by myself and just be selfish. Kiss Ian at the age of 14. Date him. Fail classes. Fly to Kansas to meet Jes. Drop the illusion of getting higher education and having a better life. Those do not exist. I now have more money than most, but my life is hard as hell. Everything I was told was a lie. You marry someone with some money, and then you get an autistic child that just burns your money quickly. There is just no happily-ever-after.


Sunday, October 1, 2023

Nowhere to run

 Recently I’ve run into a situation at work where I have to work with someone who is extremely difficult and potentially emotionally unstable. I used to run my one-person team, but due to some fucked up shit at our company, I ended working with this guy and it is destroying my life. Even when I’m on vacation I can’t stop repeating the insulting and toxic things he’s said to me. I want him dead. I want to make him pay for what he’s cost me. But these require me to be patient and to collect evidence and for him to show his schizophrenia in front of not only me. I really hope bad things can happen to him soon so that me and my children are not suffering from his presence.


Why am I still working at this stage of my life? My dream had always been a stay at home mom. I hate to deal with people at work, unless they are my fans. These ignorant losers can’t really drop dead.

Sunday, March 19, 2023

The unnecessity of friends.

 I don’t have friends. I used to have friends and they’re mostly male and single, and after I got married to prevent jealousy from Angel and his mom, I cut off all my ties to them. Also, Angel cannot hang out with my friends because he can’t speak our language and he wants all of us to speak English with him, which would just make casual chatting very burdensome. As a result, I’ve given up on maintaining friendships.

Now as my children are becoming socialized, the issue of having friends keeps resurfacing between me and Angel. He thinks I’m too anti-social so that our kids don’t have enough play dates, but I’ve always told him to feel free to take the kids to playdates on his own without me as frequently as he’d like, and he has never done that because that’s just not culturally American. The truth is he cannot handle taking both kids anywhere on his own. Every time when we had play dates, he can enjoy adult conversations with his friends nonstop, and his friends would just leave their kids to me and I’d have to play with my kids and their kids simultaneously. I could never have any adult time and I prepared all the food and gifts and toys. This kind of arrangement just makes me feel disrespected and used so I refuse to go to any playdates and he can take the kids on his own. 

On the other hand, I also wonder who they can find support from when they grow up. I grew up with my cousins but as they started their families, we decided to part ways in our lives and never talk to each other again. I have two brothers who don’t have kids, so my kids don’t have any cousins on my side, and their cousins on Angel’s side only see us once a year. Little O doesn’t know how to make friends at school and Little N just doesn’t like people or other children. I do worry if their company of each other alone is sufficient. In my case just texting my brothers every day is sufficient. If I have emotional pain from my marriage, I just write it down, wishing that X can hear me and take care of me. I just don’t find superficial conversations with so-called friends that worthy of my time. I do sometimes want to go to my alumni gathering, but the school I went to is super superficial and given my current powerless job and my fat body after giving two births, I don’t have the courage to hang out with them anymore.

It makes me sad that after working so hard and still working so hard I cannot escape my fate. I am destined to take care of everyone in my life, and no one can take care of me. I must have owed too many people too much debt in my past life so I’m using my current life to pay them back.

Thursday, January 19, 2023

Feel again.

 We’ve got five weeks off from work for the winter, and we’re traveling with Angel’s family at the moment in the City of Sakura. It’s nice to fly again after 3.5 years.

Child rearing has been tough. A lot of things have happened since I last wrote. I can barely breathe. In the past six months, we moved, took Little O to 3 different kindergartners and now it’s somewhat settled. Little O’s behavior is getting more and more difficult and I’m under tremendous stress because we just bought this house and we can’t just move away again to find Little O a better environment. I am drained inside out. I’ve been binge watching romance dramas during the break and I’m finally hearing some voices inside of me.


Who was my first love? I don’t know. A crush didn’t count. Mutual crush didn’t count. It was always Jes who came to my mind, but we’ve never met. He was the first person who I could open up to and I could feel that he could feel my pain, even though he didn’t say so verbally. With all the other men I dated, I opened up to all of them but I never felt that kind of empathy from any one of them, including Angel. They could listen, but they couldn’t feel. It made me feel that that was it; the problem is mine and every man is that way. Just choose one who won’t hurt you.


Then, the one who won’t hurt me is someone who can’t feel me, someone who loves himself more than anyone else, someone who talks a lot and monologues a lot. I want to feel love again. I want to feel that someone cares about me again. I have been giving my whole self to everyone in this family that I have nothing left. I often wonder, if I had the courage to run to Jes when I was 20, to fall in love in person with him, to live a simple life with him and never got any of those fancy degrees, would I be happy right now? Would our kids be healthier than my kids now?

But fate never let us be together. We were living so close to each other for two years but couldn’t find each other. By the time we found each other, he was already engaged after giving up on looking for me. Maybe it wasn’t real after all because we’ve never met in person. Maybe we felt connected because we couldn’t see each other, and it was all filled with fantasy. Is he a good father now? Are his kids dependent on him the way mine are on me? Does he make his wife happy?


I feel like a failure. I gave up on my previous career to pursue a family. Now I’m stuck in my current job that pays well but drills my body and mind. I finally have my own children but they have so many problems that are unacceptable in this society. I don’t know how to teach them to camouflage except that I try to hide them from most people. My husband poops three times a day and pees ten times a day; he spends most of his time in the bathroom, eating, phubbing, or sleeping. Jes, do you do that?


I try really hard not to think, not to cry, and not to feel. Now I’ve realized I’ve been so pathetic. I am so fat and ugly and old now. I’m not healthy. I’m not happy. No one would take a look at me. I don’t wear clothes I want to wear anymore; I can only wear comfy baggy clothes with animal prints that Little O chooses for me. I don’t get to sleep through one single night without disturbances. I have no one I can talk to. My younger brother has acquired his immigration status so he’s moved thousands of miles away. I am all alone. 


Dear X, can you hear me? Can you read my writing? Are you there? If you are there, can you let me feel you? Can you hold me? Can you tell me you love me and that you’ll take care of me?

Friday, May 6, 2022

Why can’t you just take care of me once?

 I had my physical exam, 4 years after the previous one, yesterday and my main problems were obesity and severe dysautonomia; it’s so severe that my nervous system’s functionality is equivalent to a 75 year old’s. No wonder I cannot lose weight because my body isn’t working. I want to break down and cry for a month. I just don’t want to live like this anymore. 


Recently we have discovered that Little O is on the autistic spectrum, or has Asperger’s syndrome. Then I realized Angel definitely has it too. Then I realized I’ve also developed Cassandra Affective Deprivation Disorder. This explains everything. Little O is 4 years old but he still cannot poop in the toilet nor ride a bike. Angel has no life skills. My whole life I’ve been looking for someone who can take care of me, and this is what I’ve ended up with. Maybe I already had CADD in my upbringing. I just want to feel comfortable again; I’ve been feeling pain all over my body for the past 5 years and I really want to feel comfort. I can’t be dealing with all sorts of stubborn requests by Little O anymore. I need to breathe. I need to feel myself. I need to cry.

There’s no one else in the world who can take care of me. I’ve been living in my own fantasy. That kind of true love I’ve always wanted doesn’t exist. X doesn’t exist. No one can hear me or feel my pain.

Sunday, July 11, 2021

Where are you?

 Dear X,


Where are you? I need to be held now. I need to be felt. Angel bumped his head on the TV screen in our car yesterday as he entered the car, and now he claims that he has a concussion and has been resting all day in his room without fulfilling any duties at all at home. I have never rested this much even right after both my c-sections. He bumps his head all the time because he’s stupid and clumsy and has slow reflex.

I am so fed up with this. He is just not a good father. He can barely perform his fatherly duties let alone a husband’s. Why didn’t you show up to take care of me, X? Why don’t you love me? Why can’t you take care of me? I am so exhausted and burned. My whole body hurts. My hormones are messed up. I want to be able to sleep all day too, but that’s not an option for me, and yet Angel can easily have that option because I am a superhuman. I don’t want to be a superhuman. I want to be a pampered woman. Why is it just not in my destiny to be one?

My kids pamper me though. I think I understand why mothers always say that their sons are their boyfriends or lovers from their past life. I get it now. Maybe they are my X’s; we are destined to be together this way. 

I’m depressed and I want to cry very much. I feel layers of sadness burying me. I wish for one day I could feel comfortable and pain free. I want to be slender and soft and effeminate. I wish a strong man could drive me and the kids for a nice meal, and he’d be the one feeding the kids without me asking him to. He would just say, “go ahead and enjoy your food. I’ve got everything in control.” Then he’d feed me a nice spoonful of strawberry ice cream, like I was also his baby. While he was driving, we would all fall asleep and I could lean on his shoulders. After we got home, we could all take a bath together with the kids in our giant jacuzzi. Then we all went to bed together with his nighttime story and my singing.

I want to be taken care of so bad; I want to be pampered. I do feel loved by my kids but not by my husband. I want to feel felt; I wish he could understand how I feel. But of course he doesn’t because he’s narcissistic. Why am I so stuck here? If this is the price the universe wants me to pay for my two kids, then I’ll happily take it. This is the only way I can convince myself that I can live like this.

Saturday, June 12, 2021

You can't escape from destiny.

 Have I used this title before? I must have, because it's a recurring feeling in my life.


I have written here for almost a year because I started a more public blog for my kids. Time flies. Little N is almost 10 months old. All the challenges with Little N's physiology we encountered before seem to have resolved themselves, although these have not been confirmed by his doctors due to COVID. Ha, COVID. Remember it's called COVID-19? Now it's 2021 and the virus is still there! All the medical centers here are occupied by COVID patients so they asked me to delay Little N's appointments there because his problems are much less urgent than COVID.


Since the lockdown in the City of Rain, there have been more conflicts between me and Angel because we can't have helpers anymore and we had to work and take care of the kids simultaneously. But today, I felt so much pain that I decided to write again. At lunch, which was my first meal of the day, I was interrupted by my kids, as always, and had to cuddle Little N to sleep. After he finally fell asleep, I went back to the dining table and all my food was gone. Angel ate everything without asking me if I was done. I know it was so trivial to most people, but it hurt me so bad because for the past 3.5 years, my life has been like this--I've never had a chance to finish a meal at my own pace without interruption, and oftentimes when I come back to my food, Angel ate all of it and I was left with hunger. 


This has happened a million times, but the problem with Angel is that he does not remember things. He's made mistakes that hurt me repeatedly; we would have a huge fight, he would behave well for one day, and then he'd go back to his normal self and make the same mistakes again. It makes me feel that there's no "me" in his heart. His intuition is to take care of himself first, always. He does not respond at all to a kid's cry or complaint. It's almost as if he really doesn't hear it; he would keep phubbing and phubbing and spending lots of time in the bathroom or enjoying his meal even if the house is exploded with kids' noises. He keeps telling me that it's because he's clueless, he's neglectful, etc. Over the time, it all sounds like one thing to me: I don't matter. 


What's really annoying is that when I tell him how I feel, he would always say "of course you matter. You're the love of my life." My question is always, "do I look loved to you? If a woman is pampered by her man, would she look like me?"


I'm really fat these days and I'm starting to have skin problems. During this lockdown, I spend all day in my pajamas, not even with a bra, and by the end of the day, I'm covered in my kids' drool, pain, food, you name it. My kids are my everything to me and I am happy to sacrifice for them, but meanwhile, I wish I had a shoulder to lean on. A man who can drive me, a man who can take care of the kids once in a while safely, a man who can at least speak the local language here and run some errands for me, a man who can cook for me some time to at least surprise me. He is not to blame though, because it's my destiny. When I was young and pretty, no other man wanted to marry me; men who had the ability to take care of me did not want to marry me. I cannot escape from my destiny; it is my mom's destiny too. Fortunately I don't have a daughter because if I do, she'd probably repeat my destiny and end up with my pain. A woman just can't escape from her destiny.


So if I have totally accepted my fate, why am I still whining here? Because the pain is too strong for me to bear. I have to write this down, late at night, when everyone is asleep, at the expense of my own sleep. I saw a more recent news article on Ken's wife; she's slender, mature, and wears a lot of make up like mascara, manicured, and simple expensive jewelry. She lets her long hair down too. I wear none of those because I'm afraid they could scratch my kids or be toxic to them. I keep my nails neat because I'm afraid they would scratch my kids. Due to COVID I can't go get a haircut but I tie it up tightly because I don't want to drop hair onto my kids or have my hair get in the way of my doing housework. I'm so fat right now that my plantar fasciitis is killing every day. On the other hand, I have to be physically strong in order to be the man and the woman in the house. I drive my whole family in our Sienna; I need to carry Little N on my front or my back for hours every day, even when I'm doing housework, and he weighs 26lb at the moment. I'm not complaining about his weight, because I am truly grateful for his growth; it could mean that his heart condition is not having an effect on him. I'm just not like those women who can have most things taken care of for them so that they can stay slim and pretty. Ken's wife said in one interview that she would devote two hours a day to her kids after work, and then she gets her own free time. My question is, what kind of parents give their kids only 2 hours of their time a day? Before the lockdown, I'd usually get home from work between 4 and 5 pm, and I dedicate all my time to them until they go to bed, and then I'd shower myself and go to bed at midnight or 1am, and the next day I'd have to be at work at 7:30am. With only 2 hours a day, how do you bathe your 2 kids, feed them dinner, change their diapers, and play and read with them? That means all the errands are taken care of and she only needs to do the fun part. 


Given the boarding and private schools she went to, I believe she came from a wealthy family and that was probably the way she was raised too. Ken wants to pamper a woman like that, although I must say she's like a million times more talented than Ken. Yes, she is someone he adores and puts on a pedestal. I was once a woman like that to so many men, but nobody wanted to marry me. Again, I cannot escape from my destiny. It's just not in my destiny to be treated like that. My destiny is to be a self-sufficient man and a woman, who provides everything for my kids. My kids are my everything. I wish one day they can make their wives happy; I wish they could feel good about pampering their women and kids and that their shoulders can be leaned on.


I say all these things but right now I really wish there's a man's shoulder I could lean on. It's 2am, and every night Angel is snoring even before the kids have fallen asleep, whereas I have to stay awake until Little O is sound asleep so I could brush his teeth thoroughly for him. Sometimes I want to talk to X; sometimes I think about Jes. I know they're not real, but the imagination that they could give me what I want brings some comfort. How many kids does Jes have now? Is he really a stay-at-home dad? He must have really good life skills and is able to carry kids on his back all the time. Angel's excuse is that he's old and he's got a back problem, so I end up being the one carrying the kids all the time. I remember about a decade ago, Jes said he wanted to save enough money so that he could be a stay-at-home dad once he has kids. I wonder if his dream had come true. He and I had the same kind of traumatic upbringing so we both understand and do whatever it can to be there for our kids. Too bad he did not have the courage to believe in us and to meet up. If we did meet up back then, I would not have played the elite games and gone into the elite world; we would just live a very simple life in the middle of nowhere, and kids would be our everything. I was so naive back then and I just wanted to escape my fate. My only two options were to either play the elite game and leave my original family or to elope with a man. He understood my pain even though he did not have words to sugar coat his empathy. Right now I really need that empathy, because I don't get any in my life. Angel is incapable of empathizing with anyone; he needs me to give him instructions for every single thing in the house to do things right. I have to spell out what I want him to do every moment. It's truly exhausting and draining all my emotions.


My 12-year journey for love ended with Angel. I do love him, but it's not romantic love. It's the same kind of love I've always had for him since the beginning--I want to take care of him and he's my family. Is it because I gave up after getting hurt over and over again during those 12 years? Or is this what it is after all? Women all end up with someone who becomes their family? I'm 35 now but I still don't know what good sex feels like, and I probably will never know. My vibrator does the job well and if I combine that with my fantasies in my head, I'm willing to live the rest of my life like that for my kids. Without Angel, I wouldn't have Little O and Little N. I am willing to go through all the pain and sorrow in exchange for their good life.


Is there really a woman out there who really has reached the happily ever after and is forever romantic? I know many celebrities seem like that on social media, but so many of them end in divorce. Does Ken's wife still feel romantic with him? After reading so many interviews about her I kind of feel that she might be secretly in love with her co-founder. I think she settled for Ken, honestly.


I wish a man could feel me. Jes and Ken were the only two who could do or say what I wanted without me telling them how I felt. They're long gone now; they both have found "the one", according to themselves. I, in the end, just gave up on the idea of "the one" and surrendered to fate. The universe knows I'd suck up to whatever shit in life for my kids; it knows me too well. But right now, I really wish there could be a shoulder for me to cry on, someone who understands me and feels me. X, do you hear me?