So you’ve been reading about death

PART ONE

So you’ve been reading about death. I’m sorry if anyone ever gets blindsided by my death, as it turns out, I’m no good for living life. Living a life takes, in my opinion, a lot of optimism, a little bit of ignorance, and endless hope. I’m not sure if I have any of them. I’m sorry I’m so “morbid”, even though I don’t agree that I am, this is, simply, to me, the most rational and plausible truth of our existence. It’s extending perhaps indefinitely into the future, we have to keep it going by giving life, and living ours ourselves, even though the process itself is meaningless. We are all living for an uncertain future, as if we are on a mission, we are extending and progressing for something in the future. I wonder if this is where Arrival (the adapted screenplay is quite different from The Story of Your Life, the difference is what I’m referring to - the whole heptapods came to earth because they need us to keep living into the future, so humanity can save them in the future) got its idea from. It does feel like we are being helped by aliens so we can be important at some point in the future.

Death is always sudden, as I learned, when depression hits you like a thunderstorm. Actually, I was diagnosed with bipolar, severe depression, and PTSD all at the same time. I’m not sure how that’s possible, I feel like the doctors were just confused and slapped all the names they knew on my file. To me, I’d rather call it an epiphany. An epiphany of how deeply meaningless our lives are. Endless hard work, exhaustion, hate, self sabotage, war, pain, sadness, loneliness, and all for what? For fleeting moments of joy, excitement, relaxation, comfort, peace and exhilaration? Doesn’t sound like a good deal to me. Why should I keep going? I’m not sure. I’m also not sure why it is suddenly such a big deal to decide to leave. No one asked me if I wanted to be born, yet here I am. It’s only be fair if I can at least decide when to leave. Turns out, I can’t. It’d be a “mental illness”. Or in my case, three.

Would it be weird if I tell you I might know how it feels like to be dead? I once described this to someone: it just feels like extreme coldness. There’s not a slight sense of warmth inside of you, your nose is cold, your head is cold, your stomach is cold, your legs are cold. You are not breathing. You can’t move. You feel extremely tired. You want to sleep. Your sense of self slowly deteriorates, and disappears. You fly up high, look down on your body, and you leave. I’m not sure how I know this. I think I dreamt about it before. I dreamt of death, all the time. The first 15 years of my life, I lived like a dead.

I had never made a single decision for myself up until that point. At least not for the things that mattered to me. I ate what was allowed, I went where were allowed, I was around kids that I was allowed to be around with depending on who their parents were, I studied what was allowed, I learned what I was supposed to know, I read what I was supposed to be reading, I watched what I was supposed to watch, I wore what I was supposed to wear.

But I couldn’t think the way that I was supposed to think, neither could I behave how I was supposed to behave. Until one day, I stopped going to school. The summer of my second year in high school, I stopped showing up in school, completely.

The summer before that, an exchange program had visited my school and told us about a year of living and going to school somewhere in USA. Being founded by a few missionaries from a prestigious college from USA in the early 1900s, our school has always kept close ties with its mother school. Every year, a few teachers travel from overseas to do a year of teaching at our school. During their year of teaching, they help all kinds of organizations to stay connected with us, and one of those years, an exchange program came to our school. By then, I had been plotting my exit for a few years, I immediately brought the program to my dad’s attention. As he always did, he said no before I could utter another sentence.

Call it fate or whatever you like, the second year, another so-call education consulting company startup, who hogged all connections with non-profit exchange programs abroad and charged a “service fee” for “helping out with applications” to applicants, came to my dad’s bank, asked for a loan. Seemed like they did proper promotion while they did that, my dad suddenly was entertaining the idea of actually letting me go. There’s clearly some misunderstanding because my dad seemed to believe that we were paying them to take care of us, while they seemed to think that they were paying us to take care of them under the disguise of cultural exchange. I had no idea if that was close to human trafficking, because I certainly felt like I was trafficked. For a little bit at least. I spent the year avoiding the host family as much as possible, but I did love all the friends I made that year. I enjoyed my teachers, my classmates, and my experience. South Lake Tahoe was so, so beautiful. I loved every second of being there. The sky, the lake, the rocks, the snow, the pine trees, the hills, the sun, the breeze, everything was breathtaking.

PART TWO

I’m not sure how to conclude the year I spent in Tahoe. Of course I got asked the do you guys eat dogs question. There were many other questions involving many other things as well, from both sides, me to them, and them to me.  South Tahoe was a rather small community, everyone seemed to know everyone, yet here I was, wondering how everyone knew I was the new kid on my first day while riding the school bus.  

Everything was unfamiliar, yet somewhat made sense. I could talk my way out of a class, even though most of the times I  failed. I could disappear after lunch, only to sit in a Rotary Club meeting with all the grandparents, and watch them play the lottery. I won often, even when I didn’t, the grandmas always gave me part of their winnings. I would miss my stop on a school bus on my way home, until the driver started picking up elementary school kids. I lost my phone in a gondola in Heavenly and found it buried in the snow. I drank with people who definitely should not be friends with high schoolers in a hotel across the stateliness in Nevada.  I auditioned for cheerleading and failed. I joined the swim team, but couldn’t wake up early enough to go to practice. I did track for a week, and got yelled at for halfass-ing. I read through 1984 and it did not make sense to me, until many years later, I realized my parents were living a very similar life. I joined a youth conference in Chico, cried and laughed and shared and supported many other high schoolers from California  who also felt like they didn’t belong. 

I went to a synagogue in LA, witnessed a baby being welcomed to the Jewish community with hundreds of people’s blessings. I flew to Boston and took the train around by myself. I rode a cable car to Chinatown in San Fransisco only to get some grandma sauce. I was left in the mountains of Heavenly, 16,  completely forgotten on a ski trip. I had to ask for a British man to give me a ride, who clearly didn’t understand the request, “A ride? A lift? You mean? “ I’m not sure who the front desk at Heavenly  had to call after looking up my membership plan, but nobody seemed to feel sorry when they finally came to pick me up after 4 hours. Coincidence? I’m not so sure. 

My mom was always so quick to blame me when anything came up. It’s either “you probably did something to upset them” or “ you were always so rude when you were home, you probably deserved it”, or “you should be thinking from their perspective, who would want to pick you up ? “ I can literally see her mouth opening and closing, babbling, like a fish. For some reason, my mom had always enjoyed inflicting pain on me. She took every opportunity to belittle me, and I hate to admit it, it did get me. It would get me every time that I completely gave up on opening up, not just to her, to everyone. 

It’s better that way. It’s safer that way. It’s easier that way. And for a long time, it was. It was easy to just go along with what everyone was already doing, whether it’d be volunteering in the national park, or dancing to Kpop in the garage, or going to all-you-can eat sushi for $20, or even prom, I did nails for the first time in my life. It was fun, it was easy, people didn’t care what I was thinking, what I was doing, what I liked, what I wanted to talk about, how honest I was, how different I was.  Even though most of the stereotyping was not too far from the truth, most people were willing to learn more. 

I had space, to learn, to explore, to try and fail, so much so that I saw another possibility of life.

PART THREE

Of course I would never tell anyone that my favorite films until that point were all of the Final Destination series, so much so that I used to retell the movies during lunch break at the cafeteria to my friends. Everyone was so into it. I’d tell movies I watched to different people, on the bus, on a walk to school, or during breaks. Maybe that’s when I started knowing I liked telling stories, even though I never had an interest in writing one. I never thought there’d be anything interesting I could say, any story that’d be worth-telling I could tell, until I realized that perhaps, my life alone might be worth-telling enough. 

Not just for me, for hundreds and thousands of kids who traveled all the way here, alone, for a shot at life. 

So here we go. Are you ready for the ride?