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Originally posted July 23rd, 2019


—


“So what have you been up to?”

Oh boy.

What a question.

What kind of answer are you looking for?

That I’ve been working on a hot new idea for the next billion-dollar startup? Or that I’ve been out in the mountains climbing gnarly stuff? That I’ve been looking for a cure for cancer and mastering astro-photography while getting my MBA, I’ve been meditating and soul-searching and am now a master yogi, I’ve been—

“Mostly hanging out, living at home with my parents, reading books.”

“Oh, cool.”


—

I spent a lot of hours playing video games and reading.

These are things I used to do with a passion in grade school and then stopped after college. So maybe it was appropriate for me to sink back into these hobbies now that I had stopped being a functioning adult.

The books I can argue had things I could learn— if nothing, then vocabulary and writing— but the games I played weren’t all so great. Some had wonderful stories and I enjoyed watching them unfold. Others seemed to barely make sense and were filled with poorly written characters and even worse plot lines, and as I pushed forward through those, I wondered why I was still playing them at all.

I think I just wanted to know.

And then?

And then?

And then?

Even if the story is bad, I need to get to the next part, and the next, and the next, and finally to the conclusion. And that’s the amazing thing about games and books— the story is all there. I can just keep running to the next dungeon, keep flipping the pages, and I will immediately know how things turn out and how it all ends, good or bad. Did we manage to save that character from seemingly certain doom? Did that other character really die die, or did they just “die”?

What are the consequences of all my actions—

Did I do good?

It’s amazing, really. I can see every cause and effect unfold in front of me. At worst, it takes a few hours of reading or gameplay, but with minor effort I can draw the lines like 1-2-3. It’s a modern day connect-the-dots, giving way to a cartoon puppy resting in the shade of a grand old tree.

How simple.


—


Believe it or not, I had a plan for when I came back to the States.

I’d hang out with my family. Build closer bonds with my estranged siblings and get to know my dying father before he actually died. After 30 years, we’d finally have a beautiful relationship, just like all those campy dysfunctional families in all those campy dysfunctional family movies. I’d reach out to old friends, explore the heart and underbelly of Los Angeles, and expand my professional skills by studying something like Python or R. And then I’d run off to do some more climbing in the wild before settling back down in LA and getting a regular full-time job in analytics at a nonprofit.

Nice.

And also completely not what happened.

What actually happened is that I went home to my parents’ place, watched my dad wilt under his new chemotherapy routine, and watched myself slip away into nearly 3 months of reading books, playing video games, replaying memories, crying, and sleeping, not necessarily in that order.

Didn’t even get close to touching a single one of my checkboxes.

But, even so, I don’t regret it.

I have absolutely nothing to show for those months and I don’t feel like it was a waste of time.


—


I used to dream a lot.

All throughout my childhood, up until college, I’d dream every single night.

They were always epic adventures of me, as some grand hero, coming in to save the day. I fought dragons and ninjas and zombies, used magic and swords and my quick wits, and of course I also rescued princesses, because if there’s something I learned from games and fantasy novels, it’s that all heroes save princesses.

And when I wasn’t night-dreaming, I day-dreamed. I did well in school fairly easily, so I spent half of class doodling or staring into space.

But once I went off to university, the adventures ended.

Except for the occasional mundane dream about going to lectures or, once I got older, going to work, my dreams stopped and for almost 12 years, there was nothing. My mind was silent.

I didn’t even realize I’d stopped dreaming.

But during this spring I spent unemployed and unmotivated and uneverything, I slept a lot. Some 9-10 hours a night.

And as the days passed by, I began to dream again. Vivid adventures, the likes I hadn’t seen since middle school. In one dream, I remember touching something and being delighted at how soft it was— even though it was strange, I thought surely, it must be real because I couldn’t have dreamed up something so soft.


—


You’d think that with so much time for doing seemingly nothing and free access to both Netflix and Hulu, I’d have spent a bunch of time watching TV or movies, but I didn’t really.

I tried. I really did. I watched three episodes of Brooklyn 99. I watched half an episode of Parks and Rec and the first few episodes of Aggretsuko. I also started watching the new Avengers movie before quitting 10 minutes in.

Somehow, I just couldn’t keep watching.

Instead I laid in bed and watch the roll of memories play through the projector in my mind. When one roll ended, another began. Or not. Sometimes I’d rewind the current scene and watch it play on repeat. Other times I’d swap out the current film mid-sentence and pop in another. It was an endless screening, just for me.

There were funny scenes, to be sure, but mostly I watched uncomprehending, trying to piece together a coherent plot. At times, I’d figure it out and I could make sense of what had happened— it might just require multiple rewatches or a connection to some other tangentially related memories in a eureka flash of brilliance. Occasionally there was no discernible logic behind what I saw and that was the most grueling— coming to terms with the fact that either this director obviously didn’t understand life or I obviously didn’t understand art.

And then there were the sad scenes. Scenes during which all I could do was cry because I could empathize with the characters and because I knew how it would end and because there was nothing that I, the viewer, could do to change any of it. And so, helplessly, I watched those memories unfold as tears plummeted en masse from glassy eyes staring at a screen nobody knew existed.

Bit by bit, I worked through the rolls of film in my mind. By the time I was done, I’d written entire thesis papers dissecting them, naming every motivation and feeling behind every beat of every frame. And here, the camera zooms in just so, and there it pans across the scenery before cutting to the next shot, we frame it like this, hold it for three beats, and fade.


—


I guess the real question is, what kind of answer am I looking for?

One that makes me look cooler? One that validates the time I’ve spent producing seemingly nothing of value to the outside world? One that twists all of these sad, lonely details around into a life-changing, transformational experience?

But the thing is, there is no way to twist this. There’s nothing to twist it to.

It simply is.

I’m not ashamed of this time and I would like to answer honestly but honestly I just want to answer in a way that doesn’t raise pity. I’ve cried so many times in the past year, more than I have in the previous ten years combined, it no longer phases me when I inevitably cry again. My tears seem to upset others more than they do me.

What does phase me is seeing other people’s reactions— their “Oh my god!”s and “Are you okay?”s

It’s the feeling that it’s abnormal, tragic, even crippling to go through such a period of being sad and wandering.

But I wonder if it really is.

Is it really so strange to need time to breathe and to simply exist with one’s self? To let go of striving and accomplishing and to let our feelings overwhelm us rather than having us overwhelm our feelings? What if we could take time to be and instead of facing the outside landscape what if we faced the greatest unknowns, the depths of our minds and our selves?

So, it is with all of this that I pause before giving my answer, silently and quickly weighing these considerations, the desire for honesty, the normalization and understanding of sadness and internal suffering, the repulsion to pity and judgment, the estimation of how receptive the other will be to an answer outside the desired and expected at the given moment.

Oh, if only you knew—

“So what have you been up to?”

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I unconsciously rub my thumb against the non-existent calluses on my fingers.

Soft.

I haven’t climbed in 5 months.


—


i didn’t know
where i ended and
the world began.
i was swept off my feet.
It was beautiful
and brilliant and
i hated every moment.


—


You know, for months, I’d been donating platelets.

Every 2 or 3 weeks, I’d lay in a cot for 2 hours, a tube stuck into the crook of each arm. They’d pop in a DVD of my choice— today’s was Pulp Fiction— and I’d just be laying there, watching John Travolta two-hand stab Uma Thurman in the chest with an adrenaline shot, while the blood was being drawn out of my right arm, spun around in a centrifuge to separate out the platelets and plasma from the blood, and then fed back into my body through my left arm. Watching my blood cycle through a machine and back made me feel queasy though, so I tried to focus on the movie.

Donating platelets was pretty okay. It was just the last 15 minutes or so I’d start to get uncomfortable. I don’t know if it was the sitting still for 2 hours or the physical exhaustion of losing platelets, but I’d always get antsy towards the end, watching the electronic display count down the minutes of processing left. The last 5 minutes were the worst— I longed for the release, to be free from the all the tape that held down the tubes and to be free from the needles pulling and pushing liquids out of and into my body.

But it was okay.

I could count down the minutes.

After the attendant finished disconnecting me from all the things, I’d get up, collect my stuff, sit in the waiting area and munch on a bag of mini Oreos or Doritos whatever other junk food I’d never buy. Once I felt steady, I’d walk up to the receptionist and schedule my next appointment. Two or three weeks later, I’d be back in the same damn chair with probably the same attendant again. I’d watch a different movie though. No sense in watching the same movie twice.

But, walking through the hospital yesterday, all the patients lying in their beds, some for a few hours and others for a few days and others who knows, all of them with tubes connected, at least one if not more, dripping some liquid or other—

fuck, man, is there a count down to even watch?


—


She sits at the table, staring into the yard.
A permanent frown sits low on her face.

Florescent lights reflect off the glass screen
and I reflexively reload the page
so I can see the same exact screen again.

One more time.
And again.

I think about the things that make life worth living
and dream idly.

Does she?



—


Sunlight spills through the window, directly onto the bed.

I stretch out against the sheets briefly and curl back up on my side, orange cat encircled by my limbs, one crescent embedded within another.

Do cats experience time the same way humans do?

If I sleep as many hours as one, will I experience that time too?

Let’s find out.


—


In that moment, I wondered if you regretted it.
If it had all been a mistake.

In that moment, I wonder if I will regret it.
If it is all a mistake.

That’s what terrifies me.


—


I’ve started swimming in the lap pool at the gym.

I watch enviously as the others swim so cool and confident.

They don’t look like they’re drowning.

Of course they’re not— the pool is only 5 feet deep.

I kick off from the tiled wall, my hands splitting the water before me. My face scrunches up in concentration and terror.

One stroke. Two strokes. Three strokes. On the fourth, I turn my face up and to the side, desperately sucking in air before I’m submerged again.

One. Two. Three. Four and gasp.

One. Two. Three. Four and gasp.

Each circuit, I feel like I’m being drowned anew.

One. Two. Three. Four and gasp.

One. Two. Three. Four and gasp.

Is this what being waterboarded feels like?

One. Two. Three. Four and gasp.

One. Two. Three. Four and gasp.

An hour passes, and I walk into the shower to wash away the chlorine.