defydusk

[defydusk]

I’m doing great! The explanation marks are just a mask for how I’m entirely not doing okay!!! But hopefully they can communicate that I am trying to stay upbeat though I’m breaking down!!!!! I’m fine. Really, I’m fine. My dad died and I miss him so much that I think I’m going to fall apart but I’m focusing on work just to stay put together and my reality is all work and wedding planning and I think I’m unhappy but that’s FINE

[defydusk]

I’m fine

I’m just breaking down

But I’m all right

I promise

[defydusk]

I love the feeling of tipsiness — the lightness of the world being lifted from my shoulders.

And then I worry that I’m falling too much in love with it. I don’t want to worry about my day or the things that make me upset. I’ll gladly take another drink to temporarily make me forget.

I’m getting older now. I feel the world slipping from my fingers. I’m so sad, nearly all of the time. I’m prone to massive self-pitying bouts. Then, I want to write about them.

Why do I feel so safe here?

Death. Death. Death. I think about it so often. There are only so many emotional paper cuts I can keep covering up. I’m scared of loved ones passing away. Because my dad was ripped from me.

I’m damaged goods. Somehow, I’m okay with that.

Someone once told me the flaws of a person are the most interesting of them all.

Well, good. Because I have a growing list.

[defydusk]

[defydusk]

㋡🥀

simply gorgeous in the sunshine..

[defydusk]

[defydusk]

Joe Thomas photography

[defydusk]

I hate being 31.

[defydusk]

Fuck me. This day was difficult. I almost wrote you. But that was the wine talking.

There’s no end game. You said it yourself. So I’ll pretend you never existed. There’s no other option.

No more scheming. I’m the problem. It’s me.

[defydusk]

I just miss you. I miss who I was when we first met. Wide-eyed, lost, confused, optimistic. Like the world could still be beautiful.

My dad was alive when I met you. You feel like a fever dream now. Remember when we got lost? Until nothing made sense anymore?

I miss that. I miss being irrational and irresponsible.

[defydusk]

I’m not sure what to tell you.

I keep going back to the app to see if your message is real.

Surely, this is my imagination at work. Every little fantasy that I have conjured over the past two years like a fever dream — surely, that’s what this is.

Because you wouldn’t be contacting me. The girl who you said wasn’t the one.

Because you know that I will be married soon.

Why did you come back around? Were you afraid I would forget you?

I am. I was in the process of forgetting you and marveling over that now beautiful silence in my mind. Until I saw your message.

And now I’m torn trying not to reply.

I have had nightmares about losing the single most important thing in my life right now. And I can’t risk it.

Not for you anymore.

I once belonged to you. I miss that feeling. Knowing where I belonged. It stirs something in me sometimes when I truly think of you.

Now I know it’s because I loved you from back then. And who you are now, I’m not so sure anymore…

None of this is eloquent. I’m writing this down anyway.

I can’t sleep. I’m not tired. I’m worried about hurting you by not responding. But I won’t risk this. I just won’t.

I am beginning to finally heal from losing you. Please just let me heal.

[defydusk]

Languid healing.

I remember being a sophomore in college and being so incredibly excited to spend my days in the library, just so I could get Wi-Fi and post my innermost thoughts on Tumblr. It was thrilling to get to be me — unfiltered and all — with strangers on the Internet. I felt like I was part of a secret group of friends, something I had long wished for, for so long. When I would type, I rarely would hit the backspace key — it was like me, confiding to my very best friend, without any hesitation, without any stuttering, because I felt safe, confident and sure that I would not be judged. This was a safe zone. This was a place where I would be okay. I could breathe here.

It is not lost on me that now, almost a decade later during a moment when I feel so alone, when I have alienated all my friends because I'm so depressed, that I have returned back to this place to pour all of my feelings out back into the world that has left me feeling empty and cold.

2022. I read through all of the posts on this blog, and I'm proud of how far I have come. Last year was awful. It has become a giant blur in my brain. Out of self-preservation, I think. Good job, brain.

Yesterday, I was accused unfairly by my boss of missing something. It left me with a bitter taste.

Today, my mom and I looked for a houseplant to bring to my sister tomorrow. Life feels like it is returning to normal — but then every small moment of happiness that I am able to find is interrupted by the responsibility of fucking adulthood. And the reality that one day, everyone I love will be gone.

I'm still depressed.

All I know is that I am now 30. I am engaged. There are flickers of joy. There are sustained periods of sadness and grief.

Sometimes, I can almost forget how sad I am. That has been the power of work — all of those long hours I guess paid off for something. I've been able to push aside any desperate emptiness away and focus on the minutiae of spreadsheets, draft briefs and meeting agendas.

But I miss dad. I miss him so much. He would have been 65 last October. This year, he would have been enjoying retirement.

This year, maybe he would have flown out to San Francisco and visited me with mom. Maybe this year, I would have been able to take him and mom to all of our favorite places in the city. I could have shown him where the best beaches are, and our favorite coffee shop.

The first piece of writing I turned in around dad's death was for his obituary. And the first piece of writing that I turned in to articulate how I felt was for a job application. I wanted to answer truthfully to the writing prompt -- "If I had a time machine, where would I go and why?"

And I would turn the dial back to the moment that my dad landed in the States.

Dad. I miss you. You worked too hard, and I am grateful. But I wish you had rested more. I wish I had pushed you go to the doctor's more often. I wish I had argued with you more about retiring early, so that maybe you would have listened to me.

I wish this hadn't been the end.

[defydusk]

Blankness.

No one knows what to say to a girl who’s father died.

#coping with grief

[defydusk]

A letter to everyone and the world.

A toast to the guys and gals who kept me upright during a year that felt so very turbulent: My mom, who is the strongest person I know. My sister, who had my back even when I was wrong. My cousin, who made me laugh when things felt bleak. My best friends who gently reminded me that it is okay to smile even when you’re sad. My coworkers who never pried and gave me space and cheered me up with terrible puns when I grew silent. And to my fiance, who makes every day still feel like a beautiful daydream.

My dad died on Thanksgiving Day in 2020. I don’t talk about it — cancer and cancel are very similar words, and I still am finding it so very difficult to talk about the sudden loss of my best friend. Everything lately has been cancelled for me: Normalcy, routine, sleep. Someone once told me grief isn’t linear, that you grow around the heartache and find ways to just simply continue. Another good friend remarked that she began to think of her life in chapters following the loss of her mother: Life before she died, and life after she died. And I understood. Because I always thought of my dad, my mom and I as the three musketeers. We always were together, thick as thieves, and I can’t imagine a world without him in it. And now, I’m living in it.

I cried more times than I can count this year. To pass the time: I read, I listened to music, I meditated, I played piano, I tried to cook, I drank an enormous amount of coffee (and wine), I journaled, I stared at the ceiling for a very long time, I threw myself headfirst into work, hoping that it would serve as a productive distraction, I paced around my parents’ backyard garden in between work meetings, I watched too many Korean dramas.  

I wish I could say that I emerged out of 2021 a stronger person. But I don’t know if I am stronger, wiser or smarter. I just know that I now live in a world where my dad isn’t in it. And that it was sad and difficult every single day to get out of bed this year. But I survived. Oh man, I freaking survived. And that has to count for something.

So, cheers to 2021. You sucked. You really, really sucked. But it was a year of growth and pain and lessons learned. And maybe in 2022, I’ll find better ways to continue on and carrying on.

#coping with grief

[defydusk]

2022.

What do you do when all you want to do is shout into the endless void that we call life? 

Depression. This must be it. Or another mid-life-fucking-crisis. 

I realized today that maybe the dark quiet sounds alluring because then I would be with my dad. And that sounds like home to me.

I miss him so much. Every morning, I think, “I miss dad.” 

I miss him. I want to call him. Everything about me is tightly intertwined with who he was and who he is still in my mind.

A selfless man who gave up the world for his daughter, with the hope that she would succeed. Because he dreamed more for me than I ever dreamed for myself.

I feel like a disappointment. I should want to have a dream. To make his sacrifice worth it. It is such a stupidly heavy burden to bear. 

I feel aimless. I feel like I’m in this daydream where one day, I’ll really wake up and find that my dad is just in the other room, watching TV, like he always is. Like it’s just another ordinary day, and my dad is still here, and I’m not that girl who lost her dad to cancer. 

It has to be some fucking sick joke, right? It has to be. I don’t want to live in a world where my dad isn’t in it. I hate this. I hate that I can’t talk to him. I hate that I’m 30 and that I’m supposed to have life fucking figured out. I haven’t got a clue. 

My job is meaningless. I do it because it pays the bills. I want to be an author...but it’s all because at 15, when I was bored and alone and at home all summer, I found fan fiction and suddenly found a whole group of online friends. 

So that’s why I want to be author. I want to feel like someone else understands why it feels so fun to imagine and dream. And to get paid to do it? Fuck, I’d do it for free. But these days, I’m just so fucking scared because now there’s all this fucking pressure to be successful and what not. 

2022. Twenty fucking two. 

I have no hopes pinned on next year. My main goal? Well, fuck. I guess it’s finally to start speaking my mind and leading where I can. 

#coping with grief

[defydusk]

Spring rolls.

I don’t know why you made this for Christmas dinner. I won’t blame you -- how would you know that we haven’t eaten these since dad died? 

Only he made spring rolls, because he made a special kind of sauce. We can’t recreate that. 

But you made some kind of Frankenstein spring roll for us to eat. On Christmas no less. For us to remember what we’ll never have again. 

Dad. At the table. With his smile, his laughter, his wry sense of humor.

We went to the river today to see him. And, for the first time, I cried. I cried with mom. 

#christmas #coping with grief

[defydusk]

Futile

That’s how this all feels

A temporary happiness, insanity

To return to you

To your arms and to indulge in you

Futile

That’s us

We’ll end anyway

Because that was us

We were never meant to be anything

But a brief

Fantasy