Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: family

November means novel to me (part five)

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Back for yet another round of talking about writing a novel in November. Here is my post from yesterday in which I touched on the same topic. In rereading the last post, I realized that I didn’t write about writing at all. That’s hilarious, but so true to my heart.

Jerks like to complain about ‘woke’ characters in pop culture. It happens a lot in video games, and I see it in other mediums, too. If the main character of a video game isn’t a cishetwhiteman, then, it’s pandering to the ‘woke’ crowd. Including pronouns in the game? WOKE. Nonbinary as a gender? WOKE. I’ve told this before, but there’s a document floating around the internet that is a list of all ‘woke’ video games. What makes a ‘woke’ video game? (And, yes, I’m going to keep putting ‘woke’ in quotes because as long as it amuses me).) According to this doc, a Pride flag made a game ‘woke’. Any major character being anything other than a cishetwhitedood was ‘woke’. Of course, anything LGBTQ+ was ‘woke’.

I’ve heard this whining for so long. It was called affirmative action in the nineties/aughts, and my god, cishetwhitemen like this are so goddamn fragile. They like to call us special snowflakes, but they are the ones who are sniveling and whining when a game’s protag is anything but (say it with me), a cishetwhiteman.

Bro. Brah. My dude.

Do you know how many video games star a cishetwhitedude? Even with all the diversity that has floated into games (and I, for one, am very pleased about it), I would guess that 75% of games (and I’m being conservative here (the only time I will be conservative)) star a cishetwhitedude. If you want to play as a cishetwhitedude, you have SO many options!

Also. I just need to point out that women (and, I’m assuming women-adjacent people) make up nearly fifty percent of gamers. In some countries, they (we) are in the majority of gamers. In other words, by putting more so-called diversity into games, developers are acttually making the games more realistic than they were before.

I’m Asian, AFAB, agender, areligious, queer, not married, and no children. That’s my life. That’s who I am. I’m not a made up character; I’m living a so-called ‘woke’ life. I’m environmentally conscious, pro-choice, an anarchist, and I would be a small-l libertarian if it weren’t such a dirty word. I believe in the collective and lifting up each other.

None of that is fake or an affect; it’s simply who I am. And there are a lot of people like me. We’re not trying to be weirdos or out there or ‘woke’. We just are. I know it’s hard for some people to believe, but we are not who we are AT them; we. just. are. Are some of a bit extra because of them? Hell, yes, but that’s a pretty normal reaction.


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But faaaaaamily

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I want to talk about my family today because I’m so tired. I’ve been talking about what I want to do with my life, and I derailed myself by talking about my family in my last post. More specifically, about my father slipping further and further into dementia, and how my mother is dealing with it.

Or not. I mentioned that she is pinning her hopes on him returning to normal, whatever that means. She knows that dementia is irreversible, and yet. She has confided to me that she does things expecting him to return to himself.

I’m doing my best not to snap at her, but it’s hard. She is very rigid in her expectations about what is and isn’t acceptable. when I was in my twenties, I told her several important things about myself that she vigorously rejected. She didn’t just not like what I had to say; she hated it. She hated that I got a tattoo (I have four now); she hated that I was bisexual; she hated that I chose not to get married and have children; she hated that I decided to study Taiji. Those were all heresy in her eyes, but there was one that was even worse–I think.

When I told her that I did not believe in her god any longer. I told her I no longer believed, and true to her wont, she simply let it fly over her head. That’s her way of dealing with unpleasantry–not accepting it it all. A few years after I told her I was bi, I said something casually about liking women, and she said dismissively, “Oh, are you still like that? I thought you were over it.”

So, yes, she did not accept that I had left Christianity. She had people from her mother church (LA branch) praying at me as they circled me, their hands near my face. They asked if they could touch me, and it was a hell no to that. I was so freaked out, especially when some of them started speaking in tongues. NOT a way to try to convince someone to return to the fold, I’ll tell you that much.

But when you’re that deep in, you just can’t see it. Just like people say, “I’ll pray for you,” thinking it’s a positive thing. They don’t realize if you’re not part of their group/cult/denomination, it’s at best, neutral, and at worst, repulsive/scary/offensive.

That’s not completely fair. I’m sure for some people, the positive intent is there even if the receiver of the prayer is not part of the group. Some people can think of it as the equivalent of warm wishes and be at peace with that.


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The ground is common, but weird (part two)

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In yesterday’s post, I was talking about a Taiwanese pop song that I really liked, but could not find online. It came up when I was on Zoom with my parents after my father sang several songs, one after the other. I did not want to interrupt him because he has so little that gives him pleasure these days.

It’s really sad. When I look into his eyes, there is nothing there. It’s astonishing that he can still speak English (his third language), but he’s losing more of his vocabulary every time I talk to him. He will sometimes slip back into Chinese or Taiwanese when we talk, but it’s not really a problem as, well, to put it bluntly, it’s not as if his English is the best right now, either.

I can understand most of what he says in any language, though it doesn’t always make sense. What I mean is that I can understand each individual word, but the way he puts them together doesn’t always make sense.

I know it’s part of the dementia, but it’s so fucking cruel. Watching someone lose himself bit by bit (or in chunks) every time I talk to him is excruciating. In addition, he’s fixated on me going there. He says he hasn’t seen me in a long time, which is true. It’s been almost four years since they were here for my medical crisis.

Here’s the problem, though. I can’t fly and neither can they. For them, it’s age and my father’s dementia. For me, it’s my various immune system issues. I have not flown since my medical crisis. I was going to fly to Ian in April of 2020 and K in October of the same year, but, of course, the pandemic changed those plans.

I don’t know if I would feel comfortable flying domestically, let alone internationally. My parents are too old and frail to fly here, either. To be honest,  I’m glad. I have a really hard time being in the same room as they are for several reasons, but at least I have a legit excuse for not flying out.

As I mentioned yesterday, I have known for at least a decade if not longer that my relationship with my parents was never going to be close. I knew that civil was the best I could ask for and not resenting/hating/feeling bad about my parents was a plus.

Back to the song. I’ve added another version below, one I quite like. I’ve found several versions of it, so it’s more popular than my mom and I had originally thought. I even found a duet by two people who did it one of those The Voice type of shows. That was interesting, though not my favorite version.


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Finding (weird) common ground

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The last time I talked to my parents (before tonight), it was on Zoom the night before yesterday. It was mostly my mother and I talking because my father is not all there these days. His dementia is getting worse by the day, and it’s really sad to see.

Side note: No matter how bad our relationship was in the past, it’s painful to see him like this. Dementia is so very cruel, and no one deserves it.

At one point, he started singing. I don’t remember if my mom suggested it or not, but he was happy to sing. He used to be a great singer, and he enjoyed it very much. Now, it’s more like a tuneless monotone that barely resembles song. But if he enjoys it, then so be it. It’s good that there’s something he likes to do. According to my mother, he spends most of his time sleeping.

I patiently listened to him sing song after song. I didn’t mind that much, even though it hurt my heart. And it wasn’t pleasant on my ears. But if it made him happy, then I was ok with it.

At some point, my mother and I talked about a Taiwanese song I really liked. It was a duet, and I could hear snippets of the music in my head, but that was it. I thought it had something to do with blood and a dead soldier and lost love, but I wasn’t sure.

Part of the problem was that I don’t know how to read, write, or speak Chinese. I can understand some basic common phrases, but that’s it.

To back it up a bit, my mother sent me a CD decades ago of a very popular Taiwanese female singer. Well, two CDs of two different popular female singers (or maybe two from the same one?), and there was a song I really liked on it. A duet that was very moody in sound and, I presumed, in lyrics.

I tried to find it on YouTube maybe a decade after that, and I finally found it after much searching. My parents and I have sang it several times together. This is the backstory for what happened in these last few days.

My mother told me the name of the female singer. We then spent the next hour trying to find the song. My father had long since left and went back to bed. My mother and I were separately trying to find this song and not having much success.

My mom said if I could come up with any of the lyrics, that would really help. I thought about it and could not come up with anything. I found other songs by the singer that I liked, including another duet. But not the one I was thinking of.


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Happy birthday to me, I guess

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It’s still my birthday as  I write this. It will be for another hour and fifteen minutes. My mother called me around this time last nigth to wish me a happy birthday, and I was fine until she started moaning about my father again.

I know dementia is really cruel and very hard to deal with as a sole caregiver. Plus, she’s over eighty hereself, tiny, and in not the best health. but she makes things harder on herself by one, insisting on doing everything by herself; two, she is holding out hope that he will get better. She tells me about this article she read or that with ways to increase brain usage.

I have told her so many times  in so many ways that this was not possible. the cruelest thing about dementia is that except for a very few rare cases, there is no getting better. It’s a slow, steady decline with one ending.

She was saying that he just wanted to sleep most of the time, and he got upset when she tried to make him go for walks. The physical therapist insists on making him work harder than he wants, saying it would be better if he could go to the bathroom by himself and not have to depend on my mother.

Which, I mean.

Here’s the thing. My mother told me that Taiwanese people don’t believe in dementia, really. Or rather, they don’t believe that it’s an ailment–they think it’s a moral failing. So of course the PT thinks if my father tries hard enough, he can do things he literally can’t do. My mother protested and said he could do them when the PT asked. My brother said the same thing about when they went somewhere like the bank. My father could pull it together for that, so my brother thought he should be able to control it all the time.

I tried to explain to them that being able to do something for ten mminutes or even half an hour didn’t mean he could do it all the time. It wsa important to him to appear with it when he was in front of non-family members, so he put all his effort into doing that. That didn’t mean he could do it all the time, and in fact, his acting up later was probably as a result of wearing himself out.


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Less familiar is better for family

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It’s Mother’s Day. I have had a fraught history with this date. First of all, it’s a manufactured holiday. The idea was noble. A woman did it in honor of her mother to celebrate all mothers did for their children. Which, fine. I have no issues with that*. But as with all holidays, it’s become bastardized and commercialized.

Not only that, but it’s become a thing to wish any female-presenting person of a certain age a happy mother’s day. Which means me at this point. Even if we were to get past the whole assuming gender part (because let’s face it. That’s not going to change any time soon), it’s bizarre to me to wish anyone who isn’t your actual mother a happy mother’s day. Why would you wish any older female-shaped person a happy mother’s day? And it seems to happen to female-shaped people more than male-shaped people on father’s day.

It’s like people telling me how smart Chinese people are. And industrious/hard-working. Putting aside the fact that I’m not Chinese, let me remind people that positive stereotypes are still stereotypes. Asian American kids kill themselves at a high rate in college because of the pressure to live up to the model minority stereotypes. I will say that a lot of this is in-group pressure because in East Asian cultures, there is a high value placed on education. And being as ‘good’ as possible. This is how the stereotypes started, and it’s only been perpetuated over the years.

Anyway! I’m at the age where I’ve gotten wished a happy mother’s day at the grocery store. Which is just bizarre to me. Another reason not to do this is because there are people who have had miscarriages, are infertile, or can’t have children for other reasons and deeply mourn the loss.

Of course, the people at the grocery store don’t really care about mothers. I wouldn’t expect them to. It’s probably a mandate from on high, and I’m not sure the purpose. I’ve read that this happens in church and to a much lesser extent, work.

I have always hated the day because my mother gets upset if I don’t send her a card. My brother sends her nothing. He is not a people-person, and he doesn’t get why things ilike this are important. And he’s a dude, so he’s allowed to get away with it. I, on the other hand, am not  because I present as a woman. I am supposed to take care of my mother emotionally, and I’ve been expected to do this since I was eleven.

This was waaaaaay before I knew the term parentification, of course. My mother apologized for this when I was in my thirties, but she didn’t stop doing it. Now, she justifies it by saying the parent and child roles have been reversed. And she continues to dump her shit on me. She tries to justify it by saying it’s the way of the Taiwanese culture–that the parent becomes the child. She also tried to justify it by saying that it affected me as well because he was my father.


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WWDTAOL: But faaaaaaaaaamily!

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Today in What We Don’t Talk About Out Loud, family edition. I know I said I would write more about women and the patriarchy, but that’s not what I want to write about at the moment. I may get back to it at some point, but we’ll see. This post is about praying at the altar of faaaaaaamily and how we’re supposed to revere it above all else (while also not doing anything to support it). Fortunately, in the last several years, there have been more people speaking out as to the problem with this mentality, but it still seems to be the default. There is something the matter with YOU if you are estranged from your family or low contact. There are several reasons for this so let’s dive in.

The first is the same as in my post about women and the patriarchy–holding up the status quo. For people who are invested in doing what they’re supposed to do, it can be a kick in the posterior to have others not doing the same thing. It reminds me of an old letter on Dear Prudence (they run old letters on Sundays). The letter was from someone who had spent the past several years (from when the letter was written) taking care of their deteriorating and abusive mother. The Letter Writer (LW) mentioned that their brother had cut off the family once he turned 18 due to the abuse he suffered at their mother’s hands. The crux of the matter was that the mother had come into a large amount of money. The LW was seething that her brother would inherit a portion of it despite walking away. The LW wanted to know if they could somehow get their mother and other relatives to cut the brother out of their wills because he hadn’t “manned up” and taken care of the mother in her late years. The LW glossed over the abuse, barely acknowledging it existed in their rage against their brother not doing the right thing (according to them).

This was Emily Yoffe and I hesitated to read her response because she was all over the map when it came to her answers. She had a stubborn streak of misogyny especially against sexual harassment victims. In this case, she was spot on. She rightly took the LW to task for being pissed at their brother for doing what he needed to live his best life. She astutely intuited that perhaps the LW was mad because they had made a different (and not healthy) choice to stay in contact with their abusive mother. This is the point I wanted to make. The LW held up the status quo because it’s what expected in our society. They did what they thought was their duty and was resentful because their brother didn’t do the same thing. In other words, misery loves company. I understand why the LW felt bitter about it, but she was directing her ire at the wrong person.

It reminds me of a metaphor I heard of relating to this topic. A dysfunctional family system is like a leaky boat that is rapidly taking on water. Or rather, the abusive person is the leak in that boat. Everyone on board is frantically bailing out water with equally-leaky buckets, trying to keep the boat afloat. At some point, one of the bailers realizes it’s futile and jumps overboard. They manage to swim ashore at great detriment to themselves. Everyone left on board, instead of being impressed and perhaps inspired that someone made it out alive, they become enraged at that person for escaping the situation. Why? First, because it leaves the ones behind with more water (abuse) to bail out (deal with). Second, because it busts the illusion that there’s nothing to be done but bail out the water (put up with the abuse). It can make the left behind people feel like they’ve wasted their lives up to that point. Third, and this is where the analogy falls apart, it’s difficult to be angry at the abuser because you know the abuser is not going to change. It kinda fits. The boat isn’t going to fix itself in the analogy.


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Sickness in the time of COVID-19

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I don’t get a temperature. I have to start out by stating that so the rest of this post will make sense. Let me be clearer–I have a base temperature of 97.5, and I have never had a temp higher than 99.5. This is important because one of the main symptoms of the COVID-19 (I always want to call it ‘the COVID-19’ for whatever reason, and I’m never quite sure if it’s COVID-19, covid-19, or Covid-19) is a fever. When this started to become a world-wide concern, I tried to figure out what a temperature for me would be. Since I started a base of 1 degree lower than most people, was a fever for me 1 degree lower than it would be for others or would it be the same? I’ve seen arguments on both side, but very sparingly because it isn’t something that scientists seem to care about. In addition, I read denigrating comments about ‘those people who claim to never have a fever’ and it was really disheartening. I mean, how the fuck am I supposed to know if I have a fever if I don’t know the definition of a fever for me?

To me, the fact that I start 1 degree lower should mean that my fever is 1 degree lower than other people’s, but the (slight) consensus is that there’s a hard line as to what a fever is. It seems to be over a hundred? I don’t know it’s also difficult to find what exactly is a fever. Apparently, 100.4 is a low-grade fever, but anything over 103 is cause for concern. On the Minnesota Department of Health website, they say that 100.4 is considered a fever for COVID-19. And a fever is a big marker of COVID-19, though not everyone with COVID-19 gets a fever. I jokingly asked if I wasn’t able to get a fever of 100.4, did that mean I couldn’t get the COVID-19? I know that’s not how it works, but it’s my way of dealing with the frustration of not knowing what a fever means for me.

I woke up with my sinuses bristling. It’s hard to explain what I mean by that, but I’ll do my best. It feels as if there are a thousand little needles pricking my nose and the  area around it. It’s very minimal at this point, so it’s the start of something. I do not have a dry cough, but I am fatigued. I’m always fatigued, however. But it’s been even more than usual. Also, the fever thing is baked into recovery of COVID-19 as well. What I mean is that if you’re three days free of fever, you’re considered well enough to go out again (if you’re also free of respiratory problems). It’s frustrating that yet again, I don’t have the easy touchstone.

In addition, I have plenty of sinus issues. I’m having a problem with it at the moment. I don’t have a dry cough or shortness of breath. I do have a headache, but I always have a low-grade headache. I have diarrhea on and off, but that’s a food sensitivity issue.

Side Note: I was watching an episode of Docter Mike, whom I had been enjoying for the first few episodes I watched. The third or fourth one I chose was about food allergies, and he had an expert on. The guy was affable, but it was soon clear that he was disdainful of anything other than true allergies. He said sensitivities were not a thing and that everyone had to deal with some unpleasantness. Doctor Mike joked about everyone having a leaky gut, and they both had a hearty laugh. I had a visceral negative reaction to the video because it summed up how doctors can be so incredibly callous. Neither of them were sneering openly, but they made it very clear what they thought of people who complained about food issues that weren’t allergies.

I’ve spent years dealing with food issues. I’ll call them intolerances because that’s what they are. They are not allergies. I don’t have Celiac, and I am not going to die when I eat something that doesn’t agree with me. I will, however, have to sit on a toilet for an hour, feeling my asshole getting progressively rawer and rawer. I get dehydrated and exhausted, and I don’t feel like moving for the next hour or so. Is it life-threatening? No. Is it debilitating? Yes, even if it’s brief. No, it’s not a life-and-death matter, but it definitely is a quality of life thing. Oh, and I would say I’m allergic to alcohol because I get a shortness of breath when I drink it. But, again, I probably won’t die from a single gin and tonic, so the good doctors probably wouldn’t classify it as an allergy, anyway. In addition, it’s strange to me that allergies related to foods are deadly whereas allergies related to, say, nature aren’t necessarily.


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I vant to be alone

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Day Five

go. away.
I’m ready for the apocalypse.

It’s day five with no end in sight. Life as we know it is over, and I may not make it out of this alive. If I don’t, tell Shadow I love him.

I’ve been up for almost three hours, and I’ve had to answer four tech questions for my father already. Now, I know this isn’t a big deal because many of us have older parents who are uncomfortable with technology. Let’s throw some additional wrenches into this shitshow. One: I don’t read Chinese; my father’s phone is in Chinese. Two: I don’t use cell phones for any serious work because it makes me angry, scared, and confused. I like a full-functioning keyboard and all my keyboard shortcuts. Three: One of the problems has to do with PowerPoint, which I don’t use at all.

So. We have the comedy of me pointing at something on the screen and asking my father what it says. He doesn’t speak English on the regular any longer and hasn’t for at least two decades, so he struggles to translate the Chinese into English. Then, I try to figure out the equivalent in English before poking his phone, mostly in random.

This is fairly funny, but it’s also irritating because both my parents expect me to drop whatever I’m doing and help them RIGHT NOW. Yes, I know their emergency is not my emergency, but Asian parenting training is real, yo. You don’t say ‘no’ to your Asian parent. You just don’t. I’ve gotten much better at it, but it’s hard not to slip. Plus, my mother has a singular mind when it comes to, well, anything. And she has no ability to rate how urgent something is. If she wants it done, then it’s urgent. It’s hard because my ‘office’ is my couch, which is in the living room. So they feel free just to wander in and ask for whatever it is they need or just to chat.

Small annoyance: My mother is like a caster of her own thoughts. You know that inner voice that is constantly narrating what you do and think? That’s my mom. “I’m going to cut the vegetables now. First I have to soak them, though. I soak them for twenty minutes to get the–what do you call it?” That’s an actual question which she waits for me to answer. I know what she wants, but I’m not going to give it to her. I am not. No, no, no. I am not going to say toxins. “I leave it for twenty minutes, and–” I cannot tell you what follows because by this time, my eyes have glazed over, and my pulse is nonexistent.

I know that I’m making all this sound amusing (and it is in retrospect, it kinda is), but it’s mostly irritating at the time. The last few times they’ve been here, I’ve been able to let this shit roll off my back, but for whatever reason, it’s been harder this time. It started when my mom called me a few days before the visit. We were just talking about whatever, and then she said something that was patently a statement of denial. I was telling my brain, “Don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t say it,” as my brain formulated a statement that I knew wouldn’t make things better and might actually make things worse. My brain wouldn’t let me not say it, and, yes, it didn’t make things any better.

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Break From the Ordinary

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I had another post planned for today, but sometimes, reality takes precedence. My mom fell this afternoon, twisting her knee. She tried to tough it out by icing it, but it was really hurting. I took her to the Twin Cities Orthopedics (Coon Rapids) because they have Urgent Care that is open until 8 p.m., and I’m relieved that nothing is broken or torn.

However, because of it, my whole schedule is in shambles, and I’m not up to writing the post I was originally working on. Therefore, today, you get Shironeko (white cat with orange markings in the background) and his buddy just chilling.

I could do with a little serenity, and Shironeko helps me get there.

Odlly enough, however, for all my PTSD worst-case scenario catastrophizing, I’m actually pretty good in a real crisis. Instead of overreacting as I normally do, I’m calm, focused, and relaxed. I concentrate on what needs to be done, and I’m not upset or flustered by what is happening. I think it’s because I’ve practiced in my mind for a disaster so many times, actual terrible things are easier to handle.

It’s also taiji. I’m always going to give credit to taiji for making me calmer and more able to deal with stressors.

The doctor told my mother that all she needed was ice and Tylenol. She (the doctor) did give my mother crutches, which she’s using to hobble around. The doctor looks twelve, by the way, but she was terrific, as was the technician and the front desk person. All in all, it was an easy and smooth experience, and I would recommend them to anyone who needs orthopedic work.

Here’s an extra video of Maru relaxing in a hammock plus various other activities, including laying flat on his back with his tail lazily swishing back and forth. Bonus appearances by his sister, Hana. I can’t with the cuteness!