at christmas you tell the truth
it was a hard year without you.

too much

What right do I have?

That's what usually makes everything feel null and void.

It's been over a year and I still feel it. I feel everything, and I don't know why.

You're interested in someone new. That's not supposed to be big news or even out of the ordinary. It's been a year, and I left you.

But somehow it is. Somehow it hits in the gut like an unexpected wave, and there's nowhere else to go.

You have to let the past go. You have to let it go. You have to.

Sometimes memories will replay in my mind like a bad film. A bad reel. Over and over. None of the good parts, just the bad ones. And I don't know why. I can't sleep on those nights.

Sometimes I miss you so much it hurts.

Sometimes I remember the way, the way you used to talk to me and the way you used to make me feel and how badly and how hard it all was.

"It's never supposed to be that hard," she'd said.

To be with someone and cry yourself to sleep over this or that.

It wasn't supposed to go that way.

It was so hard to leave you.  It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do.

How long is it going to take?

5 years maybe, she said.

Fuck that, I'd said.

You are such a good person.  You've always had such a good heart.  Why was that not enough?

And then there was everything else. Why would you ever lie? I couldn't get over it. I couldn't.

Old letters

"Not only is your birthday a special day for you, it is also a special day for me. I'm so thankful you were born, because you have made my life such a happier place."

When the rain falls

And the night falls down
Yea, you've got me here
In this humdrum town

At almost twenty-nine, I finally grew out of casual sex, learned how to light a lighter, and wear eyeliner. I learned that bro-code pretty much doesn't exist, that it's kind of necessary to note you're in a relationship on Facebook, that having trouble saying no only makes situations harder, and that online dating is a waste of time. I learned to appreciate the humor in awkward moments when guy friends think you're down for hooking-up, and, in getting fired from your job boxing pizzas. It was the year when I started gauging everything against forever. It was the year when I let you go. I had waited my entire life for someone to love me in that way, to that degree, and when you came around, I learned the hardest lesson, sometimes love just isn't enough. I faced it with a certain disbelief. Sometimes true stories are the hardest to comprehend because they can shake the reality you always felt you knew.

At almost twenty-nine, I stopped feeling like a failure. That's how it had felt, gauging accomplishments against time, against that of others, against these ideas I had had on what life was supposed to be like at certain intervals.

At almost twenty-nine, you came around again, in a way I hadn't seen since we were far younger. And I played with the idea of you, in that way. Maybe a decade was all we needed. But in reality, the thought of being with you, makes me feel like that 16 year old girl who first fell for you, and I'm not her anymore.

And for the first time in maybe ever, I don't mind getting older.

The former years. 

That autumn

On the eve of my twenty-ninth birthday and our ten year high school reunion, we were coping with decisions we’d made that got us here.

She said she wasn’t going to go. Maybe if she got her shit together, then she’d go. But otherwise, she wasn’t going to, wasn’t going to have the questions asked, questions for which she didn’t have answers. I said, but what did it matter?

But I knew what she meant. There were moments when I avoided social gatherings with people who weren’t close, those you don’t see often because I didn’t have an answer for their questions. So what are you doing these days? 

My Facebook newsfeed made my life look like a string of vacations and forays into alcoholism. Whether that was a mirror of real life was left to be said, but perception is hard to change.

Something about milestones make us look back and reflect on how we got here. Some days, I would say, marriage was never going to happen, owning a home was never going to happen. But I'm inundated by these announcements on the daily, and some days, they make me feel like I'm failing.

But the latter was never an aspiration and the former was something out of my control.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about you, wondering if I’m a disappointment in your eyes, like how you were in mine for all those years. Are you still trying? Don’t get stuck there, you've been saying.

Sometimes I'll have these moments where I miss you, and then I'll go and look at the few memories I still have access to. I try not to do this for too long.

It was the summer of endless nights, east coast road trips, rest stops, drive thrus, west coast love, the hot desert sun, fleeting crushes, blurry nights, drinking from the bottle, revisiting the past, and letting go.

Summer 2013. You were good to me. In all the ways.

V: did u meet any new guys as of late
C: no one worth keeping
V: isn't that how it always goes
C: that's how it seems

J: i don't know why i still think about my ex..we broke up in Dec and she was totally not what I'm looking for

i'm retarded though...

i'm a lil b*tch..i think non-stop about unnecessary crap

love.

You Can Say Anything

If I could say anything....I would tell you that I love you, even when it didn't show.

You know how I save everything? I should really, at least, get rid of the old photos and things you've said, that I saved on my phone long ago. Nowadays, there are days that go by where I'm not reminded of you. The other day though, my phone kept telling me iCloud was running out of storage, so I had to go back and delete insignificant things from my photo album. So, of course, I had a mini trip down memory lane, reminded of things you used to say, fights we used to have, how much you did love me in those moments, and how you used to make me feel, when things were good. It's so rare, you know, to find someone who will love you.

We were on the phone last night, updating each other about our lives. How we got here, at 28 years old, professionally and romantically far from where we thought we'd be at this age. "At 12, I thought, I'd lose my virginity at 18, get married at 23 or 24, and have kids at 27, when I would be professionally established." Well, that didn't quite pan out. She was talking to a new guy, he was 25, "he's so green, untainted, wide-eyed, brings vodka in deer park water bottles to house parties. He doesn't know there are cobwebs in my head, and I will never tell him." These days, we're wondering why we couldn't just have stayed with the one that loved us. What am I waiting for? Up until a few years ago, hanging out with a cute guy would've brightened up our entire day. Nowadays, cute doesn't even do much. "I don't even want to bother hooking up with him. I'd rather go home, wash my face, and go to bed." - "It's such an ordeal. The me of 3 years ago would've had a problem turning a guy down, now, even the cutest ones, I don't want to bother with." 

I wondered today, when a whole day will pass and you wouldn't have crossed my mind. I wondered when that day would come.

These days I just try not to think about you, what you're doing, who you're with.

And I think, maybe I'll go on one of these dates with these guys I can't even bring myself to be interested in.

I don't know what it's all about.

A year from now, everything will be different.

Waiting for one day.

How long does it take to move on?

A: "I still cry every time I think of -. But I know it'll eventually stop."
T: "Eventually?"
Q: "There's no timeline of when you'll get over it. It's usually either when it hurts too much or when u find someone new."
C: "All of the above and yea you might never really get over him."
A: "Yeah unfortunately. You can have many loves."

Q: "Don't ask me. I never get over anyone."


Two and a half years. I wish I had the heart to delete two and a half years of text messages from my phone. Then I could delete your number and it would stick. Then maybe, I could take that way out. Cold turkey. But out of sight, out of mind was never my style. I was the girl who defriended him and then stalked his new girlfriend's Facebook and sobbed over their photographs as a happy looking couple. I was the girl who read everything and looked into everything until it didn't hurt anymore. As much exposure to the wound as I could take, until I couldn't anymore, until I didn't feel anything anymore. That was the way I'd always gone because at least I wouldn't be blind sided one day. I would already know that he had moved on, and I would simply be coping with it.

Out of sight, out of mind meant that, you could be blind sided at any given moment. There would be no easing in to the idea of him and someone new. One day, it would just be there. As a fact. But at least, in the meanwhile, you would've been able to forget about him, to live your life without feeling crazy because you happened to know who he was with or what he was doing at any given moment. But then, there's the danger of never really dealing with the end, the danger of suppressing emotions, that could one day, one random day just take hold, and then you're wondering why, months down the line, you're having a break down because all of a sudden something has reminded you of the life you used to have with him.

I don't know what's better or healthier.



J: "I broke up with him. It took me a year to get over it."

Why are you sad? You broke up with him.


I don't know if it's a girl thing or a human thing. Every guy has asked me that though. Why in the world are you sad? Is it true? When guys are over it, they're just over it? But it hasn't been that way, it hasn't been all roses and over it.  Perhaps I've been going through the five stages of grieving without really realizing it. Denial and isolation. Back then, it had felt like a weight had been lifted off of me. I had asked myself a simple question, can you live the rest of your life feeling this way? To be with someone, to have someone that was yours, but yet, feel sad more than you felt happy? And I couldn't, so I left. But I had been deluded enough to think that I would be able to get over it without too much time. Maybe that was the denial part. Anger and bargaining. In the aftermath, there was the period where I would get so angry and feel so much resentment because he never understood. Even when it was over, I still wanted so badly for him to just understand why. And then, in the time after, I thought maybe, maybe I could, we could figure out how to make it work. Depression. the step before Acceptance. I'm not really sure where I am. But somewhere between, maybe. 


A guy friend told me recently guys like to date younger girls because they don't carry as much baggage. They're not all depressed and shit. They still know how to have fun. I guess I'm not helping my case. Not attracting any more men with all of this baggage. Whatever. This is life.

An Obiturary: Losing you

"Have you cried?"

Knowing what to say was never his strong suit. When he asked, he was looking away. And when I was on the verge of tears, he changed the subject. He never said the right things, but then, in that moment, somehow, he got it right.

You passed away at 10:30 p.m. pacific standard time. 3/9/2013.

When I was a kid, I was always scared of you. You were my great uncle, you were stern, you never joked or seemed to laugh. And then I grew up, and you got sick, and my perception of you changed, or maybe you changed, with age and illness. You came to America first, during the war. And in the months and years after, you got the paperwork done for your nieces, nephews, wife and kids you'd left behind. You are the reason I'm here, living the life that I do now.

After you got sick, your marriage fell apart, things fell apart. She stayed with you because she owed you that much. You never traveled. And finally you did, before things got really bad. And that was when you realized, you'd waited too long to see the world. You'd worked too hard for too long, and had put it off for so long, that, at some point, it did seem like, too late.

In the later years, you smiled a lot, I'd even say you were kind of funny. Entirely different from the man I knew growing up. I wonder if that's what age and the knowledge of death does to you sometimes. You suffered for a long time. I know in the end, you just didn't want to be in pain anymore.

It'll just be strange now, going back, and you not being there. But I understand.

Rest in peace Ong Bay.