dear jacob,

i decided to give hot yoga another college try after almost 20 years of avoiding it. suffocating in the stench of feet and greasy hair… finding flexibility in my stiff body is all part of my healing journey.

when we were facedown, the instructor directed us to put our hands by our heads almost as if we were going to do a pushup, but to lift our upper bodies only enough to get off the ground. then, we were to twist slightly and dip our shoulder towards the floor for a stretch.

“go to a death that feels good to you.”

huh?

i paused, wondering if i heard her right. oh! a deeepth… go to a depth that feels good to you…

but wait. give that back to me! “go to a death that feels good to you.”

what gave me pause wasn’t that a yogi was talking to us about death. it was that it made perfect sense to me.

in this season of my life, of deeply uncomfortable, unanticipated, forced change… nothing felt within my control. i didn’t choose this. i didn’t choose to become. but yet… i became.

there is an inexplicable trust in the universe that she knows what she’s doing, and you weren’t meant to be something else. and all you needed was a catalyst. and that catalyst can be something like a bullet to the heart— something you may not feel like you can survive, but here you are. becoming.

what the universe’s intentions for your evolution reminds me of is how a man complains to a doctor about… i dunno… stomach pains. the test results come back and he has some abnormal polyps that need to be removed. but when he’s lying on the surgical table, his insides yawning open, the doctor finds a malignant tumor that the scans had missed.

that, my son… is an example of how a catalyst can almost violently change the direction of your life. and while you’re standing amongst the rubble of your old life… you will find that there was something else wrong with it. something else that needed to go. that’s the beauty of a life in pieces.

sometimes, you have to break to become. kind of like a bone that didn’t set right. and i do believe that not everyone reaches a point in their life when they find a bone that needs to be reset.

but jacob… this doesn’t mean that you did it wrong. think of life like a video game. some people finish the game without having unlocked all the levels. without discovering all the secret challenges. i know people who will replay a game over and over again until they find every single hidden level. but this is life. there is no reliving it— so wouldn’t you rather be the person who lives it once and gets to experience every single secret? what a bummer to be the type of person who had it so easy and never knew what life was really about.

also… it is true that living all these extra challenges does mean you’ll die repeatedly. more than the next person who sails through life on the main setting. but these deaths will result in a new chapter— a wiser version of you than the last. so my lesson to you is this: go to a death that feels good to you.

love, mom

dear jacob,

halmeoni used to say that my depression was her fault; that she had passed it onto me when she was pregnant with me. i think because of this, i have lived your entire life worried that i passed it to you.

but tonight, i’ve decided that i hate this idea: that depression is inherited. that i have been condemned to it like a family curse. i refuse to believe that what we as a society have been told about depression is fully accurate.

i believe there is an element of choice to depression. i believe that you can exacerbate it by how you accept it. i believe it can become a guest who has overstayed its welcome depending on how you look at it.

in other words, you can choose to greet it as a visitor, or you can accept it as a roommate. there is an irish saying that goes, tá brón orm or “sadness is on me.” the irish have long known that you are a rest stop. not a home. sadness is not meant to be part of your identity. it is simply a veil.

i think we as humans sometimes forget this, that sadness is like weather. not even happiness stays forever. emotions are temporary and you must wait for it to pass over you. or through you, more accurately. and it’s important that you acknowledge it rather than ignore it. and once you have allowed yourself to sit in it, encourage it to move on like fog burning off in the mid-morning sun.

being human is always waiting for the sun.

i recently watched the movie ghost world. a melancholy coming-of-age film about two teenage girls figuring out life after college. one is planning for the future while the other builds resentment because she feels that her friend is moving on (or growing up) without her. but you know what the scene is that gets me? the scene where both girls express not wanting to turn out like norman; a guy who is always seen waiting for a bus that they think will never come. but lo and behold, at the end of the movie… what do you know, but norman’s bus finally comes.

jacob, do you see where i’m going with this? why i want you to be just like norman?wait for the bus that feels like it will never come. a simpleton watching the movie agrees with the teens who think norman is a complacent loser. that norman is passively manifesting his future rather than getting himself out there to chase his dreams. but what norman really is a metaphor for is waiting for the sun.

jacob, on those hard days, please don’t forget to wait for the sun.

love, mom

i thought a lot about my previous post on my walk today and realized there is another lesson i want you to take away from what happened between my friend and me…

there will be a time when you genuinely try to explain how someone’s words land on you, and they will accuse you of “twisting their words”.

there will be a time when you try to explain to someone how they hurt you, and they will respond sarcastically with, “you’re right, i’m a terrible person; it’s all my fault.”

there will be a time when you try to initiate a conversation about why you are upset, and they will immediately rush to decenter your feelings and will suddenly be the victim in the situation.

and you will be befuddled, because you are being accused of all the things you were trying to talk to them about. (if you ever want to explore this and improve at identifying red flags, read the book adult children of immature parents by lindsay c. gibson).

this deflective behavior is designed to antagonize you. it is designed to confuse you. and my advice to you?

get out. immediately, if not sooner. i called your godmother today who knows i am a deeply flawed individual. i shared every uncomfortable detail about my fight with my friend. and she told me that i need to get better at turning off the switch that tells me i need to feel heard by the other person. i was the one who had escalated the situation when i refused to let go of the need to feel understood. oh god, how right she was… it’s a compulsion of mine— a result of being misunderstood by my mother. and looking back at last weekend, it makes so much sense to me why i was so triggered. trying to talk to my friend about my hurt feelings felt exactly like talking to my extremely apathetic mother.

do better than me. because when you are dealing with someone who will not tolerate someone other than them being upset, there is no talking sense into them. logic is no longer at play.

walk away. refuse reconciliation. because it will play out in the exact same way the next time you are upset. there is no winning against a person who lacks self awareness and emotional maturity; there are no taking turns at humility. the second you refuse to take blame for everything indefinitely, it will be framed as the biggest betrayal. and they will weaponize whatever they can to poke at your guilt. and if you choose to continue participating in a toxic cycle of their version of friendship, the cost will be your inner peace. no one is worth even a sliver of that.

oh, how badly i wish for you to learn this lesson sooner than i had.

love, mom

dear jacob,

this weekend, i got into probably the worst fight i have ever had with a friend. i was, in so many words, accused of not being there for her when she needed me to be and lacking in accountability for anything that has happened in my life.

these grievances left me shaken to my core. they brought me to my knees and made me question my own understanding of my identity. is it possible i am these things? is it possible that i am selfish and a terrible friend when i feel like i have given away so much of myself to the point of depletion?

when i told my friend that her accusations didn’t feel fair (after all, i lost my brother, went no contact with my parents, had a divorce, lost my job, and other events i will not disclose— all within the span of two years), she dismissed me. she said i had always been this way.

i could not wrap my head around it: how can i take accountability for things that were outside of my control? also… i am a “fixer”— i am never down and out for long and will view obstacles as a challenge to overcome. i am a nurturer and will go as far as attempting to fix other peoples’ problems to where this year, i had to work on scaling that back to leave some for myself. it was so shocking to me to hear this perception of me because my goal for this year was literally to be more selfish.

then it became abundantly clear: she was right. but not in the way that she thought.

what she didn’t see is that my marriage and my mental health had been declining for about six years in a way i won’t get into. i was miserable and angry. writing my book had also reopened many childhood wounds that left me re-traumatized. i was the worst version of myself. and that is when i began therapy, to try to deal with this version of myself i despised and could not reason with. for most of her experience of me, i was a ghost of who i am. and during this time, i had given myself away to everyone else and left none for her.

and she was right in that i was a shitty friend to her. but she was wrong that it was out of a place of selfishness. it was coming from a place of self-survival and a poor attempt to keep my head above water. and jacob, this exact situation is how many people lose friends while experiencing a loss. usually during the grieving process.

i could not be there for her not because i did not want to be, but i could not. i was incapable. and she did not understand which is not her fault. she did not understand because the weekend revealed that we were actually not that close. and a catastrophic catalyst cannot be recovered if both parties do not have all the information on the other friend. there are some people who will come into your life where you cannot give the benefit of the doubt if you do not have evidence that they are deserving. and in her eyes, i was undeserving. she didn’t know the full story of what i had been going through. and this is not about placing blame on a person for not sharing. this is entirely about closeness. it is no one’s responsibility to share intimate details on their own lives— those intimate details come naturally if a person feels safe to be vulnerable. the weekend also revealed that neither of us ever felt safe nor vulnerable in each other’s company to ever come fully clean about who we were.

jacob, when life falls apart, the next natural step is to rebuild. and there will be friends who will be left feeling wanting. i learned a vital lesson this past weekend: one of the most important thing in a friendship is balance. we usually look at complementary friends as having strengths where the other has weaknesses. but there is also a balance required in the history of your relationship; there will be times when you need to rest your weary head on a friend for as long as you need. and a true friend will not remind you of an expiration date. a true friend will not remind you that you need to take accountability— they will allow you to mope and be self indulgent for as long as you need. and when life moves on, they will need you for a place to rest.

but here is the complicated part: if you do not feel compelled to be that person to shoulder the weight of your friend, you have what i call a “vessel” friend. a friend who has become a friend only because they have become someone easy to hang your burdens upon. if you are not careful, you will misuse this person. and you must recognize what you are doing and either say goodbye or rely on them less to restore balance to the relationship.

what i learned this weekend is that not only did i have a vessel friend, but i did not clock it as soon as i should have. and i relied on her much more than i should have but only for my life’s negative highlights reel— none of the deep stuff. and she deserved more. and the combination of not having an open and honest relationship fueled the worst fallout i could have had.

this reminds me of how a girl will only use her girlfriends to complain about her boyfriend. so they grow to despise him, only because they have heard negative things about him. it may or may not be accurate, but that is the portrayal. the perception. i did this very thing to my vessel friend about myself. i only brought her tidbits and none of those tidbits were good.

what a shame. i did treat a good person poorly. and somewhere along the line, she misinterpreted me as a victim of my own life. someone who can see me so inaccurately could never be a close friend of mine.

the ones who are dearly close to me know this: i am a fighter. i am a survivor. i am scrappy and will make do. i will never settle for less than what i deserve from my life.

and if someone holds a belief that i am nothing other than a warrior, my only conclusion can be that they don’t know me at all. through maybe no fault of their own. i never invited them in.

my dear boy, sometimes life is so nuanced. sometimes, there are no bad guys or good guys. sometimes, the villain is perception.

i hope that makes sense.

love, mom

dear jacob,

you’ve been asking me a lot lately about dating. undoubtedly as a result of the divorce. and here is what i told you on one of our drives that i hope you never forget:

the point of dating is not to find your soul mate.

the point of dating is to define who you are in relation to someone else.

the point of dating is to discover what you love and despise in a partner.

the point of dating is to practice identifying red flags.

the point of dating is to collect data.

my point? take the pressure off yourself to put the ‘settle’ in “settle down”. never settle. ever. there is a japanese saying: “if you get on the wrong train, get off at the nearest station. the longer you stay on, the more expensive the return trip will be.”

there is a high cost to settling and that cost is your own happiness. and most importantly, time in happiness. and the key to avoid settling is to get better at figuring out what you want in a partner. but more importantly… what you don’t want in a partner. maybe it’s my pessimism speaking, but it is much more valuable to experience attributes you find intolerable in a person. it is far too easy to mistake complacency for satisfaction in the absence of friction.

so please, jacob… be with someone you can’t stand first. and in your journey, i hope for the following dating bingo card:

i wish you an ex who is needy, in the hope that you learn how to hold your boundaries.

i wish you an ex who is inconsiderate, in the hope that you learn the value of thoughtfulness.

i wish you an ex who is selfish, in the hope that you learn when to prioritize yourself.

i wish you an ex who takes you for granted, in the hope that you learn self love.

i wish you an ex who is passive aggressive, in the hope that you learn how to communicate your needs.

and lastly, i wish you an ex who is insecure, in the hope that you learn that no one is ready to love you until they are ready to love themselves.

there will also be a moment when you realize your partner desires something in you that you cannot offer. and in these moments, i hope that you also learn when to walk away. it takes great maturity to recognize that if you cannot (or will not) become what your partner wants, the kind thing to do is to close that chapter.

there are two types of daters out there: the child who adores the butterfly in a jar until it quietly suffocates… and the child who loves it so they unscrew the lid.

our society has drilled the cliche, “if you love something, let it go.” there have been millions, maybe billions, made off of songs built around this overplayed sentiment. but what we don’t talk about the fact that this phrase isn’t just about love. it’s about kindness. at times, the kind thing to do is to cut loose.

the other night, you asked me to define compassion. as an english major, i was surprised at my own struggle to explain it without outrightly defining ‘empathy’. surely, there is a difference…!

several hours later, i had it: “compassion is when you show kindness to those in need of it.” when i looked it up online later, there was a key nuance missing to my explanation. so let me try again.

compassion is when you notice and sympathize with someone’s pain and show kindness when they need it.

for me, the word that vibrates is “notice”.

jacob, my wish for you is an ex who ignores your pain. in the hope that you will cherish and treasure a life partner who notices you.

love, mom

dear jacob,

yesterday, i told my acupuncturist that i believed my muscle knots to be unprocessed grief. i only elaborated enough to say, “i lost my brother last year.”

my own words forced me to pause.

“i lost my brother.”

why do we use ‘lost’ as a euphemism for death? as if i had misplaced him, like a set of keys.

i do believe language to be a deliberate form of expression, so if at one point we decided “i lost someone” to mean “someone died”, how did we justify it?

are they wandering aimlessly in the void between life and death? or maybe wandering in the afterlife? to suggest that we can’t find them means we are still searching.

i lost my brother last year.

the word ‘lost’ also indicates a sense of acknowledgement that there is a vast space after death and we can’t exactly pinpoint their location.

my sweet boy… i have another confession. although, again… i’m not sure it is a confession since you were there. but i hope that by ensuring these memories are not lost, you can hold me accountable when you are an adult and you experience a hurt that you cannot explain. i want to be as honest as possible with you about the kind of mother i was. unlike my mother, who would deny any wrongdoing.

when you were around five years old, we were at a department store. you were so wonderfully stubborn— determined to walk everywhere despite moving at snail speed. i was being impatient with you. but there was no talking you out of navigating the world on your own timeline.

you would pause and look up at every rack, every poster, every mannequin... not even to point and demand my attention (as many children do), but to stare and observe. and at every corner, i would pause and huff, calling your name to urge you to move faster, not wanting to lose sight of you.

but when we approached another corner, i decided scare you into urgency. so i disappeared around a wall and i ducked and waited.

i could hear the second you began to panic. you started to wail and i told myself this would do you some good, to learn to keep up. you started to scream “mama!” and i jumped out to reassure you.

you ran into my arms, collapsing into a panic that you could not relieve yourself of. and in that moment, i knew i had miscalculated.

it was not your job not to lose sight of me. it was my job not to lose sight of you. and even today, i still fear i marred your nervous system. i’m scared i taught your nervous system that i might disappear.

there might be a day you tell someone close to you: i lost my mom.

i just hope despite all this, you understand that i never lost you.

and all of this reminiscing makes me wish i could say the same about my brother… i wonder what it will mean to find him again?

maybe losing someone to death was always designed to mean a temporary misplacement… to mean that we don’t know where they are until we join them so finding them really means experiencing death ourselves. maybe our lost ones really are like a set of keys.

but even the phrase “losing someone to death” sounds as though we are in a tug-of-war with Death. like a game. like our loved ones were condemned and we were to fight it out; the prize being a little more time with us.

something else i can’t get over: aren’t the living the ones who are lost? is my brother on the other side explaining to someone, “i lost my sister…”? because if i had to guess what death is like, i’m sure it’s a place where things make a hell of a lot more sense. i think life is confusing. death seems simple. not easy, but simple. i think we are the ones looking to be found again.

i lost my brother.

i wonder what it feels like to be found again. my sweet jacob, i’m sure you already know.

love, mom

dear jacob,

i won’t go into great detail about why your dad and i aren’t together until you’re older, but i also understand you’ve been curious lately about what happened. i can tell it’s gnawing at you. and who can blame you? you’re at the peak of thirteen years old.

neither your dad and i were in good places when we separated. don’t get me wrong, we cared about each other a lot and it was as amicable of a divorce as you could dream of… but we got together SO young and i think it’s important that you understand that when you find a partner, you have to enter each chapter of life reselecting each other; reselecting the new versions of yourselves that you become. you don’t get married just once— you essentially get married over and over and over again.

i am a wholly different person than who i was at twenty-two when i met your dad. but your dad is the exact same person he was at twenty-two. i’ve heard that’s pretty typical for men. but maybe even more typical if they’re paired with women who accommodate that mindset. the issue was that your dad needs to be with someone who accepts him as is. that is the way he feels most loved. the issue with me, is that i need a partner i can challenge. and the more i pushed your dad to go after his dreams and aspirations, the more he grew frustrated. and the more disappointed i got. i can’t say that either one of us should be faulted for that; we were just incompatible which only created increasingly more friction as we grew older. i want to be with someone i can invite to rise; someone who will join me in taking on life. your dad is risk-averse. i am borderline reckless. which, i guess, is expected when you get dealt a shitty hand too many times. what is there to lose, really?

jacob, it’s also vital to pick a partner with a compatible trauma response. when you are triggered, how do you respond? how does your partner respond to you if you are both triggered? when you are both wounded, it is important to find someone who can simultaneously sit in it and still find you. and vice versa. i cannot press how important it is to find someone who will initially discover your trigger and thereafter become a knight whose mission is to protect it. not someone who blunders around and continues to bump into the trigger. oops.

i cannot tell you how deep my pain goes from telling someone i loved, “ouch, stop… that hurts,” only to have them continue to stick a finger in my wound then claim that they can’t help it, they are trying to stop. and it’s so much worse when it is not exactly intentional, but pure carelessness. how can i be angry if it wasn’t on purpose? i learned too slowly that “not on purpose” eventually loops back into “deliberate” at a certain point. now, it’s my time to find someone who can treat me delicately. my seams are undone and i wish to be poured into a new vessel to start over. i wish to be poured into the open and eager hands of a willing person.

after the divorce, your dad started going into the mountains and he looked healthy again. it brought me great joy to see him finding his spark for life again. i would say the past few years (perhaps even longer), i could tell he lost his zest. he never made plans and i had to drag him off the couch to see the world. all those trips to hawai’i? i never even told him i was planning them. i just bought plane tickets and forwarded them to his inbox. i thought if i lived for the both of us, it would be enough for him. but i couldn’t continue lighting myself on fire to keep him warm.

recently, after one trip from the mountains, your dad was excited to show me a picture on his phone. foxglove. he couldn’t believe what he had found in the mountains. he marveled at its beauty, its fuchsia coloring. but here is the thing, jacob…

foxglove grows all around our neighborhood.

and this is why, my love… i couldn’t stay with your dad any longer.

i hope one day when you read all of these letters, it all starts to make sense. i love you more than life itself.

love, mom

Oppa

By Dr. Joan Sung

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dear jacob,

i’ve been in chronic pain for the past week due to stress— migraines, body aches, etc. and i know i’ve mentioned before how my right shoulder experienced a traumatic injury several years ago (now, fully healed) so now the left side of my body overcompensates by doing everything. and as a result, my left side is always in pain. it dawned on me recently how we, as humans, tend to do this: we identify someone who has experienced an injury, so we do everything possible to protect them. even at our own expense. and as a result… we end up in chronic pain.

when i divorced your dad and moved out, i took all the shitty kitchen supplies despite being the primary cook in our household. i look back and it made so much sense in the moment to elevate someone you care about and to make sure they’re taken care of. i even took the shitty chopsticks which is crazy since your dad is the whitest guy ever. this habit, this default, was very asian of me. even when i used to serve him food, i would take the deformed pieces. the smaller pieces. i always put myself second. and even under such circumstances like divorce, i put myself second.

now, i am stuck using the shitty chopsticks. while the good chopsticks sit in a drawer in your dad’s house, unused. the house i easily gave up because your dad said he didn’t want to move. i wish i wasn’t like this. but i need you to understand, sweetie… the divorce was the first time i. ever. chose. ME.

but here is the thing, jacob… a person with an injury does not mean they are an injured person. they can be fully capable, if you allow them to be. there are two types of people: people who get up and fight for life like they’re in a game of tug-of-war, and people who indulge themselves and allow people like me to always center them. they need an invitation to be empowered.

the sad thing is, i now see i was more critically injured by life than your father ever was. he read my memoir and admitted he had never experienced trauma to that extent and that it made him realize he lived a pretty good life. but despite this, he passively watched as i continued to choose myself second. and i passively watched as i waited for him to choose me first. i overcompensated for him and he allowed me to. hence, my chronic pain.

the next time i drop you off, i’m taking the good chopsticks. your dad will understand.

love, mom

dear jacob,

when my brother died, people he knew continually reassured me, “he loved you a lot.” i don’t think this is a normal reaction when someone you know dies. i don’t think it’s normal because, usually, people assume you know that.

i’m not sure if my brother loved me.

i’m not sure because my mother spent our entire lives turning us against each other. it’s a strange thing to be considered the black sheep of the family only because i spoke out against her toxic behavior. all the while, my brother was dealing drugs and getting arrested for shoplifting. looking back, it is now apparent that obedience was valued much more than dissenting against my mother. there are times i marvel at this revelation.

i once wrote in my hello kitty diary that i hated my mother. i was around eight years old. i had already endured years of verbal and physical abuse and i needed an outlet for the rage that sparked within me. and because my mother had successfully poisoned my brother against me, we were at war. naturally, my brother read my diary, looking for ammunition to prove mutiny. he delivered my diary to my mother to prove he was the child worth her attention and i was punished accordingly. in return, i rifled through my brother’s dresser drawer and found joints. so i promptly delivered them to my mother. but unlike my brother, i was not rewarded for reporting misbehavior: i was punished for taking them out of context because his friends had tempted him to “try it” and for violating my brother’s privacy. i never realized as a small child that there was no winning for me.

even when i decided i didn’t want my mother’s approval anymore, the feud ensued. because my mother would call my brother to vent about how bad of a daughter i was for not brainlessly obeying her (i questioned everything because i wanted to know why). not only did he believe her, but he could never forgive me for giving the woman he worshipped such a hard time. and despite the fact that she terrified him and abused him as well, none of it mattered because he had finally won her full devotion as the “perfect child”. he couldn’t spite something he paid a high price to earn.

today, i wake every day making the decision to remain no-contact with my mother. every day, i question my choice. and every day, i make the same determination. closing myself off to what should be a lifeline for a daughter. and this mother wound haunts me. however, i remind myself that the pain of not having my mother in my life is nothing compared to the pain of having her in my life. it is the epitome of picking the lesser of two evils. i have embraced being the bad daughter. it is equal parts liberating and torture. i picked my poison: the one that will kill me slower.

i also ask myself occasionally: i wonder if she’s changed? and i always shake my head at my own naivete; how many times does she need to reveal herself to me before i believe her? how many times does she need to demonstrate to me that she has no desire to change? i only wonder momentarily before i remember that people never change. not that drastically, anyways.

i knew of one guy who changed who he was to his core. he went from an absolute prick to a considerate, empathetic human— it was almost unbelievable. but the catalyst of this transformation was when he missed his girlfriend’s phone call and then she threw herself off of his apartment building when he wasn’t home. guilt goes a long way in terms of changing who someone is to their core.

i think i would need to jump off a building before my mother understood at what lengths i would go to escape her. to relieve myself of the guilt that i will never be the daughter she wanted. my inner child is wracked with guilt at being disobedient. and my inner child’s wrapper holds a hand over her mouth.

my dearest jacob, remember this: when you give people unlimited chances, you have to consider each and every chance you give. because at some point, you become the fool. you have to eventually take accountability because you know better and you are still continuing to put yourself in a situation where they can hurt you. in other words, you are now allowing this to happen and you can only play the victim so long. i hope for this to be a life lesson to you. do not grant people access to you who do not deserve it.

i wish into existence that you will never be a doormat. you will never get taken advantage of. and when someone crosses you, you will remove access swiftly because you know your worth. you are worth more than a million of the best things in life.

love, mom

dear jacob,

every day i live in fear. fear of my mother finding me. it’s not physical safety, but emotional safety i am lacking. i fear how she makes me feel: the stomach aches, the panic attacks, the nausea… i am terrified of her bad mood. it’s as though my adult self no longer needs her approval while my inner child is in a panic, scrambling to be rid herself of the dread in the wake of her anger. i am being torn in two.

i have been no contact with her for over a year now. i wish i could say i live in peace, but a lot of it is pretending— no, forgetting. forgetting that she exists. forgetting that immediately after my brother died, she transformed into the old version of herself from when i was younger, the one filled with vitriol and cruelty. and the child in me is scared. so scared. and she can’t tell me why. don’t you know she can’t hurt you anymore?

do i even believe that?

i want to stay lost. i want to be her runaway child. never found. go ahead, put me on the side of a milk carton or one of those mail fliers. have you seen me? i am lost but even i do not know where i am.

i remember when i was younger, i would threaten to run away. like every child would, i know. it was never for lack of indulgence from my mother; it was always for the way she treated me… the yelling... the unkindness in her parenting. i knew from a young age i wanted better. i deserved a loving mother. she would (as what i am told) do what every mother does and invite me to leave. she would open the front door and antagonize me. i remember wishing she would just ask me to stay. i just wanted her to tell me she wanted me as a daughter.

i would pack a suitcase, and walk out the house. when my toes touched the crack between our driveway and the street, i would droop in defeat and turn around only to see her standing in the doorway, smug. smug because i didn’t have the guts to run away and that i just proved her right. that i couldn’t make it without her. we were playing chess and she had me at checkmate. she saw me as an adversary, an opponent. and her love was conditional; she would only dote on me if i acknowledged that she was winning. she would spend the majority of my life reminding me that i was nothing without her. that the world was unsafe and that i needed her to survive. looking back, i had no idea what it meant for a parent to promote codependence to vie for control.

the irony of my mother telling me that i was ignorant and naive was that i knew more about the world than she ever did. i recognize that this might sound privileged. she knew more about war, about famine, about death. and i was lucky that i never knew about such things. but when it came to it, she knew nothing about the dangers of gang violence, substance misuse, date rape, consent, abusive partners, predators, sexual harassment… i guess what i’m trying to say is that while she knew war and communism, she didn’t know how to protect me from anything that wasn’t war and communism. we just lived in different worlds. and in her mind, it was still the 1950’s. her mind never modernized, therefore, the way she raised a daughter never pivoted. she clutched me in her iron fist and squeezed, believing she could transform me into a trad wife. “your poor husband never comes home to hot cooked meals,” she used to say to me after i would come home from a long day of work.

i recently unlocked a memory of when my brother ran away. he was around nine years old. he went missing for about twelve hours before the police found him hiding in a closed rec center that he managed to sneak into. i still wonder to this day what version of my mother he was running from. it’s this memory i have been clutching onto, wondering— hoping— that maybe he understood why my mother always told him i was a bad daughter. and why, as a result, our relationship was so strained.

jacob, i am scared of feeling the way i am feeling right now for the rest of my life. it occurred to me recently: what if this is it? what if there isn’t anything else? what if i have arrived? after returning from maui to scatter my brother’s ashes, i thought it would feel like a chiropractic adjustment: a pop, a crack, then relief... but no. nothing was put back into place. i ache for peace.

it’s summertime now. it’s 90 plus degrees and school is out for you. and i suddenly realized that i don’t remember last summer. at all. it’s a total blank. that was the summer after your uncle died. he had only died a month prior. how do i have zero recollection of my favorite season? grief is funny that way. it’s almost cleansing. i am now a blank slate. in some part, anyways. but not the way i had anticipated or wanted.

i am a blank slate in that everything i thought i knew about life, i only now have come to understand i know a lot about nothing. over the span of a year, i divorced your dad, returned to therapy, went no-contact with my mother and father, moved homes three times, and am now having an identity crisis. i am primordial goo. i am starting again.

at least i have you. but don’t worry, my love. i will become myself again without being dependent upon you, without shaping my identity around you like foam insulation. i could never, would never, do that to you. i just want to give you an explanation for why, if you look at me lately, i may look amorphous. but rest assured, one day… i will take shape again.

love, mom

dear jacob,

when you are at your dad’s, i close your bedroom door.

i close it so i do not remember you are not with me.

i close it so i do not remember i am supposed to be hearing you laugh.

i close it so i can pretend you are in there, waiting for me to cook dinner.

i close it so i can pretend that you are here with me.

it is the closest i have ever come to understanding how repression is survival— the closest i can come to understanding my mother.

oh, jacob… you left my apartment not fifteen minutes ago but i already miss you terribly. that piece of me you took with you? didn’t you know you were supposed to leave it behind with me?

every week, i can’t wait to open your bedroom door. to see you sleeping under the covers, feet sticking out. to see you at your desk, groaning in exasperation and doing your homework. to see you on the floor, scratching the dog’s belly while cooing her name.

i am finally recognizing there are things in my heart that are too tender to touch… i thought i was close to being healed. but healing is like renovating a house; the more you explore, the more you keep finding cracks. leaks. faulty wiring.

i will make repairs one day when i know i’m ready. not today. i recently came across a memory that wounded me so deeply, i could barely face it. instead, i stored it in your bedroom, along with your absence… and i tried to close the door.

come back to me soon.

love, mom

dear jacob,

there will be a day when you will inherit my jewelry. and in my jewelry box, you’ll see a gold necklace with eleven pave diamond leaves dangling off it. this necklace is called “eleven wishes”. or something equally as idiotic.

the story behind this necklace is that i was walking down old bellevue and passed a jewelry store. when i tried the door, i found it to be locked. i finally spotted the doorbell and pushed the button. then, a blonde, white, middle-aged woman emerged from the store and looked me up and down with distaste.

“we only have fine jewelry here,” she said without a greeting. i felt like she had slapped me. i was wearing an old white tee, cutoff denim shorts, and birkenstocks. my hair was in a messy bun. i didn’t brush it that morning.

without a beat, i pushed passed her. i knew in that moment there was no way i would leave that store without buying something in order to prove a point. but much to my dismay, i perused the cases and noticed that every piece in the store was outdated. clunky. solid gold mimicking 80’s costume jewelry, which attempted to appeal to a much older palette. i felt dread because i knew i was stuck buying something i didn’t even want. stuck because that’s the intensity of my indignation and my principality.

i spotted a necklace that was the daintiest, most minimalist piece in the store and asked the store clerk to ring it up without glancing at the price tag and without asking how much it cost. when she told me the total at the register, i blanched.

one thousand dollars. almost half of my mortgage. but with conviction, i passed her my credit card.

“that’s it?” i forced out, as snobbishly as i could. that’s when she opened up to me and giddily shared a bit about herself. when she considered it was a possibility that i was one of her kind.

she was a housewife who decided to get a job there because she was bored during the day and would spend her time shopping at that store. i noticed that she was draped in gold and jewels; she looked as though she was wearing every single piece she owned, like one of those 1920’s grandmothers who wore diamond tiaras, strands of pearl necklaces, and fur coats on their way to the matinee opera.

this woman was the one who told me the name of the necklace: eleven wishes. i never asked what the wishes stood for. because i didn’t give two shits. what matters is what it now represents to me.

to me, eleven wishes represents a privileged, ignorant white woman being granted eleven wishes when our communities don’t even get three. to me, this necklace represents a smug memory, where i proved a woman wrong (despite the fact that she was technically correct— i couldn’t afford that necklace i charged to my credit card). but regardless, this necklace represents being able to snatch these small moments back, turning digs into my personal victories.

after i’m gone, i want you to look at this piece of jewelry and remember who your mother was. someone who felt like every hill was worth dying on. someone who would go to the ends of the earth if it meant correcting someone’s offensive behavior (an overdeveloped sense of justice, if you will). i want you to remember how my flaws and my strengths were so intertwined, you can’t actually distinguish whether each one is a flaw or a strength.

when i was in sixth grade, i won a poetry contest at my middle school. this meant i got to read my poem aloud at the University of Washington in front of local middle schools in the area. when we got there, a girl started making fun of my friends and me, unprovoked, while we were waiting to enter the auditorium.

when we got to our seats, i was baffled at my luck that she was seated directly in front of me. i nonchalantly spit out my gum, and started giddily wrapping her hair around it without her noticing. then i got up to read my poem. i guess it was written on the wall what kind of woman i would turn out to be.

jacob, i have been curating jewelry for years now with the intention of passing them onto you. part of the reason being that i never inherited anything from my family and was always envious of anyone sharing that they had gotten a piece of their grandmother’s jewelry. because jewelry represents a person’s life, and they remain alive through the stories we tell about them. and the reason why i picked jewelry to be the vehicle for our family stories is because it is usually women who carry the generational stories and pass them on. and i don’t think it’s a coincidence that it’s usually women who carry the weight, the survival, of a family. families stay alive because of women.

i don’t have anything of my grandmother’s, who fled from north korea. the family rumor is that she buried her gold before she fled. it’s not so much the gold i mourn, but the stories tied to her gold. especially because koreans are emotionally and verbally constipated— they don’t talk about the past. let alone, their traumas. so when my grandmother buried her gold, she also buried our family stories. our family history. today, as i sit here writing this, i don’t know much about anyone. and not knowing where you came from leaves you feeling… aimless.

so when i think of people who inherit their grandmother’s jewelry, i think, what a privilege. the jewish women of the holocaust who swallowed or hid their jewelry through the concentration camps have my utmost respect. because they anticipated what this jewelry meant to family. i understand that some safeguarded jewelry knowing that they would need to barter if they were to survive the camps, but i do believe some of these women knew that it was less material and more symbolic. jewish women clutched onto their history. korean women want to do everything possible to let go of it. to forget.

when you inherit my jewelry, i hope you gift pieces to someone you love (man, woman, person, etc.). and it is my wish that when someone asks you or your loved one, “where is that from?”, you can relish them with stories of your intense, stubborn (intensely stubborn?) mother.

my second wish? that you have all the wishes in the world. unlimited. just like my love for you.

love, mom

dear jacob,

i have a confession. halabeoji has been writing me letters since i went no-contact with halmeoni. so far, i think i have about ten letters. and every time i receive one, i slip it into a drawer in the kitchen. unread. unopened.

i just can’t.

i can’t bring myself to open these letters, because i can’t allow myself to soften. my father will always be on my mother’s side and coerce me. and i am terrified of any potential avenue for my mother to reconnect with me. i can’t believe i am saying this, but the possibility of my father dying and reading those letters afterwards… i already know this pain will not be greater than the pain of having my mother in my life. which is saying a lot. every day, the fear of his death floats above the surface of my mind and every day i take my hand and hold it underwater, waiting for it to drown. i have already condemned my life to regret. knowingly and with resolution.

this is how i know hell is on earth.

my father wrote me letters because it was the safest way to stay in contact with me without my mother knowing. he has been writing me letters since i first moved out of the house for college. and he wrote me through my time in the military.

but my absolutely favorite way to hear from him? payphones. you probably have no idea what these are since you’re too young… but it was the most surefire way my father would contact me without my mother knowing what we were talking about. you see, whenever he would call me from the house phone, my mother would eavesdrop and interrupt whenever he would say something that displeased her. i could always hear her scolding him in the background, telling him to stop speaking nonsense. it was like calling a man who was in prison.

my father would carry quarters around in his pocket so he could call me when he would leave the house for work. his pockets always jingled cheerfully when he walked. but…

the unanticipated implication of modernization meant that the past few years, cities would start taking payphones down. nobody used payphones anymore, everyone had a cell phone. these structures were widely considered archaic. antiquated, even.

but not to my father and me.

when payphones began disappearing from our streets, my father’s voice— our connection, began disappearing from my life. who would have thought one small action would have such a devastating side effect?

and jacob, after the payphones disappeared and before i went no-contact with halmeoni, there was a time when the only voice i heard on my phone was my mom’s. and whenever her name would pop up on my phone, i would feel sick to my stomach; my body having a visceral reaction to what she meant to me. a visceral reaction to the word “mom” when it would appear on that little screen. i shudder to think of it.

because it took my entire adolescence to realize that i would never find what i was looking for in “mom”.

i remember too keenly what it was like when i would call her, aching for a mother’s reassurance. aching to tell my mother something amazing that happened to me. aching to tell her about something that has been hurting me. only to remember immediately after a few words from her why i shouldn’t have called her. i now understand that when i want my mom, i don’t want my mom.

when i would call her, i would know instantaneously what kind of mood she was in based on the tone of her voice. they always say that parentified daughters with emotionally immature parents naturally become hyperaware because they are so accustomed to interpreting the behaviors of their parent. the phrase “walking on eggshells” is such a joke to me. it doesn’t even come close. i walk on broken glass.

she was always angry with me as a perpetual state of being. not because of an incident, but because i once told her i didn’t want to hear her talk badly about my father anymore. she responded by telling me how much of a disappointment it was because in her version of korean culture, the whole point of having daughters was to trauma dump on them when they became old enough because they finally knew what it was like to be women. she thought it was my duty to endure her complaints about my father. she hated their marriage… she felt burdened by him, she said she couldn’t wait to die, and that she had wasted her life. she would tell me that it was my job to endure my then-husband, your dad, because that’s the duty of a wife. i remember recoiling in horror at her advice.

once she said she had always wanted to see the vatican but because she married my father, she lost her chances. this was such bullshit, jacob. she had every opportunity to travel. she just sat back and watched her life pass her by and blamed my father for it. i told her that when i would get her cremated, i would take her ashes to the vatican. she thought it was the sweetest thing i had ever said. but it still struck me how this living, able-bodied person had already committed in her mind that this was a trip she would never take.

i wonder if that’s why i am the way i am. i never hesitate to experience a taste, a smell, a sound, a feeling, a sight… i don’t want to be resentful that i didn’t squeeze every ounce of joy from my life. when i’m done with it, i want my life to be tired of me. not the other way around.

i hope you live the same way.

here are my last voice messages from halabeoji. i want to save these here so i can one day go back and listen to them after he’s gone. and so you can hear what kind of man he was. the best, jacob. the best kind of man.

take some part of this to shape who you will become. forever kind. forever calling someone you love “sweetie”.

love, mom

dear jacob,

marjane satrapi (iranian author of persepolis) died today. apparently, her mother said she died of “sadness”. her husband died about a year ago.

when you find someone who nourishes your soul, they become your lifeline. they become as essential as food and water. so when they are removed from your life, you effectively wither.

so how do you recover from a broken heart?

i wonder what i will tell you one day when you come to me cradling your first heartbreak. when i try to think of what halmeoni would say or do… if i were to pretend i went to her for support… i can predict how she would’ve reacted. she would’ve laughed in my face. because every pain i felt would be compared to the pain she felt. and according to her, nothing i would ever feel could compare to what she has experienced in her lifetime.

“i have forty years of life experience. you don’t know anything,” she would reassure me when i was a teenager.

last year (before i went no-contact with her), when i turned thirty-eight, i asked her what she would say now that i was almost forty. she snorted.

“i have seventy-six years of life experience.” ah. so according to her, i will never know anything.

but my sweet jacob, i know too much. i know too much heartache. too much pain. too much loss. but unlike my mother, the purpose of my pain is not to create standards for you to meet. its purpose was to prepare me, to make me strong enough to carry both myself and you throughout our lives.

my teens were about losing my innocence too young. my twenties were losing trust in people. my thirties? gaining it all back. re-learning how to live life vulnerably. being sixteen and carefree again— but this time, loving her. and making sure she’s around people she can trust her heart with.

my thirties are now about ensuring that every single person i allow into my life is my lifeline. but this also means there is something to lose if they were to go away. this might sound crazy, but i want to live like marjane satrapi— when i die, i want to die of sadness because i loved somebody so hard.

but don’t be alarmed. although i’ve had my fair share of pain, i could never actually die of sadness. i’ve opened my heart to my mother so many times, only for her to break it. if that didn’t kill me, nothing can. there is no splinter that exists like the incomplete love of a mother. but luckily, there was nothing more healing than becoming the mother i never had… the mother i wish i had.

jacob, my advice to you is to curate lifelines. and there is no way to do this but through trial and error. life is about practicing your love on all the wrong people until you find the person worth your abundance. and the reason why heartache comes first, the reason why it can’t be the first person you love, is because you would take them for granted if they came to you too easily. and this is also why it’s important to be ready and open when this love comes along.

love is about setting yourself up for great loss. because that means you have something worth losing. live like you have something (someone) to risk. open your heart. and when you hurt, put your hurt on me. drape it over my shoulders, one at a time, and tell me slowly and at great length so you can properly unburden yourself.

one day, when you come to me with your broken heart… i will be here to mend it. i will be your lifeline. always. that way, you will never die of sadness. because i will always be here with you.

love, mom

dear jacob,

i scattered your uncle’s ashes four days ago and i still don’t have the words to explain how i feel. i knew i wouldn’t have closure exactly, but i was expecting some level of relief or something within me to click. but nothing came. i returned to seattle only to continue feeling out of alignment. like my skin doesn’t quite fit… like my seams are off-kilter and rubbing me in all the wrong places.

i mentioned to you before that no one tells you that you grieve a loved one’s death over and over again. for me, it didn’t come in one long phase. it was grieving in waves crashing on the shore. the first time i grieved your uncle’s death was when i got the news. the second time: his cremation. and now, the third time: when i took him to his final resting place on his favorite place on earth.

i spent seven days on maui waiting for the right time to scatter my brother’s ashes. and six of those days, the trade winds blew over 30 miles an hour. i had to reschedule the service twice. but on my final day in maui, i woke to a calm sky. the palm trees were finally still. i was dying to ask my brother, why my last day? he never answered. but it was evident that i was at the mercy of the wind. the timing was bigger than me.

on that final day, the water was still, clear, aquamarine... a butterfly was sailing on the gentlest of breezes over the water. the ash scattering facilitator found a secluded beach. not a soul in sight. but kiawe trees everywhere, dropping thorned branches.

“watch where you step,” the facilitator warned. don’t i always?

when we waded out, she told me when it was time to let go. it struck me how we call this ceremony a “scattering” but really, this was a pouring. a pouring of ashes. because the water was so calm, my brother’s ashes lingered and took form of a white cloud underneath the surface. it was eerie, if i can say that.

“the heavier pieces will fall first,” she reassured, as i was pouring him out of a plastic bag. i’m not sure why this felt sticky and significant, but it did.

jacob, when i poured his ashes into the ocean, i was pouring him out of me. i held a place for him in me this past year, refusing to move on. and by letting him go, i was releasing him to the ocean, to be in her care. moments after, a sea turtle popped its head up. i perked up a little, taking it as a sign that i did what he wanted.

sigh.

so much of this struggle has been wishing i could know for sure what he wants me to do. and on my drive back from the beach, it hit me how only in death do you finally get what you want. in my experience, all of life’s most important moments aren’t even about you: weddings, baby showers, graduations… all of these markers are usually about pleasing as many people as possible. which i personally never understood (it’s why your dad and i eloped).

“it’s what they would’ve wanted.” how many times do we hear this post mortem?

jacob, this is why i want you to live life selfishly. people pleasing will get you nowhere. and what kind of life is it to only get what you want after you die? most people will only consider you after you’re dead. be an advocate for what your heart desires.

it’s how your uncle lived. it’s how i live. nine times out of ten, the only person who will ensure you come first is yourself. don’t forget that.

and in case you’re wondering, putting you first is what puts me first. that’s how much your happiness means to me. and that’s how much i love you.

love, mom

dear jacob,

we had to reschedule your uncle’s ash scattering ceremony for the second time. i’m beginning to think the trade winds are him protesting something. who knows what— he was unbelievably stubborn. but i know one thing, jacob. there is no way in hell i am bringing him back to washington. i won’t have it. i know in my gut he belongs here. maybe all of this will make sense tomorrow morning, when we rescheduled the ceremony. i am expecting him to explain himself tomorrow.

the locals here say the weather has been bizarre, almost their version of winter in what should have been the start of summer. the local who i’ve been in contact with who is facilitating the ceremony simply put it: “everything is swirly.”

i’m not sure if i could have put it more perfectly. everything is swirly.

today, i drove to wailea beach where it was hotter than hot. the winds were much milder there and the sand hurt to touch. i got sunburned yesterday and the sweat dripping down my face stung my skin. i spent the better part of the morning laid out like a lizard on a rock, watching an elderly man use a metal detector up and down the beach. i wonder if he was hoping he’d find something in particular or find something at all? i also wonder why we associate hunting for buried treasure as something only children do. because don’t we all? after all, the idea of treasure is so subjective.

it made me think of the balinese, who scurry up and down the beaches, scouring for ancient chinese coins (pis bolong). these coins wash to shore after being used in hindu funeral rituals at sea. one man’s corpse coin is another man’s treasure. isn’t that how the saying goes?

several weeks ago, i purchased a course from a hawaiian, maui-based healer named kai soong to try to heal my, what hawaiians call, mai na loko; a spiritual wound from my brother that has been making me sick (the gut issues, the migraines, the muscle aches, etc.). and just in case you’re wondering… i’m not ready to deal with my mai na loko from halmeoni yet… as of now, my mother wound is too traumatic for me to start peeling back. this healing method, ho’oponopono, is allowing me to emotionally process and clear an emotional clog with my brother so i can free us of our conflict even after his death. or that’s the hope.

my sweet jacob… it took me almost a month to find it: the uhiwai or the “undigested, unprocessed emotional memory.” this memory keeps coming up for me, over and over and over again… and according to kai soong, it’s a specific moment (not the general state of a relationship) where you might turn to someone and say, “can you believe they did that?”

in the beginning of my search for my brother’s uhiwai, i thought it was his death. how could he? how could he die without knowing that it was my mother who broke our relationship? how could he not see it for himself?

but no… it didn’t feel like it fit. there was no specific moment of occurrence… there was the death and the crashing waves of emotions and internal accusations afterwards. not to mention that the further i drift away from his death, the less i feel indignant about our unfinished business regarding our mother.

but today on the beach, lying on my belly and playing with the sand, it hit me. and i began to laugh. i was laughing in relief because i knew with great certainty that i found it. and i couldn’t believe that while i was raking my fingers through the sand, i had found a treasure.

when i was about five years old, our local library was doing a program where they were handing out plastic bags of ladybugs. you see, jacob, we were experiencing a shortage of ladybugs which in turn messes with the balance of our environment. ladybugs eat aphids, which controls the aphids population, otherwise, you would have aphids eating at the crops and our native plants. and to think bees get all the attention.

anyways, i was so excited as a little girl to take my new friends home. i wasted no time in freeing them in our front yard. only to turn towards the house and see my brother rushing outside with his little league baseball bat.

and i watched him, in horror, as he ran around the yard and smashed every single ladybug he could find.

i was devastated. crushed. in the moment, i found it unforgivable because he hurt tens of helpless creatures.

as an adult, i find it unforgivable because he hurt me.

jacob… as you go through your life, don’t forget: nothing is too small. not a ladybug, not an emotional injury. it’s not about the size of things. it’s about the weight.

i’m sure you will have an uhiwai involving me (certainly several). and i’ll be here waiting to own up to it and apologize. nothing is too small.

now that i found the uhiwai with my brother, the next step is to process and clear it. i’ll keep you posted.

i love you.

love, mom

dear jacob,

i once met a buddhist who told me that the western way of meditation is to teach people to be dumb. he claimed that since this poorly adapted technique was encouraging westerners to empty the mind, it was essentially coaching people to be stupid.

apparently, the buddhist way of meditation is to quiet the mind in order to increase spiritual awareness and enlightenment. you’re just vibrating at a higher level, a higher frequency. the man i spoke with told me the last time he meditated, he had a vision of his kids jumping on the bed while him and his wife were lying down; it wasn’t a memory, it was what he believed to be symbolic for enlightenment.

a couple days ago, i drove to the halfway marker to the road to hāna; a relatively dangerous road, maybe even treacherous, considering the trade winds and wind advisory here. i woke up that morning and felt compelled to go. it wasn’t until i started driving when i realized the date: may 23rd. the anniversary of my brother’s death. and although i didn’t know the date, i had grabbed my brother’s ashes that morning before i left, wanting to take him along for the ride. maybe he was the one compelling me to go. who knows.

the road to hāna is a challenging exercise for a person who can never get their thoughts to shut up. even though i now know that true meditation is not about emptying the mind, i usually fail at being present enough to make my mind more of a receptacle for enlightenment— it’s just too busy worrying and wondering. but on the road to hāna, there is no space in your mind to worry and wonder. made up of a total of 620 curves and hairpin turns and 59 one-lane bridges, i was mentally spent after being forced to be present for almost two hours in the rain and wind. and that’s even after only making it to the halfway point. and that was about the time large rocks started falling off the side of the mountain onto the road.

the other thing about the road to hāna: you actually have to lift your eyes off the road to enjoy the views. it is famous for its breathtaking jungle of flora, fauna, and waterfalls. but to take your eyes off the road also means temporarily losing sight of the cars ahead of you, maybe even drifting out of your narrow lane.

i wonder if meditation requires two layers: opening the mind AND zooming out to see the bigger picture.

my dearest jacob… learn to meditate in this way. don’t forget to look up. if your eyes are always on the road, you’ll never see the view. be present, but not so present that you forget that there is more to appreciate. more to enjoy.

i hope that makes sense.

love, mom

dear jacob,

when i was in fourth grade, i killed my goldfish. his name was sharkie. i’m not sure why i thought he was a “he” but that’s besides the point. every day for a week, i stuck a spoon in his bowl and swirled the water to make a little vortex. and every day for a week, i watched him get sucked up and swept around in a water tornado. when the water would die down, i would use the spoon to scoop him up, eyeball him for any damage, then ungraciously tip him back into the bowl with a plop.

if you asked me then why i would do something like that, i would have probably responded with, “i just want to see what would happen.” if you asked me today, i think in more or less words, i wanted to see how far to the edge we could push a life before it gives out.

i guess i’m lucky i never turned out to be a serial killer. no— but in all seriousness, i think children are born with a natural curiosity about death. like how toddlers stomp on ants. not only to see what happens, but to see how they feel about it. that part is equally as important.

one day after school, i came home to find sharkie repeatedly swimming into the side of his bowl, slamming his head into the glass. the next day, i found him belly up. i wasn’t necessarily shocked, i was… amazed. i was responsible for my goldfish’s suicide and i remember feeling like it was such a shame. but what was i disappointed in? sharkie’s lack of fortitude? my own behavior? the fragility of life? if i had to try to put into words what i was thinking, it was somewhere along the lines of: so that’s all it takes? is that the amount of elasticity we have in life?

i remember the first time i learned about death. i was seven years old and in the second grade. on a random day in march, the school notified all of us that a girl in the first grade had hopped a fence during recess and was killed by two rottweilers. the next day, i saw the newspaper on the dining room table open to the page about her death. her name was heide.

i thought about heide for days afterwards. because i didn’t really know what it meant: to die. death was so conceptual to me as a child. i think at that age, the closest synonym to accurately portray a very elementary understanding of death is “to be extinguished”. to be put out. to be no more. like a flame blown out at the end of the night.

just… poof.

i’m trying this new thing, jacob: gratitude. not this capitalistic version of gratitude that is being sold to us today; the kind that is shoved down our throats that coaches us to consider yourself blessed for the life that you have. but the most challenging kind of gratitude; being grateful for death. being grateful for truly terrible things.

because how the hell are we ever to enjoy life if death never touches our lives? how can we feel blessed for what we have if we don’t know the risk of it being removed?

soon, i’ll tell you about all the good things that came from your uncle’s death. as strange as that sounds.

i miss you so much.

love, mom

dear jacob,

today in lāhainā, i watched a bird clutching a gorgeous black and orange-spotted butterfly in its beak. it was struggling helplessly.

it’s such a pity when something pretty has to die.

visiting lāhainā three years after the wildfires is a strange experience. i had never been to this island before so i have no point of reference, but there’s almost no trace of fire unless you look closely for signs of singeing. but clues are evident on building sides, store signs, playgrounds… i think what makes it even more surreal is being immersed in the abundance of lush and emerald-green growth. i don’t know what i was expecting. i guess i forgot that the living can recover. i forgot that the surface is only the skin.

without context, the landscape looks as though lāhainā is unadulterated land, newly settled upon. in one area near downtown, there are skeletons and cement foundations of homes as far as the eye can see. it looks as though the emergent theme in this chapter of my life is fire. which is fitting since this is the year of the fire horse: quick changes, lots of movement. in the case of lāhainā, fire was a catalyst for a rebirth. in hawaiian, lāhainā actually translates to “cruel or merciless sun”. i suppose it depends on who you ask here: the alabaster-no-more tourist waddling back to her hotel room burnt to a crisp (but begging for more sun worship), or the recovering historic banyan tree depending on the next rainfall. another way to look at it: the sun is the bird and we are the butterfly in its beak. i don’t really think of the sun as merciless, but we definitely at its mercy.

two days ago, lāhainā experienced a solar phenomenon: lāhainā noon. only twice a year, the sun looms directly over hawai’i and, no exaggeration, removes every single shadow. like peter pan when he lost his shadow and wendy had to sew it back on. if i didn’t have a shadow, i would begin to question whether or not i was real. isn’t that what shadows are? proof that we exist? that we occupy space? it’s the solar equivalent of being a vampire without a reflection.

jacob, not to be dramatic… but i’m not sure if i have a shadow anymore. even outside of lāhainā noon. i’m just not sure if i exist right now.

as you know, your uncle’s ash scattering ceremony was supposed to be today but it was rescheduled because of the trade winds. there is an actual wind advisory right now.

it’s just so fitting that even this final step couldn’t be easy. but i guess there is no “final” step in grieving. and there definitely is no “easy”.

i just got off my facetime call with you. i just love seeing your face. i can’t wait to squeeze you when i get home in a week.

love, mom