Category: Personal Update

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Personal Update

Fragments

I have a hard time with labels when it comes to mental health challenges. The CDC says that over 50% of Americans will be diagnosed with a mental illness or disorder in their life*, and that’s not even counting those who don’t get a diagnosis. Some people have it harder than others–I’m no stranger to that–but I think the many faces of what we in the 21st century call mental illness are a part of the human condition that every one of us has to deal with in some way or another. The world’s literature can attest to that.

For me, like anyone, some days are harder than others. The other day, I went for a walk and found myself looking up at the mountains and thinking about all the holes in my life. As I passed by a suburban house, I saw a family in the front yard. One of the kids tossed a soccer ball at her older sister, who was on crutches. She swung one of the crutches at the ball and knocked it flying.

I’m not sure why that moment touched me like it did. Perhaps it’s the simple story of life. Everyone bears wounds: some shallow, some deep. But we find a way to keep living, and do it beautifully.

*https://www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/learn/index.htm

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Personal Update

Week Joseph

Every week has a personality, just like people (and offices). I think we ought to name them. This week felt like a Joseph. He’s got unkempt hair and an uncertain future and cologne like spring dew.

I realize that I’ve piled way too much onto my plate this semester. This week was a microcosm of that. There was class, work, late-night conversations with roommates, paying taxes, viewing apartments, a little bit of non-required reading, a lot of required reading, karaoke parties, deciphering rental contracts (did you know that “act of God” is an actual legal term used to describe a disaster that’s nobody’s fault?), band practice, poor time management, birthdays, COVID tests, X-bar theory of sentence structure, irresponsibly long Japanese practice sessions, tidying up, staying up late, dreams that should have lasted a little bit longer. The big highlight was taking Friday evening off to go see a concert that my friend Asa was performing in. Local music is fun; it feels so much more intimate to be able to go talk to the performers after a show.

I also finally got to see Jojo Rabbit, a movie I’ve been wanting to see ever since it came out in 2019. It’s a historical comedy coming-of-age film that treats one of my favorite themes: the irresistible, redemptive power of human connection. In his portrait of Nazi Germany, director Taika Waititi (who also plays the 10-year-old protagonist’s imaginary version of Hitler) demonstrates that satire need not be subtle to be biting; Waititi opts instead to magnify the fantastical. The film contains some deeply poignant scenes: in particular, a brilliant performance by Scarlett Johansson about the narratives we invent for ourselves, as well as a memorable sequence at the end that depicts the uncanny collision of war and childhood.

I really wish emotions could be kept in a jar and saved for later. The mornings where you wake up on the wrong side of the bed would be a lot more manageable if you could use a couple drops of yesterday’s Hamilton singalongs. But alas, there’s really no emotional middle ground when a week seems to contain a whole month’s worth of substance (no, Joseph, that wasn’t a fat joke). To sum up, I guess my advice to myself from last year was “speed up”, and Joseph’s advice to me now is “slow down”. Life is an all-you-can-eat buffet, and once you’ve filled up your plate, you have to keep eating until it’s gone. It’s the polite thing to do. ∎

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Personal Update

When One Love Dies

It’s funny how the moment romance enters the stage of your life, it immediately shoves its way to the front and sends all the other actors rushing to the wings. I’m not sure if anything else has that power. Maybe death. It’s even funnier how easily you can hand that power over to a complete stranger. But the funniest is when somehow, it clicks.

That’s my explanation for why this blog has been silent for the last little while. My guitar hasn’t, as it’s been suffering the brunt of my trying to arrange the fragments of lyrics under my skin into something that rhymes.

Usually you don’t know if something is the right thing or not until after you’ve done it. Now I realize that she was the right girl at the wrong time. She was better than perfect–she had all the right imperfections. It helps that for once, it didn’t go wrong because of some big dumb error on my side. We fell into each other, shared a couple heartbeats, and then she was off in her direction, and now I’m off in mine. I’m just grateful that we collided. She’s blurring into one of those memories that puts a smile on your face and a rock in your chest all at once.

I don’t think there’s such a thing as a clean break. There are those moments when your eyes catch her like they’re used to, and you aren’t sure whether to say hi or just keep walking. Or when the pressure builds up enough that you’re walking to her door for answers, knowing full well that you’re probably walking to your own execution, but knowing just as well that if she’s going to break your heart, you want it to happen in person. There’s a lovely reconciliation in that.

The whole thing is a little like cutting your arm off and then trying to ignore the fact that you don’t have an arm anymore. And at any moment you could just run into your arm anywhere. One day you’re riding the bus and your arm gets on, and you’re like, “Oh hey arm, didn’t realize I’d see you here. Looks like you’re doing well. Glad to hear it.” So I’m still learning how to not look for her anymore.

Every other day is hard. The bad days are when “the way it might have been” is at high tide, and you realize just how many blank pages were left after the good part ended. Those are the times when it’s hard not to ask, “What happened to the ‘I’m so glad I met you’ and the ‘I’ll see you in the morning’?” Someone else has won those battles. Though I guess I wasn’t really even invited to the table.

The two perspectives that help the most are the close-up and the wide-angle. Closing my eyes to tomorrow hides the ruins of a sorely miscalculated future, if only briefly. But the good moments are when I’m high enough to look out over the mountains and be grateful for that tiny fraction of our lives, perhaps barely a day long, perhaps barely an hour, when each other was all that we wanted, and we had it.

That’s something I’ll always have. ∎