“It’s harder to talk about, but what I really, really, really want for Christmas is just this: I want to be 5 years old again for an hour. I want to laugh a lot and cry a lot. I want to be picked or rocked to sleep in someone’s arms, and carried up to be just one more time. I know what I really want for Christmas: I want my childhood back. People who think good thoughts give good gifts.” ~ Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
It has been a tough year. Not the worst year by any stretch, but it was tough nonetheless. There was a lot of family strife, and a lot of old wounds resurfaced to remind me of unresolved conflicts and brought to light a lot of moments from my childhood from which I have never healed.
And so I decided that this year, I will not go home to the Philippines for Christmas. Hopefully I will not regret it later as my father is eighty-six and my mom is eighty-two, but honestly, I am mentally exhausted and feel as though I still need to mentally work through the conflicting emotions I feel, particularly with respect to my father, and to also preserve my mental welfare as I try to learn to let go and forgive him for the things he had us endure over the years due to his cruel and narcissistic behavior.
I currently have no plans for Christmas, other than to attend church either on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning, and then maybe order in some Chinese food and watch Netflix movies. I know that it sounds sad and pathetic, but it really is all I want to do.
“Cat: Where are you going? Alice: Which way should I go? Cat: That depends on where you are going. Alice: I don’t know. Cat: Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.” ~ Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
I adopted the kitty. Her name is Michi, and she is beautiful.
The first few weeks were rough. She cried every night and she refused to let me sleep. Admittedly, I even had a few moments when I felt regret, a few moments when I felt as though I was not up for it – the late nights, the lack of sleep, the patience to wait for her to trust me. But sometime during week two and three, I woke up one night and found her laying beside me, her face buried in my stomach. She has been sleeping like this ever since.
“Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.” ~ Christopher Hitchens,The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever
So I put in an application to adopt a cat. I am nervous that my application will get rejected. Anxious much? My perpetual insecurity seeps into every aspect of my life, I guess. I know it would be easier if I just went to a pet store and bought a cat, but I believe in the motto “adopt – don’t shop.” The little cat on the Queens rescue page has been in the shelter for over a month, and reading that broke my heart. I have no idea what her history is, where she came from and how she ended up at the shelter, but I just want to bring her into my life and shower her with all the love and care she deserves.
Just when I feel like I am strong, just when I feel like I am over it, over him, my mind is assaulted with memories. Rapid fire visuals of moments spent with him scroll through my brain and there is no switch for me to turn off this automatic reel of our relationship that continuously plays and plays. I close my eyes and try to think of pleasant thoughts, of a recent sunrise or sunset, of a show that made me laugh, or even a chore that I have to accomplish. I try to think of anything so that I may forget, but the harder I try to escape, the memories of him shoot at me more quickly, piercing me in my chest and in my heart.
Photo Credit: Freepik
The intrusive thoughts are hard to evade, and once I am hit, it deploys itself all over my body. Memories are like poison, flowing through my bloodstream, infecting every part of me. I hold myself and brace my stomach, as though I am preparing to be kicked in my abdomen. I lick my lips and taste the bitterness of how our relationship ended. I become thirsty and drink water, but it is never enough to drown out my longing for what could have been, how it should have been. I swim in my thoughts instead and though not enough to drown, it is just enough that I am left gasping for air to fill my lungs.
The memories burn. As I replay past times in my head, my skin feels like it is on fire, but I am shivering. I hate myself for pining for someone who did not exist. I long for the version of him that I had hoped he would become, not the person who he really was.
I do not want to say I “hate” being asked, but it can become awkward when I am asked how many siblings I have. My sister has been gone for over twenty years now, and I still am triggered whenever I am asked. Do I tell them that I have two? But then they may ask where they live and what their professions are. Then I will have to say that one passed away. Things then become awkward and some start to apologize profusely. Some even ask how long it has been, and when I say that it has been over twenty years, some will shrug as if to indicate that it has been long enough.
Or do I just say one and leave it at that? But then I feel as though I am forgetting about my sister, and she deserves to be recognized as my sibling even though she is no longer here.
It is amazing how a simple question can be so complicated to answer.
Yes, it has been over twenty years since my sister passed away. I suppose one can argue that I should be “over” her death. And yes, in many ways, I am “over it” in that I do not cry every day anymore. And I may not even miss her every day anymore, but I do miss her, in a way that maybe one would miss their limb if it was amputated. I am sure that as time passes by, a car accident victim would get “over” losing their limb in an accident, but would they wish that they could have their limb back, if at all possible? I say, absolutely, yes.
Even though I no longer miss her every day, I actually miss her more. I miss her more whenever I see my parents growing older, on holidays when the lack of her presence is glaring, on her birthday, on the anniversary of the day she passed away, and most especially when I want to talk to someone who was a part of my childhood and who I had expected to be with me to the very end of my own life.
Billy Bob Thornton talked of his feelings about losing his brother. I echo everything he said:
“I’ve only had a couple of times in my life when I was carefree… For a couple of years I felt OK, which is very rare for me, and then he died. I’ve never trusted happiness since.”
“I have to really force myself to think that things are going to be OK in terms of worrying about my family, myself or one of my friends. I’ve never been the same since my brother died. There’s a melancholy in me that never goes away. I’m 50 percent happy and 50 percent sad at any given moment.”
“I don’t want to forget what it felt like when he died, because he deserves [that remembrance]. That’s how important he was to me. So, if I have to suffer and I have to be sad for the rest of my life, and if I have to be lonely without him… then that’s the way I honor him.”
“I’ll be sad and melancholy about that forever. I know it and I accept it and I live with it, but I think it’s OK. I think it’s OK to have all those feelings.”
“As an artist, that’s where a lot of your stuff comes from. You keep honoring those people forever by singing that song or writing that movie or doing that part in the movie or writing a book, whatever it is that has a sadness and a melancholy and a fear in it. Those are the things that keep them alive — whatever you put into your work or your family or your art.”
“It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.” ~ Chuck Palahniuk, Diary
Through the grace of God, we seemingly have survived the worst of G’s teen years. It was not that long ago that I was on the verge of a mental collapse. Coming out of that stormy phase, I feel like a survivor. I actually see some sun in my life and in her life, and the dark clouds that hung over us are becoming thinner and thinner.
I now have time to focus on the little things in life, such as challenging my newly found skill of keeping plants alive.
These plants are what I have to show to reflect this peaceful period of my life. I have no relationship to stress over, no immediate financial or health concerns, G is improving daily – in essence, everything for which I prayed to God, He gave to me. My plants are a reflection of my current state: growth and serenity. I wonder now if my plants never survived before because my energy was troubled, dark, and dismal. Did my plants absorb the toxic beams that I emitted? I believe so.
It is Lent Season, and what I have decided for my Lent journey is to try to forgive and to let go of the negative and toxic feelings that I hold inside of me. I have a Lenten journal, and everyday or so, I write down my thoughts about my day and about how my feelings and actions that day correlate to my faith. Now that I can read my thoughts and see them on paper, I can be accountable for my movements. I am more aware of whether I did really try to be more understanding towards others, and other days, it can be a rude awakening to read about how much of a jerk I was that day and it then becomes a lesson as to how to improve the next time I am faced with a similar challenge.
Reading through my journal, I realize how short-tempered I am and how very little patience I actually have towards certain people. Not to excuse myself of this faulty trait, but I do live in New York City, and this place, this city, just exudes impatience. It is almost as though one cannot live here and be patient because the city just runs on its own timeline. Everything happens in a New York minute. Unless you live here, it is hard to understand that the city cannot run unless things just keep on moving. I, for better or for worse, have adapted to this mentality. New York may be the only place in the world where if someone commits suicide by jumping in front of a train, the people are angry at the person who jumped and will say “What an asshole. They couldn’t kill themself in another way?!Now I am going to be late for work!” I also have come to believe that the jumper is selfish, but not for the reason one may think. I think they are selfish because of the trauma and pain caused to the train operator. I can imagine that they will never be the same after such a tragic event.
I am working hard on my patience, but admittedly, it has been challenging. My first inclination is to resort to the New York attitude and feel exasperation whenever I feel like someone is impinging on my time. I pray and meditate on this often and hopefully I will see some improvement as I work through this with God’s help.
“Sadly, no one in our family ever said, ‘I love you.’ Do you realize that? The truth is, I think we were all frightened of saying it, since the obvious reply would’ve been, ‘Well, if this is love,what is hate like?'” ~ Louie Anderson, Dear Dad, Letters from an Adult Child
We spent the holidays in the Philippines with my parents. Now that my parents are older, I try to make it out there twice a year, time and money permitting.
As you grow up, the things that you see and experience, without having anything else from which to compare, you assume to be normal. If your father yells at your mother for not having prepared dinner earlier, or if your father beats you for disobeying his rules, you may not like it, but you accept it as simply how life must be because, again, you know no differently.
The last few visits to see my parents have opened my eyes even more to how dysfunctional my family is, and how horrifyingly toxic my father is.
I already knew even when I was a teenager how abusive my father was. I had come home one day, one hour after school dismissal because I had wanted to watch a soccer game. When I arrived home, my father was waiting for me. He had asked me why I was late, and I told him that I watched a soccer game after school. He did not believe me, and instead yelled at me for coming home late (it was 4:30 p.m.) and accused me of being late as I was probably out with a boyfriend. Out of frustration for being wrongly accused, I yelled at him that I was not with a boyfriend and that I was late because of a soccer game, and that I had even arrived home in a school bus since it was a school sponsored activity that I had attended. He was furious that I yelled back at him, and he slapped me for “being disrespectful.” He even got a hold of a whiskey bottle, and he was about to hit me over the head with it, and had my brother not stopped him, I would have died that day.
After that day, I went to live with my cousin for the next year, until I was off to live in a dorm at university.
During this recent trip, my parents got into an argument. There was a leak coming from the kitchen sink, and my father asked my mom to call the plumber. My mom was in the middle of cleaning up the water that had leaked onto the kitchen floor and did not call the plumber right away. My father got very angry and yelled at my mom because she had not called the plumber when he had asked (told) her to do so. He started going off on a rant about how she never does what he says, and he kept inching closer and closer to her, as though he was going to slap her. I got in between them and said to my father, “Stop yelling at her!“
His face twisted angrily, and he yelled at me, “Don’t you ever yell at me again!“ I yelled back, “Stop yelling at her!“ He stepped closer to me, and yelled “Don’t you ever disrespect me again! Do not ever yell at me!“
It was at that moment that the memory of that day from high school came flooding back. It took everything out of me to not punch him flat in his face. He is eight-four now. I could easily hurt him. Every fiber in my body wanted to lash out at him, in retaliation for all the times he physically and emotionally abused me when I was younger. But I managed to stop myself, from punching him, from slapping him, from yelling at him some more. I backed off, but my blood was still boiling from the hate that had been brewing all these years. I tolerated him throughout my life, maybe even had forgiven him at some point, but to see him continuing to mistreat my mom, all the anger and hatred that I had suppressed all these years, came dangerously close to exploding out of me once again.
“Finally, she mused that human existence is as brief as the life of autumn grass, so what was there to fear from taking chances with your life?” ~ Mo Yan, Red Sorghum
I went to Maryland a few weekends ago to visit my sister. It was warm for a late October day. Nearly 80F/27C degrees. Too warm for Autumn, but I was glad to see that the leaves had started to change already.
Nearby my sister’s cemetery is Seneca Creek State Park. It was absolutely beautiful there. I realized then how much I had taken this place for granted when I used to live down there.
The following day, Sunday, October 29, I woke up to the news that Matthew Perry had passed away. I do not normally mourn the passing of celebrities, but this one hit me hard. I have always liked him, probably because he was so human, and because he was so open about his struggles. I am glad that he seemingly found peace in his life during the last few years of his life, and that he had found God. I pray that he can rest in peace. He is so loved and missed. I am not sure I can ever watch Friends again, and if I do, I know it will never be the same.
“Happy is the man, I thought, who, before dying, has the good fortune to sail the Aegean sea.” ~ Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek
We spent the last weeks of August in Greece, in the Ionian Islands.
We took a ferry boat from Igoumenitsa, a coastal city in the northwestern part of mainland Greece, to Kerkyra.
There is a bakery at the port in Igoumenitsa where I had the most amazing spinach pie.
We took the ninety minute ferry ride to Corfu under the bright moon light.
Kerkyra is an island in the Ionian Islands. Because the Venetians sieged and occupied Kerkyra from the medieval times and into the seventeenth century, the city’s architecture is distinctly Italian and not Greek.
Using Kerkyra as our base, we took ferry boats to other islands in the Ionian Sea. I will try to supplement this post with pictures of the other islands when I am able.
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