Just why

So Erik replied to my text with another essay:

Understanding and solving what i want and need in the area of attachment is a complex problem. I have confronted that part of myself and do understand it much better than I used to, but that doesn't make solving the problem easy.

#1: The fundamental orientation of my personality is to explore. I'm highly novelty-seeking, tolerant of unstructured situations, and I probably find experiences gained through exploration more rewarding and satisfying than the average person. 

#2: I have compensatory attachment seeking. when I was a child, we rescued a cat who was on the edge of starving to death. from then on, she always had plenty to eat and no reason to overindulge. Yet she immediately and repeatedly ate so much that she became fat to the point of her belly touching the floor. My parents paid for two surgeries to remove her belly fat, but each time, she just ate more until she reached her previous fatty size.  

That cat's relationship to food is a good analogy for my instinctual reaction when it comes to human and sexual connection. The main difference is that i am quite selective about whom i connect with, but if i find someone interesting, it requires a tremendous exertion of self-control to resist exploring further. the hunger is just so strong. 

#3: Emotional home. Like you, I've always been seeking an emotional home. but what actually is an emotional home? 

One definition of a secure attachment "emotional home" that makes sense to me is one that serves as both a "safe haven" and a "secure base". 

A safe haven is a person we can turn to and know that they care about our safety, will respond to our distress, help us co-regulate, and are a source of emotional and physical comfort.  And we will do the same for them.  Even if we can’t be there physically, we will do what we can to support them from a distance.  

When we’ve established a sense of safety , we can go out and engage with the world.  A secure base provides the platform from which we explore and take risks. Just like children who want to show off their latest drawings and cool tricks, adults also want to share our discoveries and achievements.  A secure base supports our personal growth, independent activities, and even our other relationships. They can also help us see where we may be inflating or limiting our belief in ourselves. 

Even to this day, despite all the dating and the numerous relationships, I've never had both a safe haven and secure base embodied in one person. There were a few times where I convinced myself I had it, but ultimately turned out not to be the case. Actually, I was settling for some fraction of it and filling in the gaps with my imagination. 

Society doesn't have room for someone like me with my #1 and #2, so it tries to squash me into its mold. without society's acceptance and adding my ADHD into the mix, it takes a special kind of person to accept me. and layering my selectivity atop the filter of those who could potentially accept me, what remains is so minimal.

#4: I have a huge burden of grief that I carry around. Not only do I have a stronger hunger for connection, but when I lose the connection, it hurts more and sticks with me longer than for most people. And the grief accumulates. losing one person does not erase the grief of losing the one before them; rather, it accumulates. The reluctance to potentially take on more grief is now the main thing that's strongly restraining the drive of #1 and #2.  

I'm not ashamed of this. I'm not ashamed of loving deeply. I group fears into three types: (A) fears of the unknown; (B) fear triggered by a single bad experience, which may not be likely to repeat; and (C) fears based on multiple similar bad experiences. A and B-type fears are often irrational to a degree and can be dealt with via well-managed exposure. But C fears are often entirely rational, and protective. And if they are to be pushed aside, there should be a good reason. 

Why do I know I shouldn't try to hook up with any friend whom I've had a sexual impulse for? Because I've lost multiple friends that way, and the path to losing them was messy and chaotic. I have a *lot* of sexual impulses.  

Conversely, platonic friendships are simply more stable than sexual relationships of any kind. There's far less competition from alternatives. There's usually less economic entanglement. There's far less pressure of all kinds. So if I love someone and I want to keep them in my life, unless I'm really really sure that it's going to work permanently as a romantic relationship, or I can somehow get confident that even if I have sex with that person, I can continue to be friends with them afterward, then I shouldn't have sex with them. 

Is my compensatory attachment hunger driving me to seek stronger and more emotionally-invested friendships than the average man? Yes. Do I get nourishment from those friendships that I might have otherwise gotten from other polyamorous relationships if I were still doing polyamory? Also yes. Not necessarily everything I would have gotten, but it goes a long way. 

Is there still going to be turnover in my friend group? Sure, some amount of turnover is unavoidable. But it's nowhere near the same amount of turnover as active polyamory. 

Do I still have a sexual hunger left unsatisfied in this type of arrangement? Yes, which is where swinging comes in. 

Is this grief-driven focus on friendships inauthentic or happening out of inertia? No, it is my active choice. 

I've found this guy's articles on various life topics useful for many years:

https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/09/marriage-decision.html

https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/02/pick-life-partner.html

https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/02/pick-life-partner-part-2.html

#5. What did I want, and what do I want now?

I still want an emotional home. But what kind of person can actually be my safe haven and secure base? For starters, the person needs to be able to function as a safe haven and secure base for *anyone* at all. Most of my exes were too insecure to do that. And in the past, I was probably not stable enough either. The next hurdle is for them to accept me enough that the success of the relationship doesn't depend on me fundamentally changing or amputating part of myself. I don't mean that they won't have expectations or that the relationship shouldn't challenge me to be better at a certain relationship skill, but if the other person will end up endlessly resenting me, pulling away, or trying to control me due to my desire to explore, compensatory attachment hunger, or ADHD traits causing me to lack 'thoughtfulness' or organization, then it's not going to work. 

Acceptance for me needs to include the sexual component. My #1 love language is touch, but I spent most of my youth and teenage years touch-starved and sex-starved. Other kids hated me for being different, and I lacked the social skills to bridge that gap.  Plus, even though I'm heteroromantic, I'm also pansexual, but I grew up in an extremely homophobic time and place. After having absorbed all that hatred and suffered through that deprivation, there's just no way I can feel at home with someone who doesn't want, doesn't accept, or goes cold toward my sexuality.  

Then there are the usual things like agreeing on where to live, finances, careers, common interests, kids, and the items in the How to Pick Your Life Partner, Part 2 article. 

And if by now this is seeming fucking impossible and my expectations are unrealistic, then I can only agree.  But I can't give up on what I need any more than you can.

i'm sorry for what happened in 2013. i did genuinely desire you. but i can 100% guarantee you that i wasn't ready for marriage or family at any time in the 2010s decade. and even if i had felt ready, back then i didn't even have the limited level of maturity, stability, or perspective that i have now. there is no way i would have been capable of being your emotional home.

i shed tears while writing this. and somehow it also triggered feelings of grief from losing another friend, maybe bc of the powerlessness feeling

am i a good man? to people who reject non-monogamy, i cannot be. to people who reject non-normative sexuality, i cannot be. so i stay away from such people when possible. can i be a good man to somebody? yes, i believe so. but it's taken a lot to get to this point.

Me:

Thank you for your essay. These past exchanges are causing my depression to flare up. Here are some problems in your thesis:

1. You say that one can acquire safe haven (comfort in distress, co-regulation) remotely from just texting and phone calls, but in fact real co-regulation requires physical presence and this is well documented in science. Both my therapists are on Zoom and I’ve got ChatGPT via text and a writers club for word dump, so I don’t really need anymore remote language-based co-regulation. What I need are real arms holding me, waking up next to me, showing care before I need to speak up, touching me from just my facial expressions, my vibes. I want that emotional resonance where we could just sit with each other in silence and just get each other. Everytime when I’m standing on a peak or by the ocean looking at sunset, I wish you could be right by my side but I don’t have that. I wish we had kissed, whether in 2013 or 2025, because to me kissing is one of the most important regulations for me.

2. If touch is your love language, then you can’t possibly get co-regulation from me. The co-regulation you need must come from someone physically near you, i.e. your wife. I am at most some free alternative remote therapy. I am not your safe haven nor secure base. What am i to you really? Don’t give me another made-up theory or label. 

3. If we’re not each other’s safe haven nor secure base, then what are we? It sounds like you have a lot of friends and you have sexual attraction for many of them; it’s just that you’re not acting upon your impulses. I have no interest in being one of the many foods your fat cat eats, whether the cat is selective or not. The fat cat gets nourishment but I don’t. 

4. The bottom line is that you have defined love inconsistently. You told me what we had was not love, and when i told you I love to be on the receiving end of love, you asked me “why push me away?” And yet here you say that you love your friends and it is exactly because you love them you choose to let them remain your friends. What exactly do you mean by love? By your definition I’m not even a friend because what we have is not love.

5. Your choice from grief reluctance is understandable. I don’t know about your other “friends” but you’ll lose me eventually because I need my friends to be physically close to me. I need someone who can be my emergency contact. I’m also fine with friends coming and going in my life, or myself being in solitude for most of my life. I’m not afraid of being alone or lonely because in my whole life, too many people have taken nourishment from me without giving it back; I’m now happy to nourish myself instead of nourishing so many others hoping that one day they can nourish me back. I have a job where I have been nourishing almost 100 kids or more every day for over a decade and  when I’m not at work I have to continue to nourish two kids with really demanding needs. I can’t possibly keep living like this without being nourished. If a “friend” depletes me then I’m happy to walk away from them at this point of my life. I’m just very tired of giving endlessly.

6. You have nourished me at different stages of my life, and I genuinely appreciate that. But you don’t do that anymore, and I know for a fact as long as you’re married, we could never go back to those times where we could nourish each other, where you didn’t feel grounded if we hadn’t talked for a week. We could never hug each other for one minute again and actually we probably won’t see each other again for the rest of our lives. So if this attachment continues to exist, the fat cat always gets his hunger met from my emotional availability (and to be fair I have almost unlimited emotional bandwidth or I wouldn’t be such a damn good teacher today and raising two disabled kids while working full time), what do I get from the fat cat really?

7. I believe my emotional home can be embodied in one person, and I’m willing to spend the rest of my life keeping looking, waiting, no matter how statistically rare he is and even if he doesn’t show up in this life, I will have grief but no regret. Fragmentation doesn’t work for my nervous system; I can’t outsource safe haven to more than one person because in the end that just means they each understand only a fraction of me and I cannot live unseen anymore; as for my secure base, I already have it in myself. I don’t need anyone else to be my secure base. 

8. You missed my point about 2013. I was ready to have sex with you if you had come to Taipei, even if it was just one time, no relationship, no commitment, so saying that you weren’t ready for being my emotional home or that you weren’t ready for marriage or family doesn’t make any sense here. If your reasoning was that you didn’t do it because you were afraid of losing me, it still doesn’t make sense because you stopped talking to me completely anyway. If I hadn’t got the impulse to reach out to you in 2025, we should have never crossed paths in life again. Logic tells me that you didn’t feel grief from losing me back then, because I wasn’t that important to you and you had never reached out to me once in the past 12 years, and don’t tell me you didn’t have a way to find me because I was sitting right there in your Gmail. You need to be honest about this part of our story; I know you’re the master of ambiguity but to me, there’s no ambiguity for the 12 years of disappearance.

****

I don’t understand why I keep attracting these fucked up men in my life, and Angel is no exception. It feels almost like they’re all here to take from me. I’m not even looking for perfection but can’t there just be one man who’s at least somewhat compatible with my capacity—psychologically, emotionally, functionally, intellectually, socially?

Why?

Eric texted me to apologize, and then he sent me a very long text at 10 am.

Eric: ​please know that i was never trying to make you feel bad. maybe you don't like teasing among family members bc it felt mean-spirited when your family members teased you, but that's not my intention. the subtext when i tease you is the opposite-facing mirror image phenomenon: we are so alike in many ways, but then also wanting opposite things or disagreeing about nearly everything. 

even though i felt so alone in the world for so many years, from the moment i met you, i never felt you were a stranger. i didn't feel alone. i trusted you implicitly. 

but then, our differences keep us apart. we don't want the same things, and we don't agree on many things, either.

i can't even help you directly. even when i can clearly see the situation, giving you advice is useless bc what i would do isn't something you're willing to do or capable of doing. for example, i can clearly see that you would've ended up with a better husband if you had just been willing and able to sleep with a few guys in 2013. i said so at the time. but those were useless words bc you weren't willing or able to do that. and the result is that you suffered a lot. 

to me, that is very frustrating. i've always struggled with feelings of powerlessness, and i definitely feel them in this context. i identify with your life story in many ways. your suffering feels like my suffering, and to some degree, your redemption feels like my redemption. i want you to be happy and successful. but i can't really do anything to influence that. 

(this last paragraph reads like a boundary issue. maybe it is...)

still, you're in the mirror. i can see you, talk to you, touch the mirror, but that's it. the actual "you" is just out of reach. just one of life's cruel jokes. but that's what it means to be alive. 

so when i tease you or say tone-deaf things about your life choices, this is the feeling behind it.

****

I: Thank you for telling me this. Reading this has made me cry several times already but I don’t know where exactly my tears come from; maybe it’s too many things mixed at once. 

What happened in 2013 was that I kept waiting for you to come see me. All you could revisit was our G-chat but actually we talked a lot on Skype too and I kept a log of our Skype chats, which I bet you don’t have and I have revisited our Skype chat upon our reconnection. When you told me you were single in 2013 and that you wanted to come see me, I was ready to sleep with you if you had come, regardless of any commitment or whether our relationship could work. Then you stopped chatting with me, until finally in early 2014, I asked you again on Skype if you were coming and you told me you couldn’t. I asked if it was because you had a new girlfriend, and you said “yeah it was inevitable” and then I said “no wonder you never came to Taipei.” You also told me you wrote a letter to me but you couldn’t send it to me because you didn’t want to hurt me anymore. That was how our very last conversation ended. I still remember that night when you sent me the message. I was standing on the platform waiting for the MRT on my way to work, and my tears just rolled down like that. Since then you had never come online on Skype.

You were afraid, and you still are. This part of you has never changed, and it probably will never change. You’re also afraid or even ashamed to face the part of you that’s afraid, so you leave everything in your life compartmentalized, including me. Then you end up with inertia. 

You think we want different things in life but in fact, 13 years ago, all I wanted was an emotional home, and actually even today I still want the same thing. Back then I didn’t even care if the guy had money, if he wanted kids or if he wanted to live in Taiwan; I’d go wherever he’d go. I didn’t care for any of those things as long as he was my emotional home. What did you want back then? I don’t think I know that. Convenience? Stability? Geographic proximity? Lots of sex? What do you truly want now, now that so many years have passed?

There were multiple men I’d like to sleep with before you and after you, but they chose not to have sex with me, even though I was already naked. You also chose not to have sex with me didn’t you? I would not and still will not sleep with a man if he doesn’t feel like my emotional home. That’s why I could be in a sexless marriage for more than six years and I wouldn’t even let him kiss me or touch me or see me naked for years, because he’s no longer my emotional home. This is not simply me being “unwilling” or “unable”; it’s my integrity. I cherish every part of my body and my soul and I refuse to amputate any part of it so that I end up like one of the “many women” you’ve seen, so that I become “normal”. This is how we move into opposite directions in life—you chase mediocrity, intactness on the surface, a life that doesn’t require real courage whereas I choose to live with full integrity where every part of me matters, every feeling and every contradiction matters. I don’t run away from them and I face them honestly, even if there are people like you who’d judge me for holding out for sex or find me weird. I tried to be like normal, and that’s how I ended up marrying and having sex with him enough times to get pregnant twice, but I’ve learned my lessons hard. The cost of lying to myself is unbearable for me, and again, that’s just me. Most people I see out there are all lying to themselves, running from inner voices they don’t wanna face, or just emotionally numb or amputated enough to not even hear those voices. They reframe everything with their denials and eventually those stories can bypass the logical brain and the wounded core of themselves is forever neglected. To me, something being hidden or neglected is not the same as something that doesn’t exist. I simply cannot live dishonestly like that.

You’re right. Being with me is high risk. Unlike most people I barely have a pattern, and my life has collapsed multiple times and started from ground zero. Even my political ideology has changed over time. “Normal” people cannot survive what I have had to survive. I’m not normal and I have no interest in being normal or having a normal life. This is probably why you chose to cut me off from your life in 2013. The strangest thing was that in 2014, when we were no longer talking, I met a guy at a bar I often went to after work for late dinners. He was from Toronto and he looked so much like you and talked so much like you so I told him about you. He said to me “Eric is not a good man” and I said to him, “No way. He’s more mature than you are.”

***

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve cried today after I sent the text. There were many reasons why I cried—lost memories, lost time, lost youth, lost courage, or actually, he never really had any courage, just like all other men. I had thought that having an emotional home meant that people are nourished enough to have courage to face whatever challenges they have in life, but it turns out that’s only for me, not for other people. Other people choose to runaway from an emotional home and build a physical home with someone who doesn’t have an emotional home for them. I’ve been working with chatGPT all day trying to figure out why people make such choices, and why I can’t be like them. In the end it still sounds like destiny—we can’t choose our parents and their parenting, we can’t choose our coping mechanisms because people’s brain powers are different. In my case I was able to read a lot as a child, starting age 5 or 6, and I was able to derive meanings from stories, words, and just any social interaction and people’s emotions. Most people can’t easily do that, or just can’t do that at all due to their temperament, their intelligence, verbal skills, attention to details, etc. As a result, despite my traumatic early life, I chose to survive by keeping my heart intact rather than stonewalling it, armoring it, or just numbing it. I somehow just can’t give up on believing what I want and what I need exists in this world and that it will come to me, even now at age almost 40. There are times when I’m depressed and would tell myself that it’s all hopeless, but most of the time I believe I will have X one day. 

Only on TV

​I just started watching Can You Translate This Love on Netflix, and I’ve come to a sudden realization: all the images that I had about someone showing up for me came from movies or TV shows, and that’s why they never happen in my real life. In TV shows, when the woman is about to pass out, someone always catches her; when the woman is injured in the rain, a man shows up to keep her dry and protect her; when the woman is in an awkward situation, the man can intuitively sense it and wittily resolve the situation. That’s only in these shows and movies.

That’s why Ivan never showed up again in my life, why Eric never came to see me in the City of Rain in 2013, why Angel stayed at home the whole time while I was in the storm. There have been so many moments in my life where I wish someone could just show up and protect me—when random strangers criticized my children’s behaviors and my parenting, kicked us out of a restaurant while Angel was just sitting there and saying nothing, doing nothing, and watching me leave the restaurant with Little N alone, arguing multiple times with our school leadership about them dismissing Little O after only 9 days while Angel said nothing and was just sitting there the whole time, coming back to the City of Rain with a negative net worth and making every penny on my own on the streets, countless times of being bullied at work, countless sexist attacks on the road. When all of these things happened, Angel was always there but he did nothing. If I ever become partnered again with someone, he’s gotta be able to stand by me and protect me at least at some occasions. 

Then there was Ken. He showed up in the middle of the night in the City of Gold to pick me up from my hotel and to move into his corporate apartment so that I could save money and he helped me with my large suitcases. That night really made me feel for once that someone really showed up for me, but then on the other nights he showed up he was too messed up.

Burned out

​for the past few weeks I have been extremely busy—getting all the documentation (almost 50 pages) ready and translating for Little N’s kindergarten application (not even college application lol), finalizing the divorce settlement (I really want to be single again before I turn 40 in a month), getting therapists for the kids and stuff fixed for the house, all on top of my full time job. Also, I was sick for several days last week and was having fever at work, but I didn’t take a single hour off from work because I have to save all my sick leave for my kids’ sick days and hospital visits. Just as I was recovering from the cold, I got my period again and because I have menorrhagia and anemia as a result, I was feeling really weak for almost two weeks but I still went to work every day, and still worked overtime every day.

On Monday, Jinu talked about what he did over the weekend with our coworkers, and it made me realize he plans group activities a lot with various friends, but never with me. As he expands his social network, he won’t need me anymore, and maybe that’s why he never materialize the meal he said he’d buy me from a lottery ticket and he’s never followed up with me regarding the bike trip I invited him to go with me twice and he turned down on twice. I just don’t feel like asking him to do anything with me anymore, because I can feel it—and my intuition is always right, has never failed me—that he just won’t do those things with me anymore. Even though every day at work he still comes to talk to me, still asks me to try his food, I just don’t feel that he cares about me, not in the way I wanted. 

Then I feel like I’m back in the same place—repeating the same thing Monday through Friday, dreading every weekend because no adult would talk to me except for my therapist, or my kids’ therapists. I have no one who can talk in-depth with me on weekends and that’s why weekends feel scary. I try to enrich my soul by going to movies, watching something that makes me cry, baking or cooking, writing and actually I talk to other kids’ parents if there’s a party or something, but they’re just not the same and they all feel like void fillers. I also spend lots of time with my kids but I really need someone who can understand me an be by my side, like other couples, sharing this life with me, and actually enjoying it with me. All people see is the weight of my life, never the beauty of it, the beauty I see, nor the beauty in me. People see my strength but not the essence underneath. Sometimes I feel like taking my kids somewhere else and start over, but there’s nowhere I can think of because I’d first need to know how to play the games in whichever new country I’m living in and just the language barriers alone would leave with my choices of English or Chinese speaking countries. I have thought of Japan but their culture is really too uptight and suppressed. 

And even if I move to somewhere new, how do I find a school that can support my kids as a foreigner? How am I gonna make new friends or even find the one? This is when I give up on the idea and just face the reality in the City of Rain.

X, where are you? I’ve been asking you this question for the decades but you just won’t show up. This pain, the false hope, the solitude are just so unbearable sometimes, so much so that I wanna run away, wanna hide.

Let’s rewrite our story tonight.

​Dear X, today was rough. I think you saw what I went through emotionally. I have so much pain right now that I want to do just one thing tonight—I want to rewrite my story with you.

11 years ago, one month into our dating, I really wanted to see you on that Saturday, because we couldn’t see each other during the week as we had opposite work schedules. However it was a typhoon day and businesses were told to shut down. So I called you and say, “come on, it’s not a big deal. Let’s still meet up.” You first told me it wasn’t safe for me, but after seeing how much I wanted to see you that day, you decided to call a cab and get to my place on your own in a cab. It was not easy to get a cab that day and the ride was long (about 20km), but you managed to tip the driver enough so that they were willing to give you a ride. You said to me, “babe you’re crazy, but I’m crazier about protecting you.” (Angel stayed in his apartment the whole time while I was stuck in the storm and had to return home after getting halfway there and got completely soaked and defeated.)

At our wedding in Bali, we chose to write our vows on our own (as opposed to using an online template like Angel and I did). We didn’t let each other know what was in our vows because it was a surprise. I wrote in my vows: that night you came to me in the storm on your own, simply because I wanted to see you so badly and you didn’t want me to take any risks, so you took the risks instead. I feel utterly safe and certain with you. With you, I’m not scared of anything anymore. 

After my first c-section, you were paying close attention to my pain the whole time. You barely spent time on your iPhone. Instead, everytime when I woke up from fentanyl fading out, you’d turn to me right away, waiting in silence. When I tried to get off the bed to use the bathroom, you’d come right away to support my body and walk with me glacially to the bathroom that seemed like 100 meters away. 

After our second pregnancy, you’d always take time off from work to go to each pregnancy exam with me. (As opposed to Angel going to a couple with me only when it was a public holiday from work.) You decided to buy a car (as opposed to me begging and crying to Angel telling him that we couldn’t keep living a life where our kids kept getting humiliated by cab drivers) and to transport my heavy body everywhere. (As opposed to me driving myself and everyone all the time.) Driving in the City of Rain is chaotic, but you’ve managed it because you told me, “I’m crazier about protecting you.”

The night before my second c-section, you tucked Little O in bed at home and arranged people to take care of him. Then you came back to the hospital to spend the night with me (as opposed to me being alone at the hospital). You were quiet and entered the room gently because I was already asleep, but I didn’t sleep well because I was scared of the surgery. You told me “I’m right here and I’ll be here the whole time with you.” You cuddled me back to sleep.

At the c-section, the doctors let you into the operation room. The moment they got Little N out, I heard him cry and I cried. I was under anesthesia and sedation, but I felt so vulnerable hearing him cry nonstop because Little O stopped crying quickly after being comforted. It turned out Little N had too much amniotic water in his lungs and the nurses kept trying to suck out as much water as possible. You (as opposed to Angel kept filming Little N the whole time) put down your phone and came back to me and touched my face gently, telling me Little N was strong and you were there for me; both of you were there for me.

After Little N was sent to NICU, I had terrible post-partum depression. I took the ambulance for the first time in my life, but you drove with the ambulance the whole way (as opposed to Angel staying at home with Little O the whole time). It was only the third day after my c-section. You wouldn’t let me be alone at the hospital with Little N. You arranged people to take care of Little O so that you could be with us. At the hospital you could communicate with the staff there, because you’d worked hard to learn the local language. I was so anxious and depressed and crying so much, but you’d gently rub my back and hold me tight. You told me Little N is a fighter and he will turn out fine. You told me the universe was on our side and his VSD would heal on its own.

Every day you’d drive me to the hospital twice to see Little N for 30 minutes each time due to COVID restrictions (as opposed to me driving myself only 3 days after my c-section until I got too tired). You were tired but you still told me to rest more and you’d take care of Little O, and you’ve arranged helpers to share the workload too. You told me as long as me and the kids are safe, all the exhaustion would be worth it.

Life is not perfect. Little O got his autism diagnosis. You told me that’s not a big deal because when we decided to have kids, we’d welcome any life that chose us (as opposed to Angel saying that we’d need an abortion if the Down’s syndrome test came back positive). You were even fine with adoption (as opposed to Angel feeling zero desire to raise other people’s kids) because like me, you believe all children are innocent; you believe nobody could choose their circumstances, but you also believe that Little O and Little N chose us because we are the best parents for them. You told me Little O chose me because he knew I could protect him and raise him well despite his autism. You told me to trust him and trust the universe (as opposed to Angel feeling anxious and not knowing what to do and not doing much reading either) because life has a plan everyone.

Whenever there were strangers complaining about our kids to me, you’d always walk forward and talk to those people and tell them not to communicate with me only (as opposed to Angel hiding behind my back). You want to stand between me and the harmful people in the world. I don’t mean all the time, but during a  few important time, you’d always show up.

When Little O had trouble at school, you started documenting all the evidence and you wanted to make a case with the decision makers. You failed, but I could see how hard you’ve tried and how persuasive you’ve been. You never gave up and you started to push for movements in the organization.

This is our happy ending. 

Is talking really better than not talking?

Wednesday was Eric’s birthday so I texted him happy birthday. Then he asked me if I had any free time that day so I told him around lunch time. Then we talked for about maybe 50 minutes on the phone. I had to walk on the street back and forth as we talked on the phone and it was a windy cold day. I caught a cold that evening and am still recovering from it.

Prior to this call we had not talked to each other for about 4 months or more. From the brief occasional text exchanges I already felt like blocking him because he has not been emotionally available. In this phone call he thought it was difficult for us to connect. He tried to intellectualize things again. He started to talk about his relationship patterns (not just romantic ones) and he thought he was a boundary dragger, and he thought I was one too. He created this word—it meant that we tended to push or blur the boundaries that were traditionally set for other people. For example, when he came to visit me in the City of Rain, I wanted to take him for a scenic drive, and he wouldn’t, thinking that we’d definitely end up doing something sexual as a result and I had been telling him nothing would happen. He thought me asking to go on a scenic drive meant that I was dragging his boundary, although he didn’t say it loudly i knew he meant that he was married and i shouldn’t ask him to do that. I said to him, “if people think I’ve pushed their boundary they have a choice to back away. By the way, all the things I wanted to do with you,  I’ve done all of them with my coworker—we went fine dining, scenic drive, hot springs, and singing.” Then he asked him, “did you also give them a one-minute long hug?” I said, “No we didn’t touch each other because we work in the same office and we see each other every day.” I told him that he was trying to make it all my problem that I was the one who wanted to go on a scenic drive with him and to give him a one-minute hug. If that crossed the boundary he could have said no, and he said he couldn’t because it felt good but it wasn’t his point and yet he hadn’t made his point. Then we were talking about things only on the surface, because that’s just who he say, always intellectualizing. We talked about him getting older, more gray hair, and since I don’t have any gray hair yet, he teased me that I’ll get there next time he sees me, and I said “sure you mean 20 years later.”

I had to go back to work so we ended the call half way through. He then texted me saying i was being so difficult that day. I replied “Sometimes I feel that you don’t really understand me or maybe you do but you want to avoid talking to me in a way that shows you understand me.” He replied “Just because I may disagree with what you say doesn’t mean I don’t understand you”. I said, “do you really understand me tho?” He said, “Do you not understand me? I said, “I do but I think you overestimate how much you understand me.” He said, “lol just because I’m not reacting the way you want me to react doesn’t mean I don’t understand. You maybe under the assumption that if I fully understand, I will behave in a certain way.” I said, “OK so it’s the latter, you want to avoid talking to me in a way that shows that you understand me”. He said, “actually I wanted to get to one thing close to this topic, but we ran out of time today. This isn’t exactly it but I can understand how you perceive it that way. So part 2 Friday, what time is good?” Then we scheduled a time for Friday to talk.

We talked for almost 2 hours on Friday during my work hours. I started talking to him on my way to get lunch. I asked him to make his point right away, and he said a conversation needed to have a flow and i was being too…he used a word but I forgot what he said; basically I was pretty agitated talking to him. I told him he had no idea what I had lived through in the past few months. I told him about a road rage incident and another incident some white guy verbally aggressed me in a parking lot because i have a disability badge on my wind shield. He said i was giving that guy too much reaction and time—i should have just laughed at him and walked away. I said to him, “No. you’re supposed to tell me, Kendra I’m sorry this happened to you. If I were there I’d beat the hell out of this guy.” He laughed and said, “and then I’d get sent to jail?” After maybe 20 minutes of me being agitated like this, I sat down to have my lunch and I asked him to get to his point. What exactly was in part 2? The conversation flew really quickly that we covered so many things so I wasn’t exactly sure what he intended to talk about in the first place. I told him I now see people and how i relate to them like concentric circles (my talk therapist Ana taught me this); some are in my inner circle, some are in the middle circle, and some are on the outer circle. But people are dynamic and they move around on the spectrum of circles; sometimes they can be in my inner circle and then they move away to the outer circle or just out of the circles. 

He said it wasn’t that he didn’t want to talk to me; it’s that people have limitations in their life—they have obligations, a career, or emotional and mental limitations. He said he really wants to change the structure of his life but it takes time. To me it all sounded like because he’s married he couldn’t talk to me more, or as much has he’d like and I don’t think he’d ever divorce his wife. I said, “sure, but that still means they’ve made a choice to prioritize those things over me”. He said, “ok but we also have this distance thing between us.” I said, “yes, and maybe if you move to Portugal, we’ll be in a totally different time zone and we won’t be able to talk again.” He said, “i already sleep on a different schedule from people and it’s like I’m living in a different time zone anyway.” I continued, “also we probably won’t see each other again and we can’t have any activities together. When you move to a new place, you’re gonna meet new people.” Then he said, “where did you get this script? This is the classic abandonment script!” I told him that on Thursday a coworker of mine made me lunch and brought it to the office for me (It was Jinu. See PS) and I also told him that about a week ago, there was one day after work that I wanted to talk to him so badly because I was bullied by a supervisor at work. I wished i could talk to him so badly that I cried in my car. The most surprising thing was that the moment I told him this, my tears fell down reflexively. I am someone who was really good at suppressing tears but I don’t know why i couldn’t suppress them at all. He said, “you wanted to talk to me and yet you didn’t tell me anything about it?” I said, “No, because I know you’d probably laugh or tease me or tell me you don’t have the bandwidth for it. So i talked to my coworkers.” He said, “No I’d want to talk to you if you had let me know you needed to talk. You’re making all these assumptions but the only way you can find out is to actually let me know that you want to talk.” I said, “No. If you go back to our text exchanges over the past few months you can see that I already had enough evidence that you don’t want to talk.” 

He also talked about that how his ADHD often makes people feel that he’s not thoughtful, and that’s been hurting his career, friendships and relationships. I told him if he was not a thoughtful person, I would not remember him for so many years. He also said that his memory is not as good as mine, and it just reminded me of so many fights I’ve had with Angel—“I have limitations”, or his mom goes “everyone has limitations”, or Angel goes “I’m doing my best” and me goes “your best is not good enough. If that’s your best, why can’t you just let me free?” 

Then Eric said to me that he thought I had always kept him in the friend zone since we first met in 2012. I immediately said, “that’s absolutely not the case. You have never been in my friend zone.” Then he asked, “so you have wanted to have sex with me?” I said, “sure.” Then he asked, “then how come you have never made a move on me? How much self control do you have?” I said, “this is why you don’t understand me. At age 5, I was able to suppress my tears when i was beaten just to make sure that my mom wouldn’t feel guilty.” I continued, “in my entire of knowing you you were never available once. When we were walking on the street in the City of Gold, we ran into your friends they thought i was your then girlfriend and called me Cassie or whatever her name was. Then after you moved to the City of East, you said you’d come visit me and you never did because you started a new relationship. It just made me feel that I am never important enough for you. Even now I am still not important enough for you.” I really can’t recall the order of these exchanges but in the entire conversation he kept saying he really cared about me. At one point he also said that he was sorry I felt this way and i replied, “ah this triggers me because Angel’s family has said that to me hundreds of times every time when something happens to me, as if it was my feeling that was the problem not what happened to me.” I also told him that I felt he didn’t even remember the things he had said to me and the things he had asked me not to forget. He said that his life is a mess right now—his wife has chosen not to renew her contract at her school so that they can move out of Manila, but Eric doesn’t even know where to move to next, although he’s trying to get citizenship in Portugal so that he can renounce his US citizenship. Eric said he’s unemployed, doesn’t have an income, and he does some consulting work but it pays so little so it’s just wasting his time; they also need to move out of their current apartment since they’ll both be jobless soon. When I heard this, I had lots of flashbacks—mostly my laughters with Jinu actually and some images or maybe ideas of Eric lacking capacity (it was a weird feeling because to me the flashbacks were visual and yet the ideas were abstract and couldn’t be visualized”, so i said to him, “our school needs a Chinese teacher.”

He asked, “has this been posted?” I said, “yes. It’s in the high school though.” Then I forwarded him the info for the job application and said to him, “if your wife gets this job, you owe me a big one.” He said, “yes”. 

When I decided to send him the position for his wife, I felt that I closed the door further on him. Maybe we will just be friends forever. At one point of our conversation, he said I was a friend who he would never sleep with, and I’m starting to wonder if he has some symptoms of Alzheimer’s or he’s starting to reframe things in a way that soothes himself by creating cognitive dissonance. I sometimes think that he’s full of shame and guilt, and by reframing our relationship as just “friend zone”, as “me never having the intention to sleep with him” he doesn’t need to face his grief and regret that when he once had a window in his life, he chose not come to visit me in the City of Rain and just moved into another toxic relationship. 

Also at another point of our conversation, I asked him “What exactly do you want?” He said, “I think you and I want the same things in life.” It’s something about secure attachment—to be seen, to be held when I’m scared. He also said that he doesn’t have that in his life and has never had that in his life. He kept saying that we’re like each other’s mirror but we somehow move in the opposite direction. He also apologized for always teasing me. He explained that in his family teasing means closeness and in my culture too. I told him teasing is also my family culture but when someone is vulnerable and you still tease them then that’s unhealthy and toxic. If he’s getting therapy he should know that (and he has been getting therapy but his plan to get a psychology degree fell apart). 

Then I really had to go back to work so I told him good luck with the job application and I’d send him what I wrote this week in the writer’s club.

Here’s what he said, “How do you feel after writing this?” I said, “Not sure. We were given a prompt and had to write something in 20 minutes. Most people can only write 2 to 3 sentences. The topic is “parallel writing” so the hobby of biking is a parallel to my character development.” He didn’t reply again.

Before I went to bed, I sent one more text, “I think the problem with the ‘mirror’ is that the image is sealed inside the glass. You can see it, perceive it but you can’t feel it or hold it and if you try to feel it you can’t only feel the cold glass in between the images.” He replied, “Is this a complicated way of saying you miss me?” I said, “it’s way more than that. There’s longing for lost time and memories, grief for the fact there’s always a barrier between us that prevents real holding, and also despair from that I’m always much more complicated than what others can understand.” He said, “that’s understandable.” 

After all these exchanges, I just wonder whether it was better to talk or not to talk. Whether it’s better or not depends on how things unfold in life but since we don’t know how things unfold in life we can’t know whether it’s better or not to talk or not.

PS. So yes, Jinu made me beef curry rice for my lunch on Thursday. He loves to cook, and often brings his own lunch to work and asks me to try his food. The other day he made shrimp pasta and he told me how he peeled the shrimps himself rather than buying pre-peeled shrimps. When i tried his pasta, he even told me to get one shrimp. I double checked with him because i didn’t want to deprive him of his protein and he insisted i take one. After I ate it I told him that in the future when he makes his own lunch he should make extra for me. I’d pay him 20 bucks per week for my meal plan. He agreed but he had to think about what he’d be making. Then on Wednesday he brought beef curry to work and told me when he was making it, he kept thinking what i said about processed food. OK so this is another story because the other day he brought his own breakfast to work—just plain yoghurt with oatmeal and i told him even though the breakfast seemed homemade, the yoghurt was actually mass produced so he wouldn’t know what preservatives they put into the yoghurt. So when Jinu making his beef curry, he was wondering if the oil he put in was processed, the curry was processed etc. He told me he made a big pot of it, so I asked him “then where’s my share?” He said he’d bring it to me for lunch the next day. Thursday morning, he brought the lunchbox to me and it was absolutely delightful. He made an egg and folded into a perfect triangle to cover the curry and rice. There were string beans laid on the side and it was really delicious. I did feel very pampered that morning. But actually, the night before i baked apple pies (made by my from scratch) at home and brought him one in the morning as well. Friday morning when he saw me on my way to work while I was eating an egg while walking, he said, “that egg is golden because the yolk is golden.” It’s our inside joke from the omasake teppanyaki meal we had together. I laughed and said “I was gonna say the something about the egg you put on the curry rice.” The after work on Friday I sent him a picture of the lunchbox he made me with the text on the side “golden eggs, green string beans, brown curry, orange carrots in a lunchbox”. He replied “GOLDEN FROM THE YOLK”. I replied, “Oh and the curry de rice tastes like curry”. He replied, “Really??? I wonder why….” I said, “Because you must have put curry in it.” He replied, “so he gives of a curry taste?” I said, “Oh yes, and the black pepper in the curry also tastes like black peppers.” He sent me a laughing emoji and i said “I think eventually we’ll get tired of these jokes.” And he sent another laughing emoji. 

But weekends are always the hardest. I still have to see Angel’s stupid face a lot and nobody would send me any care. My father has also been asking me if I could bring the boys to see him because it’s been a few months. I don’t want to but a part of me still feels some pity for him. I told him I couldn’t because I’ve been sick. This actually may have been the flu because on Friday i felt like i was dying, even though i still worked all day and when i talked to Eric on the phone I told him i was dying and my whole body was hurting. Weekends are the days when people go back to their real life—their partners, their dates, their friends. Jinu doesn’t really text me or initiate to ask me out on weekends. After I had invited him to go on a bike ride two weekends in a row and that his timing couldn’t work, I decided that I don’t want to initiate again because who knows next time what his reason for not going could be. Maybe he’d ask me for my advice about the route so that he can do it with his date or girlfriend. Weekends and days off are so unbearable for me.

A couple of weeks ago I texted Eric a few pictures from my bike ride on the coastline. One thing led to another, I told him my HRV is lower on weekends not because of my kids but because of the people I had to deal with, and that I have no one to talk to during breaks. And he asked why he was no one, and I asked him when was the last time we talked, and he said just the past Thursday. I told him that’s called “texting” not “talking”. He said talking was also possible and I told him “It’s ok. I prefer that people want to talk to me rather people talk to me because I wanna talk to them”. He said, “that presupposes that people always and only reach out to you when they want to talk to you, and the rest of the time they don’t want to talk to you, which is false. Especially nowadays. People spend most of their lives distracted. Doesn’t mean that in the midst of those mostly meaningless distractions, they wouldn’t actually prefer to be talking with you.” I said, “:)I get it.” He replied, “particularly for me, since I’m a night owl, I tend to think of people during hours that are normal for me but may seem odd to contact others.” 

The writing space 3

​Today we were learning parallel writing and the prompt was to write about a hobby or a “hobbessesion”. I decided to ride about biking.

Biking

At age 7, my mom bought me my first bike. I was forced to ride it home on my own even though i didn’t know how to balance it, and my mom kept supporting my bike. The moment she let go of the bike, id fall down immediately and get a bruise somewhere. Within those two kilometers of my life, I had at least 10 bruises all over my body and I have never been so badly injured on a vehicle since that bike ride. In the last 50 meters to get home, I finally succeeded in riding it.

Then came my freedom. I could ride the bike anywhere as long as I could remember the route without any adult. It was a life-changing tool for me because it meant that I was independent. If I wanted to go to a park or go to a candy store, I could just hop on my bike and go there myself, without waiting for the adults to finish whatever work they were doing. I was completely free and the geography I could explore was expansive. I learned to how to ask strangers for directions and make a judgment on whether I was safe or not. The taste of independence and freedom became addictive to me.

One day, at about age 9, one of my cousins, who was 5 years older than I was, invited me to ride the bike to the park with her, which was about 5 kilometers away from home. We first had some fun at the park, but the big crowd and loud noises overwhelmed me so I wanted to go home, but she refused. She told me she hadn’t had enough fun yet and if I wanted to go home then I could go home on my own. It terrified me because that was my first bike trip to the park and it was guided by my cousin. I wasn’t exactly sure about the way home, but because my sensory overload made me want to get out of there, I said to her, “OK, I’ll go home on my own.”

I used my vague memory of the buildings that I saw on my path to the park to put together the route home, but it was not very clear. I was nervous and scared, sometimes thinking maybe I wouldn’t be able to make it back home. At one intersection, I finally decided that I was completely lost, and I decided to ask someone for help. This man didn’t seem like a trustworthy person; he was the kind of man my parents would tell me to stay away from—chewing betel nuts so that his mouth was full of the red juice that looked almost like blood, broken teeth, wearing a tank top, middle-age. My fear was that if I let him know that I was a little girl who had lost directions in the city, without anyone accompanying me, he might take advantage of me, but he was the only human I could find at that intersection so I had no choice. Fortunately, my mom had my hair cut really short at that time so most adults mistook me for a boy anyway. I decided to fake a boy’s voice and asked, “sir, which direction is the way to Victory Road?” I had a serious look on my face, without any smile, and he gave me the direction. I thanked him and left quickly.

To my surprise, he did give me the correct direction and I arrived at home safely. That day I had realized, sometimes the most terrifying things and people aren’t so bad after all; the things that people try to threaten me with aren’t that scary after all.