Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: re-birthday

More re-birthday musings

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Let’s talk more about my weird brain and how I think of things. In the last post, I was talking about how bigots are going to bigot because they are bigots. I know that’s reductive and goes around in a circles, but it’s also true. When you get down to it, they are bigots because they are/want to be bigots. They have hate in their hearts, and they want to spread it around.  Also, many of them believe that everyone also has the same hate in their hearts, but just keep it to themselves. That’s why it’s important to speak up when you hear bigoted statements.

It’s interesting. As a visual minority, I don’t get to hear most of the rank foul things people would say about Asian people. Sure, I get to hear the casual racism, and I’ve been asked really foul personal questions as an Asian AFAB person. And, my god, when I used to use the dating apps, the vast majority of the men responding (when I was looking for men) would tell me how much they LOVED Oriental girls (their words, not mine) and send me dick pics. This was with me putting in my ad that I did not want dick pics or men who were Asian fetishists.

Side note: my dudes. Bruh. I don’t know why I need to say this, but the way to instantly stand out on the apps as a straight dude is to FUCKING READ WHAT THE AD ACTUALLY  SAYS. I was very upfront about not wanting either of those two things, and I would say at least 90% of the replies I got had the Asian thing and maybe 50% had dick pics.

Guys whine about not getting any answers to their queries on dating apps, but if you can’t put in the minimal effort of READING THE FUCKING AD, then there’s no reason for someone to reply to you.

I know what it is, of course. Sexism and racism all rolled up into one. Yippee. It’s cishetwhite dudes not realizing that they need to put in a modicum of effort. So many guys whining about not getting any answers, blah blah blah. Like they are entitled to a date from any given woman. I mean, I would have a modicum of sympathy if they put in the effort and were being rejected (which does happen to some guys, obviously), but for the ones who don’t even READ THE FUCKING AD before responding, well, they can go fuck themselves (because I certainly am not going to do it).

I’ve gotten into Kpop (well, one specific group, Stray Kids), and I’m struggling. One reason is beacuse I see a lot of what I consider queer-baiting behavior in the indulstry in general. And it’s based on very rigid gender roles that are as entrenched as they are in America (in different ways, yes, but still makes me grimace).

Not only do I find it distasteful, but I don’t get it. I don’t understand why the need to constantly joke about them being married to each other and why fans are so invested in it, too. All the shipping makes me very uneasy for several reasons. One, who the fuck cares? That’s the first and biggest reason.


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A somber look at my fifth re-birthday

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I’m still fucked up in my head about finding out my fake-hubby, Yutsy died last December. In addition, it’s my fifth re-birthday, so I’m meditative about that as well. It feels both much longer and much shorter than that. Simultaneously one year and ten years. I have some thoughts on that as well. Yesterday, I talked about Yutsy and how we became a thing. I want to talk more about that and what it means to me now.

I hadn’t talked to Yutsy in some time, but I knew he was having health issues of his own from the last time I talked to him. He was always in my heart because he is my fake-hubby! Where else was he going to be? We met on a political blog and clicked because we shared a wacky sense of humor, were queer, and a few other reasons. Mostly the queer thing, though. He was gay, and I’m bi. We both were passionate about advocating for our civil rights and pushing for equality.

I think we became fake-married during the debates asinine arguments fucking bullshit about marriage equality. During that time, I was mad a lot. Not only because we queers acutally had to debate our humanity, but that the bigots acted like the injured party when we weren’t as “civil” as they demeed proper. I can still remember a Vikings player mewling about how people should be respectful as we debated the issue. We could agree to disagree, blah, blah, blah. (And, yes, I remember who it was. I just don’t want to dignify his bullshit by naming him.)

It makes me see red when someone in the majority wants to tone police someone being actively hurt by their bigotry. They want to act as if they’re the aggrieved party when they’re the ones deny our humanity. I said at the time, “You want us to speak civilly to you while you do uncivil things to us” to highlight the hypocrisy. Oh, your feelings are hurt? Well, tough shit.

This bullshit has been thrown at minorities my entire life. “Yes, we’re doing atrocious things to you, but you raised your voice at us!” Tone policing has been used to put minorities in their place probably ever since time began, and I’m not having any of it.

Here’s the thing. There’s no argument that is good enough in their eyes to change their minds. Let’s take marriage equality since it’s coming under threat once again. (BIG sigh.)

Oh wait. Before I get into that, I wanted to say the other thing that really rankled me about the marriage equality debate–it wasn’t something I personally cared about. I realized in my early thirties that I did not want to get married and that I had many issues with it. Actually, it wsa earlier than that, but it was my early thirties that really solidified that marriage was maybe 972 on my list of things I gave a shit about.

What I do give a shit about, though, is equality. That’s probably in the top five if you were to press me about it on that same list (of things I give a shit about). If straight people can be miserable yoked to one other person, then queer people should be allowed to be just as miserable!

So it made me angry that not only were the bigots bigottng as hard as their bigoted hearts could bigot, but that I had to care about an issue (marriage) that I didn’t care about at all because it affected an isssue (equality), I did care about.

You can probably tell that I have many negative thoughts/feelings about marriage, at least as how it’s usually defined as in America. Monogamous one-to-one union of a man and a woman for their whole lives to the exclusion of all others.


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Thoughts on my birthday…on my birthday

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I have more to say about my birthday–on my birthday. Technically. It’ll be my actual birthday in roughly seven hours I’ll be…ah….fifty…..er……..five? Yeah, that’s right. I honestly had to think about it for several seconds because I don’t really think about it. Again, it’s not because I’m getting older–it’s just because my age doesn’t matter to me.

Fun fact: When I was younger, I used to say I was a year older on January 1st. No idea why I did that, but many East Asian countries start at age 1 or 2 at birth. Maybe it was osmosis. Anyway, I say I have no idea why I started doing it, but it helped me get use to my new age by the time my actual birthday rolled around. As a result, though, I don’t always know how old I am. And, more to the point, I don’t really care. As with everything else in my life, it’s just a detail that doesn’t matter. Age really is just a number, and what I can or can do isn’t defined by it.

Whatever. I find my birthday meaningless, but I’m ok with other people wanted to acknowledge it (to a certain extent). Like, I’m going to be talking to K tomorrow, just so she can wish me a happy birthday. Here’s the thing. We both have April birthdays (hers is a few weeks after mine). When she was here, we would go out sometime between our two birthdays to celebrate them together (or any time near them).

She’s one of two people I actually get a birthday present for, and she gets one for me, too. She’s my soul sister, and I have been friends with her longer than anyone else in my life. I have joked with her that when we are both old, we’re going to be in an old folks’ home together, waving our canes at other prisoners inhabitants. We will shout things at them and just let the  chaos rain down.

I love her with all my heart, and I know she feels the same way about me. A few decades ago, we were talking about the hoary conundrum of ‘your best friend and your spouse are both drowning ten feet away from each other. Who would you save first?’. I was the one who brought it up, though I don’t remember why. She got angry and heated about it (which is unlike her). She said she hated that question beacuse she loved me and her husband equally. I was skeptical, but she insisted it was true. Unlike me, she cannot lie with passion. If she said that, I knew she meant it.

She said that she really didn’t like how society portrayed romantic love as being above all other loves. I didn’t either, so it was something else we bonded over. It’s very specific to Western culture. Eastern culture had a very different view on that, obvioously.


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They say it’s your birthday; it’s (almost) my birthday, too

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It’s almost my birthay. My parents called me to wish me a happy birthday (among other things) because they’re going to be busy on my actual birthday. I don’t care beacuse my birthday means nothing to me, but I’ve gotten over hating it by now. If it makes my parents happy to wish me a happy birthday, well, then so be it.

In the past, I hated it. My birthday, I mean. Not because I was getting older; I don’t care about that. but because I hated being alive and that I’ve not done what I’ve wanted with my life. That’s drastically compressing  and simplifying what my deal was, but it’ll do for the purpose of this post. I hated it so much, I refused to tell people when it was. When I first joined Facebook, you had to give them your birthday. I just lied and put a random day in January as my birthday. Then, I would be surprised by dozens of happy birthday wishes on that day. It never failed to amuse me.

My mom used to get upset when I said I didn’t celebrate my birthday. She once cried and told me it was such an important day for her. I mean, I think it’s a more meaningful day for her than me, yes, because she was the one who did the work of giving birth to me. I was did nothing to ease the birthing process, and I was probably a poin (literally) in her ass whilst making that journey. Though, family lore says that it only too k half hour for me to slide out (I was in a hurry).

Look. I didn’t ask to be born. I didn’t  want to be born. And I didn’t want to be alive for the first fifty years of my life (more or less). It took dying (twice!) to give me an appreciation for life, but now, that appreciation is draining from me. This president….this country…my countrypeople….Yeah, I’m not feeling it at all.

After I died and came back twice, I lost my hostility for my birthday. I had become ‘neutral’ to it in the decade before, but neutral was definitely in quotes. I said I did not mind it, but I still did not want to celebrate it. And I did not really want people mentioning it.

Here’s the thing, though. Once I came back to life and became as close to normal as I was going to get, I adopted the day I died and came back to life as my re-birthday. I realized much later that I should have made it when I could breathe on my own, but whatever. I’m keeping my original re-birthday. That meanss that I’m four-and-a-half. Not really, though. It’s not that kind of birthday.


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My actual goals for my re-birthday, part four

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In yesterday’s post, I mostly focused on martial arts. I want to set that aside for this post and contradict what I had said in yesterday’s post about not having any more goals for this upcoming year. This is going to be family-focused, and it probably isn’t going to be pretty. Because family isn’t pretty. At least not mine, especially not now.

My father has dementia, and it’s getting worse. He’s almost eighty-six years old, and his decline in the last six months has been rapid and alarming. I talk to him maybe once every other week or so, and we Zoom (with my mother) once in a long while. We did that a few days ago, and my father was clearly not having a good day. Usually, he can hold it together enough to talk to me–and he almost always remembers who I am–but this time, it was clear that his mind was wandering.

Dementia is a cruel and ugly disease. It strips the person of everything–especially if the person is…look. My father was self-centered and self-absorbed before he got dementia. It’s only gotten worse because that’s what dementia does to you. It makes you a toddler who can only think of themselves, and it seems to be worse in my father because of his proclivities prior to getting it.

In addition, it emphasizes the dysfunction that already exists in my family. My mother has devoted her life to my father, and now, she has a valid reason for doing it. But she also resents it at the same time, and she has some pretty rigid ideas as to what he should and shouldn’t be doing.

The problem is that she’s hoping against hope that he’ll return to ‘normal’, and she cannot accept that dementia only goes one way. She told me about a promising new medical study for early-onset dementia, and I could hear it in her vocie. She knew that my father was beyond that, and yet.

I don’t blame her for hoping, honestly. Most people hope for miracles when something really bad happens. It’s the fact that she pushes my father to do things because she wants him to get better, and the things she pushes him to do border on cruel. Like when we were talking on Zoom, he suddenly decided he had enough. He abruptly stood up and started to leave. My mother protested and tried to stop him from leaving. He was pretty insistent on going, and she was equally insistent on him staying.

I broke in and told her to let him go because it was distressing to watch. And, there was no need for him to stay if he didn’t want to. That’s my mother, though. Once she gets an idea in her head, nothing is stopping her from executing it.


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My actual goals for my re-birthday, part three

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I’m still thinking about the goals for this year. In yesterday’s post, I talked a lot about Taiji and Bagua and the weapons I want to learn/how hard it is to find a Double Sword Form. I did add one more actual goal, and I’ll add a few more in today’s post (probably).

I’m still dealing with the lingering aftermath of getting double-vaxxed and my bloodwork done on the same day. That second shingles shot was no joke. Even though I knew that going in, I was not ready for how much it was going to lay me out. K and I were talking about it, and she said she had never felt as shitty as she did with her first shingles shot. My first one was pretty bad as well (I always react badly to shotslvaxxes), but nothing like the sceond one. My right arm (pneumonia shot) is fine. My left arm (shingles shot. I got the bloodwork done in the back of my hand.

Side note: Whoever invented the butterfly needle is a genius. Seriously. Changed my life)

is still slightly puffy and sore. The real issue is that I’m still exhausted, like I had the flu. I was doing the Swimming Dragon Form today, and by the end, I was fatigued–and sweating. My teacher has always said that if you start sweating lightly, you’re fine. If you start sweating profusely, you should immediately stop.

No, wait. It was when I was doing the Double Fan Form that I started sweating and felt really fatigued. Fortunately, I was able to retain all the movements with minimal problem, but by the end, I just wanted a nap. I had hoped I’d be able to do a full routine by now, but that isn’t the case.

It’s been almost two full weeks since I got the shots (will be two full weeks in eight hours), and I’m really glad I work from home. I can’t imagine dragging my body anywhere feeling like this.

Back to my weapons.

I think I’ll polish up my Double Saber Form next. It’s gotten a bit sloppy, which makes me sad. I love this form, and I love the double sabers. So, yes, I think that I need a refresher on the form. I’ve done it once, I think, since getting my shots. Hopefully, I will be able to do it all the way through when I’m up to practicing it again.

I am not worried about the Sword Form or the Saber Form because they are the first two weapon forms I learned. Same with the Solo Form–I’m pretty comfartable with that (well, not with the changes my teacher’s teacher has recently made, but I’m getting there).


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My actual goals for my re-birthday, part two

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I’m back with more actual goals. Here is my last post, and, yes, I’m still talking about my re-birthday. Hm. It’s really late (early in the morning), and I am exhausted. I t hink I’ll skip it and come back to it tomorrow.

I’m back. A quick side note (yes, this early): My sleep has been so fucked in the past two weeks. It’s the vaxxes and my bloodwork, and I really should not have done all of them on the same day. Yes, it made sense to do them all at one time just to get them done, but given my outsized reaction to shots, I should have known better.

It’s been a week-and-a-half, and my arms are almost 100% better. I’m still tired, though. Very much so. I was able to do the whole Swimming Dragon Form (hands-only, Bagua) after completely forgetting the beginning of it yesterday. I was also able to do the whole Double Sword Form, though I did have to peek at the videos now and again.

Here is the post from day before yesterday in which I listed four goals for this year. I struggle to make them realistic because I swing from making very small goals that I easily do and goals that are so big, there’s no way I can reach them.

In addition, I don’t know what is realistic, really. Like before my medical crisis, I could confidently say I could write a rough first draft of a novel (100,000 words or more) in a year. hell, I did that during NaNoWriMo several years in a row without breaking a sweat. Now, however, I don’t know if that’s true. I think I can still write 2,000 words a day? But I haven’t been able to do that in ages, either.

I want to set goals that I can conceivably achieve, but I just don’t know what that means any longer. I think it’s better to set ongoing goals when I’m unsure about the results. I think I can say that I will finish teaching myself the Double Fan Form. I have 11 movements left, so I could even possibly get it done by the end of this calendar year.

If that’s the case, then I need to start thinking about what I want to learn next. I do want to teach myself a Double Sword Form at some point, but there are several problems with that. One, there is not an official Double Sword Form–at least not one I could find. My teacher’s teacher hasn’t done one, either. She did ask him about it, and he said that you can do the Sword Form with two swords, doing the guiding hand mmotions with the off hand with a sword in that hand, too.


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My actual goals for my re-birthday

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Ok. No more fucking around. I’m going to lay out my goals for this year. Starting with the more important ones and then meandering down to the ones that are just rattling around in my brain. Here is my post from yesterday, which is vaguely related.

1. Write the first draft of my novel/book. This has been in the forefront of my mind for the last few years. I have tried and tried to write it, but I’ve always stopped short because it just would not gel. Now, I don’t care about how terrible the first draft is as long as it gets written. I’m not sure which of the two ideas I want to focus on or if I can somehow combine the two.

I have been putting it off for a few years because I just can’t get the words to come out right. I don’t know if it’s permanent or temporary–but I fear it’s the former. I still have the ideas in my head, but they aren’t alive as they were before. In the past, they were moving as if in a film. Now, they are static.

I don’t know if it’s because of the medical crisis or not, but I have a hunch it is. I also realized that I had a much harder time visualizing things in my head. Before my medical crisis, if someone said, “Picture an apple in your mind.” I could do that easily, put it on any background, and make it move around. Now, I can still picture it, but it’s very pale and shadowy.

Again, I’m not mad about it because I’m alive. That’s all that really matters. But writing was a big part of my identity, and I’m lost without it. I could easily write 2,000 words a day as I did before my medical crisis–and I have. But it’s shit, and what’s more, I don’t know how to make it not-shit.

On the one hand, there’s no reason not to write the whole novel/memoir/book because why not? I have  all the time in the world, so if it ends up not working, it’s nothing more than a few wasted months. It’s not like I don’t have those, anyway.

My goal is to write a very rough draft, 2,000 words at a time. If that’s too intimidating, I’ll start with a thousand words a day. The goal will be just to write. If even that is too much, then I’ll start with a character study of each main character. I never do that, but it’s a good way just to get me writing.


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Life goals for my re-birthday, part three

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I am back to write more about, well, my lack of writing. I mentioned in yesterday’s post that I had said to myself a few weeks after I got home that if I never wrote again, that was a fair trade-off for being alive.

I stand by that, but…

It’s hard. Before my medical crisis, I had stories in my head all the time, and I had no problem writing furiously for hours on end. I had a goal of two thousands words a day, and I had no problem fulfilling that goal. This is not a humblebrag or a brag, but 2,000 words was no problem for me. It took maybe two hours if I was really on a roll, and it was usual decent writing. Not end game writing, of course, but it was at least usable.

Now, I have tried to write the first two or three chapters of one, ah, yes, we can call it a novel I guess over and over again. The first ten pages or so? Great! Then, it just goes flat, and I cannot inject life into the words no matter how hard I try.

I gave up after writing the first few chapters four or five times. I have another idea in my head that is pretty far from the first one, but I would love to find a way to bring them together.

This is my strength and my weakness. I like to bring together disaparet ideas and make it work as best as I can. I don’t like to hear that something can’t be done because why the hell not? When I took a murder mystery writing class from a local mystery writer I really enjoyed (her work), I was pretty disappointed when she said I couldn’t do what I wanted to do. I usually write from the first-person perspective, and for that class, I decided to have scenes in which the “I” character did not appear.

My teacher was adamant that this could not be done. She said if the book was in the first person, that character had to be in every scene. When I asked her why, she had no real answer for it. She just reiterated that it wasn’t possible/acceptable.

Here’s something you need to know about me. If someone can’t give me a solid reason for whatever they’re saying, I won’t accept it at face value. Let me rephrase that. I can’t accept it at face value; my brain just won’t allow it.

So when teacher was saying it wasn’t possible/correct to have the “I” chaaracter missing from scenes in a novel, I pushed back. I could not see why it wasn’t possible/proper/correct, and she kept saying it wasn’t done. Yeah, I know. But that’s not telling me why it can’t be done in the future.

You want to know the ironic bit? A few years after that, it became the rage to have murder/mystery novels with different perspectives. An “I” character could be missing from several scenes, and no one would bat an eyelash.

In other words, I was fucking ahead of my time. I often am. My brain doesn’t work the way other people’s brains work, and at some point, I resigned myself to just being a freak. Until that point (late twenties/early thirties), I just thought my brain was broken. I knew about neurodiversity, but I didn’t fit the stereotypical symptoms, so I thought it couldn’t be me.

In addition, many of the things that are empathized with auutism (lack of empathy, the inability to read social cues/situations, not being able to do extended eye contact) were not things I had an issue with. In fact, I excel at the first two and can (kinda) do the third. It wasn’t until an autistic friend told me to take the online test as unmasked as possible that I realized how much I was performing for the gen pop.

I’m excellent at social cues unless I’m really tired or sick because I have had to do it since I was a small child. Same with empathy. I am exceptionally good at it, but it’s something I developed and honed over the years. I do think I have some natural ability for it, but I can’t say for sure because I have been my mother’s emotional support person since I was eleven.

I think I will have to add to my goals something about finding a therapist/psychologist to help me sort out my shit. I have a lot of shit to figure out, and I tried to find a local therapist. The problem is that I need someone who understands straddling American and East Asian culture, the difficulties of living in a dysfunctional Asian family, queer and gender identity issues, AND autism issues.

If I had to choose, I would put the first two as the most important right now, but I would like at least a glancing knowledge of the other two.

I live in Minnesota which is predominately white. You can see my difficulty in finding someone who would have an in-depth knowledge of diaspora issues, especially for an Asian person. Especially during the current troubled times.

Another thing I really want to do in the next two months is finish teaching myself the Double Fan Form. I have taught myself 39 out of 48 postures, which means I’m more than three-fourths done.  I can’t tell you how agonizing it’s been and how I’ve doubted that I’d be able to do it. It’s the hardest weapon form I’ve learned/taught myself by far, and I was stuck halfway through for a very long time. I have never taken this long to learn a form, and I was oddly grateful when my teacher validated my feelings out of the blue. I sent her videos of the form, and she emailed me back saying, “Wow, this is really difficult.” That was unprompted, so it made me feel so much better.

I’ll be interested to see how many movements I’ve lost when I start practicing it again (have not done it in over a week before of my mulitple shots/vaxes I had on one day). I think with a little watching of the videos (three!), I can get back to where I was pretty quickly. That still leaves me with 9 or 10 movements left to go.

I do not doubt that I will learn it this year. But I’m curious to see how long it will take me. I have no idea. It could take me anywhere from another month to half a year. I hope it’s not the latter, but I would not be surprised if it did. After that, I’m not sure which weapon I want to learn next. Before I started teaching myself the Double Fan Form, I was thinking that I would want to teach myself a Double Sword Form. The problem is that there doesn’t seem to be an official one, and I’m not sure I want another really hard form after learning this one.

I may focus on refining my Double Saber Form. I think I’m getting a bit sloppy in my execution, and it’s not a bad idea to tweak a form every now and again. That’s all for today. One more post tomorrow.

 

 

Life goals for my re-birthday, part two

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Yesterday, I said I wanted to talk about my goals, but ended up talking about other things. I never got to my goals for my fifth year of life, so that is what I want to tackle in this post.

I spent the first year of my re-birth adjusting to the fact that I was still alive. It was simultaneously difficult to believe that I was still on this earth and easy to feel like nothing changed.

This is not a complaint, though it will sound like one. After three months or so, it was really fucking with my brain that I was pretty much back to where I had been before, minus a few things. I wasn’t nearly as depressed as I was before (roughly 90% of my depression was gone. Not coincidentally, it happened at the same time my parents went back to Taiwan), nor was I as anxious (about 40% of my previous anxiety). I had a few things wrong with my brain (could not do simple math in my head, and I no longer could remember names as well as I used to. In addition, I would suddenly forget a word now and again). I also had worse depth perception than before; almost no peripheral vision; and my already-terrible reflexes were worse.

All of these are more than acceptable trade-offs for being alive. I can walk with no problem. I can do my Taiji (and now Bagua) with almost no problem*. I can type as well as I used to, and I’m physically fine. My depression has crept back to roughly 70% of what it used to be, and my anxiety is back up to about the same. Still a net positive, but going in the wrong direction.

One thing that I’ve struggled with and that is a big goal for this year: my fiction writing. I have tried to write a novel (which I could do easily before my medical crisis. I have written dozens of murder mysteries over the years), but to no avail. I have had an idea for one ever since I got out of the hospital, but I have not managed to make it work.

I got another idea from a friend of mine a few months ago, but I just cannot make myself write. With the second idea, I have the characters fleshed out in my head, and a vague idea of a plot. This is unlike me. In the past, I would map out the plot in my head and by the time I started writing, I knew who the victim was, who the perp was, and the general path to get from A to B.

I usually ‘write’ the first ten to twenty pages in my head, and I know the general shape of the whole novel before I even touch my keyboard. Well, since this is in the past, I should put things in the past tense. I rarely had writer’s block, and when I did, it was for a day or two. The worst time, I had it for maybe a month.


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