Quarantine Diaries: Week 3 – INTEND

Wednesday, July 15, 2020 – 10:56AM

I am so incredibly tired right now after being unable to sleep yesterday due to my obscene caffeine intake. I’m on my second cup of coffee and I’ve been up since 6AM but I am really struggling to stay awake. I worked out for the first time today since my injury, modifying everything, and my ankle is still tender and a putrid shade of yellow-green but I’m at a point where I need to push past the pain. After this week, there’s only one week of July left! We’re halfway there and already more than halfway through the year. In 7 months time, I’ll be twenty-nine!!
I woke up early despite my lack of sleep and accomplished everything on my to-do list before 10AM, now all there’s left is to finish that looming writing piece but my eyelids are so heavy that I prioritized this diary out of fear of falling asleep or losing motivation before I get around to it later today. Even now, my fingers are stumbling and clumsy and my words are mixed up in a dyslexic sequence because I keep losing my train of thought with every yawn.
One prevalent issue I have been struggling with (and have previously touched upon) is my insecurity about feeling under-appreciated. I know comparison is the worst kind of poison but it’s something I’m dangerously addicted to and actively working on. I would definitely say that comparison is my life’s greatest vice. I have gotten a lot better about it in adulthood, recognizing the toxicity of tearing down other women as a sign of my previously unrecognized insecurity, and being better about bringing fellow women up. However, I still struggle with comparison not with self-worth, but when it comes to measuring external love.
I’ve dealt with insecure friends who lash out at signs of my perceived betrayal or disrespect so I try to keep those experiences in mind when I feel uncertain about where I stand with someone I really care about. I think in my journey of self-love, I’ve recognized that I give all of myself again and again to people who consume all of my resources without ever offering anything in return. My mother used to scream at me for it, watching me pour my time, money, resources, talents into other people until I was sleep-deprived and over-worked but smiling so stupidly because other people’s happiness was the key to my own. “You have to learn to protect yourself,” she’d say, “When are you going to learn to put yourself first?”
I’m trying not to do that anymore and I’m learning what it means to maintain healthy boundaries but I still feel a disproportionate disconnect between what I feel and how much I am loved and I often sit with my thoughts trying to untangle the thread of whether I am just being inherently insecure or if this is sincerely just another one-sided relationship I need to give up.
I wouldn’t go as far as to say that what I feel now is one-sided, but I definitely can’t shake the feeling of being under-appreciated. I see other people being so wholeheartedly supported and publicly lauded for doing a fraction of the things I’ve been doing behind the scenes and it honestly feel likes shit. I hate this version of myself and I’m not sure where this is even coming from because I felt like I had been doing so much better with learning to implicitly trust the people I love.
I also find it abhorrent when people proclaim “how much they’ve done for someone” after dealing with the type of friends who make that their daily mantra and seeing this same performative “selflessness” for the sake of ego validation also play out in the media. I don’t need acknowledgement for the person I am behind closed doors and I would never hold the things I’ve done for you against you. What I take issue with is the difference in appreciation that is expressed that makes me feel like it isn’t owed to someone like me.
I can never tell the difference between my insecurity warping the situation and the reality in front of me. Do I deserve to move on or am I walking away from someone who truly cares about me due to my misperception?
Why is loving someone this hard? There is so much uncertainty and miscommunication even between two people who openly express their unconditional love. It makes me all the more hesitant to branch out past platonic relationships and be doubly vulnerable in the search for romantic love.
I’m also so tired that I hate everything I’ve written thus far today and feel like I’m still miles away from what I’m actually trying to say. My recent insecurity has doubled with this persistent self-criticism about not writing poetry anymore. I used to speak in metaphors and sonnets, incapable of committing my meaning to literal explanation and relying on volumes and volumes of poems to express what I was feeling. Then I joined my school’s elite literary magazine and the most beautiful pieces were lengthy prose compositions and I began honing my own craft to mirror that of their own until I finally completed a multi-page odyssey in the style of magical realism as the perfect actualization between metaphor and prose.
As the years went on, I found I could only write in prose rather than poetry, in the same way I am amazing at art when my writing takes the back burner or awful at art when I concentrate all my energy into writing. I don’t know why everything has to be all or nothing with me but it’s the way I’ve always been and even my talents commit to this trend. I’ve dabbled with poetry in recent years after rereading my early work but everything I write now feels too intentional, with not enough subtlety or sincerity; thus lacking in emotional connect and originality.
I found myself pondering committing to a poetry challenge as I showered in the early dawn this morning. I think it would do wonders for my craft in the way this diary has, but I am afraid to let go of these entries and look back at only beautiful musings with no elucidation to these visceral memories I am trying to immortalize.
I don’t want to risk forgetting anything, especially when the days are this fleeting.

Thursday, July 16, 2020 – 10:21AM

This whole past month I’ve had these bizarre reoccurring dreams that constantly feature my sister. One was about two of her oldest childhood friends and the four of us going on a girls’ trip where one of them offered to lend me a dress for my school formal and I tried on a bunch of her clothes in a bonding moment and the latter friend freaked out and left early after screaming at us for ignoring her the whole trip and making her feel invisible. The angered friend is actually terrifying in real life and I woke up in a cold sweat after having endured her wrath even in dreamland and texted my sister immediately.
My sister laughed and said thank you for always having her back, even in dreams. Though, my sister is the real MVP. No one knows me better than she does, I try to convey just how accident-prone and foolish I am through my stories, but my sister has been there to witness the messes I always find myself in firsthand. She’s seen me wipe out and fall at work with such a loud scream that everyone in the store froze in concern, she’s seen me leave my phone repeatedly in the back of a cab or on a sofa at the bar for her to pick up, she’s seen me lose my keys twice when moving out of two separate apartments and leaving with the doors unlocked, she’s seen me deteriorate into the most helpless, child-like version of myself when she’s around because I just stand there with a blank stare and whimper “Help” and she screams “Are you fucking kidding me?” but then inevitably gets it done; like chasing a cab three blocks to retrieve my phone or going outside to pick up our KFC order from Seamless because I refuse to leave the home.
I crack up hysterically whenever I remember the Seamless story because we ordered only for the combos since we had nothing to drink at the Airbnb and then the driver forgot all the drinks so all we had between us was our building thirst and salty chicken but both of us agreed to suffer in silence instead of contacting him and fighting over who should venture outside because my sister had already done it once, wouldn’t do it twice, and I just flat-out refused.
Even now I’m wearing her contacts that aren’t my prescription and make me dizzy because the letters are so unfocused on the screen, but ten months in Asia and I’ve already run out of my own, just like she knew I would so here we are. This morning she rescued me from a pandemic-induced nightmare of canceled and rescheduled flights with no response from customer service because of the overwhelming requests from patrons all in the same predicament. She sighed, not understanding how I get myself in these situations, the way she sighed when I shattered my own tailbone, didn’t pack up my apartment until the day I was due to move out, slipped twice on the marble floors of my Balinese studio, and nearly fractured my ankle.
But then she stepped in and rescued me like she always does.
I don’t know why I feel like crying as I write that.
She’s not one for emotional displays of affection but it’s safe to say I would honestly die without her. I’m still forcing her to go get the food though because I’m not interacting with a stranger for nobody.
My sister deals with a certain level of anxiety she confided in me about and it was shocking for me to hear because I’m always the one freaking out, throwing up on the way to work, on the verge of tears.
She’s the one who always coaxes my social anxiety to a rational, manageable level so to hear how she needed my perspective to rationalize her worries was a strange shift in our dynamic. She’s so cool, calm, and collected that all I could say was, “Who are you, honestly?” and she chuckled in bemused agreement.
She told me college shattered her sense of self, the way it wrecked mine, and tells me every day that she’ll never attempt further education again.
Another close friend of mine is currently attempting to finish her degree at the same time as my sister and expresses a parallel degree of misery and crippling self-doubt. What is it about tertiary education that cuts us down to the lowest versions of ourselves while promising to build us up? I don’t agree with the societal value placed on a college degree, and another one of my best friends who is pursuing her masters always reminds me that it’s only a participation award whenever my Asian family tries to pressure me into returning to school and I beat myself up.
The first friend I mentioned is such a reflection of the person I am, with the same mirrored insecurities so we often feel like the words out of one’s mouth came from the other’s brain. We even fooled her younger sister into believing we had telepathic power after being inspired by T*Witches in second grade.
We attribute this kinship to the dual nature of both our star signs, so similar in our highs and lows, constantly invalidated by our inability to follow through when the negative twin shows up. Only we are capable of understanding the self-loathing that comes with cyclically, repeatedly, always being your own worst enemy and having no one but yourself to blame.
I’ve kept this diary a secret from everybody. Partially because I’m just doing it for myself, partially because I’m afraid that if I say it out loud I won’t be able to see it through, partially because I wasn’t sure myself if I was capable of following all the way through. I wish I could share it with her, I wish she could take comfort in knowing that almost every day, I’ve been plagued by my own lethargy and lack of motivation. That I am also terrified of never accomplishing everything I set out to do. That I also feel the same massive anxiety when another day passes, full of excuses, and I have nothing to show for it.
Yesterday I was so tired and dizzy I dropped an entire glass canister of coffee, sick to my stomach with dread as I watched it slip from my fingers in slow motion. It exploded like stars, in similar fashion to the glass bottle of water I dropped from my bed and then stepped on its minuscule pieces. For days after, I bled.
The coffee grounds scattered everywhere; like dirt, like ashes, like a million little roaches. I feel nauseous even looking at all of the blackened dots. I will never again take a broom or vacuum or carpeted floors for granted. I poured buckets of water by hand to scrub the sticky coffee grounds off the humid jungle floor and wiped everything up with napkins.
I have so many scars on the soles of my feet from dropping too many glass objects. Whenever this happens in Asian shows, in dramas and anime, it happens in slow motion, as a bad omen.
A dark chill settles in the air. But how many times have I done this in my lifetime?
My sister implores, “Please, stop doing stupid shit.”
When will I stop fucking up? When will I grow up? When will I start showing up for myself instead of always giving up?

Friday, July 17, 2020 – 1:43PM

I feel really triggered being the only Asian, female tourist I’ve seen traveling alone. There are so many British/Australian retirees vacationing/residing here and every single time I am inadvertently forced to overhear their conversations due to their carrying voices in the otherwise silence, my whole body hums with a buzzing defensiveness because every single time I listen, it is rooted in racism.
I just think it’s funny how everyone on social media is so quick to make memes about the racism in America (which I absolutely don’t refute) but I wholeheartedly reject the idea that Europe is any more accepting or that Canada is a refuge. The latter has been soundly disproved by the deluge of videos and accusations of neighborly, random, and police attacks of brutality against the Asian community. The internet has responded with as much shock as outrage, the common theme in the comments stating, “Wow, I guess Canada isn’t any better than America” with Canadian minorities confirming this is the case.
During my two years living in a tiny town in Ireland where I was one of eight Koreans and all of twenty Asians in the entire community, the racism was more rooted in well-meaning ignorance so I just smiled politely instead of firing off. Abortion was still illegal then, Catholic roots still strong, and my boyfriend at the time was hesitant about us getting our own place together due to his grandparent’s culture shock. In a town like this, I seldom saw black people and the racism was the strongest against the Arab community and the Eastern European immigrants who had moved to Western Europe to do all the menial jobs no one else would do; much like the Hispanic immigrant workforce in the United States.
There were hateful accusations thrown around; pejoratives, generalizations, scoffing disdain. It shocked me to see entire people groups treated like this, especially towards the Romanian/Serbian immigrants who were so genuinely kind to me when no one else bothered to befriend me when they saw me as Asian; though some were quick to change their tune when they learned I was American.
It seemed to me that the mindsets in Europe were as ancient as their buildings. In the same way I was in awe of their crumbling castles and historic churches, I was constantly shocked by the open discrimination and accepted bigotry in daily interactions. Remember, these were the original colonizers, and this is a mindset I still see traces of that are never as openly discussed as the racial issues in America.
In witnessing disenfranchised groups find their voices even on the constantly combative political stage of America; such as the gay community, the trans community, the immigrant community, the black community, and the feminist movement, I see so many opportunities to be heard in America that I don’t see in Europe. I’m not saying it’s enough and I know we have such a long way to go, with police brutality and white fragility and continual hate crimes and the continuation of the KKK, but I am proud of how far we’ve come; of every inch we’ve earned.
I see Europe as far more set in their ways than America; the boomers to our Generation Z. There is so much racial homogeneity (just like Asia) and people are so dependent on their generalized mentalities rather than actual interaction that every racial generalization is summarily defended with “That’s just how they are.”
In America, because we are a country comprised of immigrants (an indisputable fact I know the right loves to argue) I have been lucky enough to be exposed to the difference between Korean, Japanese, Thai, Malaysian, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Shanghainese, Cantonese, and Mandarin. We have Ukrainian restaurants and Ethiopian food, we have Halal carts and Jewish owned bakeries. When I lived in the South momentarily, I was shocked to find that due to the overwhelming homogeneity, these nuances weren’t identified so I was just seen as blanket “Chinese” and Jewish people were believed to sprout horns.
White Americans seem to have inherited this attitude of white entitlement from their original colonizer ancestors who still cling to these sentiments. My ex-boyfriend’s grandfather made jokes about the Asian prostitutes him and his G.I. buddies would abuse during the war while everyone ate in embarrassed silence, no one daring to correct or call out his behavior, including me. His parents apologized afterwards, privately, and I smiled falsely and told them, “It’s fine.”
In the same way minorities born and raised in America struggle with being perceived as “American” (I’ve had Trump supporters tell me I’m not a “real” American even though I was born and raised here just because I dared to speak out against DACA), I see how brown and black and yellow and any other shade of non-white is not viewed as “English” or “Australian” or “Irish” even though they were also born and raised in that country their entire lives.
Who the fuck are white people to dictate what the rest of us are and aren’t? What the fuck about the shade of white makes it so superior to the rest of the shades in the spectrum? Why is it that only white people get to create these rules and use white governance to keep them in place while the rest of us scream for social change? I am more angry now that I am usually (which is a more calm shade of constantly, steadily bitter) because of the kind of shit I overhear on a regular basis while vacationing in Indonesia and being subjected to white privilege even as an Asian in Asia while these fools are also literally just fucking visiting and somehow still kings of the motherfucking castle.
Thanks to the pandemic, I’ve had to overhear daily ignorant accusations about the Chinese and other Asians – today I had to listen to the weakness of Asians and how submissive we are, sometimes it’s about how ruthless and conniving we are, other times it’s how money-driven and sexually easy we are, sometimes it’s about the pandemic and how it’s all our fault, sometimes it’s about China and Asian political conspiracy theories, sometimes it’s racially charged comments about the Black Lives movement and how fake it is, sometimes it’s about the indigenous Native culture and dirty jokes about their naming practices.
Every time it’s an old white man while his high-pitched wife giggles in shrill approval. My blood boils. I clench my fists. I grit my teeth. I never feel safe. I never feel accepted. And yet, I am a shade of yellow in the Java Sea and it’s me facing the rejection. I can’t even blame the racism on the pandemic because I experienced it just as regularly prior to the world falling apart since the fractal point in Wuhan.
Take Michael Lofthouse, the British immigrant tech CEO who had only been in America for eight years and was an immigrant himself while he went on an unprovoked racist rampage directed at a Filipino-American family who were in fact, American, but were Asian and so this was a truth that Michael’s white brain couldn’t reconcile. He screamed at them as though his white skin automatically put him in a position of superiority, of rightfulness, of belonging; and whether it’s America or Europe or even Asia, white people cling to this idea of privilege and superiority in a way that makes me blind with fury.
America is racist AF, yes, but what the fuck are you doing to address the racism in your own damn country?
Where there is a prevalent white community, there exists white privilege, which in turn begets racism.

Saturday, July 18, 2020 – 5:59PM

I woke up an hour ago the sound of bells ringing, tinkling in the recesses of my mind like the dreamscape motif in movies. Apparently today is “Tumpek Landep,” celebrated by my downstairs neighbors with these haunting bells and the otherwise familiar traditional music of drums, chimes, and wind instruments. The melody sounds like their dances; the quickened tempo of pitter pattering feet and then slow mysterious turns of the arms and wrists. The bells, however, are new to me.
Some cursory internet research has informed me that today is a holiday for “sharpening the mind;” literally a day of cleaning  and purifying metal tools and heirlooms, but metaphorically doing the same for our souls and thought processes. It goes a step further for creatives, as a day in which we pray for “Taksu” – the aura of inner power one feels through art; so that the people who are exposed to our creations may in some way feel inspired by our intentions.
“Landep” means “sharp” and it is in this context they hope the holiday can sharpen the mind against ignorance, darkness, and misery.
As hopeful as I feel about the blessings bestowed upon my writing endeavors, I think this aspect of the holiday in some way explains the oppressive sweaty darkness of my dreams, a passing storm, a fever I’m still recovering from.
I’ve been sleeping all day, first waking up at 6AM then 1PM and now 5PM, sweaty and confused like a child who falls asleep on the couch.
My dreams each time have been both realistic and stressful, highlighting the two people whose emotional abuse towards me haunts me even in my waking days. I’ve done a lot of meditation, praying, and yoga in an effort to cleanse their stains; sometimes even fooling myself into believing that I’ve succeeded in forgiving, but the bitterness, the trauma, and the dreams always inevitably return; reminding me that it’ll be a long while before I am finally free.
One was about a toxic family member who had been invited to a family wedding that I was not informed of. I remember seeing a glimpse of her sneering face in the hallway before I was dragged back into my room, screaming by the other family members. “There she goes again,” I remember her snarling.
I remember finding out I wasn’t invited to the wedding because of my tattoos, my family not wanting to expose their black sheep at a traditional Korean ceremony and intentionally keeping me in the dark for months. They didn’t understand my screaming, my tears, my trembling hands ripping open my shirt to express my inability to breathe, my pain; in the same way the abusive family member made me break out in stress hives all over my body for months, in the same way she caused me to have a hyperventilating panic attack and my eldest aunt just told me to “Calm down” before I was diagnosed with Long QT Syndrome.
They called me melodramatic, they didn’t address their wrongs or my wounds. There was no acknowledgement, no apology; it was the Eastern way. My mother didn’t stand up for me. She didn’t understand why I was feeling so betrayed.
They made me stay locked in my room while my toxic abuser crowed triumphantly, “You did the right thing, you know how she is.”
There was no one on my side. I stopped eating, I stopped talking. I got as skinny as I was in Korea; every single one of my ribs showing. I got as quiet as I got in Korea, not speaking unless I was spoken to; in monotonous one word responses, not looking anyone in the eye. I was the perfect Asian.
My cousins eventually came to rescue me, coaxing me out of my room because they missed me and offering to be the buffer between my bitter edges and our family. I didn’t smile, I didn’t speak to them, and I didn’t say anything as they went through my camera roll on my phone while I slept in the car. It wasn’t ill-intended, just young kids obsessed with iPhones, and the youngest one commented on the album I had created of all of her ugly baby photos which made me smile for the first time.
We went to a museum or an aquarium, it wasn’t made clear which one, and I remember rolling through exhibits like penguins on our bellies or a trolley on a track while we passed through walls with realistic images playing on floor to ceiling LED screens. I was too numb to feel engaged, barely focusing on all the animals displayed until we turned the corner and a feeling hit my stomach like your core gripping for balance when surfing or right before the drop on a roller coaster and suddenly we were at the crest of a wave, observing so many beautiful whales swimming through the depths; they were so glorious that I couldn’t tell even in the dream if what I was experiencing was real.
I remember feeling frozen with shock, with awe, with terror; screaming that I wanted to take pictures but no one would give me my phone. Finally, when the waves died down and the whales were gone, I reached into the right front pocket of my shorts and there my phone was, all along.

Sunday, July 19, 2020 – 4:17PM

I dreamt I was back in Alabama with my big sister, my little brother, and my second-oldest stepbrother and we were all in my brother’s room drinking beer and talking shit and dreading the arrival of some girl (a family friend, possibly a co-worker, or a congregation member; I honestly don’t remember) who was due to visit. In that room, my brother suddenly pulled out an engagement ring, if one could even call it that. It was basically the size of Bob Belcher’s engagement ring he buys Linda in Season 10 before the kids lose it at the water park and Linda says, “Our love wasn’t in a big giant ring, you dummy” and Bob interjects, “It was very small.”
I mean honestly, I know my mind and I will just say it was that exact ring from that episode and that was definitely my brain’s source material. The diamond, for those of you who do not watch my favorite show, was literally the size of a grain of sand. So please keep this in mind as my seemingly materialistic criticisms later come into play. I’m also not supposed to be addressing an audience so I promise to work on that and am now shifting gears. Goodbye fourth wall.
So anyway my brother pulls out this very tiny, very pitiful ring and we all try to be enthusiastic and supportive about it (with the exception of my stepbrother because his role in our family is to be the permanently bitter dark cloud raining on even the best parades) but there is an audible awkwardness because of the elephant in the room; ie: we all hate the ring. The ring sucks.
At this point, the annoying girl whose presence we had all been dreading has now joined us and we are all collectively relieved at my brother pulling out this ring to detract attention from her shrilly talking about herself. I don’t know who she was supposed to be, though I am certain she wasn’t based on anyone real and definitely not a love interest for my two male family members in the dream. I just remember her being an exhaustingly vapid creature with a penchant for selfies and an inability to read the room and a plethora of bizarre interests that made everybody as uncomfortable as the high-pitched falsetto of her voice.
But even she agreed that the ring sucked. “He went without us,” I explained and she looked over at the ring, then back at us and shrugged and said, “I can tell.”
My brother at this point looks crestfallen at the open disdain in her voice and I try to gently inform him of the realities of shopping for women.
I say something along the lines of, “Maybe you’ll meet a genuine girl who doesn’t care and finds the ring only symbolic and is happy just to be loved. But chances are that even the nicest girl you meet will be expecting something more, and the girl who doesn’t care is just a myth. The perfect wedding ring is important to women and I don’t want you to be disappointed by her reaction when this doesn’t live up. The ring isn’t about paying the bare minimum out of pocket, usually the man pays a deposit with a payment plan that suits their yearly income. That’s how important it is to the woman as a symbol of the man’s dedication to her and her happiness, as well as the promise of him being able to provide for her. This ring says you aren’t ready. This ring says, I love you but we’re both going to starve.”
This part of the dream also felt familiar, this constant role of relaying harsh truths gently to my well-meaning but misguided brother because my sister doesn’t have the patience for it, nor does my mother. My eyes fell to the  sole, ill-fitting, thrifted suit he owned with iron marks where his inexperience showed through the trail of melted rayon and my heart hurt for him the way it does in real life.
He left for a while; maybe to find his ring receipt, maybe to use the bathroom, maybe to grab a snack from the kitchen – another detail I can’t recall. I just remember making jokes in his absence about the failed blind date my stepbrother had attempted; saying something about how my stepbrother would never have the chance to wear an ugly suit of his own. But then my grin faded when I saw the way he stroked the suit, compiling the jacket into an outfit with black athletic socks and a black tracksuit because he didn’t have a suit in his size, of his own. Because what I had said jokingly was true; he had nowhere to go, no one to love.
I also don’t remember if in my dream he was as defensively and notoriously egotistical as he is in reality. Another tangent here but I honestly don’t understand disgusting men; unattractive, misogynistic, overweight, balding, uneducated, and usually OLD ASS MEN approaching, bothering, harassing, hitting on, then insulting beautiful, intelligent, accomplished young women who are clearly uninterested or just too good for them. Like sir, where the fuck do you get off?????? Have you lost all touch with reality? Has porn really warped your brain into thinking that your lack of hygiene and any basic standard of merit still warrants you to the hottest girl in the room? Like truly, I just don’t understand the audacity or entitlement of men. Even a loser with nothing to offer thinks he’s too good for anyone other than a gorgeous eighteen year old with a flat stomach, porn star tits, and a master’s degree. BOY, BYE.
And then whenever you give them a cold, disinterested smile or God forbid, reject them, you’re met with a barrage of screaming, small dick insults like, “You’re ugly,” “You’re fat,” or “You’re just a dumb bitch.”
I bring this up only because my mom has tried to set up blind dates for my stepbrother who still lives at home with his parents and spends his days playing video games even though he’s in his thirties, but no woman my mom suggested was “good enough” for him. So again, in the dream I don’t know if this was the same attitude he held or if he was more humble about his hidden heartache. I also think that she was a single mom and he actually did like her because I remember my advice being that he try to pursue her because she was an amazing woman. I think he was tripped up by his inexperience and insecurity because I just remember detecting a rare vulnerability in the way he gazed at my brother’s suit and realizing that he too, was desperate to find love.
When my brother returned from whatever he was doing, I took him aside and tried to convince him to give my stepbrother suit. My brother railed against this, his suit being his pride and joy, but I reminded him that he had found love and he had us; but my stepbrother had nothing. He begrudgingly agreed, knowing he could say nothing and I just remember thinking “My work here is done” then making pointed eyes at my sister like, “Bitch can we please get the fuck out of here?” and then both of us making up a flimsy excuse to run away to our room and pretend to sleep the first chance we got because that girl was the Korean version of Courtney Wheeler.
After my tumultuous dream about looking for love and not giving up, I woke up to a text from the person I’ve been waiting to hear from.
It arrived at 6:15AM – seconds after my eyes had opened because my alarm was set to ring at 6:17AM and my body goes rigid with tension every morning in a weird race of my internal clock against my morning alarm.
I always wake minutes before it is set to ring, no matter what time it is, no matter how much sleep I had or hadn’t gotten the night before.
I struggled to function, to get out of bed or make coffee, but finally I fought the urge to fall back sleep, had my breakfast of garlic and tomato mie goreng with extra sambal tabur, took a shower, and finally texted him back at 8:29AM.

Monday, July 20, 2020 – 8:28PM

I don’t have any dreams to report and I got sidetracked just now trying to figure out a minimal tattoo design that best embodies this period of quarantine, this studio of solitude, this strange and trying time trapped on what should be one of the most beautiful destinations in the world. I don’t feel fulfilled anymore, by month six, countless naps and paling skin in, I’m lonely and ready to go home.
I will miss all of the temples and the jungle paths I didn’t get to see, the elephants and the monkeys, the waterfalls and the tree swings, the festivals and the experiences, but there is no point in waiting in this tiny apartment for things to be any different because the reality is that these things are as inaccessible to me as they would be even if I were back home, three oceans away.
I can’t understand the crowds and the congregating; for half a year I’ve chosen to stay home and now, I am choosing to truly go home.
My sister booked my flight for me yesterday, and finally, instead of impeding regret I just felt relief. I get to see my sister, I get to sleep with my cats, I get to hear the sound of my voice without it sounding foreign any longer. My ankle is still in awful shape, enough to worry me about the travel but I’ll check in a week from today when it’s time to go home. I could barely sleep last night, just the weight of the blanket on bone being too painful to bear, so I kept it elevated and exposed but then my toes got too cold so it was just a constant back and forth nightmare. There’s a metaphor here somewhere about always being hot or cold and never comfortable but I’m too lazy to attempt it. Just know it’s there.
The thing is, even if I didn’t do all of the social media goals on the quintessential Bali bucket list, even if I didn’t go on a meditation retreat or take a tour of a rice paddy, I know in my heart that I lived the reality of island life on a more honest scale than the glossy veneer of one week spent in a villa, shopping in the town square where bikinis are $100. I got to wander the broken pavement and familiarize myself with the constant rumble of passing bikes. I discovered my own abandoned rice field, overgrown and forgotten, sandwiched between a graffiti painted wall and too much traffic. It’s my favorite spot to pass on morning runs, I always pause when I glimpse it. The sidewalk is so shattered there’s no place to stand but I somehow manage and watch as the sun sometimes fills the water-filled field on rare days when it’s not too cloudy.
I got to see the chickens and wild dogs in the street, even being bitten by one my first month here. I got to see the children playing and screaming in their bare feet. I got to see the local women each partaking in their routines in the mornings; some preparing morning offerings, others squatting with a knife and carving out figurines between their knees. I got to hear the monthly cacophonies of Hindu holidays being celebrated from my balcony, that haunting Balinese melody I hope I’ll never get out of my head. I got to feel the jungle heat every single day in a studio with no A.C., befriending lizards and feral kittens, remembering life before the sterile American experience of cement and linoleum.
I got to taste countless dishes at cash-only warungs, the dimly lit, tiny carved out spaces with generations of family members working together to scoop out a plate of rice and local delicacies. I got to drink a cold bintang almost every day, taking a break from my short walk because it was too hot to continue and I’d stop into the nearest café with sweat dripping down my face and neck and sigh with pleasure at the first cold sip. I got to smell the incense every morning from the beautiful daily offerings, familiarize myself with the heady scent of smoke and hopeful intention.
I got to see a sky full of handmade kites flying high in the clouds all summer. I got to observe the changing clouds of the jungle each morning; sometimes blue, sometimes grey, sometimes so cloudy you couldn’t see a patch of sky underneath, and rare days when the whole sky would light up a fiery pink that would make even my curtain drawn room glow red. I got to take showers where the water would always grow cold before I finished, I got to give up blow dryers in a villa where I would always blow out the outlet. I learned to be more appreciative, I learned to do more with less, I learned to be humble, but I also learned that any trip; however rewarding at first, is hard when you’re too alone.
Thank you, Bali for everything.
Tomorrow kicks off my final week.
I want to do more of what I love, spend less time in bed.
I want to experience more so I can write about it here before it’s too late.

Tuesday, July 21, 2020 – 5:05AM

I don’t know anyone who dreams as often or as vividly as I do, and with near-perfect recollection. The girl I dreamt about last night is someone who visits me often in my dreams. I wonder if she thinks of me as often as I think of her. She was my middle school best friend, someone I treated horribly during my stage of the popularity battle royale, and I guess the guilt has manifested into these lingering dreams of memories and reconciliations. I wonder if she was able to see the real me underneath the awful things I did out of insecurity, but I remember the passive-aggressive criticisms she would make about me at the end and I know it was too much to ask of her and I don’t blame her for the perception she held onto instead. I’ve dreamt of our reunion as adults, as college students, as people running into each other on the streets or at a party. Each time I see her, I pull her aside and I apologize profusely. I wonder how many of these subconscious apologies have made their way into her head? I hope at least one, if not the many she deserves.
As I reflect on my dream in this waking state, I remember the subtle accuracies that transcended into my dreams even as my waking -self had forgotten that I even retained these details. My friend I had dreamt about would never wear a jacket, even in the dead of the coldest winters, even when it would snow and my wet hair would freeze into icicles on the two block walk from to subway stop to school. One day I remember draping my friend in my thickest scarf; a gift from the Gap from my aunts; thickly knit in stripes of white, black, and brown, wanting her to be warm on her way home because I was fine in the North Face parka I owned. She continued to wear that scarf all winter until one day I worked up the courage to ask for it back. It spiraled into a fight I didn’t expect, her insisting that it was hers and genuinely incensed by my asserting it was mine. In her mind, I was coveting something nice that she owned and lying about my claim to it. In my mind, she was taking advantage of my act of kindness and didn’t want to let it go. She told everyone that she had found it in her closet and I felt wordless, no one believed me when I said, “Ask my sister, ask my mom – it’s mine!” It wasn’t even the scarf I cared about at that point, it was just so weird to know something as fundamentally true but then have no one believe you until you yourself felt crazy.
It wasn’t worth the fighting so I let her keep the scarf.
But that feeling, of feeling like Cassandra, I still remember it all too clearly. What do you do when you speak the truth and no one believes you?
Also in the dream, I remember telling my sister I was concerned because my friend had said she was waiting for her maternal grandmother but in both the dream and reality, she had lost her mother at an early age so I suspected she had made up that lie so we wouldn’t feel as guilty about kicking her out. When I woke up, it got me thinking about how sad I would feel that she grew up without a mom, not pity but compassion. How hard it must have been for her. Then I thought about my dad and wondered if I had ever opened up to her about his stroke; how long I had kept my own tragic truth hidden from my own friends while I wove a tapestry of popularity and brand names that couldn’t have been further from the truth. I honestly couldn’t remember if we had ever talked about it, about her mom or my dad. I wondered if things would be different if I had allowed myself to be honest, to be vulnerable back then. My dad is gone now and I wonder if we could talk about that if we ever met again, bridging this decade long gap with a small show of pain.
I remember the only friends I ever invited over were two of the richest girls in our grade, the kind of people dressed head to toe in couture, but oh so casually because they were wealthy enough to be humble about it whereas I was so poor I always had to flaunt my brand names. These girls were also the most sincere people I befriended, making me feel safe enough to invite them over and their kindness winning over my insecurity of them seeing how the other half lives. They made the two hour trip into the suburbs from Tribeca by train, marveling in appreciation at my three story house and the front lawns and the picturesque quietness. They gave me a new appreciation for my neighborhood instead of feeling ashamed that it wasn’t the cramped hustle and bustle of New York City high rises and crosswalks.
I remember their visit only because they were the only people to glimpse my dad, handicapped from his stroke, always hidden away. I asked him for money and the girls and I dressed up in cowboy hats and walked a mile to Jackson Hole and danced to the jukebox and ordered way too much food to go. We had the best day but I look back on that time now with so much guilt. They had no idea how much $60 was to my family, the one whose house they were visited was paid for by my relatives because my mom was working for minimum wage.
I offered to pay because they were always paying for everything, and because they had traveled so far to come see me with no complaint.
But now all I can think about is how I never went out to eat with my dad, how I never brought him anything back, how I never spoke to him unless I needed money, how we never spent time together unless it was Sundays at church. I was too preoccupied with escaping to make the most of the time I didn’t realize would be cut so short. I think about the person I am now, the relationship I have built with my mom after outgrowing being such a self-absorbed little shit, and only wish my dad could have been around for this long over-due evolution.
I wonder what kind of relationship we would have, the mature adult I hope I have become after the selfish, shallow pre-teen I had been when my father suffered from his stroke then sudden cancer. I was incapable of processing the shock, the shame, the guilt, the grief until a full decade later.
I still can’t write about him without crying and I hate that this is the best I can do, so many years later. He deserved so much more from me, from his family, from his life, from his God. I am unafraid to say that last part angrily, even now. Maybe it’s blasphemy, maybe it’s a concession of my own weak faith and lack of understanding but God, he deserved so much better than what you gave him.
The only thing I can hope now is that you took him early to give him everything he wasn’t getting from this hell on earth.
I hope he’s up there with you being regaled by all the saints and angels, eating only the best food, laughing loudly, walking proudly, even running. I hope to God that all of that’s true because it’s the only thing that keeps me going.