I'm not passive aggressive

Okay, maybe I am a little, but you can't blame me. Blame the times; it's the way of our generation, the zeitgeist, l'air du temps. Blame the Internet -- now I can call you out on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+ and my twenty-plus blogs without ever writing your name thanks to this handy hashtag: #youknowwhoyouare. Like, totally, right? Or I can always fall back on the fact that I'm Asian, and if that's not good enough for you either, there's the classic excuse of my female birth. Passive aggressiveness is practically social survival.

I'm not self-absorbed either. And if I am, well, it isn't my fault. See, I chose to be in a line of work that sells little more than glorified personal opinions for $15 a pop. And I ended up there because I was born with a soft voice and people just assumed I had nothing to say (unless I resorted to yelling) because they had to work harder to hear me and I had no choice but to express my ignored sentiments turned to pent up judgments because there was no other way for people to listen to (not hear) me and I need people to listen to me because I was born the oldest and everyone knows the oldest always ends up with some kind of self-important, vainglorious neurosis. So, you see, it isn't my fault at all.

I'm not short-tempered, am I? Getting mad at you for choosing him over me isn't silly, is it? Well, if it is, I can tell you I'm probably going to be moody for the remainder of this week and possibly into the next because I'm on the rag. And I know it isn't an excuse, blah, blah, blah, but actually it is because did you know my hormones are raging inside of me and the imbalance is causing me to produce legions of little red armies all over my forehead not to mention I crave (and eat) like I'm pregnant? In fact, every time I read a period-related article in one of the six women's magazines I'm subscribed to (which averages out to one period story a month), I swear I have PMDD and should go see my gyno soon, but then I don't because I forget, and I also swear I have some sort of ADD because this spiel started out with why it isn't my fault that I'm short-tempered, and actually, it ends my argument nicely because I obviously can't remember that life is actually good and much worse things have happened, which makes me think that something silly like you choosing him over me is actually one of the worst things that ever could've happened.

And I'm not ruthless. Maybe you'll consider this online reality check ruthless, but I can tell you to blame yourself and my ex-boyfriends and frenemies because I've done the nice thing, and again and again you people take advantage of me and I swear to you I'm the victim in all of this and I know everyone says that but I'm telling you that's just how it is 'cause I didn't ask to be, and it's not like I've ever hurt anyone like that in my life. And sure, maybe I can be a little more empathetic to people, like when a girlfriend is going through heartache, but it's so hard for me to remember what that's like! Refer back to previous ADD mention.

Maybe I am all of these things, but I don't think I should have to change myself because well, that's just me. I'm not always sure how I ended up that way, but I did and that's who I am. And frankly, I just don't feel like it. And everyone knows the key to happiness is to be accepted as your true self, right? Isn't that what we're told? Just be yourself.

And maybe, I am a little passive aggressive.

Did you buy my excuses? Yeah, I don't buy yours either.

Staryh

People often ask if you feel older on birthdays, and as those years add up and friends get married, we rhetorically ask each other, "Don't you feel old?" And to those I answer no and no. Sure, the numbers always look higher each time, but it never fits right (am I the only one that feels like my brain is four years behind, older and none the wiser?); and all weddings seem to do is emphasize how not old I am. In all sobriety and no means of morbidity, nothing makes me feel older than funerals.

For those of you who are confused, I went home (San Francisco) last week. And trust me, I'm just as confused as you are, which is probably why I told barely anyone where I went and why. (Frankly, most people probably didn't know I was gone. Welcome to the self-absorption of working life.) What can be said in thoughtless conversations with interval friends?
"Hi, how have you been?"
"Oh, actually my aunt died yesterday from something that had to do with a stroke and the leukemia she found out about two weeks ago and I found out two days ago. I'm going to California tomorrow to attend her funeral."
I don't mean to be cavalier about it, but I don't think (don't think) I realized I was talking about a dead body. And not a dead body, a dead person. And not a dead person, a dead aunt. A dead sister, mother, grandmother. My aunt. Dead.
It wasn't until the wake that it sunk (maybe that's why they call it that -- a wake): she's not going to be there anymore.
"Were you close to her?" is the inevitable question. Does it matter? She was there for as long as I existed, but she wasn't a part of my day-to-day life.
And now, she isn't. Won't be. Now, her powdered remains lie there in the open casket with glued lips. All I think is, open caskets are stupid. (I know what they symbolize, but symbolism isn't immediate in the minds of those in bereavement.) My grandpa and my dad's sister also had open caskets. The made-up cadavers look strange and foreign, a mockery of our loved ones, a sad imitation of the living, the real person. Like a sick joke. Like they're simply hiding in the closed part of the casket, waiting to spring out at you, laughing. Surprise! It's the laughs you miss the most and remember the longest. So laugh a lot.

When we arrived at the burial site, my family noticed she was being buried right next to my grandfather. We took time to say a prayer after the service, me, my brother, my parents, the pastor; and afterward, I stayed behind with my dad for a minute.
"Dad, I miss Grandpa." And I did. I think it was the first time since his passing that I really felt that ache: the I-haven't-seen-him-in-a-year-now kind of missing, and slowly, the I'm-not-going-to-see-him-here-again kind of missing. Does that make me inhuman? Or more so? I cried at my aunt's funeral in surprise, for my mom and her sisters, for my cousin and uncle. I love her and my family will never be what it was without her, but certain kinds of mourning turns out to take its bitter time.

I've never felt older because death has never felt closer, or more visible. Twenty-two is not old by any measurement of life or death, but I no longer have delusions of this body's immortality. I know it is inevitable, unpredictable, and its clammy claws take with no consideration of our plans. I see it and it exists.
When we passed by my grandfather's stone, my parents and their close friends stood around me and pointed to their plots down the row: "Look, this is where I'm going to be buried!" Yes, in exclamation. I can't say I've accepted it to that extent, but my recognition of the Styx is the marker: I'm not a little girl anymore. Twenty-two is not eternal. Twenty-two is twenty-two.
Everything feels a little more trivial and bigger at the same time -- the paradox of growing up.

They all said it was a beautiful funeral and that they'd never seen so many attendees before. Maybe they were being appropriate, but there were nearly as many people standing, spilling outside of the chapel doors as there were sitting in the pews, a total of 300-something people. To have loved that much is all I could pray to do until I'm called Home.


Who knew I could be so Russian?

The Entitlement of Pretty Girls

"The coldness overwhelmed us and forced us to move inside on the day my friends and I saw a very pretty girl in the Water Tower Place food court. She was pretty enough to cause all three of us to stare mid-cannoli as she walked out of the elevator, and she was pretty enough for me to remember three weeks from the sighting, but I’m not sure how vividly I’d remember her if it wasn’t for what happened next. We stared at first because she was stunning, and then we kept watching – frozen, affixed, like a bad horror film we couldn’t look away from – as she lifted her foot onto a chair at the table next to ours and continued to text as the boy who was with her bent down to tie her shoelaces. She didn’t even give a glance, not a trace of acknowledgment. In fact, I doubt she was even aware she was with anyone, except when her shoelaces needed tying, of course. Our eyes trailed the two as the girl walked out of the mezzanine with the boy faithfully following behind her, and then my two friends and I stared at each other, gaping, not knowing whether to laugh or, well, what else could we do?" 

It's just the intro to an essay I wrote for my creative nonfiction class this past quarter, "The Entitlement of Pretty Girls" (and don't worry -- it was more than just a bashing of the beauties). The point is this whole story that makes up my intro never happened. Well, it did happen, just not in that way. But I decided to write it like this (as if I was there rather than in the bathroom) because this is the way it had to be for me to get my later points across.

This issue of truth is something we dealt with a lot in both of my writing classes, fiction and nonfiction. I feel like every writer has their own stance on where the line is drawn between the genres, or if there's a line at all. My nonfiction professor probably sees it as a dotted line: if you would please, sirs and ma'ams, stay within the lines, but you won't get crucified if you cross. Or maybe you will.

Take James Frey, for example. Absolutely torn apart very publicly by America's de facto dictator, Oprah Winfrey. Because in these modern times, when we slap on the terms "memoir" or "nonfiction" it has to be that way, down to whether or not The Brady Bunch was actually on the television during the time of day that author claimed it was on. Um, hello? That wasn't the point! (This actually happened in one of my professor's other classes.) The point is whoever is enough of a lifeless, pompous windbag to point out something like that is completely missing the point. If the writer knows what he's doing (and if he doesn't, then just stop reading), then the choices were made knowingly.

And the mind is fickle. Especially if you're writing something like a memoir, literally "memory" or coming from the memory, the wrong-ness of the details is actually the truth isn't it? The memory and its lack of accuracy is just as real as the experience itself, and in fact, I'd argue it's more real because while that experience affects that person for just that amount of time, it's the memory that remains.

In the end, true, false, real, fake, the truth is that important to people. We spent a few discussions on this idea of truth and what it is, and I just found it really sad and affirming at the same time. God placed this desire, this hunger for what is true at the core of every person, and the intense yearning of the world is affirmation for me that God is in everything. There is truth; He's the truth. And so many people spend their lives determined and lost, when their answer is in the very question they ask.

(photo via pinterest)