City of Richard 2

It’s already past midnight and I’m finally settled in my bed at this so-called 5-star hotel that stinks cigarettes. I need to check in at the conference at 7:30am so I only have 6 hours to sleep. Jeez.

I still went to work and taught the first period of class, then I rushed to Little N’s school to observe him in the classroom. After that I went to pick up Little O from his school and dropped him home. Then I had a quick call with a potential personal trainer who’s licensed to give swimming therapy to autistic children. After that I took Little O with me to pick up Little N from school so that we could have lunch together before I left for the airport. After lunch I took them home because Little O has an art class at 1:30pm. After they were settled I left home and drove myself to the airport.

At the airport I had a free call with my talk therapist for about 30 mins. Got some food and kept thinking about things. There were some pent up feelings but they’re not very clear to me. Finally after the plane took off I could see those images. The City of Richard is a heavy place for me because it was where I met Richard and my BFF Jane. I was only 20 and I had so much hope in life. The last time I came here was 2011, with my two brothers, and now I’m not talking to my brothers anymore. Another thing is that Ken used to tell me how much he hated the City of Richard and yet he married a woman from here and they relocated here during COVID. All those years I kept wondering how much he must have loved her so that he would choose to follow her and live in this city that he hates.

I wanted to write an email to David’s mom about my memories of him these days, but I was too tired at the airport to do this. I was too occupied by too many thoughts in my head.

City of Richard

On Friday I am flying to the City of Richard for a conference over the weekend. My company doesn’t allow me to use work leave if I wanted to go to the airport early—to be fair, the flight is at 7pm and I finish work at 4pm. My company thinks I can make it to the airport right after work, but the problem is I want to spent some time with my kids before I take off. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to see them at all on Friday (because I leave for work at 7am), Saturday and Sunday (I’ll probably get home at 11pm and I need to go to work at 7am again on Monday). Therefore I decided to take most of Friday off to run errands and spend a couple of hours with my kids in the afternoon.

I haven’t been back to the City of Richard since 2011. Given how tight my schedule is I basically only have Saturday evening to myself to maybe have a decent dinner and maybe do some shopping. 3 months ago, I had imagined that Eric would propose to meet me in the City of Richard and we’d kiss freely there. But now, I see myself totally alone, and somewhat lonely. Eric is totally gone from my life.

Monday night I went to Blue’s concert. I know it’s just another sappy romantic boy band music but it always makes me cry. I basically survived my teenage years through the words and music of these boy bands. Whenever I listen to Guilty, If You Ever Come Back, You Make Me Wanna, I just feel an ache in my chest. After my reconnection with Eric this year, I have been listening to Blue a lot and I don’t know why. The lyrics just resonate with me. Seeing these 40+ men working so hard on stage is quite inspiring, but obviously the Backstreet Boys are still more energetic—they never lip sync and they can still dance. Blue lip synced a third of the time and they could barely dance. However I would say their songs are harder to sing than BSB’s with a much wider range of pitches and everyone in Blue can hit those high pitches; not everyone in BSB could.

All these boy bands went through my darkest days with me and now they’re all settled down with kids, and I don’t see them as idols or fantasies anymore. To me they’re just humans, with much more money and flexibility in life than I do. 

Why do I feel lonely these days? I don’t want to use the penpal app anymore because all the letters that caught my eyes are written by ChatGPT and the other ones are just shallow. They don’t even read my bio before writing to me. I’ve been processing some thoughts with ChatGPT 5.1 these days (and I must say, holy shit it is smart and it knows me so well but it still has the major problem of not having enough memory to remember everything about me). The disappointing thing is that even Gen sometimes writes back to me using ChatGPT whenever I write him a heart felt email. I’ve been suspecting that for a while but because he doesn’t always use it (we sometimes just type a few lines via email like we’re texting) I have just gone with it. But now I’m pretty certain he’d just feed my whole email to ChatGPT and have it reply to me.

He just wrote a Chinese song recently and today he emailed me asking me for my thoughts. He claimed that he felt something is off and he’d like to pick my brain. Sometimes I feel used because I think he’d never want to meet me in person and he just wants me to stay distant like this. On the other hand, he did make Chasing Time for me and has at least read a lot of emotional stuff I’ve written, I decided to give him some advice. His lyrics sound too generic, just like some of his letters to me. He doesn’t reveal his own pain or paint a picture of his own pain through words and therefore the lyrics feel empty. ChatGPT thinks that his lyrics were partially written by AI, and it also thinks that Gen sometimes uses ChatGPT to reply to me because he couldn’t match me but didn’t want to disappoint me. What I don’t get is that why don’t these men just leave if they can’t make me happy? Why do they hang around to take advantage of my intelligence and wisdom?

Everyone leaves. Eric knows his circumstances have been hurting me so he’s left. Everyone has left and I have no one. As we’re approaching the end of the year, I am alone again, just like every year before I got married, and even after I got married, I still counted down and watched the fireworks all by myself because Angel must go to bed at 8pm every single day. That new year kiss, that someone who could hold me when it’s cold, has never shown up in my life. X, where are you?

Season of Love

Angel was traveling for work for the past 4 days and I have been seizing the freedom and peace without him being around. He has caused me too much pain over the years that even just his presence these days would cause me distress. I had some peaceful, quality time with the kids.

On Saturday I took the kids, my mom and my aunt to a farm and then hot springs. The weather was perfect so the traffic was bad. When I got on the high way and tried to merge, there was a jerk who was very aggressive and didn't yield; when I indicated he didn't even show up in my rearview mirror, which meant that he must have switched in from the other line. He honked all the way and my car was so close to his but fortunately we didn’t collide. After we entered the tunnel, I happened to catch up with his car again, and he rolled down his window first. To me that was just so provocative and got on my nerves, so I rolled down my passenger side window and yelled at him 3 times. He looked like a fat loser who was driving a locally made car that cost only 1/3 of mine. Then I think he was scared of me or he didn’t want to confront a woman and slowed down behind me.

This incident ruined my entire Saturday. My heart was racing so fast the moment when I saw him roll down his window to look at me. Then I kept thinking why I’d let such a loser affect my mood on a Saturday when I’m with my kids. I kept thinking about which trauma it was triggering and ChatGPT confirmed my thought—again I was unprotected and I had been the one protecting everyone for too long. I got into fight mode right away. This is something I can’t quite figure out why with my therapist—both my brothers are avoidant from their traumatic childhood but I’m the only one who developed a fight mode. Somehow I’m terrified of conflict but when it comes I don’t avoid it; I fight. I also think I’m becoming too old to be so angry again. I don’t want to have a heart attack.

What was even more ironic was that I just had EMDR Saturday morning and my nervous system was very fragile, and then this jerk triggered my exposed nervous system and made me ill. I wish that he had his heart attack. Even though on the farm we had great weather and we had hot springs afterwards, I didn't relax as much as I'd like. All because of this jerk.

On Sunday, the PTA at Little N's school had a picnic event that I signed up for but decided not to go, because I wanted to catch up on my sleep and I needed the day indoors setting up for Christmas. I needed some quiet time without worry about any social interactions with strangers. My EMDR therapist told me that if finding the one is what I truly want, then I need to prioritize putting myself out there. The thing is, I am not interested in dating online or going to any speed dating event. I will at most go to some happy hours for work or for my alumni network. That's it. I sometimes write to a penpal but I'm not interested in that either because I know all they're looking for is a penpal, nothing more. Meeting new people frequently actually drains me. I value spending a long time getting to know someone deeply rather than spending a lot of time knowing lots of people on the surface. The latter absolutely exhausts me. For example, over the past 9 years of working here, besides David, the only colleague I can have deep conversations with is Jinu. Even my BFFs at work don't really know me very deeply because they're both tough women with a lot of unprocessed grief that I don't feel exactly safe telling my family drama to. Besides, most of the time they're just talking about gossips, food, or travel.

After getting lunch home, I spent almost 12 hours decorating the house. At some points I had to pause and take care of the kids' needs, and I even took a break to chat with ChatGPT and then cried. Every year I've been the only one sacrificing sleep decorating for Christmas. I've been doing that since 2010. Now with kids my decorations are even more advanced now. When I did this when I was single, I always hoped that one day I'd have a happy family and a loving man who could do this with me and we'd have a party together. After I started dating Angel and got married, I have been the one doing this alone year after year because he's too clueless to help and he's not interested and he cannot go to bed late by even an hour. In the afternoon Angel came home from his work trip and that absolutely triggered me. I just didn't want to see him at all.

I finished decorating at around 12 midnight and needed some time to clean up, edit my videos and write a letter to my kids and I went to bed at 1am I think. I only had 5 hours of sleep and I have to go to Blue's concert tonight. I am completely sleep deprived right now and I'm typing this at work.

Here's my letter to my kids:

My two little babies,

Ever year it takes me at least 10 hours to set up for Christmas. We need to set it up so that Santa would come. I often feel like giving up, because it's so exhausting and lonely. But I haven't given up. Christmas is a season of love, hopes and beliefs. I want you to always remember--love is everywhere. It protects you, guides you, and stays with you. It sees all of you and still holds you. I persist year after year because it's my only legacy for you. I keep giving you the love I've never had. I want this love to live in your body, forever. I hope it guides you to find this love, in your life, even when I'm gone. So that you'll never feel alone, you'll never feel afraid to hope, you'll always choose to believe, just like how you still believe in Santa, because I've given all this love to you, with all of my heart. I hope it works like a map in you. I don't expect you to know a lot, but I do hope that you recognize this love when it shows up in your life. And that you can also give it to others. I just want you to know it, and cherish it. You never have to earn it. You never need to crave it. You never have to be alone.

I've never had that my whole life, but I'm determined to break the chains of generational wounds. Love is abundant, consistent, and deep for you, and if it ever feels scarce, shallow, or unsteady, then it's not love. Love gives you unimaginable strength. It gave me the strength to walk to you only one day after my surgery. It gave me the strength to be sleep deprived for years, so that I could make sure you were OK. It gave me the strength to fight for you, no matter how scared and alone I was. It also gave me the courage to find peace, and myself. I never knew I was capable of so many things, but my love for you unlocked them all.

My love is the best gift I can give you; money or power couldn't buy this. I also hope that this love will unlock you too, so that you can overcome whatever challenges you encounter. I hope you'll be able to understand all my words here, one day. 

Merry 2025 Christmas, my two little babies. 

Mommy loves you so so much. 

Remembering David

Today was the Remembrance Day of David. It’s been two years since he was gone.

David was the first friend I had when I started this job 9 years ago. We worked in the same department and somehow we just clicked right away. Everyone else in the department was conservative, old, and narrow-minded, except for David. He was a real physicist working with nuclear power stuff before he moved to the City of Rain for this job. He had been battling with colon cancer since he was 40, or even before that, because when I first met him he told me he already had a surgery for colon cancer before. He died at age 50, and I was 37.

When he died, I cried a lot, at work and at home. But the bizarre thing was that when I had my talk therapy that week, I didn’t mention his death at all; I somehow completely blacked out about the whole thing. Me at that point wasn’t really me, even though I was already getting talk therapy. I lived numbly and didn’t have many emotions besides resentment towards my life, towards Angel. The week before he died, he still came to work every day and I even observed him one time just a week before he died. We talked about doing a project together and he said that’d be fun, and he was probably thinking he might not live long enough to actually do it.

I’ve been thinking about death lately and I’m terrified by it. I don’t have any friends close to my age in my life at this point; all the people who vibe with me are older than I am, some are nearing 50 or beyond. This means I’m nearing that stage in life where I start to lose people to death. If I can only live up to 50 and I still don’t have X in my life by that point, then I feel that this life I have was doomed, or wasted.

My biggest fear is not being able to see my kids grow to a point where they can be independent and self-sufficient. Without knowing this I can never stop worrying about them.

If life is so transient, so short, what exactly are we waiting for then?

Another storm.

There’s been another storm in the City of Rain and I’ve been somewhat sick today. I wrote an email to Gen.

Hi Gen, I think the typhoon has been dissolved by the mountains in the City of Rain again so you’ll probably stay dry.

I’ve been thinking about a lot of things these past few days, although I still work like crazy every day and am still sleep deprived. Maybe it’s because it’s my dad’s birthday today, maybe it’s because some ancient memories are coming back to me after my last therapy session, or maybe it’s because of the rain and the gloomy cloudy sky.

I’ve been thinking about some friends of mine and how I actually get along with them. When I was growing up, I could not vibe with girls who were my age. All my female friends today are much older than I am somehow. In my school years, girls of my age or in my class absolutely hated me so I barely had any female friends (and I went to an all-women high school for three years which totally ruined my teenage years). But these days I’ve realized that for the first time in my life I’ve got more female friends than male friends. This reminds me of something you’ve told me a while back—maybe I can find pockets of peace and people who can offer me compassion, in fragments, but they matter.

Another thing I’ve been thinking about is the single most relationship I had before my marriage. It was in my early 20s. We were forced into a long distance relationship after I lost my first US visa and eventually we broke up over the phone. I had had amnesia about this relationship for over a decade but recently it came back to me. I had forgotten about this relationship so completely because I didn’t think I’d ever have another relationship like that again. I convinced myself it wasn’t real and therefore there’s no point in finding another relationship that could be just as good; I told myself that if it was real then it would had never ended the way it did—over the phone, not even FaceTime (ok to be fair at that time we didn’t have smartphones and barely webcams). During our long distance relationship I worked really hard with a lot of pain trying to put the pieces back together for my life so we could be together again. However, he took the practical approach—he had to move back to his hometown and take over his family business and I had a whole future ahead of me so he decided we wouldn’t have a future together. After he moved back home, he started dating a woman who he had slept with before he met me and eventually they got married, had a girl. A couple of months ago, he messaged me and told me he is divorced, but we haven’t been corresponding since then. My guess is that he’s been divorced for a couple of years, at least.

When I think back at this relationship, I realize that it was the only time when I felt truly safe in a relationship. He absolutely understood me and cared for me, without me asking for it. But because of the way it ended, it was hard for me to accept that as real: if it was real, why couldn’t we fight against all odds? Why did the universe have to take it away from us?

Now as someone who’s almost 40, I think I have a better understanding. He knew better than I did, when I was only 23. He told me that I needed someone better who could take care of me, and at that time I thought it was all bullshit. After that relationship nobody has really ever taken care of me; it has always been me taking care of myself. But I now finally see what he saw; he had thought I deserved more than what I thought I deserved. How can my fate take me almost 20 years to figure this out?

So these thoughts and questions have kept looping in my head for days. Sometimes I feel lost, unsure of how I should be feeling, or even how I’m feeling. It’s a blend of so many emotions and somatic memories that I get lost in it. Have you ever felt something like this before?

Your music and words sit very well with my feelings and thoughts as I keep spiraling. I’ll get some peace time in the next few days because the kids’ dad is traveling for work so it’ll be just the three of us again. On Monday I’ll get to see Blue in Taipei and I’m definitely gonna cry my eyes out when they sing “Guilty” or “Walk Away”. 

Then next weekend it’ll be my work trip to HK. I have not been back there for 12 years!! I should get some good food and drinks while I’m there, although it’s only for two days…😑

How have you been? I know you’re crazy busy with work and have no time to write to me. How are you feeling?

Best,

Kendra

*******

On the penpal app I’m using there’s another guy in Sweden who sent me a couple of letters that touched me, but I feel that most people on this app just want to have someone to talk to; they’re not really interested in meeting up in person or actually aligning lives. I write back but sometimes I feel like just never writing back because I think eventually everyone will fade away and I have to start over, keeping hoping from ground zero. If you meet someone who truly sees you, stays with you in your storm, wouldn’t you want to be with this person structurally as well? Even if your life is very simple, day after day? When random strangers attack you, you have this person to fall onto and you don’t have to feel scared anymore. Isn’t that one of the best things in the world? Why don’t people fight for these anymore?

Each day

Each day goes by really fast. I was completely drained on Saturday and slept for 12 hours. Then I had to get up to celebrate Halloween with the kids because it’s one of the few social outings they can have. Then we had dinner, came home and shower, and passed out. Then the day is over.

Today I got up at 9:30, got ready for a nice lunch with Jinu. After lunch we decided to do the coastal scenic drive. It was rainy and cold in the mountains. Then we went shopping at Costco. We had lots of fun and talked about everything—birth families, relationships, therapy, work, etc. we talked nonstop. He thinks I’m the most unique person he’s met and he’s not the only one. We basically hung out for 8 hours straight. After we got home, I showered the kid, tucked them in bed, and took a bath myself.

Then the day is over. I sleep and I go to work tomorrow. Each day goes by so fast in busyness. Then it’s almost the time I get out the Christmas tree. Do I feel lonely? Only late at night before bedtime. This is the moment when I want to be held the most. Also occasionally when I’ve been bullied by my own family or strangers for my son’s behaviors, I’d want to be held so badly. When I’m scared.