Underneath my yellow skin

Category Archives: Relationships

Taming the anger inside, part four

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Let’s talk more about the anger I have in my heart. I don’t want to have it, but I’m not trying to tamp it down any longer, either. Anger can be a useful tool as long as it’s used well and judiciously. It’s something I’ve had to learn to embrace rather than try to stuff it way down or pretend I wasn’t feeling. Here’s the post I wrote yesterday about my anger.

I have quoted Dr. Bruce Banner on several occasions, the same quote, because it fits me so well. “That’s my secret, Cap. I’m always angry.” Right before he seamlessly turns into the Hulk. This was after Captain America told him that now might be the time to get angry.

That’s how I am in my heart, too. I’m always angry. Always. Even when I’m happy or at peace, there is a kernel of anger in my heart. When I talk about how I’m still alive, I mention three things–luck, love, and Taiji. But, I think I have to add that little grain of anger, too. And spite. Just the smallest hint of spite. You think I’m a freak and a weirdo, and you wish that I were dead? Well, fuck you. I died twice, bitch, and I came back. Twice!

I don’t think spite should be a huge part of what keeps you going, but just a soupcon of it? Hell, yeah! It should be about 1% with anger being about 4%. The remaining 95% would probably be better off as positive emotions, but that’s not easy to do. Especially for someone like me who suffers from both depression and anxiety.

When I was in the hospital and after I got home, my depression went down 90% and my anxiety around 60%. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t waking up wanting to go back to sleep forever. I wasn’t up and at ’em, either, but that was just beacuse of my physical limitations–not my mental ones. Again, after dying twice, my body was tired and deserved a little break.

It’s weird. It was the first time in my life I was going to bed by 10 p.m. and getting up at 6 a.m. It was the first time I was actually  getting eight hours of sleep and feeling rested when I woke up. It’s funny what sleep will do for a body, isn’t it? (Yes, I know it’s a proven fact that getting eight hours of a sleep a nighht does wonders for you.) I will say that being drugged to the gills with sedatives, barbs, and opiates were very helpful for my sleep. I would not recommend it on a regular basis, however.

I will note that I felt like a god when I was drugged. A very tired god, yes, but a god, nonetheless. I experienced no pain, and for the first time in my life, I felt as if I could do anything. Honestly, I understood why people did drugs because my god. They were wonderful. Plus my beloved oxygen tube. I wanted to take that thing home with me when I left, but the nurses wouldn’t let me.


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Trying to tame the rage inside

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I’ve always had a temper; it’s just in my younger years, I was really good at reining it in. Like, inhumanly good. I had to be beacuse I was punished for not doing so. Not physically, but emotionally shamed/chastised for it. I was not allowed to show any negative emotion. If I did, I would be screamed at by my father or my mother would give me the “I’m eating a very sour lemon” face while drawing her lips tight.

Only my parents were allowed to show their displeasure. My father either by shouting or being silent for hours whereas my mother would either cry or pull faces while she complained to me about my father (her marriage). It was during these times that I learned to keep a tight lid on my emotions and all my reactions.

It was so bad, that I had to unlearn a lot of coping mechanisms later in life. In Taiji, my teacher taught us chin-na (joint locks) techniques. We would practice them on each other and tap out when the pain was too much. Except, because I had such control over my reactions, I did not react to the techniques. At all. Now, I’m  sure you can see why this might be a problem. The chin-na did not do permanent damage if you let go quickly or before you went past the point of reasonable.

Since I could not tell what that point was, I was in danger of having something broken. I wasn’t trying to be tough or to flex; I truly did not feel anything. There’s one where you grab the thumb and jerk it downwards toward the wrist. I can already almost touch my wrist with my thumb, and I would not notice if someone pushed it a few inches further.

My teacher declared that I could only do it with her and even then she had to tell me to tap out when I thought it was a reasonable point of pain.

Additionally, when I got my tattoos, I would fall asleep much of the time. Or I would find it erotic. The only time the pain was more prevalent was when the tattooist was doing my collarbone. That was excruciating. The rest though? Not a problem. I have four tats. One large one on my left boob. One small one above my stomach. One band of thorns and flames on my left forearm. One rather large band of waves and flames around my right upper arm–with a yin-yang as the medallion joining the two sides.

I want to get another, but the tattooist I used to go to left the state a few decades ago. I’m not sure I want to go through the trouble of finding another one. I don’t go out much because of my incredibly shitty immune system, and I’m not sure I really want another tattoo. Or rather, I do, but I’m not sure I want to go through the bother to get one.


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Getting out of my comfort zone

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I am a creature of habit. I tend to stick to the same thing day after day. I don’t have a problem eating the same thing on the daily, and it’s comforting to have a routine. I mention this because I’ve been thinking about dating. Just thinking about it. As I’ve mused about it in past posts.

I have waxed poetic about how I envy my brother for being decisive and energetic. When he started dating again, he made his plan and followed it to a T. He signed up with several dating sites and swiped, er, right? Left? Whichever is the ‘yes’ option many times. He put hours a day into dating. In other words, he took it as seriously as a job.

I warned him that Asian men and black women got the least responses on dating apps, but it deterred him not. He did admit it got tiresome at times, but he stuck it out. He averaged a date a week, and in a year, he found the love of his life.

In the process, he went on a trip outside the country by himself for the first time. He found a new layer of confidence in himself that he did not know he had. Over two years later, he’s still with his girlfriend, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him this happy before. Well, that’s before all the shit that has happened in Minneapolis.

Putting that aside with great difficulty, I want to focus on my brother for a bit longer. When he started dating, I was thinking I might want to try, too. I looked at my OKCupid dating app, but I just couldn’t get into it.

See, here’s the thing. My inertia is way higher than my desire to get laid. I remember how great sex was. Believe me, I love sex. But. I don’t love what I need to do to actually get it. I mean, I probably could get sex fairly easily if I wanted to. Still at my age. But I’m not motivated to actually do anything about it. That’s my problem through and through.

I’ve been reading up on autism. There are articles about how there is no such thing as lazy and how somoene with autism has to fight their own brain to get shit done. This is the hardest thing for me.

Side note: I was looking for a song/video to include in this post as I do. I Googled songs about being the best me or something like that. One was a Bad Bunny song. I had heard a few of his songs, but hadn’t gotten too deep into it. Then, I saw his skits on SNL, and I noticed that he wore dresses in many of them. Somebody said something about him being pansexual and wearing dresses. I


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Looking for lust in all the wrong–well, no–places

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In the last post, I was talking about the possibility of me dating again. I summed it up in the last post, kind of, but I’m going to break it down in this post, kind of.

Here’s the thing. I’ve mostly fallen into my romantic relationships in the past. Meaning, a romantic relationship sprang up out of a friendship. While I have a type (quick recap: short dark hair, nerdy glasses, warm smile, deep voice, square body (thick), a nerd in general, funny, and, weirdly enough, optimistic), it’s not something that I stick to in real life, mostly because as I said, friendship leads to romance, and I don’t restrict my friendships by appearance.

I didn’t really date, either. I started dating my first boyfriend when I was sixteen. That was probably the closest to dating I did. We lived forty minutes apart, so we only saw each other on the weekends. He was a sweet guy and extremely smart, and we dated for two years. That was the closest to a typical relationship I’ve had.

My first boyfriend in college, we were good friends who spent a lot of time together. He asked me out, and I said why not? That ended up being a really complicated relationship that turned me off dating, unfortunately. It also wasn’t typical in that we didn’t go out on dates, really. We just hung out like friends–except with romance included.

I have always been good at sex. VERY good at sex. My motto was that I’d try (almost) anything once. Unless it was truly something I could not stomach, I was good to go. And I liked most of what I experienced. Sex is amazing! Sex is awesome! Sex is life-affirming!

Romance and dating, on the other hand, were hard. The examples I had in my childhood were terrible, and I was deeply and negatively affected by them. I was brought up in a cult-like church that was heavily sexist, conservative, evangelical, and fear/shame-based. Plus, Asian culture is deeply sexist in a different way to American sexism. So I got so much sexism shoved at me on a daily basis.

It’s hard to unlearn that stuff. And I noticed in my last relationship (about fifteen years ago) that I still immediately fell into my traininng as a subservient woman whose only purpose was to please the man* within my vicinity.

I hated who I became, and I realized that dating wasn’t worth it to me. In adidtion, I like being on my own. A lot. If I’m going to be around someone for a significant amount of time, it had better be a very positive experience. I like to say that I’m the cake and the other person would be the frosting. Meaning that the would be additive and not part of the substance.


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Typcasting my love

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Just for a change of pace, let’s talk about something more frivolous than the shitty state of the world. Which, quite honestly, could be anything. Literally anything. In this case, it’s romance sex,  and it’s still related to everything that’s going on.

I have a type. I noticed it decades ago. Alan Rickman.

I could leave it there, but I won’t.

Let’s add to him, Rachel Maddow.

Those were the gold standard for so long. I added to my list Erika Ishii because they are just my everything. That voice. That personality. That bod. That face. That hair! Just, they are the whole package.

Ever since the hell started in Minnesota, I’ve been watching way more news than I used to (and than is probably good for me). I glommed onto a local news anchor, Jana Shortal, who has short, curly hair, is acerbic, yet warm, has a lovely deep voice, and is a lesbian.

I mention the last because that’s been a theme, starting with Rachel Maddow. Dark short hair, wonky glasses (wonky as in wonk, not as in broken/weird), deep, warm voice (of course, these days, a reporter has to have a great voice), nerdy, and a sarcastic yet rousing sense of humor.

Next up was Kara Swisher. Pretty much rinse, lather, repeat. Yes, I know that it should be lather, rinse, repeat, but I’ve always said rinse, leather, repeat–and I won’t ever stop. It’s gotten to the point where I’ll send K a name and a bio with a wry, “So my type!”, and she’ll quip something back in return.

Side note: K and I are both pretty passionate about politics. We agree on most everything just to different degrees. I can count the number of times we’ve flat-out disagreed on something on one hand. We can tell each other things we would not share to the world at large. We’ve been friends for thirty years, and I still learn things about her that I didn’t know before.

We’ve discussed our love lives, sure. She’s been married the entire time we’ve been friends and had her child about ten years into our friendship. I told her that she got the first year free to talk about the baby as much as she wanted. This is the thing I say to all my friends when they have something momentous happen to them. After that, I expect them to return to a more balanced conversation.

K never needed that time. She and I kept on as we always were with her talk of her kid being an additive. I commented on it from time to time, and she said that she was glad to be talking about other things with me. What I inferred was that she wanted to retain her identity as K and not just as L’s mom. I could dig that, and I was happpy to be that person for her. Everyone needs the friend who will just let you be you. And, I love her (now young adult) child as if they were one of my niblings.

K has been my rock throughout my, well, rocky dating history. She’s been there for my heartbreaks and thrills, and she’s not judged me along the way. She’s not coddled me either, though. She’s a straight-shooter, which I appreciate. She’s also been my wingwoman when we went out dancing, back when she lived here. A best gal pal who will hype you up is to be treasured.


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My goals for 2026, part three

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Here we are in post three about what I want to do with my life in 2026.I have several goals, but there are three that I consider my priority. In yesterday’s post, I mostly wrote about Taiji and Bagua forms, of which there are several I want to teach myself. The goal for the year is to teach myself the Bagua Knives Form (with the deer horn knives), but in order to do that, I first have to teach myself the left side of the Swimming Dragon Form. Well, I don’t have to, but my teacher highly recommended it.

She told me there really wasn’t a Swimming Dragon Form with the deer horn knives, which made me sad. That’s really my ultimate goal in Bagua, and she said that basically, I would have to cerate my own. I’m up for it, but just not yet. Frist step is to teach myself the left side of the Swimming Dragon Form. I’m halfway done with that, and I should be able to finish it in a month or so. Or two. I want to be generous to myself so let’s say two.

My third goal is perhaps the hardest one of all. Well, that’s not true, but it’ll be difficult for different reasons.

3. I will find a queer/genderqueer Asian group, probably online.

I feel a lack of Asian people in my life. Asian American, to be more specific. And queer people. And genderqueer people. Ideally, I would like it to be all at the same time because it’s combining race, gender, and sexuality is a tricky triple combo. As with everything else in my life, I have to pare down what I’m looking for. If I was going to be unrealistic, I would add areligious to the mix, along with body positive, into martial arts, and black cats. In other words, people a lot like me. Oh! And autism and/or ADHD. Again, asking for all of that is a tall order, so I’m trimming it to gender, race, and sexual identity.

This will be hard because of my specific wants. It’s not just queer–it’s bisexual/polysexual/whatever you want to call it. In other words, not gay. I know that everyone thinks queer means gay, but it doesn’t. Bi erasure is real (or whatever you want to call it these days–bi, I mean. I’m not sold on it and never have been, but I can’t think of anything I like better. So for now, bi means people like me and people not like me. Said with a grumpy sigh), and it’s so fucking tired.

It’s the same with gender identity. I don’t mean nonbinary–I mean agender. They are different things, or at least they are to me. I don’t fluctuate in my gender like some people do. This is something that I have such a hard time explaining because I can’t make it make total sense in my own bran.


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More about my goals–and the Double Fan Form

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Ok. Let’s talk more about the Double Fan Form first. I wrote about it yesterday and how I’m struggling with it. By the way, I’m getting so engrossed with it, I’m spending up to half an hour on learning it–and we’re talking about a new posture or two at a time. In other words, it’s been ROUGH. I messaged Ian, saying I’m struggling with it. He asked if there were different things to do with each fan, which would give him trouble. That’s part of it, and today, I learned a posture that had the two fans facing the opposite ways and doing distinctly different things.

Even before that, though, the form was fucking with my brain. I was trying to figure out why that is, and I think it’s beacuse I have to hold the two fans in one hand for several postures. This is unlike the Double Saber Form in which you immediately separate the two sabers. You have one in each hand from the first posture after the bow, and you continue along in that fashion until the last posture.

With the fan form, you start with both fans in the left hand (this is common. You start with the weapon/s in the opposite of the dominant hand for the form). You transfer both to the right a few postures later. Then, a few postures later, you separate the two. One fan is facing forward and one is facing backwards. Of course, this means that you have to hold them the opposite way in the beginning when they are in one hand. I have tried it the way it makes sense to my brain (with the front sides facing out), but that doesn’t quite line up with where I need them to be by the time I separate the fans.

Side note: I was just browsing fans. Yes, I just bought a new set, but I’m curious as to what is out there. One thing that is guaranteed to make me NOT buy from a seller is them not including the dimensions of the weapon. I have seen this far too often, especially with the fans, and it’s simply not acceptable. I think one reason it happens so much with the fans is because fans are in that gray area between weapon and toy. Well, not toy, exactly, but accessory. Plus, you can do dances with them. So it’s not strictly a weapon. Still. If you are selling a fan as a Taiji weapon, then you MUST include the length. That’s not negotiable, and it boggles my mind that sellers would not automatically include that information.

I was looking at a pack of ‘large’ fans, and I could not find the size in the description anywhere. Granted, I did not peruse it carefully, but it did not show up in the description, which is where I would expect it to be. I get all my martial art equipment from Kungfu Direct, but their fan selection is limited. I wanted to see what else was out there.

Back to the Double Fan Form. I have watched half-a-dozen versions of the official Yang-style Double Fan Form (that’s what I’ve dubbed it in my head), and they are the same with small flair/tweaks. I have decided that this will be the first one I learn and that it’s good for me to persevere with it.


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Leap into the unknown

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One of the things I wanted to do in the new year (which is now a quarter done) is to widen my circle of, not friends, exactly, but acquaintances/cohorts/etc. Oh, yesterday’s post was a shambling mess. Expect more of the same today. I have not done this. Instead, I have just keenly felt more and more alone. I know my brain is broken (and my depression is getting worse) because I feel like no one loves me. And I objectively know this is not true. Yet, my brain weasels are whispering that maybe it would have been better if I hadn’t come back from dying (twice!).

By the way, I find it hilarious to say it that way. That I had died (twice!) with twice in parenths and an exclamation point following it. I can recite all the reasons why I know it’s not true (there are at least a half-dozen people whom I know love me and about a dozen more who would be sad if I were to disappear. That’s not many, but it’s still some.

And yet. I feel sad and lonely. It’s partly because I can’t comfortably drive. Not that I went out that much even before my medical crisis. But it’s hard not to look back and think that I should be further than I am now. Before I ended up in the hospital, things were opening up after the haze of the pandemic. I got my first vax and optimistically thought that I could go out and do things. Within the first month or two of going out, I caught walking (non-COVID-related pneumonia) and ended up in the hospital. That’s the short version.

Once the vax was available, I had high hopes. Right before the pandemic hit, I wanted to start dating. Or rather, I wanted to find a fuck buddy. Netflix and chill without the Netflix. I looked at my OKCupid profile, intending to clean it up and maybe  get my bro to take new pics of me. And then I had my medical crisis and that took care of that.

A little over a year ago, I started thinking about it again. Then I had a personal tragedy (which I’m still not over yet), and I put it on the backburner yet again. While I would love to find someone to have sex with, it’s not at the top of my list of thinghs to do. I can tell because I’m not doing anything to find someone. There are many reasons for that, but the main one is that while I would like to have sex again, I don’t w ant to go through all the shit to find someone. I have other things that are more important to me.

One is to find a community of other genderqueer Asian queers, as I mentioned yesterday. One of my problems is that I tend to start adding all the things I want, which are basically people like me. Narcissistic? Yes. But also, it’s because I feel so unseen. This is putting aside the medical crisis because there is literally no one else w ho has gone thorugh what I have. People like to say there are no unique experiences, but this is simply not true.


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Random musings, part deux

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I was talking about dating in yesterday’s post. Kind of. As with everything in my life, it’s much more complicated than just do I want to date or not? Because yes, I do, but also, no, I do not. Or rather, I do, but I’m not sure I want to go through all the pain and angst to do it.

This is how my brain works. Basic thought: I want to date/have sex.  Tandem thought: I do not want to have anything to do with Trump supporters. Tertiary thought: I hope they all suffer from whatever the next four years bring. Quaternary thought: Shit. That means people I love will probably suffer as much if not more. Then my brain is off to the races, and I’m no longer thinking about dating.

It’s because I’m probably neurodivergent. I have not had that tested and/or confirmed, but at my ripe old age of 53, I am fairly certain I have one kind of neurodivergency, if not more. It’s been a relief to realize that because it means that my brain isn’t broken the way I have always thought it was.

I could go deeper into the weeds, but I shall not. I want to get back to dating.

When I was in my mid-to-late twenties, I used to do the personals for dating. At the time, the biggest ones pused were Plenty of Fish and Craigslist. Both of which were like dating in the Wild West. No quality control, no options other than what was on the front page, and just a bunch of ugh. It was discouraging because as soon as I said I was Asian, that was all the responders focused on. This was in the category of W4M, which was what I was looking for at the time. Well, I also had an ad in the W4W, but I did not get any answers for that ad.  I don’t want to get into why I think that is.

I cannot tell you how many guys told me how much they loooooved Asian woman and sent me dick pics, even though I was very explicit about not wanting either. Worse, at that time, most of them said they loved ‘Oriental girls’, which was a sure way of making sure you would never get a piece of this ass.

That was a quarter of a century ago. I am even more strident about what I want and don’t want now. No straight men, especially white men. Does that cut out a huge portion of potential dates? Yup. Do I care? Nope.


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Random musings for the hell of it

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Checking in with my feelings.

*Several seconds of internal checking*

Yep, still furious. And with the news as to who Trump is going to appoint when he’s president, scared as fuck. Again, not necessarily for myself as I have options, but for all the people who will be hurt by the upcoming administration.

I don’t want to talk about that, thoughh, because I don’t need that agitas in my heart right now. I want to talk about something related, though, and that’s what I plan to do if I start to date again. It’s tangentially related because there is a bit of politics in it, but it’s more about what I want for my future. If there is a future.

My brother was just here, and we talked at length about what the fuck is wrong with America right now. Or rather, in general. I don’t want to get into it, but we’re pretty much on the same page.

Back to the point at hand. I don’t know if I want to keep living in this country. I know that’s a very privileged point of view, but it’s painful to live in a country that hates me. I mean, I’ve been doing it my whole life, but this election made it painfully clear how hated I am. Not me in particluar, maybe, but people of my ilk.

The sad thing is that if you talked to many of the people who voted for Trump, I’m sure they’d say that they voted for him despite his repugnant stances (suuuuuuuure) and that they voted for him because of his business acumen (what??). The thing is, though, that the fact that they could brush off the repugnant viewpoints says a lot about them. They don’t think they’ll be affected by his hate, but they will. Trump doesn’t care about any of them. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself. Hell, I would say he doesn’t actually care about himself, either.

Anyway. I am not here to talk about that directly. I’m here to talk about dating/sexing. I am not sure I want to do the former, but I’m pretty sure I want to do the latter. As I’ve said in recent posts, though, I do not want to hook up with cishet dudes, specifically cishet white dudes. They are the reason we are in this mess, and I have no desire to weed out the good ones from the get-the-fuck-away-from me ones. I just don’t.


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