.SOMETIMES RAW.

A lot has changed in my life and I feel so much better. I am still easygoing but sometimes difficult. A woman who startles easily. I still forget to wash an apple before I eat it. I think, “Yes, things could be grosser, hotter and nastier”. The sound of people spitting bothers me. I still interrupt occasionally when people talk but I am getting better at it. I am confused about how strange it feels to receive a postcard or a letter – this little card that travelled to my house while I wonder how many people at the post office have read it. But writing an actual letter will soon be history, I think.

When I lived in Canada, I wrote a weekly letter to my grandpa, who had dementia. He read the letter for one week straight amazed that it was addressed to just him. I sent pictures of my son and me, too. Whenever the next letter arrived he felt better according to my grandma. It is always the little things that make a difference.

Oh, yeah, I still prefer to count to twenty instead of ten. I love ice cream and the weird sensation of brain freeze I get when eating it too fast and then quickly swallowing it down. I still have trouble discerning between solitude and loneliness, and the weird feeling of sadness I get on Sundays; is the same feeling I get when listening to Beethoven on a rainy day. I am still wondering why I am initially comfortable and then restless when sitting on grass. I love the size of LP records and want a record player for the longest time. I love when people collect them and play their records.

Sometimes I am still shocked by how irreversible life is. That there is no going back to this old version of me that existed before. What is done is done, I try not to dwell on the past too much anymore. Or how much life was before I figured out the pleasure of doing absolutely nothing. Or before I figured out that there is no one way to live and to life. Or before I smelled city smog in New York Midtown Manhattan and thought I could never live there yet I rented an apartment for a couple of years and loved it. Or when I read Marguerite Duras’s The Lover and thought it was the best book I have ever read. Or whatever version of me existed before I moved on, found a new perspective, saw the magnolias in early spring blooming in a somewhat different way – not just pink but rather flowering almost forcefully and ambient letting me know that a new chapter is about to begin.

Weirdly, I get shivers on very hot days and I get annoyed when a Post-it unsticks and comes off my journal. Sometimes I still confuse being misunderstood with feeling some sort of shame and uncomfortableness. I am super hungry when it is not quite lunchtime or dinner yet. I love sitting on a porch when there is lightning, thunderstorm, and rain. To sit in my hot tub and watch the stars and the moon makes me happy. I still imagine my brain is the size of a pea when it comes to mathematics, statistics, spreadsheets or when I do not understand how bridges are built over large amounts of water or whenever I don’t get the exact location of countries or continents on a globe.

For whatever reasons I am drawn to the colour red. Recently, someone told me, “People don’t change.” Listening to some people feels like hard work trying to retrieve a mutual tenderness that has already fallen from our hands and rolled into a storm drain a long time ago. How unfamiliar it feels to deal with some people or to even look at them. All these unresolved arguments and trying to test the other over nothing that now just feels colourless, sad, unnecessary and creeps back silently when least expected over emotions long forgotten. I am now in this strange possession of a history that often pulls me in different directions that I can manage pretty well.

I can identify now what constitutes a big drama, hot air or the difference between the former and latter. I know how it feels to be hurt. Also, the hurt we cause when we have been enduring too much in silence and have started to trust our fixed claim that everything is just fine even though it is not. How it lightens but also strikes the heart. I learned that I should not try to change a person. The effort exerted is often ineffectual and rather upsetting. Change, I have learned, rises like nausea – the simple promise of relief is what makes it all bearable. I learned that I have to be careful of overvaluing what people give and be cautious of how proportioned my ability to love is.

What I love is watching stars with one special person who listens while I don’t finish my thoughts because maintaining completeness all the time grows tiresome. A person so acquainted with my treasury of reluctance, with the lines of my body, with my soul, that I forget I have those, and he forgets he has those and we just melt together into one; while the shooting stars keep shooting. There is no rush.

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine needed me to check on her husband, Michael, to make sure he had not killed himself.

Earlier that evening, Michael (the ex-husband) had confessed to my friend that he had been entangled in a two-year-long sexual affair. His mistress was pregnant, and she was probably keeping the baby. Michael was a doctor, and she was originally his patient, and he was likely going to get fired from his practice because his medical partner had caught them sixty-nine-ing in an exam room. As if the story couldn’t get any more scandalous, Michael was also likely going to lose his medical license because the partner was pissed.

Upon being punched in the gut with this shocking and horrifying news, my friend packed up their daughter, checked into a hotel, and told Michael to jump off a cliff and die. Then, a few hours later, she called me worried that Michael would actually do the thing she commanded, and jump off a cliff (or more likely a bridge) and die.

She was too angry to check on him herself, and it wasn’t exactly the kind of thing you could bother the police with at this point she said, so she assigned the job to me.

So I left and was prepared for a tough scene. I didn’t think I would find a cold body or anything, but I assumed Michael would be inconsolable, unrecognisable, and incoherent. He had, in one night, lost everything: his wife, his daughter, his work, his future, his name, his legacy, his money. It is still crazy to me how one bad decision (to keep your dick in your pants) can murder your entire life, and yet, we flawed humans never learn.

When I banged on Michael’s door, hoping he was not hanging from the chandelier, I also hoped he would not want to talk about what had happened.

I knocked again and again. Nothing.

Suddenly things got real. What if Michael wasn’t going to kill himself, but he was going to kill me? I mean, according to my friend, he was a “fucking” sociopath. Or maybe he was the murder-suicide type. I didn’t really know him but he could definitely be a monster.

Finally, I heard some commotion inside. Then I heard footsteps coming. And suddenly the door swung open and there was Michael. No slit wrists. No bloodstained goodbye note. Just Dr. Cheater, drinking beer, chitchatting with his girlfriend on the phone.

“Hey, you!” he said nearly buoyantly to me. “Sorry. I had to put a shirt on. I thought you were the burrito guy.” Burritos? “Uh, nope. No burritos,” I replied voter cautiously. “I was just checking on you.”

Michael told his girlfriend he would call her right back. Then he came out and we sat on his doorsteps in front of the apartment. Stylish. According to Michael, he and my friend had been planning to get divorced for several years. She started throwing around the D-bomb right after they got married, like seven years ago. He only started the affair after they agreed to basically “fake” their marriage for the sake of their daughter, until she went to school. In other words, according to Michael, this marriage was totally over. So, he met someone else who lit up his life, and he felt free to go for it. There wasn’t much guilt involved, for him. As for his work repercussions, the aftermath wasn’t nearly as fatalistic as my friend had made it sound.

We have all heard the expression, “There are three sides to every story: yours, mine, and the truth.” His side of the story was very different from hers.

My friend: I was sick to my stomach, wondering if he was going to jump off the bridge or shoot himself in the head.

Michael: It was a very stressful situation. The Burrito Shack had the chunkier guacamole, but Mama Mexican delivers those crunchy tacos…..

The reality is, both sides of a breakup is a creative exploration that doesn’t make a dent in understanding how or why a relationship decays. If love is the greatest mystery of all, then death is even more inexplicable. We are hardwired to be, at once, fixated on our hearts and completely dumbfounded by what lives inside them. That’s just the way it is. No wonder love makes us insane.

Unlocking the details of a bad breakup might help with self-growth or self-compassion, but it won’t make saying goodbye, or letting go, any easier. But I say goodbye to my wild 20s and the jazz-saxophone-guy who couldn’t keep it in his pants; the CEO with his tragic cheating habits; the artist who had a minor stroke every time he ejaculated; that guy who liked the feeling of my feet on his penis a little too much; the rabbinical guy who just wanted to snuggle; the recovering sex addict who didn’t seem so recovered; the dog walker who reeked of beer and weed; the banker who was into Botox injections; the perfect man….. with the micropenis (because of course); the army guy whose penis was so big that no one could possibly have sex with him; and the Russian who, after a morning-after coffee, said he had to go “poo-poo-ca-ca” and I couldn’t so much as look at him again.

I am making peace with it all even though closure is for real estate, not love stories.

* I receive many emails on a daily basis and I sometimes wonder why certain phrases are used to start email exchanges. Here I will share some email highlights and how I interpreted or responded to them:

“I hope this email finds you well”

Did the email look for me?

Glad, the email found me.

But I was hiding so well. Damn you, email !!!

“To whom it may concern”

Nobody will read this in a timely matter.

Who will even get this email?

What about if nobody is concerned? Will I ever get a response?

“Trust this e-note meets you well”

Why? What is this even supposed to mean?

“….Urgent!”

Take at least one day to respond.

Start the email with “I hope this email finds you well”

Respond to all other emails first.

“Per My Last Email”

As you all can see,

I have already done this.

Read my damn emails!

“Reply to All”

Seriously, guys!

Who is Xiau Li in HR?

Congrats, you successfully cc’d everyone, so everyone knows I messed up.

“Pre-Meeting Reminder”

I will not attend.

Because I don’t want to attend.

Have fun without me!

“Just a (friendly) Reminder”

Hello, are you there?

You are wasting my fucking time.

Answer me, okay?

“Excellent Idea”

Let’s hear from others.

You are hogging (take or use most or all of something in an unfair or selfish way) the meeting.

Please stop talking, Jay.

“No Worries If I cannot get back to You with the PowerPoint Presentation today!”

But I am worried.

I need the final slide damnit.

Do your fucking job.

“Mental Health Day Participation Request”

If it is bad timing, I can move this new breakdown, and sob at my desk.

I already did this.

Is it mandatory?

“You Must Have Missed That”

I didn’t miss it. I just don’t care.

Your request doesn’t matter.

I will reply never.

“Let Me Check My Agenda”

I cannot do it.

Stop asking me to do it.

I don’t want to do it, okay?

“How Are You?”

I super do not care.

Oh, wow, another get-together?

Just murder me, please.

“I will get back to you as soon as possible”

Get ready to wait.

Prepare another email “friendly reminder”