noted things

         My grandfather died today.
         All I could think of is how she called me a family curse, declaring that if he died it would be due to my blackened name; that it would be all my fault.

         He passed away suddenly, to an unexpected bout of pneumonia and not the carefully avoided coronavirus, just mere months since my birthday when she screamed at me; eyes bulging crazily, spittle flying syllabically, while I laid trembling on the ground and prayed for her words to wash over me instead of being absorbed too deeply into my paper-thin skin.

         He would always come find me in the moments after the madness; his house slippers shuffling slowly towards me until he found my hand and patted it gently, telling me everything was alright. I would only cry in front of him – something about kindness that instantly broke me more than months of bitterness ever could.

         It’s so strange to look at photos and realize that the person in them is no longer walking the earth – for the first time I understand why the Native Americans believed that photographs steal fragments of our soul and are inherently cursed. I’m still in disbelief that he’s really gone, even as I write this, and my heart is wrenched in an instinctive way that my mind has yet to process.

         I can still feel his frail grip on my arm as I walked with him to church, I can still see his Parkinson’s-curled fists stubbornly resisting my attempts to coax them into gloves, I can still smell his distinct scent of sun-dried sweaters and the Vaseline I would massage into his fragile flesh with my fingers, I can still taste the ramen I would make for him just the way he liked it on the afternoons when we were alone, I can still hear the sound of my name being held in his voice.

         I wish we had more time for me discover the man he was before he became my grandfather. My aunts proudly tell me stories from their childhood, about how their father was a local celebrity due to his intelligence and how all the village people would ask him for help; be it in Korean history, government policies, math problems, or minor repair work – until they all started to call him “Professor Kim.”

         I wish we had more time for him to see me grow into the woman he always told me he believed I would become; for him to see the sacrifice of him scrubbing pots in kitchens on military bases, in a country where he was neither acknowledged or respected, finally pay off. He gave everything up so I could grow up into the kind of callous child who had the choice of making mistakes, of walking away.

         I picture the man he was at my age, already a father of five with three more to come. I picture what he would say if he were alive and standing beside me, what would he have to say about the aimless trajectory of my life? Would he be proud of me? Would he be envious of my freedom or satisfied by the outcome he worked hard to make possible? Would he worriedly lecture me the way my mother does? Would he yell at me the way his only unwed daughter does? Would he struggle to understand my newfangled lifestyle in the same way he referred to all of my tattoos as “scribbles” or would he surprise us all with his acuity in the manner in which his mind outlived his doctors’ expectations despite his Parkinson’s constrictions?

         I wish I had answers to all of my questions; tangible certainty instead of all this conjecture. Did you see me for who I was? Or did you see me through the Korean lens of an abject failure? Do you remember how these tattooed hands held yours? How my marred flesh did my best to support your brittle bones? Do you remember our long walks? How I would carefully dress you in your favorite newsboy cap and warmest gloves? Do you remember how much I cried? Do you know how badly I wish you were here, right now, to tell me that everything will be alright?

         I called my mom right away when I heard that you had died.
         I didn’t cry until I heard her voice and I said to her, “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

         I found myself sobbing, then apologizing, because I had called her to console her instead of pretending that what I felt came close to what she must be feeling. You were my grandpa, but you were her father; I still feel the reverberations of my own paternal loss, even 12 years later, and I cried not for myself, but because I was so heartbroken for what you must have meant to my mother.

         I remember the sound of my mom crying into her pillow when her mom died, just three months after my dad succumbed to the same cancer. She didn’t want me to witness her pain, even though we shared a room in a tiny two bedroom apartment, and I pretended not to hear her. With you gone, she’s an orphan now, and I sobbed into the phone as I told her that both of you had left her all alone.

         My mom surprised me then – she laughed out loud, saying she appreciated my empathy but that she was a 61-year old woman and didn’t consider herself an orphan. I shook my head stubbornly, insisting that I refused to lose her no matter what age I was. Be it 28 or 58, I want my mom to live a long, long time and make up for the insufficient memories I made with my father.

         My mom says she’s happy you’re up in heaven with her mother; no more suffering, no more adult diapers. No more Parkinson’s, no more dependence, no more devolving into a shell of a man unrecognizable to yourself or others.

         My mom says that she used to wish that you could be free of your pain, of your shame, of your disease; and drift off into a happier place, unfettered. She cried only once as she told me she regretted ever having such thoughts, that having half of you was better than having none of you at all.

         If you can hear me now, I wish you could tell my dad the same thing; that for too much of his illness I wished for an end to his suffering. With him gone now, I wish every day that I could still have even a fraction of him. Are you together, at last, reunited in a place I can’t comprehend and looking down at me cry?

         I tried to convert to Buddhism once; for the meditation and the enviable sense of peace. Then I learned that there was no concept of heaven and I took it too personally, screaming at the person who told me because it hurt too much to believe there wasn’t a place for my dad to somehow still be a part of my life beyond all of this. I resolutely reaffirmed my wavering Christian inclinations that day. I don’t know how else to carry all this pain if the people I lose along the way can’t be reclaimed. I don’t want you to be reincarnated as strangers, as animals, as generalized energetic forces. I want you to be wholly mine, now and forever.

         I hope you both can watch me become the kind of woman you can be proud of.

Wednesday, July 22, 2020 – 3:58PM

Happy Week Four!! Today, after sleeping all day yesterday, I set my alarm for 4AM once again but snoozed it every hour until I got up begrudgingly at 7AM.
I had to preface the following with this whole explanation of my morning because I’m fairly certain I had a different dream every single time I went back to sleep in between my alarms, but I could only remember each partially, even after making it a point to commit them to memory before I fell back asleep.
In the final dream, I was back at the restaurant where I was once employed over two years ago, a guest of one of my best friends and another acquaintance of hers who I know in real life, but this was a dream version of her that both was and wasn’t really her. We had an awkward conversation where she was extremely friendly with me and I felt put on the spot and pretended to remember her when I really didn’t. My best friend looked over at me with concern and asked if I felt okay being back and I smiled and nodded and pretended to feel fine even though I didn’t. I looked around the restaurant that both was and wasn’t the space I once knew; with the same low picnic style tables but a more modern all white subway tile interior with black industrial accent fixtures. The office had been moved downstairs to open up the entire second floor to diners and it was a big oak table facing the room like the teacher’s desk in our childhood classrooms.
The manager I used to work with was standing over the desk with a furrowed brow, furiously scribbling on a table plan and adjusting the reservations on the iPad. There was a huge turnout and the restaurant was as busy as ever and I just sat, watching him work in the midst of all the chaos.
Countless employees walked up to him with questions, complaints, and other minor emergencies as the restaurant filled up with more and more people. One hostess informed him of a disgruntled group saying, “They’re tired of waiting, I wish we could just seat them.” She expressed this sentiment with sincere empathy, feeling the pain of their interminable wait and my manager responded with, “I know, but I’m not going to move my plants to make more room for them – they’re my babies.”
I laughed out loud at this, at the leafy green plants taking up so much space in the middle of the room while he bent over backwards to add extra tables in spaces I didn’t even knew where there. “Aren’t most of these plants fake?” I quipped, wandering around the room and running my fingers against all of the green centerpieces in mocking laughter. They were in fact, mostly fake, and my best friend laughed along.
But my laughter quickly died down when I saw that in spite of his stubbornness, he instinctively knew whether to add a stool to a table or make the whole party wait. Seeing him in action, wielding an instinct I never gleaned; who to push and who to favor, who would wait and who would walk away, which tables to turn, which tables to save, when to add a stool, when to take one away, the assuredness in his commands to all the people who came up with a question instead of breaking into a panic, I realized two things – a begrudging respect for him and the knowledge that I would never do this kind of work again.
At that point I stopped eavesdropping and turned my full attention on my best friend, asking how she knew everyone, but she startled me in revealing that it wasn’t just our immediate table that she knew but that all the tables surrounding us were her friends and family. That was the end of the dream but it lingered in my brain because I remember sitting across from my best friend so vividly.
The sound of her laugh, the feeling of eating across from her, something we did so often that I now feel like I took for granted. I could feel it was my heart’s way of reminding me how much she is missed, even if in waking days and deadlines and long naps and missed alarms and sleeping in, it’s something I too easily suppress. Every day I set my alarm for 4AM because if I don’t send my long texts after my first cup of coffee and before breakfast, then I wait until tomorrow.
I can’t do it in the middle of the day because of the emotional commitment in between errands and I can’t do it in the evening because I’m exhausted from the demands of the day and just shut down and turn my brain off so it’s always in the mornings I attempt to catch up but now it’s been weeks and I feel ridiculous and I shouldn’t need my subconscious to tell me to pick up the phone and just tell her how much I love her and how much she is missed.
My brain only had the memory to retain the details of two dreams before the rest slipped away. When I woke up to the sound of the first alarm at 4AM, I thought I hadn’t dreamt at all so it was a fight to remember this much; to coax my brain into releasing the already fading memories of something so impossible to claim.

Thursday, July 23, 2020 – 7:32AM

I didn’t sleep particularly well so I don’t have any dreams to report and I’m pretty hangry now as I stare at the screen and try to knock this out in the hour it takes for delivery to arrive. I’ve been meaning to write about this for some time I guess and I haven’t really had the time to because I was constantly distracted by my dreams. I wrote in the weeks earlier that I had started talking to someone, when I first shattered my ankle and lay in bed immobile. Then when I felt slightly overwhelmed, I cut off contact and left the ball in his court but never followed up on what happened beyond a vague update about a text the other day.
I left out the part where I didn’t hear from him for over 10 days and my over-thinking mind took it as a sign that I was right to feel so guarded and that no one could be trusted. It wasn’t until last Saturday I realized the fault was mine, that I had accidentally put a 7 where there should’ve been a 6 in my phone number and I instantly felt relieved and embarrassed and after clearing that up, I got my first text from him the very next day. I laughed at my own stupidity but it’s obvious to me how I’m always holding out for the worst possibility, waiting to be proven right.
I haven’t told anyone about him, in the same way I haven’t told anyone about this diary; I just want to hold onto my secrets for a little while longer until I can make sure that they’re real. The thing is, once I started talking to him regularly, I went ahead and compiled that mental list I mentioned even in the same breath as professing that I was working on myself and my trust issues. I’m at ten total things I hate about him (intentional movie reference, unintentional total number of reasons) and all of them are very valid reasons as to why we won’t work.
I’ve mentioned to two people in passing that I was talking to someone but as far as they know, I wasn’t that invested and have since given him up. My scant single friends love to commiserate with me about how shallow and unfulfilling the dating scene is, and it’s easy for me to play the part of another detached, jaded cat lady and crow cruelly over the objectification of the men that try to use us in ways I can’t seem to confess to my friends in stable, happy relationships.
But between us, it’s been weighing on my conscience that in the silence after the laughter fades away, I don’t feel emotionally honest about the things I say. I don’t know why I’m so quick to pretend to be strong, to act like I don’t feel attachment or want to belong to someone. It’s such an unconscious defense mechanism that the words are out of my mouth before I know it and I can’t  take them back.
Then I get to thinking about the relative truth my friends know about me based only on this twisted version of the truth I tell them where I am a much more confident and independent woman than I am in reality. This, in turn, gets me musing over all the narratives I’ve been told by my friends, both single and committed, who regale me with their own tales about their exploits or relationships. It just makes me feel convinced that no matter our reasoning or intention, there is an inevitable gap in the truth between lovers and the account we portray to others. It makes me more empathetic about the choices we make, that don’t have to be justified to anybody else, because only you and I know the truth.
This is my confession of the duality I’m forever caught between; the over-feeling and not caring. I told one of my closest friends two dealbreakers I had for the next man I would allow myself to get close to and he embodied both of them and she agreed his intentions were suspect and I told her I was off on the hunt again.
I didn’t tell her how hurt I was to hear her confirm my suspicions, I didn’t tell her how embarrassed I was to make such grandiose statements then go right back to pursuing him. I know she wouldn’t judge me, that’s not the problem; it’s my inability to recognize myself in these weak moments. I don’t know why I’m so quick to make exceptions, I don’t know why I won’t allow myself to be honest.
I don’t know what I want.
I don’t know if the rules I create are rational parameters for not lowering my standards or if they’re irrational defense mechanisms. I don’t know if this person is worthy of my affection or if I’m just being fucking dumb.
So many girls make excuses for their men, thinking they’re the exception or there’s a valid explanation, and I sit on my high horse where I can see right through them and assume I’ll never be them. Now it’s my turn to sit in judgment as the tables turn and I feel so uncertain of my own instincts. I am such a caged animal that it’s impossible for me to discern my self-sabotage from a man’s dishonest intentions.
The only thing that could possibly help right now is a Sex and the City session with my girlfriends where we discuss dick pics over dollar margaritas. But that requires a degree of honesty I have no current access to. I think I like him but not enough to say that out loud, just yet. I need more time to figure it out and until then, I just want to keep myself to myself.
I’m sorry for not being honest.

Friday, July 24, 2020 – 5:27PM

After breakfast, I got dressed and hobbled to the next nearest café that isn’t the one next door, just to make the most of this week, and tried to get some writing done. Started walking home around 3PM without any sufficient editing done and on my walk back it struck me, like literally hit me like a slap in the face or punch in the gut to the point where I stood still in the street – that I am leaving Bali in exactly one week. I don’t know why I felt like crying as I wrote that, it’s bittersweet but I’m not sad about it. But just as I wrote that I can feel my heart breaking in a weird cognitive dissonance from my rational brain (like everything I wrote about yesterday) so I guess my heart knows in my ways my mind doesn’t, that I am in fact sad about it.
I was weaving my way through all of the gaping holes in the sidewalk, furiously ignoring the catcallers as I looked up, at the row of low artisan huts selling hand-painted wares and the giant palm trees crowding the otherwise unobstructed sky, and I just tried to commit that moment to memory because I would soon be back in the land of paved sidewalks and high rises and it was just weird to think that this life, this view, this walk, would no longer be my reality.
Bali is changing, choking on the expatriates and tourists flooding into the jungles and beaches while the businesses are bloated with money and the seas are polluted with garbage. The last time I went to the beach in March I spent my afternoons pool-side after walking along the beaches at dawn because the first day I arrived I dove headfirst into the water and when I came up for air all I could see floating for miles around me, like a bad dream – was litter.
The commercialization is apparent with the boutiques and clubs, expanding real estate, and increase in prices. There is a $10 tax to be implemented on all foreigners next year and I am not against it, I just think it’s further evidence of how many tourists are overpopulating this once escapist’s oasis. I chose the jungle over the beach because I wanted to live in the heart of what was left of the local culture, not party with the expatriates at beach clubs and live in a new apartment. It’s sad to think that once I leave, even if I do come back, everything will be even more different. There’s change in the air and I can feel it, but I think it’s also just an awareness that comes with adulthood because all the things we loved are now memories and what is contemporary is entirely unfamiliar.
Anyways, this was the kind of shit that was running through my head as I walked back home (my allergies had miraculously cleared up) and a few blocks from my villa, I saw two familiar children begging on the street. It’s been months since I’ve seen them, and I’ve wondered about them often after buying a jumbo bag of mango candy to give them because I had assumed before the pandemic hit hard that I would be seeing them every day (this is why everyone calls me Grandma Edith).
I used to see them so regularly I would buy them ice cream, stroking their cheeks lovingly because my heart hurt with the knowledge that there wasn’t much more I could do. There used to be a much younger child with them, maybe only five years old, who pouted at me once because I bought the older two children a bag of rice each and I bought him only ice cream. I had assumed they were all siblings, a fact in question I still don’t know the answer to because they don’t speak any English, and I had unfairly assumed that two bags were enough for the family.
After familiarizing myself with these children daily, I took them into the nearest convenience store and told them they could each pick out one thing. I thought they would choose a toy or a lollipop but instead they each chose something practical to feed their families. My heart hurt with their premature maturity, this sense of responsibility they shouldn’t have to feel when they were still so young and I saw in them – me. The clerks clucked disapprovingly at my foolishness, this tourist being swindled by these street urchins, but I didn’t care. The bags of rice cost $5 each and their choice to buy that instead of something selfish only validated my conviction.
The clerks laughed at me in open mockery when I returned holding the hand of the crying child. He wiped his eyes and proudly refused any help from myself or the older kids, insisting on carrying his own bag of rice. It made me feel like they weren’t siblings after all, that he had his own family to feed and was devastated at the thought of failing at his responsibility. He was such a grown man in a little boy’s body, his male ego refusing to accept the initial offering of ice cream so stubbornly that the older girl shrugged apologetically at me and ate it instead. He had his arms crossed angrily and I couldn’t help but take him more seriously.
The fact that I didn’t see him today seemed to perpetuate my theory that he wasn’t their sibling but I was happy to see the other kids all the same. It’s been months since I’ve seen their faces, they beg on the streets closer to the city center where I haven’t wandered since the mandated quarantine so it was a surprise to see them on my quiet, artisan side of town. It was almost like a fated send-off, and I know that even if I forget the smell of the cooking fires, the sound of the honking scooters, and the sights of the palm trees; their little faces will always stay with me.
My mom always chastises me for being too softhearted but I often cry when I see people in pain or living on the street. It’s more than sympathy, it’s an empathy that makes me feel powerless to help them in a meaningful way beyond a handful of change. I give food or money to every homeless person I see and my mother always threatens to beat me; “Look at you, worrying about other people when you can barely take care of yourself.” She’s right so I shrug wordlessly but I don’t know how to change.
When I first moved back to New York in 2016, I ran into a homeless woman on the subway platform that I remembered conversing with when I was 18. My heart leapt at the sight of her, my first familiar face since coming back home, that kind of unexpected run-in that always happens even if you live in one of the biggest cities in the world that cements your status as a real New Yorker.
It felt like a homecoming, and I had that same gut-punch feeling that stopped me in my tracks to the irritation of the pedestrian traffic behind me, and I had such an irrationally emotional feeling that I instinctively raised my arms to hug her while she stared at me suspiciously, with no recognition.
We were on the other side of the city, 40 blocks and 7 years since we had last spoken, and yet here we both were.
There are so many parables about angels taking the form of beggars and in my heart, I believe that to be true.

Saturday, July 25, 2020 – 7:46AM

I think I was so tired that I slept dreamlessly.
I woke up with my allergies raging and for a fleeting second I had a chilling conviction that it might be corona but I rolled my eyes at myself and just carried the box of tissues to my bed frame where I am sitting, surrounded by a sea of used tissues, balled up and thrown on the floor like a dirty McDonald’s ball pit. I suspect the bacteria content is the same.
Six days left in Bali, baby – let’s make the most of it!
Oh my God, it’s terrifying to even say that out loud. Pause for sneeze.
Okay, definitely random allergies, not corona.
I ordered delivery from a café a bit further than I do usually, but I am trying as many different places as possible this week. I just ordered a cornucopia of side items like when I was a vegetarian at a celebratory dinner at a steak house and would just order salad and sautéed broccoli and baked and mashed potatoes and also French fries. That is basically what I ordered today actually.
Anyways, I am writing as I wait for it be cooked and delivered, which seems to be my best system for getting the most writing done efficiently. To be honest, even as I wait, all I can think about is the vegan Indian food I had two days ago that was nothing short of heavenly. Fuck it was so good, I think I might really order from them again instead of making good on my promise to continually try new things.
I haven’t had good Indian food since this one dinner in Ann Arbor, visiting one of my best friends. Since then, I’ve been plagued by serial stomach issues: once right when we reached the movie theater following an Indian dinner date night in Ireland and so many awful delivery attempts in Brooklyn.
There is nothing better than good Indian food and nothing worse than bad Indian food, so after many scarring attempts I was pretty hesitant but I swear I attained nirvana with those flavors and I can’t stop thinking about them. Eating a dish that was a rainbow medley of different groups of stuffings and spices and it being so good that I lost my mind and started wolfing everything down with my hands (as I honestly should) made me think of Ethiopian food, which is one of my all-time favorite foods and which I haven’t eaten since Ghenet in Park Slope.
I think about/crave Ethiopian food all the time. The flavors are just so rich and satisfying and comforting without being too heavy or rich. I also want a glass of honeyed wine. Ugh, I have to go back to my go-to spot in Atlanta when I visit. Even Brooklyn didn’t come close. And visiting Ethiopia in the future and immersing myself in the culture firsthand will always be an adult goal of mine.
I just spent the past 6 paragraphs talking about food (I guess this is the downside to choosing to write while waiting for delivery, a very food-focused mind however subconsciously) but I actually love the associations of food-based memories, of the way food stimulates the senses and allows me to relive fading memories more vividly; in turn revitalizing them and keeping them better preserved, so it’s something I will always love to write about.
I spent 15 minutes yesterday talking passionately to one of my closest friends about our love of 7/11 taquitos and full-size vs miniature corndogs. Also committed to a future corn dog tattoo after seeing one on Instagram and feeling incensed that anyone could dare assume that it’s possible for them to love corn dogs more than me. I told another one of my friends that in addition to the dumpling tattoo on my hip (which I got for the same glutton and pride-fueled reasons) that at this rate I’ll just have a full on food party on my body but she was thrilled with the idea and actually, so am I. I just did a quick body scan to think if I have any other food tributes I don’t know about and other than the kanji tattoo declaring my hatred of bananas, I don’t think I do. Also, weird thought but I have five languages represented on my body which I’ve never thought about but now think is kind of cool – English, Korean, Japanese, Tagalog, and Hebrew. I have two pending Latin tattoos on the back burner and I can’t wait to go to Ethiopia and get one in Amharic.
I started this entry with a very specific topic in mind but I got distracted with recording my unfiltered stream of conscious flow which I honestly think is residual from all of my caffeine craziness where I literally shared my every trivial thought o social media yesterday. Like truly, every single thought in my brain was narrated because I couldn’t shut the fuck up – hence my sheepish apology today. I asked if caffeine hangovers are possible (emotional hangover, not physical withdrawal because I’m aware of the existence of the latter) because I literally felt the way I do when I wake up after a boxed wine night like “God, what the fuck did I do?”
Anyway, I never got around to what I originally intended to say (you can see why my writing process can be such an struggle because I get distracted by expounding on every new thought tangent along the way and sometimes never circle back to my first original thought but man, fuck a flow chart – going with the flow organically even if I derail from my original intention is my favorite way of writing). I think in some ways it was subconsciously, if not overtly intentional because I’m avoiding the emotional commitment I have to face in order to write about what I’m feeling so I think this is enough for today and I will try to write about it tomorrow.

Sunday, July 26, 2020 – 6:31AM

Happy Sunday, y’all! After having a minor panic attack about leaving in less than a week, I spent all day in bed again yesterday. I woke up early, got my entry done, ordered healthy food, and was fully prepared to seize the day when the allergies that plagued me persisted with such a vengeance that I couldn’t function. My nose was dripping incessantly until my nostrils were raw from perpetual nose-blowing and I resorted to lying down with my head held high to counteract the drip because I couldn’t bear the sight of another tissue.
My sinus pressure built up into a full blown migraine that made the hypochondriac in me check my forehead every two minutes for a fever and google to confirm that sneezing is not a symptom of the virus. I was so congested I had to resort to breathing through my mouth like the kid who’s always breathing down Helga’s neck when she pulls out that heart shaped frame to pine over Arnold.
I feel very self-conscious about being so self-victimizing in these entries; a constant trend of making excuses for myself and dealing with crisis after crisis – to the point where I felt stupid even telling my friends about my allergies yesterday after spiraling about my ankle injury. I haven’t had an allergy attack like that at all; not in Korea and not in Bali, not since pollen season in New York in the spring; which is always triggered by that thick film of yellow dust coating the windshields and streets, and abates the second the I get home so I just don’t know.
I think I fell back asleep around 11PM, then woke up in a panic at 4AM because I just felt like there was so much I had to get done.
I had coffee, I showered, I cleaned up the mountain of used tissues collected at my bedside and strewn in the sheets, and prepared to catch up on my correspondence but I was too hungry to focus so I decided to write as I wait for breakfast.
This morning the sky is extra grey and cloudy, no sign of a sunrise due to all of the fog and the inexplicable kerosene scented smoke that rises over the rooftops at odd hours of the day, every other week. It’s my favorite kind of view, honestly, and I wish I could ask my host family what causes it, what they are setting on fire or what it is used for but I don’t know how to bridge the language barrier in a way that expresses my curiosity without being rude. Also, there are cooking fires that are used several times a day and I see the smoke from that and smell the grilled pork or smoked fish so I don’t know how to specify the exact kerosene smoke I mean. On this particular day, just shy of 6AM, the entire sky was already an eerie grey so when the blanket of smoke spread across the villa and rose to meet the low hanging clouds, it just created this atmosphere of tense expectation; like the opening of chapter of a folk tale or the beginning of a play, and I wrote it down in my heart over all the sunrises I’ve seen on replay these past few months.
I feel like this entry is all over the place and just verbal garbage but I showed up, I got it done, and now I’m going to eat breakfast. I hope I have more noteworthy things, written more articulately, to share tomorrow.
P.S. I am aware that I never got around to writing about what I avoided yesterday and yes, it was entirely intentional. I just don’t want to think about it, to open myself up to it just yet, so I won’t and it’s 7:10AM so it’s time for breakfast and no more of this emotional distraction from what I need to say.

Monday, July 27, 2020 – 8:56AM

I used to watched Terrace House religiously, just the comfort of this real-life reality show; filled with the minutiae of day to day living instead of exaggerated drama for ratings. But one day, I felt so exposed by the show that I built up this mental block (like I currently have against fruit) and now I can’t bear to watch it. It just hit me that while this show transpires in minutes for us, it plays out as weeks and months for the cast members – it is an irrefutable record of the build-up of the small decisions we make every day which in turn sets the course of our lives. There are so many housemates who go to work every day, have store openings, or celebrate brand launches. Then there are other members who make the same excuses, remaining exactly where they started six months ago. When I reread my diary, every single fucking entry is mired in excuses and it’s terrifying – I didn’t do this, I didn’t do that, I didn’t sleep, or I slept too much. When all of these days are strung together in succession, it’s no wonder I have nothing to show for my life.
My sister and my friends tell me to let go of this pressure I always put on myself; to stop being such a perfectionist or living by these crippling rules of “I can’t do Y until I first do X” – ie: “I can’t do yoga until I first catch up with my friends,” or “I can’t go for a walk until I first catch up on all my work.” When X doesn’t get done, Y becomes something else I can’t possibly commit to, so I spend a lot of my life in limbo instead of doing whatever the fuck I want. I am most definitely a slave to my rules but I can’t begin to imagine even the possibility of letting go. I don’t know what that says about me.
I guess this is the best place to segue into the topic I’ve been avoiding. But I will say I woke up this morning feeling compelled to write about two things: how grey the sky was today and how hardened my heart is.
I love how the view from my terrace has become my entire world while in quarantine, and how my diary has allowed me to record the drastic changes in its mood and appearance day by day. My favorite are the rare fuchsia fires and that one day of rolling clouds in perfect seafoam waves, but something in the pure grey of the sky this morning, with no patch of blue or white, no sight of sun or sky; just this prevailing veil cast as far as the eye can see in a perfectly uniform coat of opaque grey, it just resonated with me.
By the time I started writing this piece two hours later, the sun had started shining through the clouds, and by now, the sky is entirely blue and sunny; transformed in a way I hadn’t expected. It felt like it would rain all morning, and now it’s the perfect summer day. I’m going to leave that as pure observation but glean whatever metaphorical allegory from that you wish. I’ve had so much coffee to compensate for last night’s exhausting lack of rest that I am currently disassociating and it’s the weirdest out of body experience. I can’t even describe it to people who haven’t felt it before, it starts with my gums and teeth vibrating and then my eyes feeling really uncomfortable in their sockets and then it’s not my body at all anymore.
Anyway, going back to this idea about rules I can’t break and difficult topics I’ve been avoiding until I decided that mentally disassociating would be the opportune time to discuss them, I’ve just reached a realization that for all my declarations of attempting vulnerability; I’m not open to it anymore. I know it’s something crucial to this path of healing, but so few men are worthy of sincerity and it’s sad wrestling with my inability to discern whether I’m just damaged or he’s just disinterested and coming to learn, it’s honestly both. I tried to pretend I was happy with the attention but men are so conditioned by their privilege to justify only doing the minimum and in this half-hearted interaction I realized, I would rather just be alone.
It’s exhausting trying to compartmentalize my feelings and mirror it in amounts that isn’t “too little” or God forbid, “too much.” I also read online via a famous comedian’s advice column that women shouldn’t be offended by the attention span of guys in this modern dating scene because technology has allowed a culture of instant gratification and endless options to evolve and it isn’t anything personal or a reflection on our worth and we should just learn to adapt to the times.
I honestly think about that ALL THE TIME.
And every time I think, FUCK THAT.
You want a woman’s perspective? Stop justifying the shitty behavior of men on modernization. Women also have an endless buffet of options and somehow we are still capable of commitment and authenticity. Men are just children with short attention spans and gluttonous intentions. The fact that we are expected to “evolve” to adapt a more insincere, insubstantial attitude towards dating rather than ever demanding that men grow the fuck up is laughable to me. God the caffeine in my veins has me RAGING. I understand the valid point raised by this male comedian and his ultimate point that male rejection is not a basis for female self-perception. However, I am so sick of the normalization of men moving onto option after option whenever a woman feels like asking for more than the fuckboy minimum. Modernity, dating apps; I don’t know. None of it is enough. I want more, and if that doesn’t exist, then rather than lowering my standards I’ll just continue to be alone. You can “evolve” to adapt to my stubborn refusal to settle, instead of demanding that I change to stoop to your level.
Lastly, I would just like to inform the general public whom I know I should not be addressing that my pet lizard; Lyzard Skyzard, whom I have grown very fond of over the past six months in quarantine (he is literally a wild lizard who would crawl on my ceilings or pop out from behind the cabinets occasionally, but was also the extent of my social interaction) has passed away. I found him dead on the bathroom floor this morning when I went to pee without my glasses on and mistook him for a clump of my hair. It was not hair. And he was not alive. Thank god I’m leaving soon because this loss is more emotionally devastating than it ought to be and it hurts my heart to feel even more… alone.

Tuesday, July 28, 2020 – 7:45AM

Good morning! I am supposed to be doing some modified yoga right now but the jungle wi-fi is as unreliable as the rainy weather; the former declining to work whenever I’m finally feeling motivated and the latter acting up every single day I do the laundry. Today is no exception as the internet stopped working just as I prepared to do a yoga video, and all of my clothes hanging on the horse had to be brought in because yesterday’s miraculous sunshine is nowhere to be seen. Instead, it’s been dark and cloudy all morning; all of the streets and rooftops still slick from last night’s rain and the skies indicating that the day will be just as wet. My laundry smells damp and disgusting. My bad luck is legendary within my circle and it’s so ironic that it’s just comical. Honestly, the timing of coincidences and clumsiness that occurs in my life has me wondering if I am in fact real or the slapstick character in a cheesy sitcom somewhere in bad TV hell. Existential crisis be like –
Weather aside, I also cut my morning walk short due to the onset of auditory hallucinations. When my social anxiety is at its worst; I hear imagined insults, whispers, sometimes even screaming. Even writing about this is honestly terrifying. It took me a really long time to realize that none of this is real, and often if I am overly tired or dehydrated I hear an incessant ringing in my ears. I think I may be both of those things plus anxious, stressed, and overly-caffeine dependent; so I started hearing people shouting at me on the street while listening to my music on full blast (another anxiety coping mechanism, I also shop with my music on super loud) but whenever I took my airpods out, there was silence.
It freaked me out so I hurried back home which was for the best because the sky is so ominous and my ankle really hurts. I think my nerves are just running at an all-time high where every little thing sets me off. The scooters slowed to honk at me incessantly this morning and every single time it happened, I jumped – especially as the only person walking in the street at 6AM (which is why that is the time I choose to walk/run), especially as a woman wandering alone, and especially as all the vehicles slowing to get a good look were commandeered by men I don’t fucking know. At some point, I lost my shit, unbeknownst even to myself, and screamed into the street “FUCK OFF!!!!!!!” at the top of my lungs and realized, okay probably time to go home. I’m not even embarrassed when shit like this happens, I honestly think it’s equal parts well-deserved and funny as fuck.
The highly anxious, compressed, bottled up parts of me just explode without warning; startling everyone around me but mostly myself.
This also happened to me in Korea when I was stared at incessantly by everyone around me and one day I just screamed “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU LOOKING AT?” at two European dudes who had been visually stalking me across a shopping center for the better part of an hour and they jumped ten feet because I stood up for myself instead of complacently ignoring their unwarranted stares and I jumped twenty feet because the sound of English in a country where I had gone months without hearing it suddenly sounded startlingly foreign to me.
I’m also laughing as I write this but to end, I want to make note of a really random realization I had at midnight last night when my brain was still running at a mile a minute and then I bolted up in bed out of incredulousness. Basically, if horoscopes are true, then does that mean everyone born on the same day has the same personality as you? That’s so FUCKING creepy – like an army of you’s in different bodies. All of my friends I mass texted this to in my late night musings confirmed this truth and it just freaked me out. I couldn’t stop imagining being locked in a room with 100 people who have the same birthday as me and all of us crying. SUCH AN UNCOMFORTABLE THOUGHT!!! JUST ONE OF ME IS TOO MUCH!!!
Also this morning I started randomly thinking about this guy who I had to sit next to through most of elementary school who happened to have the same birthday as me. I literally have not thought about him in years because once I got to high school, I happened to have three friends who were all born the day after me and I was preoccupied with that coincidence. Anyway, it’s just strange to apply this theory to the timid, kind-hearted kid who rarely crossed my path because I was always running around like a screaming psycho and doing the most. Could we really be astrological twins? And I know about birth charts and hourly star signs so save me the spiel okay? Regardless there are general birthday horoscopes with defining characteristics and it almost makes me wish I would track him down to see the person he’s grown into and see I’m anything like him (as I’ve calmed down, has he gotten more self-assured?). His parents write the polish phone book which is ironic because that’s probably what I’d use to look him up.
P.S. The sun just came out. There’s finally some natural light.

Tuesday, July 29, 2020 – 8:39AM

I have to knock this out real quick because I only have a few hours left before I go on a secret little mini staycation I’ve literally told no one about because it’s been weirdly empowering to keep some secrets to myself instead of being such an uncompartmentalized free-flowing mess of confessions and thoughts and depending too much on my friends for my sanity. My attempts at reintroducing romance, my promise to keep this daily diary, and now this much needed paradise escape at the close of my Bali trip – I just feel like I’ve grown so much in the past six months and it feels good to have some things that are wholly mine.
I get overly anxious when I think about my writing and how I am literally cutting myself open and publicly dumping out everything I have inside for the entire world to see. I often hem and haw before publishing posts, asking myself, “Is this really what I want to do?” “Am I really okay with doing this?” “Will I end up regretting this?” It is a terrifying thing, to feel so vulnerable with so many people when it’s something I can’t even manage to achieve in my personal relationships. The thought of eventually publishing this diary takes that anxiety a step further, my heart is in my chest even as I type this, because I feel so afraid.
But the last time I posted my most intimate entry on my website yet (the month of internal inquiry), someone I knew in a strictly professional capacity; a peripheral friend, reached out to me about the things I confessed. I felt so comforted in that moment, in ways I don’t have the words to express, because it reminded me that I exist to write about my experiences and half of this calling requires the sharing of difficult truths rather than hoarding my words. Only through being brave can I reach someone who is similarly struggling and remind them that they aren’t alone, to help them feel seen, and that’s why I do this; it’s why I exist.
I have four hours to pack for my four days left in paradise. I’ve been grappling with debilitating levels of anxiety lately, I know in my heart that leaving is the right thing and it’s the right time instead of being suspended in this loneliness limbo forever and that I’m only productive now because I feel the pressure of a looming deadline; whereas I spent my general day to day making excuses and procrastinating, but all of this doesn’t help the fact that I feel so sad.
I weirdly feel like crying right now, leaving all of this behind to reintroduce myself to reality; it feels like waking up from a dream, my corner of the world where nothing was real and nothing hurt (except for my loneliness and ankle).
I also keep struggling with this idea that I haven’t done enough and I’m going to regret the ratio of days I spent holed up in my room or wasting away in bed instead of sailing to a nearby island or petting elephants or swinging from the treetops or chasing waterfalls. It’s not even comparative happiness measured up against the standard set by influencers (though I’m sure it is a subconsciously contributing factor) – the life I wanted to find here was to specifically seek a refuge detached from all the rampant gentrification. Regardless, I just can’t help but feel constantly brought down by the weight of all the lives I’m not living.
However, everything is still (and rightfully) closed due to the pandemic (along with my canceled dreams of seeing Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Australia, or the Philippines) so my anxiety has been sufficiently abated by my logistically impossible inability to experience most of the things I would be doing if I were able. Still, I realized the only safe way to experience anything special would be to book a private staycation instead of risking public places so I decided to make the most of my departure with a few special surprises in the hopes that ending on a high will leave me with the validating feeling that I had done enough.
I’ve also been struggling with my body image due to my inability to work out thanks to my ankle and whenever I hit an anxiety spiral, the first thing my brain does is attack my body. I start fixating on all of my insecurities before I can prevent the unravel. Writing such an intensive self-inquiry last month made me recognize the extent of my dysmorphia and recall the confident teenager I used to be and I want to be better about accepting my flaws but this recent anxiety prevents me from thinking straight, it’s this tunnel vision that leads straight to the sunken place.
So this morning, after 4 hours of sleep, I got up at 5AM, showered, and did some ab workouts at 6AM. I ended up seizing my back with some of the lower ab exercises which my fussy spine was not a fan of after prolonged inactivity, so I also did additional yoga for back pain which I hadn’t originally intended to embark on.
My back feels a little stiff, but no longer painful, and I am looking forward to booking an indulgent private massage after avoiding all of the temptingly affordable public massage parlors due to the pandemic.
I’ve also been craving cigarettes ever since I offered to buy my sister some duty-free and the thought of having them in my possession started sparking this obsession until I was counting down the days that I could go buy them and purchase a pack for myself to immediately chain-smoke. I expressed this concern to my sister, after having quit cold turkey between March and April, and she told me not to bother. So, I will not be buying cigarettes but I have to run to the market at some point for more bottled water (I’m so sorry environment but this is a Bali-only emergency) and odds and ends including some souvenirs. I’ve been laughing for weeks to myself about how all my friends are cat lovers and the hand carved, hand painted kitschy cats come in sets of two here so I will basically come home with a suitcase full of fourteen to twenty cats and that thought alone sends me, I swear.

Wednesday, July 30, 2020 – 12:39AM

It’s almost 1AM and I’d rather die than be writing this because I’m so exhausted but I’m forcing myself to get it all out now so I can go the fuck back to sleep.
I dreamt I was in a college classroom when it was my turn to talk and I answered a question (I’m so tired that everything looks wrong – like why the fuck is there a “w“ in answer?) that I wish I could remember but I don’t and I had a long response because I’m always verbose and then the guy who sat in the row to my right, one seat up, began his answer and it was a reference to a Russian classic author or maybe Big Brother where he kept answering in short spurts of clever one-liners that had the entire classroom cracking up and I felt my face flush with shame and I immediately texted my friend to tell her about the situation; not feeling sure if I was being hyper-sensitive or if his answer was in direct mockery of my overly long response because when I feel targeted like this I can never be sure if I’m imagining insults or reading too much into things and need her to regulate my emotional response.
But then he ended his spiel with a pointed, “I’ll answer the question but I won’t take a whole novel to get there” and everyone roared with laughter while I felt so sick to my stomach I could barely breathe. I just stared down at my desk, hearing the cackling ringing in my ears as it was confirmed that everyone in the classroom perceived me as someone who was pretentious and obnoxious; someone who loved to hear herself talk and deserved to be humbled. I felt so wronged, not by the mockery but by their perception, and it confirmed to myself my suspected fear that I talk too much and people hate it and instead of being honest and hoping to be seen, I just need to keep my fucking mouth shut. This is something that haunts me, even in my waking days, as I try to figure out how much of myself to portion while I figure romance out, and it seems I found the answer in my dreams.
I vowed, as I stared down at my desk, to never open my mouth again and the school year went by with me uttering one word replies or never doing my assignments, proving I wasn’t a supercilious overachiever, just someone wanting to get by without being judged. I had two girls in my class who were initially nice to me out of pity, but first one then the other walked away from me in indifferent directions after copying the exact outfit I had on that was some casual version of Kim Kardashian’s turquoise and silver Thierry Mugler Met Gala dress.
In the first look, I had my hair down and spray painted white and in the second, my hair was in a long intricate ponytail with laid edges and silver snakes entwining my arms and neck and both girls copied each outfit but looked transparently like cheap imitations. I realize now that the cool colors and dazzling diamonds were all on the theme of “Ice Queen” which was on brand because this time when I was publicly rejected and abandoned, I honestly didn’t give a fuck.
We went on a class trip afterwards and this one overly-enthusiastic guy kept making conversation with me on the escalator. I was skeptical at first but he proved to be fucking hilarious and unassuming, joking with me in a way that revealed no judgment or agenda, and I finally felt myself relax. Later, we were all drinking at the school social hour hosted at a dingy hole in the wall and I kept staring at the Southern guy in our group who was chugging a beer and well on his way to getting blackout drunk. He was the dumbest guy in our class but I didn’t care, he was tall and good looking and incapable of making me feel anything.
One of my friends in real life was there and she rolled her eyes at me, saying that the guy who made me laugh was obviously interested in me and that I should give him a chance. “Listen to the way you talk about him, it’s obvious to me that he’s different from the way you talk about everyone else.” But when I glanced over at him, he was so nondescript and unattractive that I only shrugged in disagreement.
He began to sit next to me in class every day until one day he asked, “Are you going to answer honestly today or are you going to keep your mouth shut?” “No one’s ever asked me that before.” I said, startled. I looked at him and realized that he saw me; he saw through what I was doing and at the dilemma that I wrestled with every morning. He was the only one who took my side, who called the guy I let cow me into silence an asshole and reminded me that the choice to speak was mine.
Days later, I was out in the city, walking home past a busy shopping complex when this random music started playing (I’m so sad I don’t remember, it was some cheesy version of a disco song or 80’s hairspray rock, just the worst possible song to be blasted in public) and before I knew it, the people in my class were dancing in a flash mob with me screaming in disbelief. The last person to approach me was the guy I was disinterested in but no one was dancing because everyone was laughing too hard at the song, doubled over and clutching their bellies and only in unison where everyone lifted up their heads to scream out one part of the chorus. I was literally on the floor, peeing myself a little, and it was the best flash mob because it was a failed one; lighthearted and fun in its sincerity.
When I looked up, he was standing above me, asking me to be his girlfriend, and for the first time, I realized I really did love him.
Then I woke up and the first thing I did was check my phone.
I don’t care about you at all so I’m not sure why this hurts the way it does.
I want you to like me again just so I can break your heart first.
I don’t want to be an ice queen, I want to dance in the streets.

Friday, July 31, 2020 – 8:31AM

When I woke up after writing my midnight entry yesterday, I had only one memory of my subsequent dream: of all my tattoos peeling off as they were healing, the darkened ink drawn mostly into the scab and almost nothing remaining underneath as they fell off. It was a lost sense of what I believed to be permanent; everything was fading, slowly forgotten.
I started this morning the way I start every morning, which is by staring in the mirror and studying my body in the reflection before beginning my workout. I found a giant bruise on the back of my right knee, a vibrant fuchsia and violet that would make even the jungle flora proud. I was startled by its appearance because in the past few days, I haven’t slipped, tripped, or fallen into anything. The floors here are waxed with a very slippery natural bug repellant so I move in careful, conscious steps after being lectured by my sister not to do anymore dumb shit and quite a few near-slips in my too-big one-size-fits-all straw hotel slippers.
I fall and bump into things so often that I am very aware when they happen – running into door frames and bumping my knee on bed posts and slipping on bathroom steps. But in the past few days, none of that has happened. I found another grey-green bruise on my upper left thigh by my gardenia tattoo yesterday and shrugged it off as a minor injury I didn’t remember, but the appearance of this bigger, angrier bruise with an equally inexplicable origin has me wondering what could possibly be the cause of them.
My entire phone photo gallery is a hypochondriac’s diary of paranoid panic – images of my new injuries with absurd captions; in this past month alone I’ve bitched about my fractured ankle, my allergies, my migraines, my lack of appetite, my anxiety, and my terrifyingly foreign and swollen bug bites – ones I spent hours googling to determine if they were venomous spider bites or an allergic reaction to a jungle variety of mosquitoes I didn’t know about. 
It’s gotten to a point where no one takes me seriously (and I don’t blame them) but I would like to be taken at my word when I say these bruises appeared from out of nowhere, not because I unwittingly bumped against something or banged my luggage about my knees when I was packing.
I didn’t handle any of my bags, save a backpack and a neck pillow, when checking in and out, due to the overly attentive staff assisting me and if I had stumbled into furniture, I wouldn’t be this disconcerted by the bruises.
I highly suspect I’m anemic from a steady diet of cup ramen and limited sunshine after my ankle injury, coinciding with vegan month. I was anemic when I was vegetarian and it explains all of the constant dizzy spells and fatigue and my inability to focus. The second I ate meat again, my anemia was resolved, so I look forward to a big steak and glass of red wine tomorrow; ringing in August 1 right with a very serious medical validation to fuel my carnivorous appetites.
My sister is in pharmacy school but I pretend she’s a doctor, sending her almost daily photos of a rash or an injury or a screenshot of WebMD symptoms because she understands I just need reassurance, not attention. I’ve come to realize that my hypochondria is derived from my dad and how his tragic conditions were severely exacerbated by the mishandling and misdiagnoses of what truly ailed him.
When he had his stroke, he was so young and in peak physical condition; tall, lithe, muscular, playing soccer with the kids every Sunday, that when he collapsed while evangelizing, the church members just assumed he had fainted from exhaustion and kept him in bed while the brain damage spread. No one could have possibly predicted a severe stroke was happening to a healthy man in his forties and no one called an ambulance until it was too late.
My father never fully recovered and spent the next five years heavily handicapped, his handsome face permanently twisted on one side.
I hate that I’m crying as I write this. I just want to get through this without it hurting this much. It’s been over a decade. One day I’ll be able to recount the facts without feeling so traumatized. Or so I hope. I don’t even mean for this to be such an emotional overhaul, just a retelling of true events; a clinical observation. But it’s my dad, so I guess even all these years later, it’ll always be impossible to separate the facts from my feelings. What happened next was worse.
My dad collapsed three times the year I turned sixteen. Each time it was from malnutrition because he was too sick to eat anything. Each time the hospital glanced over at his broken body, hooked him up to an IV, disregarded my mother’s imploring in imperfect English, and instructed us to “feed him.”
Each time he came home, my father couldn’t physically force himself to keep food down until on the third hospital visit, my youngest aunt was so aggravated she refused to take “He’s fine” for an answer and demanded further tests, and because she could speak English, they listened.
He was diagnosed with stage 3 terminal stomach cancer, so far gone that they didn’t bother with chemo and sent him home to die. “I’m sorry, there’s nothing we can do.” They said. I howled with rage. Even now my heart is burning as I write this.
He passed away in weeks, lasting just a few days after his 48^th birthday, barely able to lift his head to blow out the candles on the cake he couldn’t take a bite of.
The chances of something terrible happening to one out of the three of me and my siblings is a fear I can’t seem to shake. Equivalent to my irrational fear of losing my mother. I’ve always been the weak runt of the litter, beleaguered with a weak constitution in ways that has always aggrieved my mother.
“It’s going to be me” I told myself at sixteen, and that thought was remained with me ever since. Every rash, every cut, every bruise, every injury screams cancer to me and I live my life with the fear that every single symptom needs to be addressed seriously before it’s too late.
It’s hitting me hard that today is my final entry.
Tomorrow will be August and I’ll be airborne, on my way home after so many months spent in this indescribably wild Asia chapter during a historic pandemic.
I’ve written daily entries for all of July, totaling 50 pages.
I should be proud of myself but all I can feel is the finality, how hard it always feels to say goodbye.

Wednesday, July 15, 2020 – 10:56AM

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

Thursday, July 16, 2020 – 10:21AM

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

Friday, July 17, 2020 – 1:43PM

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

Saturday, July 18, 2020 – 5:59PM

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

Sunday, July 19, 2020 – 4:17PM

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

Monday, July 20, 2020 – 8:28PM

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

Tuesday, July 21, 2020 – 5:05AM

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

Wednesday, July 8, 2020 – 8:12PM

I woke up from another nap around 7PM and it took every fiber of my soul to escape the clutches of some sweet dream and force myself to write.
I didn’t mean that the way it sounds, it feels good to write every single day, especially when my ankle is preventing me from following up on my daily yoga or pilates calendar and the neurotic control-freak inside of me is starting to spiral. I just mean sometimes (and this week in particular) it feels good to sleep forever and breaking out of this comatose state is harder than it seems.
I can’t believe it’s Week 2 already, which means there are only 3 weeks left in July, which is crazy. I saw a meme about how each day in quarantine feels 900 hours long, but how each month feels like a week, and it couldn’t be more relatable. I have so many personal goals I set for myself this month – physical, emotional, internal, external – and my ankle injury is so poorly timed I’m trying not to scream. July was supposed to be a holistic cleanse, a detox of negativity and bad habits, and I spent a week in bed before facing another week (possibly) being confined to more bed rest.
This week I want to look at the throat chakra, the color blue, and speaking my truth after holding my tongue for so long. I feel really sad today, a mean case of the blues, but not something that’s escalated into the mean reds.
I feel like I can’t be entirely honest with the people I love which is difficult, I feel like I’m never there for people when they need me because I’m so emotionally and physically inaccessible which makes me angry with myself, I feel like some people will never know how much I care about them which frustrates me but I’m learning that you can’t force intimacy, I feel like I self-isolate to a point where people give up on me and it’s sad because I hurt the people who care in ways the people who don’t care hurt me, I feel like I’m forever trapped in a state of suspended nostalgia which seeps into my reoccurring high school dreams where I wander the halls in search of my locker; a manifestation of my lack of place, I guess. A sign that I need to move the fuck on. But I still care, I still remember everything in such vivid detail, so I can’t. Sometimes I feel really under-appreciated in the face of how much I disproportionally care, and I have to remind myself that being insecure is the direct undermining of love, that I need to learn how to trust.
I read on my birthday horoscope recently that Pisces born on February 25^th have trust issues; which is rare for a water sign so open and loving, and I couldn’t find it to be any truer. I feel like people will inevitably grow tired of me, hurt me, or leave me; maybe because I have so little patience for myself, and in writing this I realize speaking my truth reverts back to a foundation of self-love I still haven’t built.
I feel sad today, but I feel lonely too. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve had a real conversation with anyone because of the time difference, my sleep schedule, and now my injury, and I just spend my waking days and dream-filled nights thinking about intimacy. The things I want to share but haven’t been communicating, the weight of all the things unsaid, the lack of solidarity I feel in my current relationships due to my emotional and physical distance, how fragile and eggshell-white everything seems; a sugar-spun candy egg you shatter with a silver hammer.
I’ve tried to open up to someone new recently and I hate the way it feels. Every word I choose in a sentence I spend too much time stringing together makes me uncomfortable in a way that makes me angry to think about. I hate that these are the first necessary steps in getting to know someone and I hate the discomfort I feel whenever I’m forced to be vulnerable. I hate how every realization of my loneliness is met with this insurmountable wall of resistance; I promise my friends I’ll try harder to be more open but they’re always met with some form of distance.
The girl who bullied me in diary entry number one once told me something I remember verbatim when I sought her out at a frat party and sat on the deck trying to reconcile with her because I couldn’t live with the constant tension between us.
“I really care about you,” I said, clasping her hands. She withdrew from my grip and looked at me coldly and said matter-of-factly, “I don’t believe that. I genuinely don’t think you’re capable of thinking of anyone but yourself.”
She said it with no anger, no malice. It was just her appraisal of me and why she treated me that much worse than all of our other friends she took care of so warmly. It proved to me how little she knew me because my greatest vice is that I care too much, that I feel insecure about overwhelming the people I love with my intense feelings, that I cared about her even as she hated me – but as I cried in my room alone that night, none of my roommates expressed anger or indignation on my behalf. What she had said to me didn’t seem incredulous to them and their lack of seeing me continued to build on a divide I needed to erect before my constant irrigation emptied into a chasm and left me with nothing but a desiccated husk.
I don’t want to get into the abuse and mistreatment, the gaslighting and manipulation I endured at the hands of so many different people because I was too eager to please, to help, to give myself up. It hurts too much to think about and I don’t want to spiral when I already feel so fragile; I’ve worked hard to cling onto this frame of a functional being. What I will say is that the insecurity I feel in my current relationships is rooted in repeated experience and that the eyes of every man seem really mean to me. It’s terrifying to admit, but whenever someone attractive smiles at me I feel uneasy; I just see a sneer instead of a smile, I see the man underneath the mask, I see the locker room texts he sends to his friends underneath the sweet nothings he whispers into my ear. I just see the potential to be hurt at the start of every potential relationship.
I want to be loved but I don’t know where to start.

Thursday, July 9, 2020 – 12:48PM

Today was Day 3 of being stuck in bed.
My brother asked about my ankle and the truth is, it’s still ugly and tender and bruised and swollen and I can’t venture outside because I live on the rooftop of a traditional Balinese villa with a slippery stone staircase that gives me anxiety to think about. There are no railings and it’s built with smooth stones and I’ve slipped on them once or twice before but now hobbling down that flight on my left foot seems both unfathomable and unreasonable.
I haven’t eaten much besides my inclusive breakfast and instant noodles so the only solution to my current predicament is to sleep, a lot. I’m going to try and shower and venture out tomorrow, maybe even communicate with the outside world and the loved ones I’ve put on hold for too long, but I don’t mind sleeping in for another day when my ankle throbs even while elevated and is such an ugly black and blue three days later. All this stillness isn’t good for my sadness, my emotional frustrations concentrated by confinement, but writing every day helps and so does the daily reminder to be kind to myself.
Today is the first day I’ve been awake to hear the torrential jungle rain instead of being half-cognizant of the sound against my windowpane while drifting in and out of sleep, wondering if it was a dream. It was such a comforting sound, that rush of wind and water ringing in my ears as a reminder of the outside world instead of so much silence. I can hear the splash of motorbikes in the streets below me as they drive through the rising rainwater in the gutters and welcome the drop in humidity as the whole world takes a breath together.
I want to be more alive; experiencing the outdoors, enjoying a hot meal in my belly, remembering what it feels like to be loved or missed, sweating in the summer sun, feeling my legs traverse briskly to another potential place of exploration with my hand anxiously clutching onto my phone. It’s sad that even here, I need some sort of buffer from the leering men as a woman traveling alone.
Maybe remembering this feeling; hearing the sound of the rain I can’t physically access because it hurts too much to get dressed and walk over to my terrace, maybe this will be enough to get me out of bed and down those terrifying stairs tomorrow. Maybe I’ll go to the café next door and stay for three square meals.
Writing has certainly helped me open up in other ways, convincing me that it’s time to play with vulnerability. I’ve only dipped my toe in the water, I haven’t allowed myself to be fully submerged, but it’s the first step in an exercise of facing the unknown. I don’t want to look back at these entries and continue to feel sad about the amount of love I deprive myself of, I want to utilize my realizations to better myself and face the demons I’m constantly running from. I don’t want to be forever stuck in this negative feedback loop of self-deprivation and mistrust, I want myself to grow into believing I’m worthy of being loved. It’s pointless to write such lengthy self-analyses with no ultimate end-result. The difference between the person I was and the person I am is the self-awareness and willingness to grow up.
I’m talking to someone and I feel much less afraid than I did yesterday. Three months from now I might come to regret my openness the way I did in Korea, but for now it’s something I admit I need. An exercise in trust, the ability to try again even after being repeatedly burned. I actually don’t have any regrets about Korea, I’m proud of the way I handled myself when things ended the way that they did and I’m appreciative of the things I learned even if I didn’t get everything I wanted. I love myself for recognizing what I deserve and staying strong even when my resolve in the first months apart wore thin.
I used to be a self-numbing drunk with a mess of boys, then I became a self-numbing comfort eater with a self-imposed decree of never being touched. Now, self-loving self-respecting me – what kind of love will this person find? It’s definitely scariest because this time it requires me being real; no façade or shield.
Whether or not I will still be speaking to this person even a month from now, it’s worth writing about in this diary because of the milestone that it is to me. This tense, uncertain step forward into getting to know each other that will be the best part to look back on, no matter the end result.
It’s such a struggle to be fully seen that I forgot how equally difficult it is to reveal yourself in careful layers. I want to take my time dancing toe-to-toe with a stranger, mirroring each deliberate confession instead of instantly ripping everything off. My impatience in the past has been my biggest downfall, revealing all of myself in a reverberating tidal wave of young love.
It wasn’t an equal exchange but my own selfish need to be seen, something I realize now can’t be forced. It’s a lesson I’m carrying into the relationships where I still feel hurt, where I still grapple with the awkward distance and the vestiges of nostalgia.
I’m trying not to live the rest of my life as a Papa Roach song.

Friday, July 10, 2020 – 10:39AM

I have to admit that committing to this daily exercise has proved more fruitful than I anticipated. I struggled with the pressure of what to write and overthinking, but now I’ve gotten to the point where I look forward to it (this can change day to day, I’m sure) and find recording all my thoughts as therapeutic as I once did. For the first time, I feel like I have too much to say instead of not knowing where to start.
I’ve learned a lot about myself in the past week and a half and reevaluating my emotional triggers has helped tremendously with my anxiety and negative thought patterns. I feel less trapped, less overwhelmed, less stuck – which is a huge emotional advantage given my very physical entrapment due to this fucking awful ankle injury. I still can’t support my weight after attempting to shower today because my entire body felt as grimy as the inside of a full-body cast and then my stomach forcibly rejected my umpteenth meal of quarantine-stockpiled instant ramen this morning so I’m just not eating at all. Super healthy.
Still, I woke up eager to write, with much to say, and this purpose has kept me from spiraling about my fourth consecutive day of injury-mandated bed rest. I don’t know what tomorrow is going to look like but today has taught me I am far from functional just yet. It is a bitter pill to swallow and I definitely feel restless.
I’ve had about three hours of sleep due to the adrenaline in my body when I lay in bed and all I can think about is what feels like an active betrayal to all of my instincts. I can’t stop thinking about him, but not in a romantic sense – less about him and more about what the fuck I’m doing and if I’m actually ready for this or if I’d feel better just never having feelings forever.
I found myself creating a mental list of all the reasons why I shouldn’t like him and I realized this morning upon snapping my eyes open that this is an unconscious pattern that I subject every fucking relationship to from the start.
And I realized, fuck I need to write about this.
I look back at every boy I’ve ever liked – not just dated – but anyone I’ve ever harbored an emotional attraction towards and realize that I’ve constructed a pros and cons list about every guy. I don’t even know it started, though definitely rooted in my neurotic dependencies on lists in everyday life, but I’ve found that I’ve divided my emotions into two columns for them all. To clarify, it wasn’t a list of physical traits or flaws vs. merits – it was a list about all the reasons why I should like them vs. all the reasons why I shouldn’t; if the chance of flying was worth the inevitable pain of the fall. Almost always, staying firmly rooted won the call.
Time has consistently proven that guys are assholes and nice guys finish last and the risk is rarely worth the reward, but I’m more concerned with this implicit lack of trust I’ve been nurturing since Day 1. The men can come and go, they can beg to stay or run away the first chance they get, it’s all background noise against the forefront of my pursuit for self-love. I am the embodiment of that meme: “Girl, who hurt you to make you like this?” But the answer is, I don’t fucking know.
I don’t ever remember having the courage to not run away, even from an early age, just feeling helpless to do anything but suppress the way I felt out of mislabeled rationale. I remember every burn branded on my skin by the men who handled me carelessly, sometimes hatefully, occasionally abusively, then later self-abusively; puppets under my control, using their hands to carry out my marionette misery, but these men only served to validate an inherent mistrust I had already fostered.
I don’t think men realize the fragility of even the strongest female.
It’s what I love most about being a woman, even with all of the trials and catcalls and discomfort and fear of running in the mornings or traveling alone or the systemic misogyny and constant patronization; I would choose to be reborn as a female for all the lifetimes I have left to live. There is a beautiful duality in the constitution of every woman no man can begin to define or comprehend; strength in vulnerability, vulnerability in strength, softness in all our hard edges.
Klimt and the other artists captivated by the female form understood this. Late in my womanhood, I am only beginning to grasp it.
At my most broken, I had all the men in my life convinced that I was fiercely unbowed; a rare specimen with no emotional weakness. I maneuvered in and out of beds and relationships with a masculinity that left me doubly empty from the energy I was wasting in suppressing my natural femininity.
It worked to keep me alive, for the person I was back then, but I often look back at that time; not with regret as much as disbelief. Every man fell for the façade without seeing the truth so bitterly laid out in front of them.
I used to think that I had come so far but every day I realize I have so much more work to do. To soften these brittle edges, to open up. I’m not as feminine as I had thought, I’m still clinging to that masculine tactic of emotional disconnect and it feels fraudulent and wrong. It’s my safe space, the place from which I’ve operated for too long, but it reminds me of that fucking idiot in my Freshman Year seminar who would go on long, exhausting diatribes about how love was nothing but a chemical reaction in the brain because he was so obviously unloved. Also, a delusional narcissist and pseudo-intellectual, but most definitely unloved. Particularly by me and our female professor who would take turns eviscerating his condescending lectures because fuck toxic masculinity.
I have a lot to say today because I’m trapped in bed and unable to go for a walk or get something to eat, so this is it – this diary is the pinnacle of my daily existence and somehow, I find myself being okay with that. The internet is also not working because jungle wi-fi is the worst so it’s literally just me and my thoughts. It’s funny how when it’s all in my head, it’s so overwhelming but when it’s written down or spoken aloud, these thoughts can almost feel comforting.
So, to you, potential suitor, because I should probably refocus this runaway train on my original diagnosis of me being a runaway bride, I don’t know how honest I’ll be with you about my trust issues or emotional reservations because I’m still figuring out what I want and that requires a degree of emotional honesty I owe to myself, but not necessarily to you. I have this long list of qualms I’ve written up about why this is a bad idea and there’s only one man whose eyes bore through all of my defensive rationalizations to fully see me, hidden underneath.
In some ways, he was a fluke, impossibly kind in a chain of awful men, but he proved the pay-off for vulnerability can be real. No one else has backed that claim so I guess I’m still left wondering if that isolated incident over a decade ago is the end-goal or an impossible-standard. I feel apologetic; to be as unfair as to use him as a measure or to be so cruel as to construct an entire subliminal case against falling for you. It’s self-sabotage like this that I need to become aware of so I can grow into the kind of person who loves as openly as I deserve.
I know it’s nothing serious, I’m not even sure if what I want is something serious, but I want it to become something I’m capable of if I become more open to the possibility. I’ve used a lot of men as emotional experiments; testing out theories, satisfying my curiosity, serving as research for writing material, and I’m learning to not immediately objectify males in an effort to emotionally distance myself by misdirecting their affection towards other means.
I guess that’s another huge realization but my body is aching from typing in bed with my ankle propped up so bookmarking that deep dive for another day.

Saturday, July 11, 2020 – 6:43PM

I slept horribly last night after being so delirious from sleep-deprivation that I wasn’t making any sense. I kept misinterpreting text, conversation, and images in ways that made me feel like I perceiving information in another dimension; not comprehending what was meant at face-value.
This translated into fitful slumber tainted by stress nightmares; of my brother not listening to me and being bullied by gas-lighters from my past. I woke up 20 minutes late for breakfast and felt like I should write before the dreams escaped me like they always do if I don’t jot them down immediately but it’s now almost 7PM because after breakfast I passed out into a kind of instantaneous slumber that was much needed after the past few days of adrenaline, stress, and strange dreams.
I haven’t seen the sun in almost a week but my ankle is still a putrid green and tender to the touch and it’s been raining endlessly; my poorly-lit studio remaining dark all day due to the sea of grey clouds preventing any possible patch of blue sky or sunlight from penetrating through. I think that triggered my inner clock into thinking it was perpetual night, allowing me to sleep this well.
I woke up with a throbbing headache so I finally allotted myself 2 of the extra strength Tylenol I’ve been rationing since buying them in Brooklyn because Asian drugs, and honestly even European paracetamol, just doesn’t do it for me like these American pharmaceuticals. I feel really gross from not showering, over sleeping, not working out, lying in bed for so many days in succession; but this is exactly what I was afraid would happen since the first day I veered off my sleep schedule.
I can’t function without rigid discipline, this week of sleepless nights and dream-filled days proving just that. I also haven’t bothered to plan my daily schedule out of anxiety due to the past week of ankle-injury induced inactivity. I promised myself I would wake up for breakfast, shower, then accomplish a few productive tasks as loose goals rather than regimented responsibilities and each day I just crawled back into bed, propped my foot up on a pillow, and went the fuck back to sleep.
I’ve learned that playing things by ear doesn’t work for me and I need a schedule for the accountability. Injury or no, my body and soul are breaking down from this life-deteriorating pattern of hibernation and I need to do something to regulate my sleeping habits again. A large part of my sleeplessness was attributable to this new vulnerability I’m undertaking and how I can literally feel my body humming with fight-or-flight anxiety. It got so consuming that I deleted every trace of interaction and left the ball in his court to initiate conversation.
I realize I have done this with a long list of past suitors; another pattern I was unaware of prior to the retrospect of recorded recognition. I get so consumed by my over-thinking that I feel like I’m losing myself to someone who will hurt me so I delete their number and our conversation in an effort to stop rereading, stop micro-analyzing, stop obsessing and tell myself that if he cares, he’ll text first.
I didn’t sleep at all yesterday but after finally emerging from a coma-like slumber today, I feel ready to accept that what’s done is done and it was the right thing to do, even if a large part of me has fallen into that toxic spiral of feeling convinced I’ll never hear from him again, because I just need to sleep regularly again. Whether or not I speak to him again; things will unfold as they will and for now, I just need to fill my days with physical activity and outside experiences instead of festering fear.
In the past, every single guy has eventually texted back.

Sunday, July 12, 2020 – 7:31AM

Woke up 20 minutes late for breakfast again. Head is pounding. I slept a total of 19 hours since yesterday and yet this eternal fatigue seems to have no end. After 3 days of perpetual grey, today the clouds look like rolling waves; continuing in layer upon layer like a frosted cake, still not an inch of sky or sun to be seen.
I want to be better about recording my meals here, in the same way I want to be more accountable about writing down my dreams. I know the unique tastes and textures I experience here will pale in comparison to the “Balinese” dishes that are inevitably Americanized back home.
Today’s Balinese breakfast was a delicious egg and batter pancake with chive, onion, and sliced garlic. It was tantalizingly crispy on the edges but chewy and gummy in the center like a rice cake.
It’s interesting how Asian countries all have their distinct version of similar dishes, a continental development that occurred simultaneously in our culinary culture in spite of our country lines. It reminded me of Korean jeons, which are my all-time favorite Korean food and which my mother makes sure to prepare in batches for me and my brother when we visit her because whatever she allots in advance is never enough. The heavier egg to dough ratio reminded me still of Chinese jian-bing and Vietnamese banh-xeo, while still retaining a Balinese profile all its own.
Covered in a pool of tangy, sweet and sour, ketchup-based sauce, it was delicious on its own but made me instinctively crave a serving of steaming white rice for balance. I’ve been craving Korean food and raw, fibrous veggies lately – there’s too much sodium in everything I eat, which would be my one complaint about Bali. To be fair, a lot of the food I order is Indonesian interpretations of Western or Chinese dishes, but even the Indonesian food is so overly salty that I often grimace. I miss the pickles and pasta in Korea, a combination that disturbed me in the beginning but I grew to later appreciate the acidity in tandem with the creamy richness; the prioritization of a well-balanced palate.
My favorite part of traditional Indonesian dishes are the raw cucumber and tomato served on the side of every main dish, so much of it reminiscent to the fried Filipino dishes with the exact same accompaniments and very much needed to complete the otherwise heavy dishes. I remember being similarly startled in Kuala Lumpur, the language having a surprising amount of similarities to the little Tagalog I knew – my research later informed me that a substantial amount of Malay words entered the Tagalog vocabulary during 400 AD due to the trade and diplomatic relations between Asia-Pacific communities. The same was true for the connections between Bahasa and Tagalog, hearing “Selamat Pagi” (Good Morning) and thinking of “Salamat” (Thank You), and learning that both had Arabic roots.
I find it fascinating how inter-related all of these Austronesian cultures are, and shocking how underrepresented Southeast-Asian cultures continue to be; their religion, their influences, their language, their history, their customs are all so unique to the Chino-Korean-Japanese classifications that seem to take up the forefront of the Asian identity. I used to resent the mainstream Chinese-Japanese representation in  Western culture; between sushi and Chinese food, ninjas and kung-fu, constantly being mistaken for one or the other as the only “Asian options” until Korea had its moment recently with K-pop and kimchi. Once Korean culture became popularized, I realized how little Southeast-Asian cultures are represented, even within the so-called Pan-Asian communities fighting for visibility.
I moved to Korea last November and was called “white” every fucking day until I moved to Bali in March and was called “white” here too. It was a strange kind of culture shock to be perceived as the same as the very people who rejected me for being too yellow. It’s the age-old story of Asian-Americans suspended in the limbo of neither here nor there, but it was doubly bizarre facing this rejection from a place I considered my homeland before having this perception perpetuated in a place where I felt different from all the other white tourists.
Reintroducing myself to the world of dating also brings up the constant caution of identifying men who fetishize anyone Asian. It’s such a hard line to toe because I certainly have a type myself; my personal line-up of white dudes I’ve dated who all look the same. But there’s something about males and their obsessive Asian fetishes that feels cheaper than my dating preferences, as if race is a prerequisite and everything else is secondary. As a rule, I avoid any man whose dating history is “exclusively Asian” because the reductive sexualization of race isn’t an appreciation, but an undermining of the complexities of being a minority.
What is the line between a “preference” and a “fetish,” and what is the line between an “inclination” and “racism?” I myself am trying to be more open to a more diverse experience but find myself being drawn to a similar archetype again and again; I’ve tried to date Asian guys in the past, only to be rejected for being “too much” or “too loud,” and similar things have happened with other races. For some reason, the guys I feel most connected to happen to be white men, but “white” isn’t a precursor for my dating preference in the way “Asian” seems to be the determining characteristic for so many Asia-philic men.
In the same way that Asian fetishizers make me lose my appetite, so does the bare feet culture in Bali – aka the white girl in the café sitting across from me who has decided to remove both her sweaty socks and her sneakers as I attempt to eat.
I also can’t eat fruit anymore, I keep coming up with creative ways of throwing it out without offending my host family. I get so into my head about certain foods like avocado, red meat, brussel sprouts, beets – I actually enjoy them all in theory, but in practice I get so weirded out from overthinking that I avoid them until they go bad and I throw them out before repeating the cycle. Does this happen to anyone else or is it just me? Is it a sign of my larger issues with food? I am definitely weird about food and it controls my life to a certain degree, also a lot of food guilt after using it as a coping mechanism, and this is validated by online quizzes. It’s an extension of my controlling ways and something I can’t let go of, coupled with my digestive sensitivities. But what it really boils down to is the power of my mind over my body; how my neurosis doesn’t affect just my emotional state and relationships but carries over into my eating habits and relationship with my body.
Update, 11:50AM – In direct sunlight and not my poorly lit bedroom, my ankle is so green and gnarly I can’t believe I’m walking around. Also, moving for the first time in a week has me feeling dangerously dizzy. I’ve lost a significant amount of weight but too rapidly, in a way that makes me feel unsteady. I tried to speak; at the grocery store then later at this café (practicing social distancing) and my voice keeps cracking; almost dusty from lack of use like a forgotten item on a shelf. I speak in whispers, the timbre of my own voice now unfamiliar even to me – I’ve forgotten how to open my mouth and form a consequential sound.

Monday, July 13, 2020 – 7:02AM

I woke up from a very convincing dream but I didn’t record it immediately, instead hopping in the shower the minute my alarm went off because last night I went to bed with all my makeup on and needed to scrub the grime from my eyes.
It’s the first time the sun has been out in days and the room flooded with light as I awoke; I feel filled with a certain energy I’ve lacked all the days before. I read that mercury was in retrograde (I’m not much of an astrologist so at first I took this to be a rare cataclysmic event that occurred once a year, not something as annoyingly persistent as my monthly cycle blues) but that has finally passed and with it, so should my emotional and physical lethargy.
My horoscope continued to say that in  the aftermath of the retrograde, I should remember that I am worthy of love and joy. That I should feel as admired, celebrated, and valued as my friends see me. That this reclamation of self-worth would allow me to receive the love the deserve.
I know skeptics always say that this is the folly of astrology, that there is enough universal truth for horoscopes to always be applicable. But to me (though I don’t fully subscribe to birth charts or plan my day around predictions), it’s both comforting and surprising to come across these seemingly personal messages; that the stars knew I was struggling emotionally all week and struggle in my daily life to embrace self-love. The timing of this advice, right as I was embarking on my own journey of self-discovery, seemed more than just uncanny. It spoke directly to the anxiety that bleeds into my mind as I sleep. It’s hard when there is so much truth imbibed into my dreams that I don’t know what to believe.
There is a persistent underlying message of fearing rejection from the ones I love. I know this is a projection of my own self-rejection than any indication of my friends’ loyalties. My friends love me more than I love myself; they would never treat me the way they are portrayed in my dreams – they would never ignore the signs of my sadness or walk away when I need them. It took meeting and reconnecting with the people I was fated to befriend to understand true, unconditional love but I’m afraid the scars of the past have a way of making themselves known even years after superficially healing.
This was also true of the tattoo I got on my left wrist exactly a decade ago, that became inflamed and swollen and itchy and covered in a red rash I couldn’t understand. I googled everything I could, wondering why it was happening now, after ten years of no issues, the outlines of the tattoo angrily raised in contusion. I found myself on that dark path only WebMD can take me down and diagnosed myself with an autoimmune disorder called Sarcoidosis because the irritated tattoo wasn’t from infection, contamination, eczema, allergies, or psoriasis. Sarcoidosis seemed to be the only applicable answer because the rash was specifically concentrated within the lines of my old tattoo and nowhere else on my body.
I also found it was extremely plausible because of the connection to breathing problems; especially after having been diagnosed with Long QT Syndrome in Korea this past February. I had the reddish skin bumps, the blurred vision, the hoarse voice, the pain in my extremities, the benign cyst growth, the arrhythmias, the ringing in my ears, and the fucked up nervous system. I was considerably Vitamin D deficient, subsisting off instant noodles and no fresh vegetables, and most definitely suffering from an unrelenting and unexplained fatigue.
I also had a giant pimple sprouting on my left cheek due to a substantial layering of moisturizer, primer, foundation, concealer, and prime jungle sweat that I left to fester instead of washing my face before bed.
So when my alarm rang this morning, my initial thought upon waking up was that it was all a dream; the discomfort of something growing on my skin, the terrifying rash, the WebMD spiral, but then I remembered that those parts were real. I run my fingers over my now smooth tattoo again and again, almost in wonderment. In the time that I slept and awoke, it’s back to normal again. Honestly the symptoms of Sarcoidosis I exhibit can all be attributable to my anxiety, low blood sugar, and other injuries. Plus I don’t have kidney stones, swollen lymph nodes, dry cough, lesions, or discolored skin so in retrospect I was just reaching.
Also, making good on my promise to write more about visceral food memories, it is officially thirteen days since I went vegan and today I am craving chicken (I know I had an egg omelette yesterday but the inclusive breakfast is beyond my control).
Also, by chicken I mean  a very specific type of Indonesian fried chicken called ayam geprek with spicy smashed sambal. Since last night I have been inexplicably craving this dish that I had twice a week when I first moved here, sweating profusely into my dish and smoking cigarettes in between; always the only woman.
I read that different cravings are different emotional responses to things we’re lacking and I don’t know what spicy fried cravings mean but to me, it just means I want chicken and that I doubt I can continue this vegan experiment beyond this month. But it’s an exercise in discipline and self-growth, and to me that’s enough.

Tuesday, July 14, 2020 – 5:55 PM

It’s 5:55PM make a wish!! I know it’s immature but I still feel a kind of magic when the clock strikes in a succession of identical digits and even if I don’t do it for the rest, I always make sure to make a wish when it’s 11:11. I watched an interview with JLO today where she talks about being 49 but still feeling 16 and it gave me a certain comfort in knowing I wasn’t alone in feeling perpetually fifteen or still blowing out candles every sequential year in abject disbelief. Time flies and we are all so pitifully mortal. I’m glad even a goddess like Jennifer Lopez can agree.
It’s the final day of Week 2 and honestly terrifying to think we’re already halfway through the month! I spent the entire second week of July crippled by my ankle injury and spending so much time in bed made me realize palpably that a week is a quarter of a month and a month is hardly enough time to accomplish a lengthy list of goals. I got up at 4AM today, finally, feeling frustrated by my physical limitations and decided to strive for everything I set an intention to finish at the end of June.
I had three cups of coffee and still feel wired and it’s so weird to think that on some days I can have four cups of coffee and still pass the fuck out an hour later. Today is definitely not one of days, I think my body is just buzzing with the adrenaline of ambition and I don’t want to be held back any longer.
After I finish today’s entry, I’m going to plan out every hour of every day from now until the last day of July. I realize this is the only way I can accomplish everything I promised myself, especially now that I’m a week behind schedule. I religiously create my weekly schedule every Sunday so this is nothing new, but given my current circumstances, I would rather plan everything altogether because there are too many things I have let fall to the wayside by assuming I have more time than I actually do. I feel like this is also a metaphor for life and it just hit me fucking hard.
I have a certain writing piece I’ve been working on since May (independent of this project) and while this diary (now) comes easy to me due to the freedom of free-flow (which was honestly debilitating at first, hence the thematic chakra healing for prompted inspiration), the other prose I’m working on has seen little to no progress because I have such a clear intention I’ve set that trying to convey that message in the way I need to keeps tripping me up. I keep missing the mark; endlessly circling around what I really mean to say until I run out of fuel.
So finishing that would be my first priority.
I also meant to run more this month, not just for fitness but because I love it and always feel so much better afterwards. I mentioned earlier that the men on their motorbikes incessantly slowing down to yell shit at me while I pointedly keep my eyes straight ahead played their part in me postponing my run every morning, but there’s nothing like being physically incapable of doing the thing you were previously avoiding by choice to make you wish you could do it again.
I might not be able to run in July, but I’ll start with long walks. The half marathon I signed up for in March, which was supposed to be held at the end of this month, has been officially canceled due to Covid-19. It’s a shame, but did not come as a surprise, and I absolutely would not have participated even if it was still on. It’s just one goal I had this month that I am actually happy to postpone as a later life accomplishment. I guess in that sense, my ankle injury was well-timed but it’s hard to keep positive when I still feel so resentful of this active attempt to overcome my negativity because I am, in fact, very fucking bitter.
I think that’s my biggest hang-up with a lot of out-of-touch yogi teachings, because these days everyone who shops at Whole Foods with a reusable tote is a spiritual guru. I think actively working to better yourself is certainly a good thing and a lifelong journey, but I hate this insincere veneer of “positive vibes only” when there are days where we’re sad, cranky, insecure, bitter, or lonely. Those feelings are a part of me, a portion of my truth, not something to be categorically compartmentalized as something I can outwardly “acknowledge” instead of diving into because it doesn’t serve this unrealistically well-adjusted version of me. I don’t want to be a “version,” I just want to be me.
Messily, emotionally, imperfectly, unapologetically, wholly, humanly me.

Wednesday, July 1, 2020 – 9:49PM

I honestly don’t know where to begin because it’s been a long time since I wrote anything stream of consciousness, with no prompt or purpose, no polish or flourish. It’s just my words and the page and it’s terrifying. I can’t hide behind hours of editing and re-working, the priority of this promise is different from curating an immaculate essay. I miss the diaries I used to keep as a child, inspired by Amelia’s Notebooks. I miss spending hours coming up with my stories and illustrating them on paint, I miss my Xanga entries and my Tumblr diaries and all the other mediums I utilized to accomplish one thing: writing every damn day.
Something I think about often is someone who used to inadvertently bully me out of overwhelming insecurity. She was kind to everyone but me, the nice Southern girl with impeccable manners who would smilingly sneer at my overly loud, overly honest ways. Every comment was a veiled insult, every insult was a veiled projection of constant comparison. She was the smartest girl in her high school, the most well-read person in her tiny town. She called herself a writer and was unnecessarily assertive about her talents. She would complain about how exhausting it was to hone her skills and how she was trying to write “more” and how forced it felt. I said, shrugging, “I write every day.”
I still remember the disbelieving bulge in her eyes, asserted by the doubt in her tone as she repeated, “You write every day?” I shrugged again.
I had nothing to prove and I was used to her rejecting everything I said out of condescension or contempt. From that moment forward, she vowed to write every day and I thought nothing of it. She was forcing herself to meet a standard she imagined I set but I wrote to keep sane; not to nurture my ego. I couldn’t sleep unless I wrote. I couldn’t relax until I emptied the overwhelming thoughts into another vessel. This wasn’t a competition and it wasn’t a chore. I couldn’t remember not writing every day and I have the notebooks and laptops to prove it.
I don’t think of that girl, I just think of that conversation. I just think about the person I used to be when I now feel this intimated by what I love to do; my fingers feel this stiff and my tongue this tied and my mind this blank and my heart this full of doubt and my mouth full of excuses. My friends always buy me beautiful notebooks, the requisite writer’s gift, until I had to publicly request that they stop because I had a house full of gorgeous, but empty compositions. Whenever I plan to write, I just reread all the things I’ve already written until I lose myself and my wavering will in a spiral of nostalgia and comparison.
I’ve now become that girl “working on her craft,” forcing herself to write every day, and this person feels unrecognizable to me. Is this growing up or have I just lost my touch? Do I still love what I do or am I clinging onto an identity out of familiarity?
I don’t question that I love to write but I question how I’m no longer capable of writing out of love, rather than deliberate intention.
I think I took my earlier passion for granted, like high school athletes who used to practice twice a day or dancers who trained professionally, until we all reach adulthood and leave behind the past-times of our adolescence. We open our eyes; suddenly 28, with a beer belly and creaking knees and a back pain that won’t abate, wondering about the versions of ourselves we failed to recognize as fleeting.
Part of returning to myself, to becoming someone who feels familiar, is writing every day. Humbling myself; conceding, struggling, flailing, grasping, growing.
I’m taking this time to rediscover the parts I love about myself.

Thursday, July 2, 2020 – 5:49PM

I’ve always been weird with numbers, my alarms set to 5:27AM or 4:49AM – never rounded to increments of 5 like a normal person. I find it meaningful I started this entry the same minute of the time I started last night, even if at different hours. I’m too tired to try and decipher what exactly it might mean; running on 4 hours of sleep but still going for a run before the sun came up because it’s the best time to avoid the leering men and sweltering heat.
Everyone insists Bali is “the friendliest place in the world,” but I’ve grown to resent all the grinning men on scooters honking their horns as they drive by; the repeated yelling for my attention from the men inching by on the garbage truck that happened to be moving at the same speed and trajectory as I tried to run on.
At some point, I’ve outgrown the pressure to smile demurely when men are “just trying to make conversation.” I remember writing in my journal when I lived in Boston; drinking gin and tonics alone when a group of fucking revolutionary war reenactors just got off work and insisted I join them in karaoke and when it finally became clear I wasn’t playing hard to get, that I actually meant it when I said I wasn’t interested, they proceeded to curse me out because it was my fault for fishing for attention by drinking at a bar alone and sending the wrong message.
I spent hours reading every single message in a thread about the UC Berkeley rapist who preyed on over twenty Asian girls; he himself being a nice, Chinese-American upper-middle class student in a Patagonia jacket. I read account after account of his aggressive behavior towards women and how he justified it by saying, “When women say no, they really mean yes because they want it but don’t want to seem slutty.”
I’m so tired of not having my words taken seriously. Of the emotions I feel being invalidated, or of being judged by fragile men nursing their egos when I don’t want to smile or make conversation. Who dictated this decree that we all have to smile politely and answer your asinine questions? Why the fuck are men so nosy? And where the fuck do they get off, being so old and ugly, and asserting themselves into the conversations and comfort zones of young, pretty women?
There’s a sense of entitlement that comes with a penis – the right to demand conversation, attention, validation. The right to run in the morning without fear of being trafficked by the few silent men watching you move in the otherwise dark and empty streets. The right to run in the middle of the day because you don’t have a street full of shirtless men screaming at you as they drive past. The right to run in the evenings without being scared of the drunk men stumbling home.
I’m not going to run tomorrow because I’m tired and I want to sleep in, but I’m not sure I’ll run the day after because today was so uncomfortable. I want to be able to walk around in my own skin and not feel uncomfortable; constantly watched, constantly cornered, constantly bothered. I envy the men who walk in with a newspaper and drink a whiskey before noon without a second glance. But then they make eye contact with me and I realize I’m not envious at all. I pity them for being so unevolved with their head nods and meaningful glances.
They have no idea what women are truly capable of.

Friday, July 3, 2020 – 9:57PM

I just woke up from a 7-hour nap after attempting to get writing done earlier today. I’ve been getting up before the sun rises every day; to run, to workout, to be “productive” even if my anxiety keeps me from falling asleep at a reasonable hour the night before. Today, I couldn’t keep my eyes open as I sat before my computer and struggled to process my thoughts into words, so I listened to my body and finally slept. I get anxious when I fuck with my sleeping patterns because I thrive on regularity (like having breakfast at 7AM every morning, like giving myself 2 hours before I have to do something or be somewhere so I end up not being late, like scheduling every hour of my day on my phone and constantly reorganizing my to-do list as the day unfolds and inevitable complications or delays arise).
I texted my best friend as soon as I woke up and she made me laugh when she said, “That’s not a nap, that’s called sleeping.” And it was funny but also struck me that what I was doing – running on 4 hours of sleep almost every day, out of this self-induced pressure that if I don’t live up to certain measures of productivity, I’ll be doomed to failure because everything I’m trying to do already feels “too late,” was more akin to a “nap” than my body’s basic right to restful sleep.
I didn’t remember to write until now and I’m glad I did because I came to a few realizations while attempting to commit my thoughts to the page.
I’m still making this about you, instead of making it about me.
I’m so conscious of an audience, of this eventually being read, that I’m not allowing myself the room to truly be vulnerable, honest, or anything less than articulate.
In the way my body is breaking down in ways I didn’t realize because of the pressure I put on myself, my words bear a similar weight; this tinge of exerted effort that imbues everything with inauthenticity.
So, starting today, I’m going to try as if I am writing to myself only. To return to the diaries I once kept that was the original intent of this exercise. I am going to allow myself to be truly vulnerable and unafraid. After all, it’s just me.
I came across the Hawaiian meditative practice of “Ho’oponopono” just a few minutes ago and everything I immediately felt in response was what reminded me to write today. “I forgive you. I’m sorry. Thank you. I love you.”
These four sentences, repeated as a mantra, to unlock healing.
I remain unconvinced about meditation and certain holistic practices that feel almost willfully ignorant in blanketing everything with a band-aid of love instead of upholding emotional truth or accountability. I believe in the philosophy of the original doctrines, but with any form of belief or religion, it gets lost in human translation and I’ve come across too many out-of-touch pseudo-yogi’s who use spiritualism to validate their inherent entitlement as universal provisions that I choose to love love but not prescribe to any doctrine.
“God, I hate myself” followed by a facepalm has been the punchline to too many of my self-deprecating stories; my tales of physical and emotional clumsiness, things that would only happen to me because of the way that I am.
“Why are you the way that you are?” And we laugh.
But somehow, slowly, in a way so insidious that I can’t place the origin, I started muttering that under my breath. “I hate myself.” Sometimes laughingly, sometimes unknowingly, sometimes seriously, sometimes screaming it in the shower. I would say it while I did my makeup, while cooking, while staring at my body in the mirror, while watching Netflix, while waiting to fall asleep in my bed. “I hate myself” sometimes became “I hate my life,” sometimes it was “Everybody hates you,” but it always a variation of the three; uttered almost compulsively, like a prayer.
I don’t believe in affirmations. I think they’re corny and stupid, but it could also be because it’s so hard for me to look in the mirror and say, “I love you.” I eventually confessed this habit to my sister, then my best friend, because I caught myself saying it in a way that scared me; how often it was, how unconscious it was, how habitual and ritualized it had become. These thoughts had become a part of me.
I promised my best friend I would substitute those words with positive replacements but I’m still not at a place where I can say, “I love you” so I say, “Everybody loves you” and “I love my life” and sometimes “You look beautiful.”
I never feel the truth of these words wholeheartedly, but I never felt like I hated myself or that everybody hated me either. They were just words, stuck in my head, on repeat like a bad song or a tic. So, I hope that in replacing them, my mind will constantly have elevator music of loving thoughts on a loop; even if it is an absent-minded default. I feel loved enough to not feel like a fraud repeating these phrases but this month I’ll challenge myself with “I love myself.”
There’s a reason why I have “forgiveness” tattooed on my left thumb in Korean. There’s a crippling degree of self-awareness and over-thinking I suffer from where I replay all of my conversations and regrets over and over again in my head until I blurt out “I hate myself” in the same mortification I express laughingly in front of my friends. Sometimes I cry because I feel so guilty, like the time I called my mom sobbing last year for the time I was a giant bitch to her because I was in middle school and didn’t want to go to the zoo because I was “too cool” and it hurts my heart even now to relive how cruel I was to her until she finally snapped and we took the bus back home in silence. She doesn’t remember, but I do.
I remember all of the fights with my father, something I haven’t talked about in a really long time because it hurts too much to think about. I can’t believe it’s been twelve years. But I want to think about it more, I want the fire blazing in my throat as I type this to keep burning as I try not to cry because time is moving on too quickly and I don’t want to live in a world that’s forgotten he ever existed.
We fought, and I was awful to him and I resented him for a lot, but mostly I’m so thankful for the time that he was given just to live.
I forgive you. I’m sorry. Thank you. I love you, Daddy.

Saturday, July 4, 2020 – 9:18PM

I’m honestly so tired I can’t think of anything to write about (which seems like the standard way I start all my entries).
I slept all day yesterday, woke up early this morning expecting to feel rested but instead fought the same wave of exhaustion and came home in the middle of the afternoon to crawl into bed and take another long nap with all of my makeup on.
I woke up a few hours ago and remained in bed, marathoning my favorite show, but once I started season nine I promised myself I would write a few paragraphs before returning to that blissful state of non-existence. I hate being so tired all of the time, of not being able to fight this fatigue five cups of coffee in, of constantly rearranging my to-do list despite starting each day with the best intentions.
I’m trying to be kinder to myself, but I don’t know how to give my body what it needs and still accomplish all the things I’m juggling. I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t tired but I’m assuming this is what it means to be old; when being a night owl and proclaiming you could sleep when you’re dead was cool as a rebellious teenager but now as an exhausted adult all you want is to crawl back into bed for five more minutes, regardless of the admission of weakness.
I read online somewhere that we need to stop glamorizing over-work and that couldn’t be truer for any New Yorker and our hustle culture. We normalize exorbitant rent and multiple jobs as badges of our toughness and solidarity in our suffering that separates us from the soft-skinned others outside of our city, but in truth, it is a poor quality of life with little time to cultivate a safe space for sanity.
I’m existing in that safe space now, suspended from reality, a blissful restful short period of time where my biggest priority is that cultivation; and all I feel is tired.
But I owe it to myself to still show up, every day, no matter how tired I am, no matter how much my back hurts to the point where I keep checking to see if it’s bruised. I think about the future a lot. I do this thing where whenever I feel happy or sad, or just something that feels significant or fleeting, I try to consecrate every second of that moment, so I can relive it when it becomes a memory. Sometimes it’s something painful like rejection or a new tattoo, sometimes it’s something exciting like being in a play or celebrating a holiday; and I just picture myself on the other side of that moment, thinking to myself “Remember that time?”
Sometimes it makes me sad because doing this comes with the acknowledgement that everything is fleeting, sometimes it gives me strength in realizing that this too shall pass. Sometimes it keeps me from being truly present, but most of the time it reminds me how special and rare this moment is; however painful, however uncomfortable, however anxious, however regretful, however emotional, however beautiful, however short – and it reminds me to hold onto that for as long as I can.
I used to pride myself on my amazing memory, my ability to remember such minute details that it became almost legendary, but now I find myself grasping at fading details with a fogginess that makes me remorseful. I want to remember every detail of everything, even the moments that I claim I would rather forget.
Living in a foreign place makes this feeling all the more certain, the way that you have to travel to really absorb the experiences that can’t be gleaned through books, shows, or documentaries. There is a certain way the air smells, the sights and sounds, the colors, the language, the customs, the spices. I think about Ireland a lot and how much I miss it and how I wish I could remember more about the way the air smelled in a country that was perpetually damp and rainy.
I can’t believe I’ve been living in Bali for six months, or that time has gone by this quickly. I just got a notification on my phone about a photo memory taken “on this day” which is always a dangerous trapping from someone as nostalgic as I am. It was a photo I had taken on the beach in March, and it was startling to realize that I’ve been living here through three seasons in a way I hadn’t processed because time flows differently in a country with only the duality of a wet or dry season, when it rains almost every day regardless because of the humidity, when every day feels like summer and you’re stuck in quarantine.
I realize now my fear of the fleeting is rooted in my inability to remember everything, all the small details that are too easily glazed over in the big picture memories. But it’s the tiny details that makes these experiences so personal, so lived instead of relayed through an external source.
These things you would only know if you were here too.
I want to remember the constant kerosene smell from the village that seeps into the air and sticks to my clothes. I want to remember the smell of tropical sun-dried clothing that is so different from American dryers or the glass terrace I used in Korea. I want to remember the sounds of the ducks and the chickens and all the other birds I can’t recognize or name that wake up with me every morning. I want to remember the feel of the beating sun whenever I squint out into the patio and the beads of sweat that form on my body and trickle down my back and chest and forehead and neck. I want to remember the sound of the children playing, fighting, screaming, crying outside of my window in the courtyard below; the clanging of wooden spoon against metal pot as a makeshift toy. I want to remember all of the kites flying in the sky that accompany the clouds as far as the eye can see.
I want to remember the first time I stepped outside and felt breathless by the number of stars. I want to remember all of the bare feet, even on the street and in shops and on scooters; this jungle life with no need for any form of hindrance. I want to remember all of the stray dogs and the broken sidewalks with crumbling pavement and gaping holes I have to jump over on my morning runs like track hurdles. I want to remember every sunrise and sunset how different the sky looks every single day depending on whether or not it’s rained; sometimes completely obscured by clouds, sometimes pastel, and sometimes a fire-lit red.
Someday, when I’m stateside, all I will have are the memories that will grow foggier and foggier with every passing year. This time I’ve spent here that seems so long now will be a laughably short six months in the face of the rest of the life I’ve lived in proportion. Someday, when I’m on the other side of all of this, cuddling with my two cats on the couch, all I will have are the things I’ve written down to help me remember what life was like when I lived in Bali alone for half of a year.

Sunday, July 5, 2020 – 8:48PM

I spent the entire day in bed sleeping today. I think I slept maybe 12 hours on and off in the course of 4 naps and it’s almost nine o’clock so I’m forcing myself to write so I can get back to the tenth and final season of the show I’ve been marathoning all week. It’s hard to think of something worth writing about on days like these where life hasn’t really been lived but I start each day off with the same admission before finding something worth saying so I hope today will prove to be the same.
I think I’m too often discouraged or daunted by the immediate pressure I put on myself, but in forcing myself to work through the initial insecurity, I find that I surprise myself every time. There’s got to be a life lesson somewhere in there, right? Today was an extremely muggy day and I think it rained but I can’t be certain because I slept so much that I can’t discern between what was a half-lucid memory from what were my dreams. Even now there’s an oppressive heat emanating from the laptop and my body and the constant humidity, but I know it’ll be harder for me to sleep once I revert back to a life of clinical air conditioning and false conditions, a separation from the realities of nature with all of our American amenities.
I really miss my cats and I miss how uncomfortably I would sleep in my queen-sized bed with two fully-grown felines I was afraid to disturb because they slept so contentedly intertwined in my arms and ankles as I suffocated from the heat in an environment reminiscent of this one. Even now, I miss them most before bed when I have trouble falling asleep and I always expect them to appear from the corner of my eye when I trip over a black tee shirt on the ground or pee with the door open.
I think social distancing is difficult, especially in a foreign country alone, but I led a fairly hermetic lifestyle prior to the pandemic and I got through it with the company of my cats. Being alone, truly alone, has led me to realize that I don’t thrive off of solitude as much as I used to – that my former independence in traveling alone, living alone, eating and watching movies and going to museums alone, has fallen away to a kind of absence I’ve never felt before. That sometimes memories are richer and food tastes better when you share them with someone.
I always want to be alone even when I’m with people, constantly in my own head instead of fully present, so I’m sure I’ll feel the same escapism kick in when I’m surrounded by the white noise and foot traffic of other people living their lives around me, but right now the streets are empty and my apartment is silent and sometimes I go weeks without talking to another person out loud and my own voice sounds foreign to me when I order coffee or say “Excuse me.”
I feel really physically exhausted this week, with a fatigue in my bones I can’t seem to shake, but I also feel really tired of trying to go about living my life so independently. I’ve taken care of myself for a really long time, guarded my own back, watched my own belongings, carried my own bags, and as a result, my arms and legs were covered in bruises. I watched other travelers, interacting with their loved ones, and realized that life doesn’t have to be this hard all the time.
I come to this realization every so often, but always revert to solitude when the time comes to bite the bullet. There’s always this wall I erect that I can’t seem to dismantle whenever I try to be more vulnerable and open. Maybe confessing my innermost thoughts regularly is a projection of the intimacy I haven’t been able to access in my day to day life, or maybe writing every day is simply to hone my craft.
Either way, something about the way I’ve been living isn’t working for me anymore and the jaded, bitter, independent woman with too much eyeliner and a grudge against relationships would laugh in the face of the softened, traditional woman that’s emerging. But I’m learning to love the soft parts of myself, to nurture the flesh under the hardened edges. I want to admit when I’m lonely and yearning instead of pretending that what worked for me at 18 is still emotionally viable a decade later. I might be getting old, but I’m also finally growing up.
Now time to get back to my cartoons, peace.

Monday, July 6, 2020 – 4:48PM

I’m not even sure what day it is anymore because of how much I’ve been sleeping. Just woke up from my inevitable nap and am knocking out my entry of the day before I lose any more motivation. I couldn’t get out of bed today regardless of my three cups of coffee and I’m still yawning as I write this. We’ll see how tomorrow goes, especially since I am on the final episode of my favorite show and with that inevitable feeling of emptiness, I’ll also find a renewed will to live.
Self-isolation is tricky because the Balinese government has been operating on denial and downplay since the onset of the pandemic, prioritizing the tourist trade and insisting that Bali has been spared by the gods despite one of the original contractors of the disease having vacationed and visited yoga studios here.
The numbers were manipulated through a willful lack of testing, only two cases being confirmed for months as Western tourists who had contracted the disease prior to vacationing in Bali, and none of the reported numbers made sense in relation to the statistics recorded by the rest of the world.
People here still vacationed, partied, congregated, and went on with their lives while the rest of the world was in lockdown and it felt like I was the only one taking self-isolation seriously until recently when denial was no longer a viable platform and face masks where finally implemented. Recently, there was a group of white tourists congregating at a yoga studio, packed elbow to elbow with no face masks and singing hymns as though their actions were ‘saving’ the island instead of putting the whole delicate island community in jeopardy. Once criticized by the local Balinese community, the yoga studio lied about the event before eventually “apologizing” through an Instagram post about forgiveness.
This recent occurrence summarizes everything I hate about pseudo-yogi’s, their lack of accountability and validation of entitlement, and why I refuse to go outside. I vacillate back and forth on my self-righteousness and my self-criticism because this is my fourth day in a row spent napping in a delirium. This is the only week I’ve documented my day to day, but I can’t help but wonder how many weeks of the past six months I’ve spent sleeping in and avoiding the sun.
I feel as vitamin deficient as I did when I was bedridden with an injury in the winters of New York City. The foundation I bought after tanning into a nice golden brown upon my arrival in March is now far too dark so I’m back to the porcelain shade I bought back in Korea. I joked to my sister that I look more like a Victorian spinster than someone who has spent the past six months in the tropics.
How much of my self-isolation is out of an effort to stay safe on an island with limited healthy resources and inefficient policies to contain a terrifying pandemic, never mind a population of entitled tourists refusing to prioritize the health of the locals and their neighbors? How much of my isolation is derived from an increased social anxiety after six months of solitude, like a modern-day Emily Dickinson?
Sometimes I push myself to go on long walks, morning runs, explore the jungle in the summer sun. Then I’m beset with creepy old men, idiots yelling and honking incessantly on passing scooters until I clench my fists and tell myself, “Never again.”
Some businesses I walk to are closed without regularity or warning, others don’t bother practicing social-distancing. Sometimes I spend weeks in my apartment and wonder how the rest of the world is living. Am I doing this right? Am I being as healthy as possible or promoting the worst qualities in myself? Will I regret this six months from now when I look back at my time here and only remember the four walls of my apartment in Bali? Maybe some of my self-righteous anger is misdirected envy at the people with the capability and the company to live their lives while I remain holed up in my Victorian tower.
But then I read the news almost daily about the second wave of the pandemic spiking due to the same idiots congregating, partying, and barbecuing on the beach and I tell myself I’m doing the right thing.
I’ll go for a morning run and a few long walks this week and check back in.

Tuesday, July 7, 2020 – 4:17PM

Today I woke up with good intentions, had a delicious Balinese breakfast at 7AM, then fell back asleep until exactly 3:30PM. My mom says my ability to sleep most of my life away is legendary, like how could there possibly be more sleep left to be had within me? Sometimes, on my visits home, she sends my sister to check if I’m still breathing. I think often of that 24-hour sleep marathon and how easily I could win.
Upon getting out of bed, I took a quick shower because my head was still full of my last lucid dream – a girl in a black nightgown in the countryside locked up in her home because her father was an alcoholic but it was her sixteenth birthday so the villagers gathered with a trampoline under her window so she could sneak outside and have the celebration she deserved while her father was out on a bender.
All of my dreams always feel so real and I need to be better about journaling them the minute I wake up instead of hours later, when minute details like the color of the bedroom walls or certain snippets of conversation are still fresh in my head. After my shower, I was stepping out of the bathroom; separated from the living area with a single marble step rather than a full staircase, when I slipped and fell and felt stricken by a fear I’ve retained since my spinal injury two years ago.
I’ve fallen a lot since I’ve moved to Bali – a fact which makes my friends and family both exasperated and worried. I’ve rolled my ankle and fallen into traffic on a morning run, I’ve smashed my knee into the bedpost doing at-home workouts, and I’ve slipped on the marble floors twice in one day when the torrential rain seeped into my bedroom and I was too lazy to clean it and suffered the consequences of my procrastination with brittle bone against hard marble in succession.
Every time I fall, I swear everything moves in slow motion – like when people say your life flashes before your eyes or that time I took my expensive porcelain doll on a picnic outside and dropped it onto the concrete sidewalk. You just see everything with such clarity, however briefly, and all you can do in that moment is act on a split second granted to you before the impact hits and everything shatters. Every time I slip and fall, I consciously choose to fall forward, onto my knees and ankles instead of falling backward like I used to (so many banana-peel falls in my lifetime).
So, I fell forward as the towel slipped from underneath my feet and I saw the marble step rising to meet me and I tucked my leg under my body as a buffer between stone and tailbone and winced as I felt the crunching impact. Everything hurt so badly I couldn’t scream or cry out and hobbled to the bed and buried my face into the mattress to absorb my shock and the waves of reverberating pain that flooded my body after the initial adrenaline rush delay.
Even now as I write this, my ankle is propped up on a pillow and my body is pulsing with a pain I’m doing my best to ignore. My tattoo artist likened my pain tolerance to a legendary spy-master, saying I must have saved Korea in a past life by remaining unwavering even through the worst torture tactics, and it’s something I think about often on the days my clumsy inclinations betray me and I’m lying in bed nursing yet another ugly bruise or bloody injury.
There are parallel raised welts from ankle to knee in perfect placement of where stone met skin, in the same way I had horizontal marks down the length of my back when I fell down the stairs two years ago. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: stairs are my lifelong enemy. My ankle is worse, swollen and blackened with a bleeding bruise the size of my palm. I think the saddest part – as I fell in a panic, praying I wouldn’t break it – was that my only thought was: “I wish I wasn’t alone.”
I’m not going to sugarcoat it, this is a bad injury. I can’t bear any weight on my right side. But according to the local bonesetter, it’s fractured at worst, not broken. I don’t need to go to the hospital in the middle of the jungle in the midst of a pandemic and I don’t need to travel on crutches while wandering a foreign country alone. I will check in again tomorrow, but I can’t help but feel frustrated at putting my run and yoga on hold when I’m already quarantined in this tiny space and felt trapped in my body for so long even before all of this. Maybe if I hadn’t slept so much, if I wasn’t in bed until 3PM at this exact moment, I wouldn’t have fallen, and it’s a thought I can’t stop myself from having.
I’m so sick of this cycle of breaking and healing. I promised my mother I would be more careful, having grown up with a permanent collection of bruised knees and skinned elbows. I collected each scar proudly, like a lightning bug in a jar, embracing my clumsiness as a definitive part of my personality. It wasn’t until I broke my first bone, spent two years in bed, and still feel the ramifications of my injury that I took my battered body seriously. I don’t understand how other women are so graceful, so light on their feet and assured in their movements while I come barreling in, breathless and sweaty like an unbroken puppy. I’m constantly tripping, falling, stumbling, awkward and unsure of my movements and fidgeting in a way that drives my mom crazy. It’s like the thoughts in my head translate into my trembling hands and shaky knees and I can’t ever stay still or silent.
My body hurts, and I won’t allow myself to feel the pain fully or give into the urge to cry. My doctor was shocked when he learned I had been working for a full week before finally getting x-rayed and realizing the extent of my injury. He prescribed me the strongest painkillers and shook his head in disbelief at my audacity, in the same way my tattoo artist couldn’t comprehend how I didn’t let out a single sound in our forty-eight-hour session. I don’t know why pain has become a part of my daily complex, an innate part of my composition instead of an unnatural phenomenon. Somehow, from bruised knees it’s come to this, the robbing of weakness even when my bones are broken and ignoring my own pain signals.
It’s okay to be weak, it’s okay to be in pain, it’s okay to ask for help, it’s okay to be vulnerable, it’s okay to feel lonely.
Life doesn’t have to be all hard edges and gritted teeth.
Let’s still work on the clumsiness though, that’s a problem.