I moved in with Cosmo. I don’t talk to my parents anymore. They’re just too abusive. I don’t ever need to hear anybody say that “it’s pointless to love people like you” or that “you’re such a waste of time”. I thought I’d be sad because we all have good intentions and we didn’t intend for it to end up like this, but mostly I’m just grateful and relieved that I’m finally, finally safe.

Cosmo is in Ontario at a conference right now. The apartment is really quiet without him. When Cosmo isn’t at home to set a good example I get into really bad habits, like sleeping really late, procrastinating on schoolwork, or overeating a lot. 

Anyway, tonight I thought I’d stay up and read some of the letters that Cosmo and I used to send each other back when he was finishing his Master’s in Ontario. I had forgotten the kind of people we were then – always sad and afraid. And so desperate, like you had found the only kind of meaning in the world and you were already losing it.

We aren’t those people anymore. I thought happiness was made of moments that are over quick and you should just be grateful to have had them and to keep their memories. But these thoughts of Cosmo and me together – I couldn’t shake them if I tried. They keep me warm.

It’s such an impossible occurrence, I think we were always so afraid of losing that. But now we know that we’re made of stronger stuff. It’s an unhurried happiness, the kind that you can savour because you know it’s going to last. 

I’m always grateful for Cosmo. I’m surprised by how often that hits me. Sometimes it’s because bad things happen and I’m scared and I need him. He keeps me safe. But even when we’re apart and I’m having a wonderful time, I’m still so happy and grateful for him.

Everything comes and goes. But this is different.

Don’t read this if you’re sick of my repetitive miserableness. I’m not trying to be. I’m trying to talk things out so it doesn’t keep cycling through my head. Once I reach this level I don’t outlet very well so this is it.

I was recovering from the last freakout. Then something else happened and it got bad again. I don’t think I can live in this house anymore. Everything here is hard. It feels like I want to hold my breath until I’m hit by a bus. I don’t understand wanting to die or wanting to injure yourself … But I understand the need for something to level with and to parallel the violence in your head. 

I don’t think I can live in this house anymore. I haven’t done something about it because whatever I do or don’t is going to hurt someone. If I didn’t care I’d already be gone.

=====================

The following is going to sound incredibly self-absorbed but bear with me here. [KitKat], [Mint] and I were reminiscing about high school recently, and KitKat said to me, “You had so many guys crushing on you Alex.” And I really did, which is a wonder because I’m not especially pretty. All I was was nice to people, which makes me wonder how other the high school girls treated the boys.

And even though I was heartbroken over Lime for all my high school years, I really appreciated having people keeping me company when I needed it, talking to me like all they wanted was my attention, keeping my mind away from self-pity.

High school was good to me. I was popular, I fit in every social circle, everybody liked me. I couldn’t go anywhere in town without bumping into a friend. I was always happy and optimistic – the kind of person who didn’t get why sad people don’t understand that when life gets you down, you just gotta wait for the better days. Lime and Digi both told me they liked me for my smile and because I was always cheerful. I always cheered them up. I didn’t have any of this depressing social justice crap weighing me down either. I have good memories of high school.

Cosmo constantly asks me why I look so sad. Apparently I look terrible. At home, on skype, on the bus, the phone, all the time – I can’t help but provoke his concern and I feel really bad about it. I try really hard not to. I don’t want to use him as an outlet – I don’t want to make that our relationship.

I tell him sometimes how nice it would’ve been if we had gone to high school together. I wish I could give him that – the other Alex. I miss being that girl. But now I just want to stay home and not see anybody and sleep until it’s time to sleep again. 

I’m seeing Cosmo tomorrow. He makes me less crazy.

Christmas was good to me. I woke up next to Cosmo and we took our morning slowly. Little sips, little sips. The kind of morning where hands and hands touch and you take the time to smile at and tease one another. Where the whole world is yours because you aren’t anticipating any sudden knocks on the door. Where, instead of holding and holding on and waiting for the screaming to be over, you remember what it’s like to be present, at peace, in control.

==================

I have very precise needs from the sports that I’ve chosen. I don’t much care if my team wins or loses in ultimate or dragonboat. I’m not like some of the other players who break out in tears after a loss (mostly back when I played in more hardcore leagues). After a cubicle life of deskwork and racing-rushing to the next and then the next deadline, what I need is to be under a big sky, either flying on my own two legs and making small work of the grass field, or forgetting friction as I glide over the water. After shouldering heavily textbooked backpacks and the other kinds of weights that you can’t see, I like to get into a hot yoga room where I can force my body to obey, where I can stretch my muscles to beyond their capacity. And only when it hurts do I know that I’ve conquered my limits, that I’ve resisted my constraints and won. 

It’s probably a really bad approach to exercise, however. My glory high school days are past and I’m not as fit as I used to be. Sometimes I can still push myself to perform but I don’t recover like how I used to. I was so P.O. when I realized because, hello, I’m still pretty young here. Shouldn’t I get a bit more time on the free ride? I used to play 8 hour tournaments and then do the same again the next day. I would be sore but the consequences were never dire. I was a kind of limitlessness. I probably need to be more careful from now on and do things more gradually until I’m in shape again.

==================

Thanks everyone for being here over the last couple freakout posts. I’m really a stiff-lips kind of person IRL so it helps to write and to know that there are eyeballs on my story.

You have to understand: I don’t get so violently upset because I lack self-discipline. This isn’t like when Trumon got mad because his teacher took away his cell phone in class. And it isn’t because I lack empathy for and perspective on those who are suffering (vastly) more. I’m no impoverished third-world child but that doesn’t diminish my experiences.

It’s because I can see all the things I can become and I know I can be limitless. I know I was meant to be without limits. I know I can be the person with the enviable work-life balance, the friends and the one-after-another socials, the superstar job, the almost 4.0, the we-argue-sometimes-but-he’s-still-perfect boyfriend. I can see all these things in front of me. I have the determination and the ambition and it’s so cruel to weigh me down, to hold me back because of sexist traditions, irrational fears, a poverty of respect, and a lack of education on interpersonal communications.

It’s so petty. I have to be more than that. It’s what we all want. To be limitless.

And I know I’ll get there eventually. Sometimes I forget that, or it’s difficult, working hard and always waiting.

But I remember who I am when I’m with Cosmo.

Okay I don’t think I said that last bit very well. What I was trying to explain is that entire plot of season 5 Buffy was to show how she was eventually driven to committing suicide. She really, really wanted it. And then when she’s brought back to life in season 6, all she wants is to be dead again.

What a horrible thing to put on TV! It shouldn’t be allowed!

But it really makes sense to me to watch all this fictional despair, to work it through my gut and my system, because then I can get through it without actually having to live in my own life, without the things that I’m actually angry at and afraid of. I’m feeling it but not really. It’s a simultaneous acknowledgement and denial.

And you know what? I whine on here a lot but I’ve honestly dealt with much, much more than this. I’ve come out on top on much bigger battlefields (or at least stayed in the game). So why has this driven me down so hard, when in comparison it wasn’t really very much at all? Nothing actually happened. 

It’s because I’m drained. I’m tired of having to deal. So many years. I don’t want to anymore. I know I can, I’ve done it before. But a part of me is refusing to listen to reason. It’s saying – iamnotiamNOTgoingbackthere. Anything but that. I quit. No more. I want to be safe. I’ve found safety, here with Cosmo. And if I can’t be safe then I’d rather hide. I can hide and it’ll be okay.

But I can’t. I can be asleep. I can watch TV (hooray for really tame coping measures?). But anything beyond that and I keep remembering, I keep recycling it through in my head.

I’m safe here, I’m at Cosmo’s, but eventually I have to go back.

… so I might as well be here?

========================

So I wonder how much watching Buffy at a young age was healthy for me. What with the whole “do the right thing even if it kills you” theme, and the other “keep a stiff upper lip especially if it kills you” theme. Oh, and there’s the “let things stew in your head for as long as possible because you don’t want your loved ones to know you’re unhappy because that would make them unhappy” theme.

I mean I had other stuff going on too. Having to be the eldest, most responsible one at home. Having to mentor a child so that he turns out right despite astronomical parental failures. Being forced to keep a stiff upper lip by parents who don’t give a shit and tell you so.

Ok so there were lots of other things. But still. Maybe Buffy wasn’t the healthiest thing for me to consume as a kid.

It’s actually really difficult to watch the show starting from season 5 because that’s when the show stops becoming a soap opera and starts becoming a bit too real. Buffy’s mom dies and her father was never around to begin with, her boyfriend bails, and the Big Bad is going to kill her sister and it’s just a matter of time. And Buffy might as well end herself right there – at this point she looks like a walking dead already – but she keeps going. And then that goes on for another 3 seasons. I don’t think Buffy even smiles in the last three seasons. It’s like the thesis of the last few seasons is “All you are is alone.” Isn’t that terrible? You can’t put stuff like that on national television!

It was like after reading Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and being sad for a week. Except Buffy is too much like real life – a young adult woman who’s in over her head and trying so hard to make it even though there’s barely anything left of her. She’s just going through the motions. It’s a little too close to the heart. I think at some point it got brainwashy. Telling me again and again that this is how it has to be, that everything is difficult because it just has to be. That’s just how it is.

It might’ve taught me a bit about taking the old one-two to the mental endurance, but nothing about how to build it back up again after teardown. And it probably wasn’t good in terms of optimism training for young minds.

Okay I’m not always scary emo person. I’m not when I’m stable, but that isn’t tonight. And at those kinds of times (or at other times just for kicks), I still watch Buffy because it gets me. Why do we keep going? Why do we bother trying to do the right thing? Nobody knows. It doesn’t matter.

============

I don’t mean to be so emo and to alienate and scare people – but then I do. I need to recognize that something’s not right and I need to recognize it hard before it gets worse. I’ve been worse and I don’t want to go back. I need to keep saying it really loudly so I don’t keep leaving it on the to-do list, so I don’t grow content with stiff lips, until I make it stop.

I’m back at home. I didn’t know how much I need Cosmo next to me to sleep. This is not a safe space. I don’t know how to make my mind be quiet. I’m afraid to close my eyes.

[FZ] and I graduated in the same year at the same high school. How is it that she – she who looks like she’s always been happy, loved and cared for – actually comes from a happy family who loves and cares for her and supports her in everything that she does? 

Shouldn’t that just make sense? But then why do I give the same impression? Why am I able to walk out of my house and function like every other normal person? Why did [paperblanks] say to me, “I always thought of you as such a free spirit and just assumed that you must have very supportive parents to have cultivated such a personality”?

I could’ve ended up like [Lime]. Why didn’t I? He, too, came from a broken, struggling family. Lime dealt with it by frequently trying to kill himself. And he had other coping methods. But I don’t feel inclined towards that at all, that doesn’t make any sense to me.

And of course there’s [Digi], who is extremely popular and he has the most loving family that always supports him and listens to him. They are never mean to him and still he was always sad and unhappy for no reason. 

I like hanging with [Bastion]. We met when I was working in government. He’s soft spoken and so smart and really sweet, like holding-the-door sweet and you-can-have-my-jacket-if-you’re-cold sweet. 

And he didn’t drop me like a hot potato when he found out I was taken. So many times people just ditch when they find out you aren’t what they thought. and it feels pretty shitty because apparently friendship doesn’t mean anything.

I don’t mean to be haughty, Bastion has never indicated any interest, but I still have that fear you know? like people only want to be around you because they want something from you. 

and sometimes it’s more complicated. once in awhile i really miss huckduck and i remember how good he was to me, and i tried to be good to him too, although he would never believe me. and i think he felt like i owed him for his kindness. i’m too afraid to say hello now because we were in such shambles at the end, we didn’t recognize each other any more.

i dont mean to be so silly. it’s nice to have friends who are nice to you because they want to be, whose smiles and company you dont have to double guess, and for things not to be complicated, is what i mean.

Last Wednesday I woke up well refreshed because I slept in. Then I felt guilty because I was supposed to help mom carry out the compost cans because they were heavy with wet autumn leaves. Then I was mad because there is both a healthy teenage boy and a middle age man in the house, and why should I have to be mom’s only option? Trumon even wakes up before the compost truck comes. Of course, mom ended up hauling out everything herself, and then she made excuses for why the men couldn’t and then why I shouldn’t be nagging her to demand more responsibility of them.

I think it’s incredible that I’ve found a partner who cooks and cleans and does dishes and laundry. It’s incredible not because that’s a high demand – it’s incredible because just by being born in the era that I was born in makes it that much more likely that the woman wouldn’t be stuck with all the chores. Mom got a husband who won’t/can’t even pour his own cup of water just because chance was not on her side. She was born into a culture and era that made attaining equality so much more difficult. It’s so unfair and arbitrary.

And of course, I’ve raised Trumon to be a little feminist and he can spout off all the reasons why equality is important and where it is missing. But he’s quite the spoiled princess, as only sons in Asian families often are. I keep saying to him, until you start helping with chores at home, you aren’t really a feminist. As long as mom and I are doing all the chores, this cannot be a feminist household.

==================

My mom is really frikken smart for someone who didn’t get past high school. She went from being unemployed and income-less, and from having to rely on her husband financially, to being able to pay the mortgage by herself. She learned finance on her own and got so good at it that she exited some of my mutual funds, because she was better at investing it than the bank. 

My parents were arguing viciously a few weeks ago and mom said she wanted a divorce. She wasn’t threatening him or holding it over his head; she was in tears and it takes a lot to make my mom cry. I was quite hopeful because my dad’s a mean and hateful asshole. But mom used the D word, and dad smarted up soon after because mom manages all his money. Suddenly he was so nice it was sickening (like actually saying “hello” to me when I came in the house).

And so I know, I know that I shouldn’t ever rely on a man for money. I know every woman should become financially independent. It’s something that moms always teach their daughters, and if I had a daughter I would tell her the same thing.

I know more than anyone that money will allow you to be who you truly are, because if you depend on someone else financially then you have to be what they want. There’s a reason why Trumon and I have to pretend like it’s okay when mom says that gay people are disgusting; we can’t make a fuss because she feeds us. When my dad tells me I’m stupid and useless, I don’t say anything because I live in his house. But if we had money we would speak our minds because we wouldn’t have to (literally) live with the consequences, we’d just go back to our own homes, and too bad for them if they’re upset.

But I am just so uninterested in money. I think mom’s level of financial literacy is astounding and it’s great that she’s offered to teach me, but I really don’t care to learn myself. I think playing these games of shuffling money here and there, of buying stock and certificates and currency is such an inhuman and meaningless way to make money. I know mom did it because she wanted to support her family and I admire and thank her for that, but I can’t fathom ever wanting to buy stocks (except for the purpose of becoming an activist shareholder). And there are moral implications with investing the way my mom does.

I can earn money in other ways of course, but with the market the way it is, I’ll be getting entry level wages for years, if I get a job at all. I don’t mean to complain – I am eager to work. But I have friends with outstanding resumes who can’t find jobs, and even Cosmo is frustrated because he has a Masters degree and plenty of management experience and he’s currently working at a job that someone with a high school diploma could do. The idea of job searching is scary.

I am working hard and lining up my cards however. By the time I graduate I will have 3+ years of communications experience, which is what most entry-level jobs require. So maybe I’ll be okay.

==================

And as much as I want to leave home and move out with Cosmo right now, I am hesitant because the odds are not in our favour. We’re still young and foolish, we don’t make much money and we’re not very good with managing it either. I might be over thinking this – I know plenty of young couples living together that are doing just fine. And Cosmo and I were very happy when I lived with him last summer.

But if we were to do this seriously I would feel better if we were to live together as two equal partners. He wouldn’t ask me to pay rent, or at least he shouldn’t because he makes six times more than I do, but that would make me uncomfortable. When I was still going out on first dates I would always pay the bill because I was afraid of what the other person would expect of me. I don’t like being in someone else’s debt.

So as much as I don’t like it at home, I think it might be better, or at least it would be helpful, to keep lining up those cards, to not jump into anything too soon. I need to become my own person first. For myself, and for us.

I don’t suppose anyone has any advice or similar experience?

I dreamt yesterday night that mom agreed to adopting a scruffy, white-and-black, abandoned kitten that happened to be wandering around our house.

Sometimes the kitten would lose its legs and grow them back so I would have the unpleasant, queasing job of removing legs that had died and shrivelled up from the cupboard and wherever else it had decided to shed them.

And I was worried because I didn’t know what kittens ate and I’d have to look it up on google later, but then later I saw the tiny kitten hunting and chasing a very scared looking panther in the hallway and I thought maybe it’d be alright.

it must be great to be a starfish
they don’t either go or stop
at the bottom of the ocean sea
all they do is plop