I’m getting a maid

I admire women who work hard for other people and create a home others depend on. They are tireless and selfless, people like my mother who held a stressful full time job but still cooked dinner every night, and people like my [good] grandmother who literally worked herself sick and almost died.

I’m not sure if I could ever be like them, and if I didn’t have to be like them, suffering and working so hard most of their lives, whether I should consider myself fortunate, or just lonely? And why is it that every time I envision a “good woman,” she is never one to sit in luxury and content?

Which is why I held out from getting a maid for the longest time even though I don’t have the time or the will to scrub my toilet every month and keep my cloth off of the ground. I’m not saying good women must do chores, but as a woman, I’d like to be able to do that. But I’m getting a maid starting next week. Maybe this really isn’t a woman thing, but just habits. And I have bad habits when it comes to keeping the house clean. And that’s okay – I don’t have to be perfect, I need to remember that.

These days I am reminded that I am a lot like my dad, whom I have lost respect to and certainly don’t
want be compared to. He is weak, and completely powerless when he faces his family and their abusive relationships. He is a coward and couldn’t say the truth even as it stares at him in the eyes. He doesn’t have a mind of his own even though he’s educated. He isn’t naturally a bully (like his brother), but he is weak and insecure and though he doesn’t bully others, he bullies my mother and I to get his frustrations out.

He does not represent the kind of man I’d ever, ever want to marry. In fact, he’s the reason I don’t ever, ever want to marry. And I hate him. I hate the fact that he mindlessly helps others and pretends to be the most generous person in front of other people, all to win approvals because his mother never cared about him, a fact he’s not willing to admit but everyone sees. Then, at home, he drives me and my mom crazy to ease his own psychological problems.

Anyways. I’m hiring a maid because that’s something I said I’d never do. But I’m doing it, because I need to break my cycle, admit my flaws – I am a horrible housekeeper and never will get any better, but that doesn’t make me a bad woman!

3

It was just the 3 of us, no one else. The moment we united at the airport, we looked after one another like true families do – for directions, for luggage, for a seat to rest on and tickets to purchase, for eternal trust. We drove down interstate 89 away from a tropical storm and into the deep mountains, toward our beautiful 3-day getaway destination. At this moment, I had a partial realization I’ve never experienced before, that this is what men said it meant to provide for his family, that this is why I work so hard in a job I don’t exactly love – so we can get away.

Like all Asian mothers, my mother brought from home her home-cooked food to consume on the road, from chicken to walnuts to baked bread, things I missed. So I start playing Chinese music on my iPod and we set off in our rented Toyota Hybrid in the comfort of having a GPS. We drove, like 3 woman stuck on an deserted island: glad to have each other.

And all was forgotten. The way she use to hate her mother, and the way I use to hate her, after multiple chemo-therapies, two immigrations, a religions awakening and an educational rebirth – we found ourselves the mirror images of each other in different times, a women who truly survived it all, another one who basically did, and the third one still completely lost.

I have always wanted to do better than the women that came before me, not to beat them at some game, but to prove their triumph. I want to travel further, marry a better man, and live happier. Easily done, I use to think, for I’ve already gone to continents and cities neither of them have gone to, been loved as an only child the way they’ve never been loved, and as to marrying better men, that is not hard to achieve giving my father’s severe psychological dependency on an twisted psycho woman, my [bad] grandmother.

But I’m also intensely insecure about going anywhere near their triumph. My grandmother ran away from home at the age of 20 into the exotic frontiers of war-torn China; my mother moved to a conservative foreign land in her late thirties surrounded by psycho in-laws and racist outsiders. Even as I travel to the edges of Antarctica, I couldn’t have traveled further than their journey in life. My grandmother survived an impossible cancer after excruciating chemo-therapies, and she has become a completely open person as a result. My mother has found peace and happiness in God. I’m not sure I could ever find something as esoteric as religion to truly let go. And I hope I don’t have to go through anything as painful as cancer to learn that letting go is easy to do.

I’m not sure I could ever find a man to love, despite all of his flaws.

Bad Dreams

I had a dream last night about a fight with my mother because she earned a law degree, a bunch of debts, but still couldn’t speak English. In the dream, I hurt her feelings and she pushed me to the edge of madness. I also dreamed about soliciting autographs from Olympic gold medalists, one of them a friend who actually got pissed when I wasn’t nice to her when asking for her autograph.

Dreams are reflections of reality, and as Freud says, “Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most crazy.”

I woke up from this 12-hour nightmare gasping for air, only to remember that the night before, I was at a club being the wing-woman of another friend; I am always the wing-woman.

And today, I talked to a guy who tried to assess my intelligence the elite-way and concluded that I’m not good enough. So, I went to Barnes and Noble and read, like I did when I was 16, trying to escape an apartment of bickering and maniac fighting. And as always, books calm me like no man could.

But I will be fine, because my friends tell me I will be fine, and at least a number of them really mean it. And I will be fine because I believed in myself even when nobody did, and I’m going to continue doing that. And then, I cried.

The Problem of the Unemployed

I hate being unemployed, just as much as a I hated being employed. I hate being unemployed because I hate the lack of identity.

When I was working, I was a consultant, and every time you meet someone new, one of the first things they ask is what do you do. And I like having an answer, because then you can talk about what you do and whether or not you like it, and if not, what do you want to do instead.

Now, I tell people I’m unemployed. And they ask why. I hate that they ask, because I have to explain how I got laid off, and how I’m not really sad about it. But they still apologize, because they want to appear nice, and it annoys me. I wish the fact that I’m lost could still be hidden the way it did when I was employed, it makes casual conversations easier to deal with.

But life is not about just the easy, but how you walk through the tough and come out a stronger, better person. And that’s what I intend on doing.

Conditional Love

My grandmother grew up as the 2nd daughter of a 3rd wife, within a large wealthy family where she was neglected. From the way she blindly favored her one son over the other, one could easily guess that she probably suffered similar treatment herself and subconsciously came to treat her own as differently as her family treated her.

While my grandmother completed high school at a time when most women in China could not read or write, she never matched up in the eyes of her family to her prettier and smarter older sister, who had the opportunity to complete college, marry an educated man, and live the modern life.

Instead, my grandmother married a Communist foot soldier and settled in a small town in Western China. To the outside world, my grandmother is the definition of grace and modesty, but as many quintessential Chinese woman of the traditional world, she grew up without a sense of empowerment, was never taught to have self worth, and worst of all, without an understanding that respecting others starts with respecting the self.

She is great at putting on a show, but it took me 24 years to realize that deep down, there is nothing there. I learned recently that she was not on speaking terms with my grandfather around the time of his death, some 25 years ago. She was not loved by her parents, and now I have come to learn that she was not loved by her husband either. “The perfect relationship between husband and wife should be one based on mutual respect and harmony at all cost.”

“Harmony at all cost” – it is her way of covering up anything that might be wrong. It is also a phrase my father has repeatedly said to me during the most frustrating and depressing years of my life.

For a person who was not loved by anyone, how can she then in turn love anyone else, including her own children?

It took me 24 years to figure her out, and figuring her out has in some ways set me free. She has haunted my father into the man who despite all his good heart, has emotionally abused me for 8 years we lived with my grandmother close by. Figuring her out made me realize why she has torn apart marriages of her own daughter, why her lack of independent thinking ironically matches with her calculating outbursts of anger. She knows when to use the vulnerable, when to hurt the vulnerable, when to be ruthless, and when to suck up, as others have done to her and around her back in the days.

I see in my grandmother, a tragedy. And in her son, my father, regret of not being able to overcome a tragic upbringing and all the flaws and fears associated with it. And I sincerely hope that I can be courageous enough to obtain the will to overcome the hereditary tendencies of repeating their mistakes.

Love withdrawal – it’s a psychiatric term I learned in college, utilized by those that practice conditional love as a way to get what they want. My grandmother is a pro, my father has inadvertently practiced it all his life without any understanding of what he is actually committing, and while I try not to repeat their mistakes, I look back in my short life and have already seen it happening in many situations of pressure and distress. We are all trying to not repeat the flaws of our parents, I am doing my best to avoid mine.

Once I get over the hate, I feel sorry for my grandmother, a woman who has never experienced unconditional love and thus does not know how to love others. And I am thankful that I was brought up instead by a different grandmother, one who has taught me how to pour all the love you have onto someone else, and realize that when you have poured all the love you could possibly pour, it all comes back, and that is what family is all about.

To predict your future, live with someone slightly older

I found myself living with people in their late twenties; as the only roommate in her early twenties, I secretly feel sort of ahead in life. I tell myself: when I’m at their age, I will not be living here.

It’s interesting living with people who had already made their choices, to take a lucrative career (and thus lots of debts), to go into academia (and thus lots of schooling), or to pursue their passion in the arts (and thus no money). It’s daunting to watch people barely older than me but with their lives clearly mapped out.

We are defined by the choices we make, and my roommates’ choices are very definitive. It’s difficult to quit or start again in our 30′s, though not impossible. I am envious of the limitation. I want to be defined.

I am at least 5 years younger, and I am completely undefinable. People ask me what I do now, and I can’t describe it. People ask me what I like to do, and I don’t have a reply. And people ask me what I woud like to do in the future, and I answer I don’t know. I have come to realize that while I make more money than most of my roommates, I am not at all successful, mostly because I don’t feel successful.

Success is defined by the degree to which you understand yourself, and that is directly related to the choices you must make at some point in your life, the degree to which you know what you want, if not where you are heading toward.

Choices also make one grounded, more at ease, and certainly more human: it takes one from wild dreams and pink imaginations down to reality. I highly doubt my roommates will agree that their lives are as clearly mapped as I see them to be, mostly because I can tell that while they have directions, they are not necessarily happy.

The best choices are still imperfect, every path has its bumps. Choices are the gateway to success, but not happiness.

So if I am not ready to make choices in my own life, at least I can choose good friends and boyfriend to make myself happy, because God knows the best of both categories are disappearing by the second.

I think I have an Existential Crisis

So, what to do next?

Bob Dylan puts it nicely…

You walk into the room
With your pencil in your hand
You see somebody naked
And you say, “Who is that man ?”
You try so hard
But you don’t understand
Just what you’ll say
When you get home.

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones ?

You raise up your head
And you ask, “Is this where it is ?”
And somebody points to you and says
“It’s his”
And you says, “What’s mine ?”
And somebody else says, “Where what is ?”
And you say, “Oh my God
Am I here all alone ?”

But something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones ?

You hand in your ticket
And you go watch the geek
Who immediately walks up to you
When he hears you speak
And says, “How does it feel
To be such a freak ?”
And you say, “Impossible”
As he hands you a bone.

And something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones ?

You have many contacts
Among the lumberjacks
To get you facts
When someone attacks your imagination
But nobody has any respect
Anyway they already expect you
To all give a check
To tax-deductible charity organizations.
You’ve been with the professors
And they’ve all liked your looks
With great lawyers you have
Discussed lepers and crooks
You’ve been through all of
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books
You’re very well read
It’s well known.

But something is happening here
And you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones ?

Well, the sword swallower, he comes up to you
And then he kneels
He crosses himself
And then he clicks his high heels
And without further notice
He asks you how it feels
And he says, “Here is your throat back
Thanks for the loan”.

And you know something is happening
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones ?

Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word “NOW”
And you say, “For what reason ?”
And he says, “How ?”
And you say, “What does this mean ?”
And he screams back, “You’re a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home”.

Because something is happening
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones ?

Well, you walk into the room
Like a camel and then you frown
You put your eyes in your pocket
And your nose on the ground
There ought to be a law
Against you comin’ around
You should be made
To wear earphones.

Does something is happening
And you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Methodical Life-Changing Plan

I have been confused for a long time on what I should do with my life.  It’s an existential crisis.  The past 5 or so posts I have written have all been obsessively about what I should do with myself and who I should be.  I also write about how I am freaking out because I don’t have answers and can’t seem to find them.

This has been extremely uncomfortable and disorienting, and scary.

Here’s what I have come up with on dealing with such gridlock situations in life:

While I can’t figure out what I want to do, I make as much money as I can because:

1. It sucks when I don’t know what to do, but it’ll suck even more if I am also broke. Money does not make things easier (or me happier) – believe me I’m here and I know. But money allows me to take hip hop classes, learn the guitar, buy annual membership to artsy fairs, and plan a trip to South America. They open my eyes and while I would much rather that money be happily earned, at least it’s earned.

2. The money gets me a career coach and a therapist. It is ironic that I make money from a career I don’t like then use that money to talk about not liking my career. But irony is life. My confusion about who I am and what to do with myself comes from emotional/psychological blockage being raised by a hyperventilating mother and an overbearing father, though I am told this is actually kind of normal. The career coach provides me action plans to shake things up, and the therapist explains why I can’t get myself to shake things up. This is all useless, but kind of necessary. It’s part of the process. Part of me think it’s just me being White but I’d like to believe it as a truly modern endeavor.

3. I will pay off my student loans. It’s a legal barrier that needs to be taken care of. I really hate loans (and people with old money).

But soon (maybe by the end of this year, I don’t know) if I still can’t figure out what I want to do I am just going to quit. Quitting totally makes sense because:

1. If I get promoted later with that 50% raise, it’ll make quitting that much harder; then I’m going to be truly stuck in this ever-lasting corporate climb because I’m going to start lying to myself that this is all how it’s suppose to bee (I could afford a house now!), just like that guy from Revolutionary Road.  Promotion is really the only reason why people get stuck and die sad. Quitting now makes sense.

2. I am legally free (of student debts). Knowing the worst that could happen to me is keep hitting zero and not spiraling into the negative is incredibly comforting. It’s sort of like buying options versus just stocks – I don’t buy options.

3. I have had money and have known the feeling of knowing I could have more – and I choose to give it up. This makes the perspective of “what-ifs” simple.

4. I have received advice on finding who I am from every alternative source possible: the parents, friends, shrinks, career advisers, corporate mentors, cab drivers, Jewish people, Chinese people, Black people, and my dear Grandmother. After exhausting every route except my own, I feel less guilty about ruining my “career” and going out there starting at zero – exploring the route on my own because I have listened and they don’t work.

After I quit anything is game, this is the part I have not figured out yet, but isn’t that the point.

Feeling Lost during Emerging Adulthood

The thing about life is that someday we will all be dead.

Birth, no matter how significant, faces an inevitable fate all the same. This preface makes what we do matter. And people in their twenties matter the most.  Look at me: I have no partner to commit to, no child to feed, no parents with broken hips or mortgage to pay off.  I have nothing else aside from feeling incredibly self-indulgent and self-inflicting.  I matter because well, who else is going to matter?

Bloggers write about how it’s okay to be lost in your twenties. But “it’s okay” is hardly the phrase people in their twenties use to describe their state of mind, not the banker who believes he’s invincible, the hipster with an opinion on everything, or the entrepreneur dreaming of taking over the world.

It’s not okay that I’m lost, and I don’t think anyone growing up in today’s competitive education system would feel at all okay for not knowing what to do with their life. Not having an answer to a question, and not knowing where to search for an answer is like watching yourself getting a failing grade and not doing anything about it. It’s unacceptable.

Two years ago I met an incredibly hot Vice President from an investment bank during a recruiting session.  She has remarkably  puffed-over hairdo, gorgeous makeup, fitting Armani suit and the nicest personality. She use to be a competitive figure skater. Her Manhattan presence looked just awe-inspiring under the limelight of my Midwestern college.  I swore to my friend Chuck walking home in 3 inches of snow that one day, I am going to become her.

Two years later our banking industry collapsed in shame. Two years later I stopped talking about white privileges on a daily basis. Two years later we have our first African American President. Two years later Chuck the asshole sidekick of any emotionally unstable female is banging the hottest girl north of 80th street. None of these I would have EVER predicted the day I graduated college. But here we are, and I am the one who is lost.

Emerging adulthood is de-evolution. I feel less sure of myself than I did in college, less optimistic that I am going to change the world, more certain that maybe the world just changes on its own. In this era of hope, I wish I could embrace what I feel about this country on the inside too.

Being lost is not okay, no matter what others write. But there is really nothing I could do about that.

Bravery

The world is a scary place; but this scary place is also a wonderful place because beauty is defined by the act of bravery, bravery conquering fear, thus making the world a better place.

And bravery is not valiant knights riding in shining armor into the sunset.  Bravery is not even standing up to the bully with the innocent cheering behind.  Bravery is not a show. If you are out there seeking applause then perhaps you are being fooled by cowardice instead.

Bravery is less glorious and more ambiguous to the eye.  Bravery is asserting your position clearly when it really counted, embracing a stance you find embarrassing but true, or speaking out about a message that is deprecating to your reputation but you have refused to go along with the manipulation.

Bravery is about protecting and lending voices to the weak at a time when pleasing the master is really all you wanted to do to feel secure and happy again.

Also, bravery is about the ability to really laugh with others at oneself through all the embarrassing blunders and imperfections.

Bravery is not to be confused with headstrong stupidity.  Headstrong stupidity seeks to assert one’s position in an untimely and unnecessary manner simply for the satisfaction of feeling brave.  Bravery is changing the world into a better place, respecting those who may not deserve any respect, and making sure that we don’t disappoint what we are really made of.

Bravery is empowering and it is infectious.

I am inspired everyday by the strong men and women in my lives, the famous and the nameless, they have shown the kind of bravery I aspire up to. I am inspired everyday to be a little bit better than I was yesterday.