What is happiness, really? Is it the sunlight that enters through the forest canopy and finally warms the cold, starving man who crawls through the snow? ‎Is it the perpetual sunshine in the meadow that seems to exist for everyone but me?

I run through the meadow when it is cold and rainy, when the sky itself is grieving because for once, I resonate with the sky. I was born and expected to be a beam of sunlight poking through the ivy-ridden windows of a rusted home, but I am nothing more than the rain. I will become a deluge someday, who knows? Noah built his ark to save the world from God’s punishment against the nonbelievers. It’s a holy task for me to spare the innocent man of myself. My heart is battered and bruised, perhaps the way it was intended to be made.

None other than I am willing to withstand the magnitude of my own flood. None other than I can build an ark and float through the forest. No matter how beautiful my ark is, no one will climb aboard. Few have, not expecting me to toss an anchor to mark them as my harbor. No harbor can withstand me. I am both the flood that destroys the ark and the ingenuity that thought to build the ark in the first place. I am both Arachne—cocky, but I soon learn my place with the harshest punishments and the harshest rejections.

I must leave my lover in the ether, where he has always existed and where he always will exist. I can visit him in the fog of my mind, but never in the human realm. I love whoever my lover would have been enough to protect him from me. The crevices my heart desires to fill can never be filled. They are of the greed of Tantalus, and to fill them would be a labor of Sisyphus. I now realize how selfish it is to punish an innocent man by tasking him to love me.

To love me is a punishment I wish upon no one else. My act of love is to ensure that no one has to at all. I will be Perseus’s shield. If my heart must gaze into Medusa’s eyes and become stone, let it be so. I love him enough to let go and be swept away wherever the ark takes me.

It’s easy to want something. A young boy wants a car for a graduation gift. A girl wants to possess the pretty flower that’s blooming in the garden. A little girl tugs on her mother’s fingers, pointing to a doll she desperately wants. Of course, once you have it, you forget about it. The adrenaline of possession is long gone, and onto the next item.

People who get adored are certainly different. They are built up with enough love and security running through their veins that they never have to doubt who loves them, if they’ll ever stop being loved, or simply what their place is in the world. They’ve already been given it. What use is it to ponder and keep pondering?

I am different. I am wanted when the clothes on my back make me look beautiful. I am wanted when I paint on enough rouge on my cheeks and line my eyes to make them look alluring. I am wanted because I’ve never experienced things like believing that I’m wanted and I’m easy to coax into lowering my guard. Another girl would never do that, but the wolves can always smell the scent of desperation on me. I am wanted when I am willing to sacrifice myself so someone else can live the life I thought I’d have but might never. My body is sacrificial meat to the monsters that only make themselves known to the dead of the night, and the burn marks I put on my own thighs are the claw marks from the monsters of my own mind’s making. Who could adore someone whose blood is only filled with hatred for herself? Hatred that other people taught her to have?

In the dead of night also exists God Himself, and I can also ask Him if I’m meant to be more than just wanted. Not because I’m beautiful or ugly or whatever else exists in between, not because I’m intelligent or downright an idiot sometimes, but simply because I’m me.

I still don’t have an answer.

God, to me, is the promised immortal presence that will watch over me and continue to love me, despite my transgressions to myself and to the world.

God is meant to be all-loving and all-powerful. Why must we withhold God’s presence through meaningless arguments and shaming one or the other? As people, do we really come to hate the prospect of religion because we hate the idea of God or because religion is peddled to us by hateful preachers who do not quite understand that yes, they are hateful? If God is meant to be merciful, then the hand of a preacher is a whip instead of a rope meant to create a bridge or pull someone up from the side of a cliff.

The premise of God is to have an immortal love that you can hold onto even during times of disappointment. It was never meant to be rationed, especially by those who want to call you to God.

How can you be so lonely and not alone at the same time?

What’s it like when you feel the absence of another so deeply that the absence itself takes on the form of a human, a jinn that will never leave you?

In the moments when you mourn the absence of another, all that really exists is that void. The void becomes the place you fill with your own desires, laughter and smiles you can only imagine. It becomes the graveyard where your hopes and prayers of love go to die.

But if that void truly exists, your prayers of love never died.

If that void truly exists, and that tight clenching vise around your heart remains, your heart never died. That love you crave never died either. It exists, in the ether somewhere, waiting for you to find it.

But there’s also the pragmatic part of me, the one that knows that no one ever stays forever. Promises that swear to keep you are just keys without locks, after all.

I don’t know who to kill. The one who believes that people stay, or the one who believes that no one will ever stay.

I know that I’d stay. I know that I’d love intensely. So who’s to say that it wouldn’t be returned to me in equal measure?

But who’s to say that it even would be, and I’m the only one who hasn’t realized that loving someone is foolishness? That staying is foolishness too—after all, no one would ever stay for me.

Love, to me, is like a vial of belladonna—it keeps my eyes looking clear and bright, like I know things, but in reality, I’m blind to the truth.

People who are loved are already perfect, something I can never be. I’m too scarred and complicated for it, and I’m always easy prey to people who know when to say the right things and pull the rug out from under me. The girl who hopes that love is out there, no matter how ugly she is, drags me too close to the sun until my wings melt.

But then there’s also the girl who’s already accepted that love doesn’t exist for her. The one who toils in the muck of her stupidity, her ugliness, and her tears is far more rational than the one who keeps reaching for the stars, no matter how much it hurts. She keeps herself in the cage of a monster, knowing she can’t escape.

The girl who loves believes in escape.

The rational girl does not.

Who to kill? Who will leave Icarus to drown faster?

The girl who loves believes that there’s always a way out of her cage, that she won’t have to be Andromeda chained to the cliff anymore. That she’s so much more than a stone to sharpen blades on.

But the rational girl douses the embers of hope.

Who to kill? Or better yet—who’ll kill Icarus first, if Icarus can even be saved?

But I’m also the girl who sits in the back, cracking jokes every few seconds because the noise in her head is like a tsunami that she can’t stop from burgeoning near the shore.

I’m the girl who only knows what love looks like because she imagines it at all hours of the day, only to forsake it for herself for the blade because she’s convinced herself that she can’t have it.

Where does that leave me?

When I imagine love, I imagine a story that could be filled with shards of glass or bullets but we could still brave our way through it. But love now looks more like stepping away from the battlefield before things get too rough. The girl with scars bears too much on her own shoulders, and no one loves her enough to want to carry part of her weight on top of their own.

That’s fair. Perhaps the greatest act of love on her end is hiding the fact that holding up boulders on her shoulders doesn’t strain her at all.

I don’t get chosen. I want to choose, but I never get to be the first choice.

I’m too easy.

I’m too complicated.

My sadness is too overwhelming and my happiness is too.

Must I subsist on the crumbs of affection thrown my way, knowing that no one loves the way I think they do, or do I hold on in the hopes that the love I imagine really does exist?

Do I continue throwing myself to the blades and the monsters in the hopes that my heart will be ripped out just enough for me to stop holding onto foolish hopes.

Do I steep myself in the iron bitterness of blood so the haze blocks out the musk of affection?

I never have an answer.

All I’ve ever known about myself is one thing—I want to love, and I want someone to love me hard enough that the sounds of the birds singing and the fiery explosions in the Sun’s core are almost obsolete compared to what we have for each other.

Except, do I even know if that kind of love exists anymore, in a life where I only continue to give and give until I’m a shell of my former self?

I feel like this idea of love that I’ve had for so long is almost nothing but a fairytale, a tale beginning with “Once upon a time.”

I’m a collection of stories, held together by scars that function as stitches. What I simply do not know is if love will fit into one of those stories.

Is the only love I’ll ever know something that exists in the stories I write? Will it be something I get to hold.

I do not know, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever know, I simply know that I don’t know a thing.

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I see love as the pang of jealousy I get when I read about someone being held for once, or even perhaps just a touch that lingers out of genuine care.

It’s strange, never having experienced it myself. And I don’t mean that as self-pity. I seem to confuse every positive emotion with love.

Somehow, the slightest bit of empathy towards me warps itself into Cupid’s Arrow and I’m suddenly in love with someone who showed me the slightest bit of affection when I fought for my heart in the trenches. They never send Cupid’s Arrow and once they realize it, they withdraw. I become Apollo and they, Daphne. Though it feels as though I am the one rooted into the ground while they walk free.

I feel enslaved by Love, but not in the idea of a lover.

I feel like someone who toils away to achieve Love but always shies away. To watch through the looking glass while imaging what I could be.

Perhaps I need to be prettier, or smarter, or simply less me.

Or perhaps I simply need to wait so I relish in the sweet fruits of love for longer.

But is it selfish, wanting to be loved without knowing if I can give that back?

Is it selfish, wanting to be loved while never knowing if I even know what it is?

What if what I feel is not Love, but Like? Like is similar to love but far more grotesque in that it feels like the most insincere form of it.

I would want to be Eurydice in this story, but am I worthy?

Do I mean enough to be a lover? Or will I simply be the one who watches every happy ending come together?

I don’t mean to for the foreseeable future because it feels dangerous. I don’t know what it’s like to hand over control of my feelings to someone and to trust that they won’t stomp all over my vulnerability.

Perhaps that is the reason I feel like an envious dragon when I read love stories. Modern and old, whether it be a touch or a kiss, I feel like my heart is something to guard, for I’ve never been wanted for even a touch.

Perhaps that is also the reason I wilt when I realize that I’ve never been the one chosen, when Pain finds me and Love ignores me. When the closest I’ve gotten to Love is Like, not even Fondness.

My soul feels like its being crushed when I read a story of someone being chosen when I’ve never had that luxury.

Pain is more familiar to me than Love. Pain doesn’t leave and it is just as hard to put into words.

Someday there will be a better ending to these words after all.

Sun passes through clouds, yes, but on the cloudiest day of the week, the clouds are a dull blanket. The sky is like the color of the ugly carpet my mother won’t replace—like a swirl of pale yellows and dark grays and bile all floating together.

Sometimes, it feels like cold drafts pass through the windows more when the clouds have gathered together. I pull the purple off-brand baroque curtains closed, pretending the clouds don’t exist.

But when the yellow bile-colored sunrays finally leave the sky, I feel most at peace. The sky finally surrenders to the clouds. The sky darkens, like the color of one of my gray jerseys when I’ve washed it in cold water.

Rain doesn’t always pour down when the sky becomes this way. Eventually, dusk comes, the orange rays filtering through the clouds in a last hurrah before leaving.

Then the night sky comes, and it doesn’t pretend. It’s covered by planes and smog and then the clouds. But there’s no tantalizing ray of sunlight promising you something that will not come.

I think love is tantalizing because you’ll never know what it brings you. The fruit that tastes the sweetest is the one that can poison you the most. But for me, love has always been something that I dream of, but I don’t completely trust the rest of the world to preserve the sanctity and purity of it. And maybe that’s the reason we see articles about how having a boyfriend is embarrassing or how a friend refuses to move on from calling it a ‘situationship’ to a relationship.

Sure, we’ve all heard horror stories from our friends when it comes to the average relationship, but I think there’s a huge smog of fear plaguing our society when it comes to emotions. Whether it’s telling men that “men don’t cry” or saying “women are so emotional,” I think we’re all just too afraid to feel things anymore because we want someone to maybe resonate with our feelings but in a day and age where your productivity matters more than your soul, no one does. Every day is like a debate of “should I extend my hand and wait for someone to reach for me? Or should I keep it tucked away in my pocket so I don’t have to realize that no one will reach for me?”

So, when we say a relationship is casual, I don’t think we mean we’re not looking for something serious. I think that in our heart of hearts, we want something real. We want someone to hold our hearts with us as we walk into the sunset, or maybe even on a short walk to the Uyghur restaurant across the street. We crave that intimacy, that feeling that we’re forced to deny ourselves time and time again because denying your feelings walls you off and protects you. But for how long? How long can a person toss away their essence before they wake up one day and realize they’re gone?

The sanctity of love only exists when a person is allowed to just be. No expectations, no demands made, just living. Calling it a ‘situationship’ is just another way to shove those feelings into the abyss. Keeping it casual is just another euphemism for “I want to be held but I was never allowed to ask for it.”

Now, in what might be sheer stupidity on delusion, I still believe that real romance is out there. I think that the problem is that we settle.

What do I mean by that?

I think the real delusion is the “I can fix him!” attitude. It just doesn’t work like that. Why is it your job to fix someone else’s behavioral issues? You’re not their mother, you’re their partner. You deserve more. You deserve a MATURE partner.

Sure, looks might be a big factor. And I’m not saying that’s ALWAYS the case, but it can be a lot of the time. In that case, were you ever in love with the person or the idea of them? Maybe you stay with them because you can’t imagine your life without that relationship.

To me, that’s not romance.

Romance is when you have stupid whispered conversations in the dark or you see this decadently baked snickerdoodle in the window of a cafe and think “I wish he were here.”

Romance is when you’re crying and you know that person is there with his arms open and you won’t have to hide from him. It’s knowing that you can hold this person’s hand without worrying they’ll dissipate the second things get hard.

It’s not having the boyfriend that’s embarrassing. It’s the way men act today.

Those books went from larger picture books to chapter books to huge tomes. I would greedily snatch up every volume of Rick Riordan books available. I’d look at myself in the bathroom and pretend to be a character in Heroes of Olympus. Sometimes I was Percy. Sometimes I was Annabeth. Sometimes, I improvised and created a spot just for me in the story. I’m sure Uncle Rick would be delighted to hear that.

Of course, after quarantine hit, my trips to the library stopped. I don’t think I’ve really stepped foot in a library in a while (thank God for Libby and Sora). I had nothing to read, so I turned to classics. Agatha Christie novels and Harry Potter and Shakespeare replaced my Percy Jackson novels. Most of my reading choices came from…Brainpop. I know it’s an odd place to get recommendations from, but Tim and Moby didn’t disappoint. I rather enjoyed my novels.

Kerstin Gier became an important part of my day. Her Ruby Red trilogy (which my friends refuse to read because it has real people on the cover) was one of the best things I’ve ever read, to this day. When I couldn’t go to the library because of lockdown, I read the trilogy as many times as I could. I swooned at all the romantic parts and like I did with Percy Jackson, inserted myself into the story. Her other series, The Silvery Trilogy, also holds a very special place in my heart.

After lockdown was lifted, things had changed. I wasn’t the same person. It felt like I was a priceless artifact that some child had broken on accident, tried to fix with glue, but hadn’t accounted for some minute pieces that they didn’t account for. In all honesty, I still feel like I’m missing some of those pieces. I struggled to cope with i then and I definitely still struggle, tremendously.

But reading helped me escape. I wasn’t just me anymore. Sometimes, I was Lim Jugyeong from the True Beauty manhwa. Sometimes, I was Ripley from My First Night With The Duke. Manhwas, with their bright panels and dialogue and fantastic art, helped me escape. It freed me, and even if it was just for a few minutes, I’m grateful for it.

Eventually, I returned to my beautiful romance novels, thanks to Ana Huang’s King of Wrath. The plot enchanted me as soon as I read the summary and I instantly fell in love with the book. I read it three times and swooned over Dante and Vivian every time. I was led into a rabbit hole of romance books that soothe me. If it weren’t for King of Wrath, I wouldn’t have discovered I Hope This Never Finds You or Chloe Walsh’s Boys of Tommen series.

What really shocked me about the Boys of Tommen series was just how much I connected to Lizzie. Chloe Walsh helped me feel seen, and I’m so grateful for that.

Each one of these authors, from Uncle Rick to Kerstin Gier to Chloe Walsh, wrote stories that made me feel like I wasn’t alone. Even if it was just for the few hours where I was engrossed in the book, I felt heard. I was part of a band of heroes! Sometimes, I had magic powers. Sometimes, I had life-threatening missions that I could easily accomplish. So, to all of these authors, thank you for helping me feel less alone.

I do a lot of things in life in a “methodical” approach: I wait for a burst of inspiration to hit, do the thing, then fade away once the inspiration leaves. Unfortunately, it looks like I’ve done the same thing to my substack!

So, to answer your question, why did I create the substack?

Well, I write! It takes a lot of coaxing for me to stay on one project and not jump ship to the next one, sadly. I’ve been working on short stories recently and I have a novel in the works! I’m very excited to share my progress with all of you.

Now, you might be wondering, why do I write?

I’ve always been a writer. It all started in third grade, writing a personal narrative essay about anti-bullying. It made a big splash with the adults who read it and I really felt like my essay and my words had an impact in the world. And as a young girl who was absolutely enamored with Percy Jackson, all I really wanted to do was write a novel. I spent countless hours watching the Infographics Show, trying to think of a creative idea for one. I created a cover on wattpad and everything until, well, life happened. As I got to high school, I met a writer friend who really gave me the inspiration to get back to writing. I realized that I wasn’t too old to keep writing (which is ironic) and for the sake of my inner child, I really hope I finish writing my novel.

Anyways, that’s me! I can’t wait for the rest of you to get to know me better.

Signing off,

Zizy