#micromemoir

Hi!

My name is Ace O’Brien and my pronouns are he/him/his. I’m a creative writing student in New York. I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember, and I really want to make a little online home for all my work!

I’m only 20 years old and I still have a lot to learn, but that won’t stop me from writing about everything I know! I focus mainly in poetry, but I’m rapidly drifting towards memoir/micro-memoir style writing. One of my current WIPs is an illustrated memoir called “Ant Brain,” which delves into my experiences with my own mental health. I know, that’s a lot of writing about me, but I think everyone has a story to tell, so I’ll do my best to tell it!

I have been dreams of one day being a best-selling author, but for right now, I’m a caffeine-fueled college student sharing my work with you!

Name: Claudia Age: 63 Occupation: Retired Journalist

HOMECOMING

My mom, Lore Feldman, grew up in the shadow of Adolf Hitler and the hatred he spewed. In 1935, she and other Jewish children in Ulm, Germany were kicked out of exercise clubs, off sports teams and out of swimming pools. In 1936, the same children who were ordered to the back of their classrooms, pelted with rocks on the way to school, were eventually expelled altogether. In 1937, when she was 14, her widowed mother had the wisdom and wherewithal to grab her children and flee to the United States. Mom hated talking about Germany. It seemed the subject was always closed. So when the invitation to attend a synagogue dedication in Ulm arrived in the mail, we all knew there was no way she was going to go. The trip was all-expenses-paid for the city’s Holocaust survivors; it was to be Ulm’s first new temple in 74 years. The old one had been torched during 1938’s Kristallnacht. Then everything changed with a phone call from a beloved niece who was also making the trip. That evening, Mom told me she wanted to take the transAtlantic journey. She wanted to see Ulm and her German relatives one last time. That was when we-- her children, son-in-law, and grandson-- realized, we were all going to Europe. At 89 years old, my mom used a walker and struggled with Parkinson’s. She was fragile. Still, she was able to let her anxiety wash away and gain renewed strength for the journey. When we got off the train and she saw the station from her childhood, she wept. Before the dedication, we visited the Christmas market where we ate foot-long sausages and washed them down with mugs of hot gluhwein. We listened to a lecture from historian Dr. Nicola Wenge. She talked about how Hitler came to power in January 1933. That March, Nazis occupied Ulm’s city hall. That November, some area Jews were arrested and tossed in an early concentration camp. “We do this work,” she said, “so it never happens again.” Several branches of our family came together in Ulm from different corners of the U.S. and Germany. Various combinations of us seemed to have the same feet, or the same wrinkles, or the same love for ridiculous knit caps and cool German shoes. I wouldn’t say that my mom unpacked all the pain after so many years. But she was better after the trip. I think she realized that her many fears about the visit didn’t come true. She had more stamina, more strength, more hope for the future than she thought. When we got back, she actually started talking to us about Germany. And I got the sense that the words no longer burned her throat.

So I started writing for his blog. I crafted each piece very carefully, because I wanted to impress all the other writers that contributed. One was a professional sci-fi author. Another was a chemical engineer. Another was a parent and teacher from the man’s community. And then there was a young woman with flowing brown hair who wrote poetry. And a mousy young woman who wrote about tech. And mousy young me. 

My blog posts got positive attention. I spent a lot of time in the comment sections, interacting with the other writers and the blog’s devoted readers. I had a few conference calls with the man who ran the blog and the chemical engineer. I’d sit in the parking lot of Giant Eagle grocery, on my tiny cell phone, in my mom’s car, chatting with them for an hour or more about the Bush administration. It was mostly pretty cool. 

I turned 18 and went to college. He invited me to go with him to a conference about journalism in the digital age. I almost did. My mom told me to lie to my grandparents about it, to not let them no. At the last moment, I decided not to go. It was too scary. 

I kept writing. The summer when I started working on his blog, I would spend an hour or two drafting a piece in longhand on a legal pad while sitting on my mom’s porch. Then I’d re-read it and carefully transcribe it in Word, looking up references and links to add. Then I’d pour over it and fixing any phrase I found too informal, and restructured my arguments so they flowed and progressed better. I wrote several posts a week, and stressed out over each of them. 

By the end of my first year of college, I was writing less frequently and more carelessly. I had other things to care about. Then I stopped doing it altogether. I was too wrapped up in my relationship, and too busy with school, work, grad school applications. The internet was changing. Everyone was on social media instead of distinct blogs. I read a lot of Digg and things like that. 

I moved to Chicago. The man with the blog came to visit. We met downtown and he gave me a really slow gentle hug, like an old hippie. We walked through the park and he took photos of the skyline. He told me about sex problems he was having with his wife. I felt uncomfortable. I was 21. He and his wife hadn’t had sex in years and he was living in a separate room of the house, “like a monk”. He strained to say nice things about her -- he settled on mentioning that she cooked their children very healthy food -- but then went back to bemoaning his situation. 

I gave him advice. He was 50 by then. I was 21. I told him some regurgitated Dan Savage-inspired crap about how in some cases cheating is not the worst thing a person can do. That if he was going crazy, he should tell his wife that it wasn’t a tenable situation. That he needed to be allowed to be nonmonogamous in his non-sexual marriage, or he’d need to break up. 

He kept talking about how hard it was. How he wasn’t even picky. He would be with anyone about his age who wasn’t obese, he said. He was a very thin man and used to write lots of journal articles about his struggles with ice cream and his dieting philosophy. I let the comment slide at the time. I think the misogyny of it bothered me more, then, than the fat phobia, which was a personal failing on my part. He was just looking for a woman to fill a gap in his life and she needed to fit certain parameters of acceptability and that was that. He did mention she had to be halfway smart, though. 

I kept a substantial physical distance from him the whole night. It was the same thing I did with my dissertation adviser, who once yelled at me over it: “I’m not going to bite you!” These men were my dead dad’s age and they were just as invasive, unwittingly, obliviously; so much so they’d be mad if you made them realize it. Maybe the man with the blog wasn’t like that, I don’t know. He was gentle, but I was still scared. 

He invited me to his hotel room to see the view. I felt awful walking through the lobby with him, I could feel people’s eyes on us. I wondered what everyone thought. I am sure he didn’t think a thing of it. We got in the elevator alone. There was a TV playing CNN in the elevator. He and I traded some words about conspicuous consumption. His hotel room was on the top floor. 

He urged me to go in before him. He told me to go to the window to see the view. He locked the door behind me. He turned the lights out. I was consumed with dread. All these years and this was how it was going to happen.

And nothing happened. He stood far away from me, by the door, and said “Look at that view. Don’t you think I’m a king in a castle? Or at least a prince?” and I stammered out a few awkward words about uh, yeah, look at that. And he turned the lights on. On his bed was a spread of manila folders. A court case he wanted to show me about. He was a lawyer and he fought exploitative cash advance places in St.Louis. He showed me a few court documents and I pretended to be impressed with all the good he’d done. 

Sometime later he divorced his wife and started seeing a thin, blonde woman his age who loved to travel and smile for photographs. I’m sure she loves sharing hotel rooms with him and seeing the world. He stopped messaging me at some point. His daughter goes to a school in my town but he never wants to meet up when he comes by to visit. Probably because I rebuffed him so many times, and so dishonestly, every time after that. I always was too busy to see him. Just as I was always too busy to write for the blog. 

He told me, on that visit, that there was nobody in the world who knew him as well as I did. I felt like I barely knew him at all. I’d read his blog. I knew how he felt about politics and that he preferred the term “human animals” to “human beings” and that he cut his hair with a Flow-bee, but I didn’t know him. And even then I thought asking a 21-year-old for live advice at age 50 was fucked up and sad. 

I don’t think he set out to take advantage of me or make me scared. He just didn’t see the power and safety differential between us, created by the differences in our age and levels of life experience. He presumed I was more emotionally mature than it was reasonable to assume I was at 21 years old. He placed far too much responsibility on me by handing me his very adult-sized problems and expecting me to grasp their gravity and provide him with useful advice. He did not prioritize making me feel safe, did not restrict himself, did not even think that restrictions or restraints were necessary. He didn’t treat me with the considerable distance and control an older person must display to a younger person to foster a healthy and egalitarian relationship. 

He wanted to treat me as an equal, a friend, a trusted adviser. But his sense of my ability to handle that was severely misplaced. He wanted to be vulnerable with me. He was someone, is someone, who values candor and honesty. But his actions showed little awareness of the fact that what we choose to be vulnerable about is up to us. We can be honest and present without burdening other people with our needs. 

That’s where he went wrong. He could have told me he was struggling in his marriage. It would have been fine for him to say he was sad or struggling. Instead, he threw intimate details in my lap and focused the discussion on his sexual frustration. He seemed to expect me to solve it, or to direct him to a solution. He wanted me to process his emotions for him. He didn’t think about how uncomfortable that might make me, not only because I was outmatched by the task, but also because I was young and at risk of being sexually assaulted by him at any moment, for all I knew. 

I have had other relationships with people significantly older than me who made similar mistakes. I had a friend who was always giving me really specific, really judgmental advice about how they thought I should run my life and change my outlook. They felt entitled to weigh in on just about anything I did or felt, but never could accept criticism of their own life, or weather my disagreement with their judgments. They had one specific idea of what being an ethical person looked like, and when I challenged that, they seemed to take it personally. They seemed to think their way of living was the only way, and that I needed their pointed feedback. 

But I’ve had wonderful, deeply helpful older friends with whom I’ve forged lasting and safe and meaningful bonds, too. There’s Christopher, my writing and live lit mentor, who helped me better understand my own writerly voice, encouraged me, and directed me towards opportunities he thought I would excel at. Around me, he has always been professional, but warm. He’s shared private details of his life and work with me, but only after a considerable amount of time getting to know me, and always with the intention of forging a bond rather than receiving emotional aid. His advice is never judgmental or preachy; he never behaves like he knows whats best for me or takes my actions personally. We can gossip and commiserate about politics together, and trade essays, and every time I effusively thank him for his help and mentorship, he thanks me for teaching him things, too. 

And there’s JD, who sought me out after reading some of my writing and provided thoughtful observations about where my work was going. He read everything and left careful, supportive comments, and always drew attention to the aspects of my work that were standing out and succeeding. He told me to keep going. He knew when I was onto something worthwhile. When I said something flippant and glib and ageist that hurt him, he told me. Carefully, and honestly. I felt horrible for hurting him but I learned, and we had a productive talk about how generational changeover does not guarantee the world will get better. He was always a deeply calm, wise, and yet lively force of support and insight in my life. He never treated me like a child, nor did he expect anything emotionally from me except growth. And he didn’t take the direction of that growth personally. I didn’t deserve his unwavering, thoughtful support, but I was bettered by receiving it. 

And then there’s Josh. Josh has always been in my corner. He’s given me performance opportunities and praised my work when it’s excelled; he’s invited me into projects and willingly jumped into several of mine. We can sit together for hours talking about horror games and films and never veer into conversational topics that are more than I can handle. When he has said things that were ignorant, he’s listened to my feedback. He’s learned from me and used his learning to teach other people. Our age gap is a bit smaller, so he and I can comfortably talk about dating and relationships and trauma to a degree, but he never expects me to be his shrink or hold his wounds and salt them. He never discusses his long-term romantic relationship with me or gets aggressive. Because he’s not as far in age from me as some of the other people, our dynamic is ever-changing, and we’ve been able to weather and adapt to it quite well. I’ve become a better performer and collaborator through knowing him. 

Name: Heng

Occupation: Analyst in Oil and Gas

Country of Origin: Cambodia

THE AMERICAN DREAM

I was born in 1979, and after two months, my entire family left Cambodia. We ended up in Khao-I-Dang, a refugee camp in Thailand. We were there for about two years. During that time, my father was shot and killed. They told my mom about it. We actually never got a chance to see his body.

After those two years, we were granted asylum in the United States. Ronald Reagan eased restrictions allowing refugees to come in. We applied for Chicago, Philadelphia, and got accepted to Houston. It was me, my mom, my aunts and my maternal grandparents. They're all still here.

It was hard at first. I remember sometimes having to go dumpster diving. At first, my mom got a job taking care of the elderly. She went from that to being a live-in nanny. She did that for about a year. Then she moved to another family, as a live-out nanny. She did that for several years and eventually ended up working in dry cleaning for about 16 years. My grandmother had a job picking up trash along the highway. Then she moved to another job building vertical blinds. She’d spend 10 to 12 hours every day on her feet, building and carrying these heavy blinds. My grandfather worked as a dishwasher at a cafeteria.

We didn’t speak English when we started school. My friends and I were all refugees. We met because we were all put into one apartment complex. We’d watch TV and make up our own English based on what we thought it sounded like. I remember being in kindergarten, and the teacher asked us to read something on the board. Everybody raised their hand. She called my name, and of course, I couldn’t read it. After that I was put in ESL. I was in ESL for three years.

My family loves living here. We really appreciate it, because if it weren’t for America, we’d still be in Cambodia. I’d probably be on the side of the road selling tarantulas or something. We struggled when we first came to America. But of course, if you work hard here, you actually get something out of it. They’re very appreciative.

I ended up going back to Cambodia in 2008. It was my first time back since I was two months old. I met my uncle and my paternal grandmother, before she passed away. She was very frail. She thought I was my mom.

It was terrible what happened in Cambodia, but on the bright side, I’m here. This is my home. I’ve been able to make something of myself. I’m not a taker. I’m not on welfare. I’m not on food stamps. I pay taxes every year. I’m an American. I think like an American. I act like an American. Even though, deep down inside, I’m Cambodian.

I didn’t get much acceptance and recognition of pain from her. And I guess that’s what I wanted. Whenever I said negative things to her about how I felt or how badly I feel about the world, she said kind of pat, surface level stuff about her still believing the world has good people in it. She never wanted to really get into the emotional murk with me. I can understand why. But when I’m paying a professional for help that was specifically sought because of a triggering recent experience with my abusive ex, I want that professional to be willing to explore that trauma and negativity with me. She didn’t seem to care about the backstory or the origins of any of my negative feelings. She wanted to focus on very surface level mindfulness practices to make me feel better in the present. 

I don’t want to feel better. I don’t want to not look at these things. I don’t think that’s a problem. She said something that really irked me about how adults must take responsibility for their mindsets. Even if horrible things have happened to us, that’s part of what adulthood is.

Fuck that. On some level. Adulthood is not refusing to feel negative feelings. Adulthood is not stuffing the pain of the world out of awareness. Adulthood is not ignoring the devastation we are facing. Things are bad. I want to see the badness. I want to be able to live with the badness and stay alive and good. I want to be the real me, negativity and stubbornness and all. I don’t want to be like her, doing yoga and traveling constantly to forget the bad things that have happened. I want to remember. I don’t want to ignore. 

I’m in it. I tried focusing on just my own happiness for a few years, after my assault and stalking. It did not work for me. It made me feel guilty and sluggish. Allowing myself to feel badly and working to examine the negativity head on is what helped. Seeing things as they are is what helped. That is taking responsibility for my thinking. Not trying to shove myself to the happier end of the spectrum. 

Bad things have happened to me. I am not going to be quiet about them even if they make people uncomfortable. When my dad died I told no one. For years. It took half a decade for the angst to overcome me and for me to really look at what his death did to my values and self-esteem. When I was abused, I didn’t tell anyone. It slipped out in small details and the way anger made me sit up with a terrified start. I paid the price for ignoring that pain, and I learned to face it, and I got slowly, realistically, better.