just a guy trying to figure things out

when my dad took his life, we took all the paperwork that accumulated over months of phone calls and office visits and filed it away in a box that's sat in my closet in my childhood home for the last decade-plus. on a recent visit home, I went through the box in hopes of finding a copy of his passport for my application for dual citizenship (more on that in a future post). I didn't actually find it, but unfortunately uncovered artifacts from that time, the most painful time of my entire life, dredging suppressed memories to the surface.

I read the police report for the first time since I was a teenager - they listed out the possessions found with my father's body, including a suicide note, which they noted had a translation attached. I flipped the page and there it was - a handwritten note, in my own handwriting, translating my father's suicide note. in the pile of shards of memories of that fateful day, this was only a small fragment - it likely took me less than a few minutes to write down the translation, evidenced by the way I chose to write it out in abbreviated bullet points. but something in me broke, thinking about how, as a teenager, I was suddenly stripped of the last remnants of childhood. learning what a 401k was because I had to figure out how to log into my dad's account and transfer ownership to my mom. figuring out how to pay off all his credit cards and close the accounts. and translating the suicide note for the police, the most painful instance of the child-of-immigrants experience.

my sister was our family's rock during this time - her anger fueled her to try and get everything done quickly, and she doled out responsibilities to keep ourselves occupied, and her church arranged meal trains so we didn't have to lift a finger to nourish ourselves - the only thing we needed to do was check on her and make sure she was eating and drinking water. but even in the darkness, there was still light - nights where we finally got our mom to sleep and we snuck around the house for late night snacks, giggling just like when we were kids. my sister reminded me of the values our parents instilled in us, making sure I brewed and served tea in the teaser we saved for company, as she picked and sliced the ripest oranges and neatly arranged them in a spiral.

it's not her fault that my mom clung so tightly to her, and cast me to the side. before my sister left to go home, my mom planned a big family dinner to thank everyone for their support during that difficult time - everyone except me. I was commanded around like a child, condescended and belittled, as she lauded praise on my sister in front of our relatives. I have to remind myself constantly that as an emotionally immature parent, she didn't (and doesn't) understand the impact of her words and actions. and as it has been my entire life, I have to tell myself that my own mother loves me - just less than she loves the idea of being a mother, dreaming of having obedient children to reflect her adeptness at child-rearing.

entering into this year, something within me felt different. when reflecting upon the hectic, travel-filled year I had last year, it almost feels like I don't recognize that person - that's how different my energy is now. I'm not one to put a lot of stock into the significance of New Years as a marker, but given that 2 months has passed and my brain still hasn't reverted, I'm taking a cautious approach with my outlook for the near future.

suffice it to say, I've felt an extreme level of detachment and disengagement from life. since COVID hit, I've lost (and have yet to regain) my passion for my hobbies, and even dropped out of grad school. I had hoped that having school off my plate would give me room to discover myself and what I want to do with my life, but it's now 2024 and I somehow feel even more adrift than ever.

it's hard to articulate what exactly feels different now. I feel more focused and maybe like I'm coming out of a fog, but there is still an acute sadness, and a fear that I'm slowly destroying myself with no vision of who I want to be or where I want to go.

I'll probably write a separate post for each of these topics, but I guess this will help me organize the jumble of thoughts in my head:

uncovering a suppressed memory from right after my dad's suicide that l realized likely has deeper implications than I thought

for the first time, in my 30s, developing feelings and attraction for someone else, and trying to navigate what that means

uncertainty of what keeps me here - if I got laid off, I'd probably pack up and leave. but is the job I have now worth staying for even if I survive yet another round of tech layoffs?

the pursuit of dual citizenship and taking steps toward improving my connection with my roots. when the future feels uncertain, I look to the past - for better or worse.

the path toward self (re)discovery - to continue with my hobbies or try new ones?

Is blogging still a thing? Casting my stream of consciousness via text into the void? For anyone who's still here, I sincerely hope you're all well, and that, in some way, me sharing some thoughts may help you feel less alone.

I spent the majority of the pandemic living with my mom. No, this was not intentional or planned - I had gone home the first week of March to attend a wedding, that ended up being cancelled when the world shut down. While I laugh about it now, I was operating under the naive thought that we'd be working from home for just a few weeks and then I'd be on my merry way back to the life I've set up for myself. It goes without saying that none of that happened - I ended up in my childhood home for nearly 18 months, and my mental health reached new lows, as I struggled with finding fulfillment in life while doing nothing and feeling myself regress back into my anxiety-ridden curmudgeonly shell that I had worked so hard to break out of. I'll be honest - my relationship with my mom has not recovered, she does not know why, and I don't have the mental or emotional capacity to try and navigate a conversation with her about feelings and trauma.

That sentiment of complete emptiness and worthlessness did end up propelling me to the realization that I had spent my entire life living for my parents, and living up to the image and narrative that was set up for me, to my own decay - that I had internalized this mindset without even realizing it. There I was, working more than I ever had in the last 5 years, pushing myself to please everyone at work, while juggling a part time masters at my parents' "dream school" for me that I did not even really want, all in the vain hopes of making my parents proud. The thrill of the chase finally collapsed, and I felt nothing after each accomplishment and step toward the goals I had propped up for myself.

After months of struggling, and countless therapy sessions, it came screeching to a half - the realization that it didn't matter what I achieved, I would never be able to change my mom and feel emotionally supported, but I also had been so emotionally starved that I would not be able to accept it. That in my head, I knew she would always be proud of me, but nothing I do would undo the years of emotional repression and withholding as a child, and that I can't change the past. And even if I could, it would not make me happy to continue serving everyone else's needs but my own. I put an indefinite pause on that masters and allowed myself to unabashedly take some time for myself - except I got back to my home, and I didn't feel better. In some ways, I actually felt emptier than before.

Like many others in my circles, Everything Everywhere All at Once has been at the front of my mind ever since I saw it. Like Joy, I felt unsupported and unaccepted for who I was, and like a disappointment for what I did not live up to. Like Joy, I'm also feeling like nothing matters, like I could search the ends of the universe and never find happiness. As life starts to resume and pick back up, I find myself withdrawing and almost recoiling - nothing feels the same as it used to, and it feels like I'm just going through the motions. I know I need some more time to figure things out, but for right now it feels like there's this enormity of the rest of my life ahead of me, all the opportunities, and I just want to run away from it all.

I don't have anything poignant to end on, but I did enjoy this quote from a review of EEAAO:

"Everything Everywhere All at Once" doesn't reject nihilism as a philosophy. Rather, it promotes a more optimistic, humanist nihilism. Instead of "nothing matters, so why bother?" it says "Nothing matters, unless you decide that it does."

I probably don’t have the time to spare to write this, but I knew I needed to get it out there, to manifest it, to remember it. This won’t be very good or even sensical, but I need to process this.

Growing up, I would always remember my dreams. Strange, fantastical, futuristic dreams that had no clear beginning or end, no clear linear story. Dreams of flying, of being a crime-fighting superhero, of aliens and spaceships. As I started getting older, the dreams started getting darker. Dreams of falling, of my teeth falling out (I still get these), running but not moving anywhere.

Weeks before my dad passed, I had a dream of a mass shooting at a zoo. The dream ended as the shooter found me in the penguin exhibit and shot me point blank. Despite what people say, I did not immediately wake up, nor did I die in real life because I died in the dream. Instead, I astral projected (Jackie Chan Adventures style) and witnessed the events continue to unfurl from an omniscient point of view. I eventually woke up and thought nothing of it...until weeks later and I confided in my mom, who, in her grief, told me I should have sensed the dream meant something and that I should have known something was wrong.

I never told my mom about any of my dreams after that.

Yesterday, I dreamed of a “what if” universe. My father was still alive, we were still living in the same house, only it looked the way it did before we had enough money to remodel. He was still young, the anger still lurking beneath the surface. I suddenly remembered how careful I had to be around him sometimes, and I remembered that I inherited my ability to hide my emotions and my pain from him. Something was wrong - where was mom? How old am I in this dream?

I got a call from my mom - he demanded to know if it was her. I lied and said it was a robo call. Looking around, the pieces slowly started coming together - the house in disarray, the broken glass on the ground, the redness in my dad’s face. Suddenly, it dawned upon me why I was there - I didn’t live there anymore. I was there to get something - and I needed to get out. The man I’ve wished I could see just one more time, staring me right in the face - and I needed him out of my life all over again. Lying to his face, reassuring him that I was on his side, while texting my mom with my hand in my pocket - a bit ironic, since it was always the other way around when I was young. With his guard down, I began sneaking around, I gathered my mom’s things and prepared to run to the car and escape, when -- suddenly, one of my young nephews appeared. The moment I had always wished to see - my dad as a grandpa, and I had to get him as far away as possible. My heart lurched - I scooped up my nephew with one arm, bags in the other, and raced to the car. My dad quickly heard and burst through the garage door, ready to move heaven and hell to “protect” his family.

The thought of the perpetuation of trauma that I lived through, passing onto the next generation in my nephew, is too much to bear. It’s been enough pain for a lifetime already. I spent the rest of the day drowning myself in mindless tv and sleeping.

in the summer of 2007, my sister moved away from home for the first time and made the 7 hour drive to her new home with her husband. one week later, i waited for her as she made the drive back, following the news of our father’s suicide.

after commemorating the 10 year anniversary of his death back home, i made that same 7 hour drive back to work, back to real life. and just like it was 10 years ago, i received the news that around 4:30am, my grandmother had passed. this time, it was my turn to turn back around and drive home, so prepared to move on but being called back home.

i’m sad. of course i’m sad. but i tell myself everything that i want to hear - “she’s no longer suffering” “she passed comfortably in her home, surrounded by all of her children (minus my dad) “she lived a full life”

i will be the first to admit that i wasn’t very close to my grandma after she moved our of my childhood home and i began to lose my grasp on the only language that bonded us. i visited a few times a year and still knew how to keep basic conversation. but that’s life and i don’t feel guilty about it; instead, i just feel this vast hollowness, as if her death has echoed and reverberated the emptiness from my father’s death, the meaninglessness of some parts of my life and that yearning for something...different.

my boss and team have voiced their support, yet i still feel this guilt for taking any time off or being away from work. i have so much on my plate and i’ve been working mornings before spending time with my family because i’m trying so hard to climb the ladder and not let this compromise all my hard work. it’s draining me of my energy and all i want to do is quit and find another job that energizes me again. “you’re still paying your dues,” i tell myself. “you worked so hard to get here and you’re willing to let it go, just like that?” i tell myself that it’ll all pay off if i just try harder now. but i’m starting to wonder about what i want. is it selfish that all i can think about is the impact this is having on me?

i reflected during my father’s 10 year anniversary that i’ve been able to achieve nearly everything i had ever hoped for for myself. i checked almost everything off my list in just 10 years...and now i don’t know where to go from here. there is only one item left on the list...but i don’t know if the list was even valid to begin with. maybe this is the next step - figuring out what’s important to me and going from there; to stop making lists and start doing.

“Focus,” I whisper faintly under my breath. The conductor announces my stop and the train creeps to a crawl as my campus slowly emerges into view. I step off the train and take a few steps - “fuck,” I say to myself, checking my watch - missed breakfast again. I tell myself I’ll start getting to work earlier, knowing full well this promise will fly out the window tomorrow morning once again. My brain recalculates and brings me to my building instead of the cafeteria, muscle memory leading my hand as it grabs my badge and scans in. I climb the stairs to my floor, pausing in front of the door. My hand rests on the doorknob and I catch my reflection in the window. “Focus,” I utter again. I take a breath and perk up my face, hoping to hide how tired I am, how tired I’ve been.

I sweep past the desks and drop off my backpack before heading to the kitchen to pour myself a bowl of cereal. I peer through the fridge doors until my eyes settle on my milk of choice (non-fat lactose-free). I uncork it and invert it over my bowl - damn, almost out. My hands gently rock the carton around, as I gauge whether whatever’s left is enough for the next person. I conclude it is, with probably 70% accuracy (I didn’t inherit my dad’s gift of estimation) and place it back in its icy fortress. I grab a spoon and head back to my desk, where I pretend to answer emails while wolfing down my cereal while it’s still crunchy, ignoring the milk carton and reassuring myself that I’m not a bad person.

(439). I have never had so many unread work emails in my life. I whittle it down to 402, realizing how many useless emails I had “saved” for a later time, only to realize they were no longer important. Looking around, my eyes breathe in the life I had once dreamed for myself. It was everything I could have ever hoped for, and landing here was beyond even my wildest dreams - the dream that I had been so afraid to tell anyone. And now I was there - now, I am here.

So...what’s next?

I search my calendar, hoping to find the answer to that question, knowing that it won’t help. I end up clicking forward to my vacation. It’s beautiful - the entire week is blue, completely blocked off as a visual and visceral “leave me the fuck alone.”

I look outside the window, as my brain crunches some calculations - 5 more weeks until vacation. Have I become one of those office drones? A tech bro? I shake my head and reassure myself of the plan: work for another year and a half and save up money for my second masters - getting a promo would help with that. Finish my masters while working, then maybe Ph.D. Maybe. Maybe after that, I’ll make a difference. Maybe then I’ll be happy.

I half-jokingly told a colleague that my restlessness is my tragic flaw.

They didn’t know what that was, and poked fun at me for my apparent obscure reference and penchant for reading.

one day, i’ll learn my lesson and stop planning vacations with a minimum of 3 countries and 7 flights. maybe i’ll actually be able to feel rested and ease back into work, rather than lie in bed, attempting to fall asleep and wanting to change everything in my life.

there’s a lot i want to catch up on, but one thing that’s been lingering on my mind is the idea of feeling detached and drifting.

lately, i’ve been feeling incredibly detached- from my surroundings, from my work, and somehow, from my own life. i feel like who i am as a person is not the same as the life i’m living- like my brain controls what i say and what i do and commands my actions, but i don’t really mean any of it or want to do any of it. everything feels cold and calculated, mainly because it’s what i had to do to prove myself and prove all my doubters wrong. it’s what i had to do to rack up my list of accomplishments. but now that i’ve been able to cross off nearly everything on my list of goals, i’m left wondering what is next. i buried so much of myself when i was 18 to try and survive, to make something of myself that now that i’ve accomplished beyond what i had hoped for myself, i don’t really know who i am anymore or what i want, even.

it’s scary because i’ve had huge issues fitting in since i was 18. i applied for  a transfer in my second year of college because i was pretty miserable, but couldn’t go through with it even though i got into my best friend’s school. i switched grad schools 1 month before i was set to move and had to back out of my lease and scramble to find a new place (these were completely different programs too). switched jobs nearly every single year after graduating, feeling like i left and nobody knew who i was. it’s unfortunate my last job spiraled into hell because the first year i was there was everything i could have hoped for. i might be working for my dream company now, but i’m starting to think that maybe i’m not meant to work at a cushy job- maybe i need that pressure, that stress and instability. i’m still working through things, but it’s alarming that 3 months in and i still find myself missing my old coworkers and my old boss this much. maybe i need to try harder to anchor myself so i’m not floating around from job to job, from existence to existence. i just cannot imagine myself staying put for more than a few years at a time without losing my mind. it’s been 3 months and i’m already trying to look for what’s next.

when i first started here, some of the interns set up meetings with me to get career advice - apparently it’s incredibly rare to make it to my department at this company at my age. i almost laughed because i still have no idea what i’m doing.

Lol what why does this sound like someone I know...

for anyone still active and reading, i haven’t given up on this blog. been learning a lot about myself and the anomaly that is my life in the past few months. longer series of catch-up posts to come, but to give a sample of how trash my life is right now:

- lying in bed in a blanket burrito, listening to book club audible book at 2x to try and finish in time for my team’s book club lunch tomorrow. i had 2 months to read and i did not even try. and i am not paying attention as i type this.

- 3 different TV shows open on my computer, all paused in the middle of random episodes.

- unfinished (AND LATE) email drafts to my references sitting idly in inactive tabs amongst the 30 tabs of possible programs (yes i am running away from my problems by applying to grad school again)

- dress rehearsal for orchestra tomorrow and i have neither practiced nor bound my music. i am a fantastic asst concertmaster.

- i need to relearn russian for a chorus performance with the city symphony in the spring and my russian book is on the floor for some reason.

- my work phone let out a whimper because i haven’t charged it in 3 days and it’s about to die.

- absentee ballot STILL not completely filled out (this is probably the most pressing tbh) and sitting on top of a pile of unread mail from my investment whatever and 401k whatever (this is what i get for selling my soul and working in tech).

- I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT

i landed a job at my dream company.

work had been getting much better and i was starting to manage people...and then suddenly, one fateful afternoon i stepped out of a meeting to take a phone call that would change everything.

i’m worried though. self-doubt slowly digging its fingernails into my head, worried that the confident version of myself i presented in my interviews has faded. 

i’m leaving for what is essentially a 2 week long trip bookended by work conferences in about...4 hours. this first one is just me and my new VP (who is one of the worst team leaders i’ve ever worked with) and i have to smile and pretend like i didn’t just get through to the final round at my dream company and am on the cusp of leaving the company to follow in my old boss’ footsteps. deep breaths.

afterwards i am finally, FINALLY taking my trip to europe. my asian parents never let us go to europe on family trips growing up because they were afraid of pickpockets. and here we are in america with donald trump running for president - i’m pretty sure that’s scarier than any pickpocket. but i digress. also can i just say i love technology and credit cards with no international fees and unlocked cell phones and cloud services?

and then i’m flying straight from europe to another conference. at which point i may very well have been offered my dream job at my dream company. time to put on a show for everyone.

so looking back at my old posts, the last major update was around october. that was basically my hell month, waking up every day with stress headaches shooting up my neck, spending all my free time and every ounce of energy outside of work focused on music. i have no idea how i used to do this (and more) back in high school. i guess age is starting to catch up to me. all told, i survived juggling the countless rehearsals with crazy-intense work deadlines, pulled off 4 concerts (including the world premiere of my friend’s composition for piano) on 3 different instruments. but at the end of it all, the fact that i felt more relieved that everything was over rather than the normal satisfaction of a performance well done signaled to me that although i may try really hard to maintain the high school image of me as this crazy renaissance man, it’s not worth sacrificing my sanity for. so i dropped out of the professional chorus and cut down on gigs for piano and chamber work.

but now that everything is in the winter lull, i’ve been feeling kind of empty. lots of changes happening at work, and i’ve been purposely left out of some major discussions to the point where coworkers are asking me why i’m not involved...and it kind of stings a little to work as hard as i do and not have anything really change. but i’m still young and there’s plenty of time to make a name for myself. it just won’t be as fast as other people’s i guess. curse the competitive streak in me.

i made some vietnamese coffee with it today, and it reminded me so much of him. i started drinking coffee when i was only 9- it started off as my dad making his coffee before work and letting me mix the condensed milk in. he’d let me lick the chopstick after and that was when it all started- drinking coffee starting at a young age (and vietnamese coffee at that) gave me extremely high caffeine tolerance, which still plagues me today. but sipping on that delicious coffee, using the same filter he used to use, listening to the drizzling rain outside...i finally felt a sense of peace i haven’t had in years.

sorry for the lack of updates. despite the fact that it’s summer, it’s been pretty crazy so i’ll just jot down a few notable things

- boss and i started using a project management software to log hours and it’s a reality shock seeing my actual hours per week being calculated (breaching 70 hours a week now but can’t stop, won’t stop.)

- the heads of my department selected me to receive a quarterly spot bonus for all the long hours worked. that made me feel better about being overlooked for award vouchers (bonus > gift cards).

- my boss and i are officially harvey and mike from suits. i brought this up to him in a joking (but hoping he’d take it seriously) matter and it blew his mind and he started telling other people. what is my life, even? how can things possibly have worked out this well?

- busy busy busy at work. it’s hit the point where my boss is actively discouraging other people from contacting me for fear that i might lose my mind from stress. fortunately, my hard work has paid off- we will be looking to add a second person to our team soon! (and i’ll finally get a minion haha)

- orchestra started and i’ve been bumped up a stand. just one seat away from being assistant principal!

- my audition was successful and i will be joining a professional chorus in my county in a few months.

- i joined a string quartet that will double as a piano quartet since i play piano too.

- i started learning russian.