Dear Past Self: Sorry But I Have to Change

My college self would be horrified at the goal I have decided to set for myself: to write about an Asian American experience through fiction. She would call her future self a failure instead of looking past it that it shouldn't matter she had a name that was constantly spelled wrong. She would be disgusted -- like the time she relented to write a Chinese retelling of the New Year's monster that her professor ate up because it was new, original, and practically “foreign” to them. You are destroying thousand year old stories just for an A. 

At the same time she'd also be horrified that her future self would wear less black and more pink lacy dresses.

I'm older now, which is terrifying.  The desire to connect to an Asian identity has been repressed so long and tearing, clawing itself to be let out. It's guilt. Guilt from choosing Saturday Morning cartoons than learning Cantonese.  Guilt from being afraid to go to the non-English parts of Chinatown. Guilt that I may be losing what little Asian identity I have. More American than Asian.

Ultimately I'm like everyone else - I want to relate to another's experiences.  I want to know there is someone else in the world feels and experiences what I do. Fresh off the Boat premieres tonight. And the anticipation I felt for this was similar to that elementary school girl who clung to a neighbor's VHS of Flower Drum Song – only relenting to let it go the very day they were moving. Or the 6th grader who found a crumbling copy of Jade Snow Wong's Fifth Chinese Daughter and found the character's experience similar to her own. That she was not alone. Someone else felt the same back-breaking familial pressure to succeed and was one of the failures who could not live up to expectations.

I read the book. I even read the New York Magazine. Even if this is a flop it is the something that Asian Americans want to others to know: that I'm not exaggerating the harsh discipline, the odd cultural nuances, and the deep desire to simply belong ingrained into every man, woman, and child. This is where I come from.

Witching Hour

    It's 2:46AM according to your cellphone, and you wake up from a short fevered dream again. It's been a third night in a row.  This room has always been so well-insulated that it was the warmest in the house. Perhaps that's why you unconsciously picked it as your room when you first moved in.  And yet things feel different.  The clean, contemporary floral wallpaper banner is still on the walls.  Even the Japanese Bridge print you scoured the Met gift shop just to find it because it epitomized your love of Monet. The American Girl doll still in its box just as you left it.
    And yet here you are wide awake, watching an episode of the other Ghostbusters because it''s the only other thing airing other than infomercials -- which even at this hour does not make any sense.
    You had naively hoped that things would be preserved, just as they were. Perhaps a tad more dusty and in desperate need of a vaccuum.  You knew this was coming, you've just been in denial.  In this wee hours of twilight, it finally hits you. You thought when you hurriedly packed for New York City they would be retrieved later in time.  The things you didn't would be thrown out would simply just go away.  Instead time passed until someone thought you weren't coming back for them.
    Things have been moved and slightly replaced with something different, but you are unsure as the furniture is still just as white as before. There are books in the bookshelf in the corner but a lot of them are missing; ironically you found them in a box in the living room the other day. You pray that  collection of stuffed animals have traveled to the Land of Misfit Toys beause at least they would have a home.  Strangely all your ugly socks are still matched and in the drawer.
    You are more awake now and not going back to sleep anytime soon.  You need to rid the echoes of the perpetual nightmare you are having but its hard when you are thinking where things were ten years ago.
     This no longer your home. Your home is in New York City where you can go where you want, when you want. Where things are familiar and you know exactly where there are and supposedly should be.
    Here you feel trapped and bored and scared to leave the room. Or rather it's so warm than everywhere else feels so cold. At some point your insomnia has spurred an epiphany: perhaps this was a metaphor for the real world. That you had a choice: you have to outside in order to eat or do nothing and be warm and happy in your makeshift womb. The revelation causes some part to die inside.
    However there are remnants of a person living here that you've become incredibly bored to the point of napping away your trip.  You are a ghost haunting your own room.  You were in such a rush to leave that without realizing the consequences of being left behind. And here you are finding childhood things rearranged or simply gone; it might be too late for you to settle things before heading towards the light.
    Yet as you search for a stuffed goat that your husband gave you in college, you realize not everything was rescued. And as strange as it may seem, you kind of still want that ratty old bear you used to sleep with.
    Staying here for the week after a long hiatus still proves fruitless. Before you left you were determined to find the things that were still of importance. However you been away too long and the house has become too foreign and you've forgotten even where the spoons are. The basement, though, is still dark, damp and terrifying. Which means it is probably down there.
    Here you are frantically rescuing everything bit by bit like that dream everyone has once in awhile.  Like that dream, the building is burning and you are still packing but there is always one last thing.
    Then one more last thing.
    And then another.
    And another.
    Until you realized it should have gone down with you inside it a long time ago.
    Is this what growing up feels like?
   

Tell-Tale Heart

We cry sometimes because the world beats you down with moments of hopelessness.  When you've been rejected your junior year of prom. When you realize you can't get good grades in everything. When you realize your photography skills are not professional enough. When you realize you've abandon your dreams for a "job."

We've forgotten the person we were suppose to be.

Majority of our parents teach us to follow simple formula: get good grades, go to college, find a career or job that will make you money.  The factor of happiness only seems to be a bonus.

And it's unfortunate that only a small percentage achieve a career that makes money and makes you genuinely happy. Not the monetary happiness of purchasing items because you can afford it but the happiness of fulfillment. The happiness of doing something you are proud to have accomplished.

It's also depressing to realize you are one of those that buried your dreams under the floorboards until you forget. However, it won't let you forget - constantly beating like a heart to remind you it's still there.

Until it realizes that studying the pattern of woodgrain is driving it insane. It misses the light.  It misses the feeling of trying. It misses being a part of you. So starts beating at a faster, more fearful pace; eventually driving you insane.

Why can't it to just go wherever dreams go to die?

Instead you can only cry because it seems like the only response.  Leaving you at your most vulnerable and most clairvoyant.

It won't go away until you take action and rip the floorboards apart to find out there's nothing there.

The noise came from your own beating heart; beating frantically at the thought of "what if?"

What if I stay where I am, chugging along like a train on a route remains the same day in, day out? What if I'm not good enough? What if I find something else and I still won't be happy? What if I don't even try? What if I just give up?

Staring at the black nothingness of the floor you confess to yourself:

Only you can make a decision, so what will it be?