the cartography of grief

Today, October 14, is Vern's birthday. He would've been 22 this year. It's his fifth birthday since his passing.

It's already been five years, and something about that feels so strange to me. Five long years, five short years; I don't know which of these to choose because it feels like both. Five long years because so much has happened that if you were to take a snapshot of me at 16 years old and another of me at the present, they'd seem entirely unrecognisable. I've gone through university, I've graduated, I've traversed through countries I never imagined I would have had the opportunity to, I've done some amazing things and some lame things, like shaking the hand of the governor of Victoria while accepting a scholarship award, like sleeping overnight on a public park bench in Kobe with my friends because our travel plans had gone awry and we had nowhere to stay (and which of these two is amazing and which is lame is up to you to decide).  Five short years because if you were to look really hard at these two snapshots and poke around and investigate a bit, you'd find that everything about me is the same beneath the surface. 

So much has changed, so much hasn't. And this is just me—what else in this great big world would be unfathomable to any of us five years ago?

I keep trying to imagine what Vern would be like right now. 22 years old, probably just graduated or going to, thinking of entering the Working World™. And what else? I have random guesses and assumptions scattered about like puzzle pieces, but not nearly enough to form a full picture. Who would Vern be, how would he have changed, and would he still like me, would I still like him, would we still be good friends, or more or less than that?

There's something incredibly dissatisfying about looking him up on Facebook and seeing nothing has changed. No new photos, no new status updates, nothing. I don't expect anything to be uploaded, yet I still get disappointed. And I'm not even the type of person who stalks people on Facebook and trawls through a person's history out of boredom—I use Facebook once a week (if even that), and what other people update are rarely of concern to me. But looking at Vern's empty page with nothing new but posts from other people for the past five years...here I am, looking into portal into the past, into something unchanging, stagnant. How do you deal with the fact that the person you loved and love is unable to experience the adventures and changes that should be a part of life?

Sometimes I like to imagine how Vern would've reacted if he had been the one experiencing what I've gone through, just a bit of Ctrl + H-style replacing him into my life. What would he do, how would he wriggle his way through things, how would he have lived in my shoes. Sometimes I'd laugh and think "hah, yeah, I did a way better job handling that than he would have." And other times: "yeah...he probably would not have screwed that up the way I did. Good job, me." I think I'm trying to find ways to give him life within my limited capabilities and imagination.

---

May 30th was the fifth anniversary of his death. 

I had thought of writing something then, but nothing came out. The spout of words had been capped. Normally, I'm quite good at forcing myself to write even when there is nothing to say (writing essays for university will give you that gift), or when I am completely uninspired (because if I wrote only when I felt inspired, I'd write once a month at most). But I truly was at a lost on that day in May. 

Five years.

What is there to say any more? I can echo the same things again that I've written before, I can recycle the same lines again and again. 

I had thought that grief would be a straight line down—you move on and on, gradually and slowly to whatever pace suits you best, but with that lingering memory (May 30th, 2009) eventually passing far behind you. Still visible, still in your thoughts, but further, further, further as the days go by.

It seems to me now that grief is not a straight line down, but instead a large circle that I've been roaming around on. I move on and on, but instead of May 30 fading far behind me, it stays the same. I'm walking in a big rotation around it, and no matter where I go, May 30 is equidistant. It is the point around which I revolve. 

Maybe this is okay. I'm still going on and traversing this circle, and I've been throwing myself into a loads of experiences and fields and worlds by following this path, and I've been growing and stretching and evolving. Maybe it's okay to have May 30 hovering in the periphery, rather than expecting it to linger by my back, out of sight, out of mind.

In a way, I'm imagining that God has given me a big piece of parchment and told me to go on and use it as a map. And when I've unscrolled it to have a look at it, I find instead that it's utterly empty besides thick black borders on all four edges and a large message written at the top: "Map this out yourself". It's up to me to draw out the world and chart my own course within these boundaries, and I'm to keep going forth into the darkness to see what I find. 

With Vern's death, I think that casts a different light on what I find in this terra incognita. Clearer or dimmer, I don't know what kind of light it is, but the way I perceive things and experiences is entirely different now. Maybe I've just matured, maybe I've learnt something or nothing at all, but the way I view things is not the same. 

---

I had a good cry earlier. It's been a while since I've cried over this, and for a while, I had wondered if I had let Vern slip out of my periphery at last. But no, I've had a quiet day, thinking about him and the time before, and reminiscing about the past. I wish I could reach backwards and snatch him out of that prison cell of memories he's in and let him loose in the present. Let him experience life as he should, as he deserves. 

I had a very good cry, and it was quite unexpected.

---

When I say I miss Vern, that I miss him more than anything, I mean many things with that. I mean that I regret many things that I've said and done and the many things I didn't get to say or do; I mean that I wonder what would he be like now; I mean that I want to know above all does he still care about me the way I do for him; I mean that I think it's unfair that he'll remain stagnant and still as I keep living and changing.

There is no direct equivalent for "I miss you" in Japanese. There are a multitude of ways to express the same idea in that language though, and the two most common ones (that I know of) are: 寂しい or 会いたい. They both can mean "I miss you" if you were translate them into English, but their direct meanings vary a little.

寂しい (sabishii) means 'I'm lonely.'

会いたい (aitai) means 'I want to see you.'

Sometimes, as I'm learning and practicing my incredibly shoddy Chinese and Japanese, I get a bit frustrated about how frequently there aren't any direct equivalents for what I want to say, and that I have to learn various other ways of expressing myself. But here, I think the Japanese options trumps the English "I miss you." 

Dear Vern,

I am lonely, and I want to see you. I miss you. 

Love,

yuan yuan

A look back and forward

Something has been bugging me for a while now. Something has been bugging me for a long time.

I have many, many fond memories of my childhood and of all my friends, of Malaysia and my life there. One in particular stands out, one in particular still haunts me.

I had a friend named Nina, who I loved and still love despite our geographical distance and the time between our last conversation and now—and we were very close when we were younger. At one stage, I called her best friend, and she really was one of the best. She was a few years older than me, and she was always of a very breezy personality, not so easily affected by what other people said or thought (or at least, she never displayed it outwardly), and I really admired her for that. 

Our friendship was made up of hanging out at school, going to her apartment after class whenever my dad was too busy to pick me up and I had nowhere else to go, and calling each other almost every night when we were at our own homes, carrying those massive corded handsets around from room and room, discussing anything and everything and racking up tremendous phone bills for our parents. I loved those phone chats. 

It was over the phone that she told me something I still think about to this day. She distilled me and my personality down to one very succinct line: "You're always like this, Roanne, you always start something and never finish it."

Quick disclaimer: my memory isn't the strongest, and I am only paraphrasing what she said, but the gist of it is right there. 

She didn't say it to be mean, she said it very simply, like it was a plain and clear fact, indisputable and obvious. I think I was too stunned to answer for a moment, but we moved the conversation along anyway, smoothly and unabated in only the way young children could manage.

I still think about that. Every now and then, her words come back to me. I remember holding the phone against my ear—dark green, the receiver squared and angled in shape, porous texture, black spiral cord that I liked to twist my finger into, Telekom—and hearing that. 

She didn't mean harm by it. But I felt hurt, later that night, when I replayed that single sentence in my head. I felt hurt, later in the years to come, whenever I'd look back at my recent actions, my failures, my struggles, my difficult moments in life. I wanted so badly to prove her wrong, I wanted so badly to prove myself wrong. Because she was right and I knew she was right; she was absolutely spot-on with her diagnosis—not even stubborn me could deny that.

I am easily scared, I am easily cowed, and when I encounter an obstacle, my first instinct is always to find out whether it's still possible for me to quit, throw up my hands and walk away and leave unscarred.

And in defence, I will say that this is not always bad: knowing when to give up is sometimes the best victory to be won. Knowing how to choose what to pursue and knowing what you're willing to give up is important in life. There are many things that I would love to become: astronaut, inventor, philosopher, polyglot, concert pianist, mother of an army of children, writer of a novel that would outsell the Bible, CIA agent (citizenship be damned), a horsemaster (not just a horse rider, please note that). And as a person limited in years of life, I know that I have to pick and choose what dreams to give up and what dreams to hold on to. 

So giving up is sometimes good; it is, at least, necessary. 

I guess what I'm driving at is that sometimes I'd look back at all my years, all twenty of them thus far, and think: "Where am I now, where am I going, and what paths did I take to lead me here? What other paths have I ignored to get to where I am?"

I have very few regrets in life, and all of them are more of the social-interaction variety; none are concerned with my major decisions in life, like deciding what university to attend or what degree to take, or whether to go on intermission or not. These things, these decisions I make and stick to and follow and don't regret. But I do wonder.

I have accomplished many things so far that I am really, really proud of: I've graduated with my double degree with good grades, I got accepted into the Honours program (though whether I go through with it or not is another matter), I studied abroad in China, Taiwan and Japan (by far my most  interesting and proudest accomplishment), I've made friends from all over the world (by far the most important accomplishment), and many other things that I can't even begin to record down...

But I am always asking myself about the things I have not yet achieved. The things that I am only slowly making progress on, if any, the things that I've put on the back burner, telling myself that I'll eventually 'accomplish' them, as if that verb isn't vague and ill-defined. I have so many goals, and I always worry about never meeting them. 

Productivity has always been a concern of mine. I love reading and thinking about it, trying to make my ways more efficient. I use all sorts of apps to organise my life, I integrate all sort of things like 'non-zero day' and 'pomodoro timer' into my lifestyle, all with the hopes of being more productive and actually making headway into finishing my goals—

—because I am afraid. I am only 20 now, and I can look back and see only a few years, look ahead and see still many, many years to go and remind myself that I still have time. But my worst fear is to hit 50, 60, 70, 80, and look back at my life and the paths I've taken and realise that I've never really moved forward, I've never really checked off everything on my list. Since I was young, I've been bolstered up by praise coming from so many people: friends, family, teachers, relatives. The expectations for me have always been high, and everyone has always told me that they expected great things out of me. And in turn, I grew up forming these own preconceived ideas in my head of what I was going to do when I grew up, when I became an adult. I was going to be a doctor, no, a lawyer, no, a CEO of a massive global organisation, no, a best-selling novelist raking in tons of money, no—I was going to be amazing in some way. And yet there was always another voice in my head, loud and clear and strong, reminding me that I am a coward, that I am a quitter, and more likely than not, I'm going to achieve nothing of value in my life. I am not going impact anyone, I am not going to contribute to the world, to society, to an industry, to the arts, to my country, to my family, to my friends.

I want to prove Nina's voice, grainy and coming in over the telephone lines through that green receiver, wrong. I want to prove myself, that loud and clear and strong voice inside my head, wrong. Yes, I've quitted many things many times, and I will continue to do so—because there are some things that I know aren't for me, they aren't what I truly want, and giving them up would be the wisest decision. But the things that really matter, the hopes that I'm clinging the hardest to, the artificial checkpoints that I've always imagined meeting, I'm going to run at them, I'm going to charge forth and yank them into my bare hands and I'm going to never let them go. The goals I've made, the dreams I've constructed, the milestones I'm striving for—I'm going to start them and I'm going to finish them.

I get a funny feeling whenever I click the link to this blog. I'll click the link, watch the page load (sometimes instantly, if I'm lucky and my connection isn't being a finicky chump), and then just stare. I don't really read the words I write. It gets too embarrassing.

I'd let myself read a sentence here or there though, just so I can recall the general gist of the post. I've written so few here that I can somewhat recall the majority of what I've made public here.

Every single post makes me want to delete this entire blog. Instant cringing, raging desire to smash my head against the nearest, hardest object. I feel the same way whenever I occasionally glance through old photos of myself up on Facebook—hideous, terrifying; everything must burn!

Yet it's undeniable that every post here expresses some aspect or fragment of a younger me. Whether I like it or not. I usually wrote and posted during my peak points of erratic, volatile madness, with occasional brief and blithe posts to pad and soften the edges. It's hard trying to determine the right balance between being honest and being embarrassing.

One day, when I can muster the courage to do so, I'll sit down and read through every single post I made here, thoroughly and carefully. I have changed since I started this blog, and I have ebbed and flowed by all accounts in all aspects. In many things, I am happy with myself as I am now, in others, I wish to reclaim the virtues of the Me of the past.

I imagine most people are like this. They march forth in life, shedding old faults and learning new ones, polishing skills and virtues and forgetting some others. And most are filled this sort of half-satisfaction, half-regret. Or maybe I am one of the few still mourning a past, one that never really existed beyond the barriers of my biased memories.

I think one day, I will close this blog and make it private for myself.

Fieldnotes on what to say to a grieving person

When Vern passed away, a whole slew of condolences came my way. For each and every single one of them, I wholeheartedly appreciated their intent and their meaning. But some were more of a burden than a salve, and some I still feel very bitterly against in their usage.

Some things were just not what I wanted to hear.

The one thing I hated then and still hate now, more than any other platitude said to me, was a person claiming that he knew what I felt and what I was going through. I think this is said in an attempt to support the grieving person via a sense of camaraderie and empathy. But it's a complete lie. No one knew what I felt and no one could understand what I was going through. And I didn't need them to, nor did I especially want them to. Even if they had lost someone important to them, that doesn't mean they knew what was going through my mind during those nights when I cried for hours. I don't know what they went through. I cannot put into precise words their own pain and feelings because they were grieving the loss of a completely different person with whom comes a set of completely different memories. I cannot imitate their pain and grief. I only have my own unique configuration of sorrow, one wholly my own. This isn't meant to sound like a bitter competition between whose grief is stronger or more honest. It's just a basic recognition that a person's pain is his own and no one else's, inimitable and impossible to pin down with precision.

In a previous post, I discussed Proverbs 14:10, and I'm going to quote it again here because it puts my thoughts into a sentence so succinctly and perfectly: "Each heart knows its own bitterness, and no one else can fully share its joy."

---

A few nights after he passed away, a friend called me. She was kind and consoling, at least initially, but I think in her own grief she started to tearfully discuss how according to the Bible, Vern wouldn't be able to go to heaven. I don't remember how I responded to her, but I'm quite certain I only managed a weak "I don't know". There wasn't anything I could say to that sort of judgment. At least, there wasn't anything I felt I could say to that, not with how she was crying out loud and I weeping inside.

That conversation had me distraught for a long time. True or not, it's not something you should say or even think about. Or maybe it was just something that I didn't want to hear or think about then. Only after talking with Miss Catherine and Yvonne did the claws of that conversation start to withdraw from my skin.

---

The things that I had really liked to hear and felt had really helped me were the ones that assured me that there was no structured process to grief and that I didn't need to force myself to get over it and forget him, or do things in a certain way, or think or act in a specific path. Whatever I did, it would be all right. To those who sympathetically told me to "take my time", thank you.

During that time, the ones who I found to be a pillar of great strength for me were the ones who, while also grieving, were still dependable, warm, and wise in controlling their own emotions. These are the people who maintain their own hope and faith and pair it with their senescent logic, and then use it as a driving force to press on forward even in the bleakest of times. I looked at them with awe and I tried to imitate their steps, and did so with imperfection and many mistakes. But I learned many things from them, things that they probably weren't aware they were teaching me, and for that I'm grateful.

---

In the aftermath of the quietus, one way I handled matters was by trying to adopt a few of Vern's attitudes and mindsets. He sat at the very opposite end of the spectrum from me in many virtues, and one that I find more telling than any other: he thought and acted like he was invincible, like there would be no consequences for his actions and if there ever were, he didn't give a damn. So very often, he'd say things or do things out of utmost bravery and also complete stupidity. Halfway across that world was me, and I thought and acted like I was the most fragile piece of glass that'd shatter at the slightest thing, and I shied away from even the smallest of hardships. Over the past few years, I've been reversing my trajectory towards becoming a further outlier in trepidness, and have been instead heading towards where he once stood. I don't plan to engulf and become what he was. Not entirely. But I've been cultivating a thicker skin and a fearless face, one that he always wore in the face of everything.

From someone who thought too much and did too little, I hope to balance out and step into a midpoint, to close the distance that existed between me and him. I've a long way to go, and though every step comes with an added level of difficultly, a whole new realm of potential opens up with every inch I creep forward and conquer. And sometimes the harder it is to do something, the more fun it is in hindsight. Over time, I begin to understand how he gleaned so much joy out of his life, how he seemed to keep alive that wicked flame that I never bothered to ignite in my own life. But even then, I know that I'll never be able to hold that joy and flame in my own hands, and see it in its full glory with full understanding. His joy was his own, and it can never be mine.

I don't know how to put into words how much I miss him right now.

3rd year - collection of old thoughts

It's been three years since Vern died.

I actually don't know what to say right now. This isn't exactly a loss of words; it's like an inability to decide which train of thought should I take. Should I talk about this or that—can I talk about everything?

Some things are still exactly the same. And of course, with the passing of three whole years, even more things have completely evolved into greater or lesser versions of their prior forms.

For example, I've become a better person.

I'm lying, I'm still a terrible person, but I have been improving a little. In terms of gaining confidence and eradicating my social awkwardness, I've made leaps that I feel quite certain even Vern would be proud of. He had always been scolding me for being too quiet when I shouldn't be, for not saying things that I ought to. Sometimes he'd be quite understanding of my old fear of speaking, sometimes he'd be driven mad by it.

I'm really unable to write anything substantial right now. My brain is numb due to overuse, due to the streams of conflicting and concurrent thoughts swimming around in spirals.

I will instead post extracts of a few things I wrote in the past but never got around to posting here or sharing with anybody. I wrote this things for myself, and avoided sharing them for many reasons, but now they gain a public presence. Sometimes the best way of being miserable to is keep it all to yourself, sometimes the best way is to shout it out into the world. I will do the latter for today. I don't think I will get another chance to be publicly miserable, not for a while.

Some of the below snippets are embarrassing (and you know, these are actually the better segments of the original texts that I cut them out of, imagine that), and I might delete this post one day. But because these were written privately and honestly, while I was trapped in some emotional states, I want to preserve the below notes. It's a bit like finding an old diary you used to write in when you were a child, and all your entries were stupid, stupid things that seemed so important at the time. And despite how inane and embarrassing it is to read it, you still want to keep that diary just because it was an honest part of your past. What I will post below are my thoughts, both old and recent. They tend to talk about the same things again and again, but that's just how my thoughts cycle and repeat themselves. Dates of when they were written are included, if possible.

♦

31 January 2012

He'd piss me off terribly; he'd make me cry and weep because of an injured ego; he'd make me smile and giggle in sheer bliss. I was desperate for those sorts of feelings. I don't think anyone else could affect me as much as he did. He breathed life into my passionless worldview, ignited sparks and blizzards of iridescent flashes to wake me up. It was magnificent, he made me feel alive and like a breathing, angry, happy, sad, everything person. I was desperate for that. Being alive is wonderful, and he could unlock that life trapped within me. With him, there was always the flashing trepidation, the knowledge that my mood could be and would be rapidly affected by whatever he did and whatever he said.

This wasn't healthy. But it was beautiful on its own. Feeling alive is beautiful. Maybe if it had went on for the long-term, it would have worn me down and turned me into an empty husk, drained. But for those brief moments, those brief years, it was wonderfully maddening. He could do anything to me, he could manipulate me into his puppet with his will, because my desperation for life and passion and emotions overrode my common sense, at least when it came to him.

He wasn't that bad for me. In some ways he was. In some ways he was wonderful. I think he really gave me the motivation and the push to change some of my ways, to hide away my deadened soul and present a smile and a friendly aura to others. Isn't that a good change? He did that to me. At least, he made me do it to myself. He knew how to hurt me, but more importantly, he knew how to love me and make me happy. I think he used the latter more than the former.

♦

date unknown 

I'm not mature now, and probably won't be anytime soon, but at fifteen years old, I was a downright insecure idiot. And when you're an insecure idiot, learning that someone who mattered so much to you had died was The End of the World. I was wailing on my bed, thinking that with his life, my own had ended. Learning of his death had me expecting the world to stop, the seven horsemen of the apocalypse to glide into town, shaking their scythes at me and saying, "Hi there, hope you're prepared." And I was ready to run around, getting ready for the end of all things, storing all my Lord of the Rings merchandise in a safe area (because I clearly have my priorities straight), stockpiling food, finding a bomb shelter to rent for myself.

But the world didn't end, much to my surprise. Things went on. I went to school. I had my orthodontist appointments. Piano lessons. Chores and homework and assignments and exams. And all along the way, I was expecting Time to stop for me and say, "Hey, you look like you need a break, so I'm just going to take a nap and let you have a breather." But Time's kind of an asshole, so that never happened.
I struggled really hard to keep moving. I remember that, just a few days after I found out about his death, I had a piano lesson. I went in, and the first thing my lovely piano teacher asked me was a very normal "How are you?".

How can one question that I receive every week, practically every day, suddenly take on such a loaded meaning? How am I? I'm horrible! I'm on the verge of tears constantly! I'm surprised I'm not crying right now! How can you expect me to practice scales, learn new songs, learn all this stupid musical terminology when I'm ready to wail and writhe and steadily deplete the world's supply of tissue paper?
But I just said 'fine', albeit a little awkwardly, and went on with my piano instruction. What else could I do? The world wasn't going to stop for me, despite how much I wanted it to.

A few hours after my piano lesson, I had my orthodontist appointment. Same thing again. "How are you?" Horrible! Life sucks! What is the meaning of life? How can anyone be happy when this tragedy has occurred? Ridiculous!
I actually remember pausing then. Earlier at the piano lesson, a rapid "I'm fine" had came out, just an automated response built up by years of training, but sitting in that surprisingly comfortable chair in the orthodontist office, I had paused when he asked me that question. Some part of me wanted to just tell him everything that had happened.
Man, that would have been weird.
I just sucked it up and nodded, "I'm alright," and he went on with the usual routine.

This pattern continued for the next few weeks. Heck, I'd say it went on for months. People would ask me how I was, and I'd be ready to burst out into tears, pouring out my story of what I've been through the past few months. But that would've been idiotic, and I did have some fragment of self-restraint, so I'd just shut up and let out a nice, polite answer. That's all people wanted to hear, and fine by me.

---

I still remember thinking that Sophira had been joking when she made that call, telling me that Vern had died in the night. I reacted in complete seriousness, and my brain also registered it was completely non-jocular, but some part of me was still going, "Okay, she's gonna burst out laughing now, and say that she's kidding. I'm gonna hate her for this for a few weeks, but we'll be fine after that." That moment never came. I kept waiting for it. For weeks, for months. It was some blind hope I was running on, that all this was an elaborate lie set up to make me look stupid. I would've preferred that. Even when I went back to Malaysia, I still kept my hopeful vision of Vern suddenly popping up and saying something stupid about how, har har, I was so silly, of course he's not dead, it was all a prank!
Because that's how preposterous the entire thing was to me. No way was he dead. No way did he die in a road accident like that, no way was he gone forever, no way was I never going to see or talk to him ever again. No way. It didn't make sense, not a smidgen, it was completely absurd. So absurd that it can only be a lie.

I think the truth only completely sunk in when I entered the columbarium with my friends. It had already pierced through the surface of my reluctance, but the realization had yet to completely submerge into my conscience. It was only on that ridiculously hot day, with mosquitoes buzzing around, surrounded by endless rows of plaques bearing faces of the dead, did I finally accept the truth. Or rather, the truth shoved its way into my head, kicking and smashing open the doors, leaving only broken fragments of hope in its path. I burst into tears at that moment. I hadn't even seen his plaque yet, we were still near the entrance of the memorial center, but surrounded by all those tributes to the once alive, it was without a doubt a place of the dead. And if Vern was here, that meant that he was dead. No two ways about it. I had managed to befuddle my logic the previous months through a myriad of ways, till my common sense had swiss-cheese holes in them, but once you're surrounded by death, the bits of neurons in your cranium start patching up and logic starts flying around again. And the logical conclusion, unmarred by hope or self-deception, was that Vern was dead.

So I started crying there, next to a wall of plaques, looking at the photo of a dead person who I didn't even know, but knowing he was dead was enough for me. It was sad enough for me, and it was proof enough for me. Vern was dead.
I bawled like a baby that day, only comforted by the presence of my friends, and the blessed foresight of Yvonne to bring a bunch of tissue papers for me to use.

---

I think the only thing that kept me going in the past two years was the goal of making Vern proud. Kind of a stupid, cheesy goal, but damn did I cling to it. It became important to me.
But that goal sort of violates a few of the fundamental principles of goals. Namely, measurability and achievability.

It's kinda hard to please someone who, you know, is dead. You don't know what he wants, you don't know if you're on the right track. But it kept me going. If I had told myself "Alright, I'm going to do this for myself" in those first few months, I would've crashed and burned. Telling myself "Yeesh, you gonna sit on your ass all day and cry? Wow, Vern's sure to love that. Idiot." was the kick in the ass I needed then.
So I did a lot of not-very-logical-but-shut-up things to motivate me. I constructed a lot of conversations between us, along with a lot of praise and motivation from him to me. It's not really a bad way to motivate yourself, actually. Intense guilt and grief can be quite the energy source when you're down. Not recommended, really, but I managed to do a lot of things then that I'm surprised at.
Of course, it's all completely imaginary. Maybe he would've praised me for this or that, but maybe not. But in my mind, I could turn that uncertainty into a 100% chance, so I did. When I was down, I'd make up a dialogue that essentially boiled down to him giving me a pep talk to psych my spirits up. When I failed miserably at something, my transposed image of him would just shrug and go, "Meh. Just try again," and that was good enough for me.
It wasn't a normal way of functioning, and maybe not entirely sane, but it wasn't bad. Just a little creepy.
I still motivate myself in this manner for a few things. It still works, albeit not as strongly as before. But this trick really instills perseverance, which is quite a boon.

---

I don't think I've closed this 'chapter' in my life, if I can cheesily call it that. There's still a lot for me to think and ramble about, sometimes in quiet contemplation, sometimes with tearful cursing. There's still a lot of things I haven't let go of, some things still left unresolved. But maybe these things are just meant to be left as is, open and threads splayed, ready for further unraveling and tangling. Maybe this isn't so much as a defined chapter with a beginning and an end as a...theme? A motif? And underlying thematic motivation? I don't know. I'm pretty sure I just made up that last phrase, too.
Life is kind of annoying with how unorganized it is.

---

But in the end, that's just the sort of person I am. I'm quiet, not very sane, a little creepy, I think too much, and a large proportion of that thinking time is spent on over-thinking.
I can't say that I don't regret anything from the past two years (because I regret many, many things) or that I wouldn't change anything (dear God, I would change everything), but that sort of thinking just leads to a dead end, doesn't it? There's not much else for me to do. I could sit on my hands and just tuck away every thought, or I could just try to think a little bit about every memory I have. Willful stasis is easy, transformative enlightenment is arduous to the point of impossibility, but the latter sounds a lot nicer than the former. So what I'm really doing now is sitting in front of a massive jigsaw puzzle, still mostly undone, looking for the right pieces to press together. Maybe after a bit more thinking, I'll come away a fuller picture, not an undone scrambled lot of pieces.

♦

28 May 2012

I was completely irrational for him. And that is an amazing feeling, being so enamoured with a single person that you feel ready to shed every semblance of sanity just for brief moments of satisfaction and happiness. Those are majestic minutes where you feel that every bit of life's difficulties and complexities can be overcome with sheer strength of emotion and willpower and love and determination. You feel powerful just by the unvirtue of being irrational.

♦

date unknown

I just wanted him. I needed him for many reasons, but mostly just because I wanted him. I've wanted him since we were young, since we first talked, since we first gossiped, since we first made fun of each other (more of him making fun of me, of course), since the first time he told me he liked me, since the time he gave me a bottle of Pepsi Twist for my birthday, since he first called me fat, since I first successfully made him call me slender instead, since the first time I told him I loved him even before I had a definition of it (I didn't know what it was. But I knew I had it for him.), since every time he made my heart skip and stop and sputter in frantic, bewildered love. However childish and naive this love of mine for him was and is, it is a brand of love that is wholly Vern, one crafted by and for him. This is one that still burns alongside the vestiges of my childhood dreams, and if in time it withers and turns into ash, it will lie buried alongside its fellow dream compatriots.

I needed him. And for two weeks, I got him.

Not enough, not nearly enough.

♦

4 January 2011

It was a year of magical thinking.

And to be honest, the magical thinking, the flights of fancy and earnest wishes, have not stopped. I still sit here, thinking that if I beg God hard enough, he will spare Vern for a day, let him down and let me see him.
[…]
But I am sad. I am sad because I know, I do know, that it is not possible. I am a creature of logic. And that little logic of mine grows every day, and it tells me, louder and louder every day, that it is not possible. I am getting further and further away from the year of magical thinking.

I lied to myself a lot that year. But that is not so bad, I think. There are worst things a person can do to himself, and I think telling myself boldfaced lies helped me cope in some way.

Inside me, logic and wishes were engaged in a ferocious battle, but sometimes one bent and bowed to the other, often the former to the latter.

Fantastical lies.

♦

17 September 2010

It is the realization that I cannot do anything that stings me.
[...]
I only need a chance. A chance to cheat Death, reach behind him as he's not looking, and pull Vern from beyond his grasp. But I cannot. And this is the fatal strike of the knife, twisting its blade into my already wounded hope. No matter what I do, who I am or who I become, this is something I cannot change. It will always remain far beyond my power to reverse. I will never be able to bargain with, cheat or trick, or bribe Death.
I do not have the option to do so.
I would very much like the option. I like options. They give me hope, in times when I have none.
And I have none now, of either.

♦

date unknown

Even now, it is hard to know when to use past tense and present tense.

♦

29 December 2011

I still have so much to say about him, but now I'm afraid that it's too late to say them because I should be completely over him by now. I need to get this out, to put into words the webbed concepts inside my brain.

I had so much invested in him. So many dreams and hopes still pinned to his image, like words of promises scrawled on a photograph. He was going to be my first boyfriend, my first date, my first kiss; he was going to be to one to take me to this restaurant, to that theme park, along this street, into that mall; we were going to argue about stupid things, laugh about stupid things, talk about stupid things, and promise stupid things. We were going to be all cute and smooshy with each other, we were going to act sickly sweet only around each other and to each other. He was going to call me stupid names, and I'd love it, and I was going to ramble about random topics, and he'd stare at me blankly (but secretly love it). And while we were doing all these silly things, we were going to (somehow) grow and mature and become wise, together. He was going to be the centerpiece of all monumental and inconsequential events in my life.

I think I should've by now discarded all of these dreams, should have burned them all up and scattered the ashes into the wind. But I'm still clutching tightly onto them.

I don't believe that they can come true and be fulfilled, of course. Not anymore, not since a while. I did though, even a few months after his death. I would console myself with insane, soothing thoughts that these dreams could still come true, because Hope and Love can conquer even Death.

I was a jackass. But I was a grieving jackass.
[...]
And when he died, I was faced with the reality that I had failed the bulk of my plans, and the rest were now beyond the realm of possibility.

I think that broke me somehow.

♦

9 May 2012

And this is my biggest fear: that I'm forgetting him. Not him entirely, of course not. I don't think there'll ever be a time where someone says "Vern" and I wonder "who?" or when someone asks "your first love?" and my mind doesn't immediately snap to him. But the details that made out the fringes of his being, that's what I'm forgetting. That's what I'm losing.

He's gone, and all I have left of him are shoddy memories, however fond and well-revisited they may be. He's gone and in his absence, I can only mentally revisit him. And every time I do so, I squish his character and life into a box for my convenience. I flatten him into a 2d character. He's losing his shape and his realness in my mind.

But this is an unavoidable fact of life. As I trudge forward into my life, bits of memory spill out of my pockets, leaving a trail of crumbs in my wake that I can't reclaim unless I constantly backtrack to pick up the missing details of my memories. And that's not possible or practical.

♦

29 May 2012

It used to be that I could say that he had been an active part of more than half of my life. Now, it's a little less than half. With the power of vague rounding however, I can always just say half.
But this amount will continue to shrink as time goes on. Soon he'll have only been part of a quarter of my life, than an eighth, than a miniscule fraction. The quantity of his presence in my life will diminish, unavoidably.
It shouldn't be this way. He should've been with me, in some role (any role),  throughout more of my life, not until I was only fifteen years old.
I had him, officially, to myself for two weeks. I've been grieving for three years. This ratio of happiness to grief is only going to grow more imbalanced and ridiculous, moreso than it already is.
It is somehow inexplicably painful understanding that he will have no greater presence in my life beyond existing happily in my memories.

♦

17 October 2011 

More than many things (than anything!), I miss you.

♦♦♦

I can draw hearts very well.

Last Sunday, I was on duty to help out at children's church.

We were working on some crafts, making rather clever, minimalist "purses" out of paper and string. Unfortunately, since I am, you know, too old, I couldn't make a purse for myself. Instead, I was stuck with cutting out the purses from sheets of paper and taping and stringing them into appropriate shapes.

What a pity.

I will admit, since I was young, I never did enjoy doing arts and crafts. Not very much, at least. All that stupid scissors-handling, the precise measuring, the finagling with sticky tape - so tedious. And whenever I'm rostered on for children's church, I always have to do these things, and be reminded of how much I hate them.

So anyway, I was busy snipping out bits of string to tie into the holes punched in the purses. And a girl whom I was taking care of, Kaitlyn, was sitting next to me and coloring her little purse.

She interrupted me suddenly, asking, "Can you help me draw a teirajlaef?"

A very important note to make: I volunteer to help take care of the younger children, ranging from toddlers to about 5-year-olds. Kaitlyn is about five (or maybe four, I forget). Now apparently, 5-year-olds are still quite lacking in their verbal abilities.

Rather strange to me. I'm pretty sure I was an eloquent poet the moment I jumped out of my mother's womb. I just leaped out into the doctor's arms and began reciting excerpts from Shakespeare, complete with theatrical arm movements.

Anyway, so Kaitlyn hadn't exactly said "teirajlaef" but she had said something completely incomprehensible to me. Luckily, I'm quite used to these situations by now, and so I patiently asked her what she wanted me to draw for her.

"A waurauea," she tried again.

Again, that was not exactly the sound she had made. Again, it had been completely incomprehensible.

"Can you try to doodle it out for me, and I'll try to draw it nicely for you?" I suggested, hoping that I'd get a better idea of what she wanted then.

She made a face, not exactly a displeased one but a somewhat impatient one, but took her pen anyway and made a quick scratchy jumble of lines on a spare piece of paper.

What the heck it was supposed to be, I had no clue.

"Hmm, I'm not sure if I can draw that very well," I muttered, trying to sound calm as I tried to recognize what on earth that bizarre, oblong shape was. "How about I draw a heart for you?"

She stared at me blankly, and I gently took the pen from her and drew a heartshape doodle on her purse. After a quick second, I handed her purse back and waited for her reaction.

Her jaw dropped and her eyes widened as she stared at my orange-colored creation. "Yes!" she cried. "This is perfect!"

And then she made me draw another heart with another color, I think it was green.

I don't know why I think this is worth writing and posting. It's just a fond memory I have right now, I suppose. Her pleasant satisfaction at my small doodle is quite heart-warming. It's nice to see that sometimes, if you get something that you didn't originally want, you can still end up happy and content. Because it might just surprise you and turn out even better than what you wanted in the first place.

Proverbs 14:10

I was reading the Bible aloud to my sister, and I came across this verse.

I admit that I haven't picked up and read the Bible of my own volition recently. Not for a long time, in fact.

But as I was perusing through it, it struck me that I had forgotten just how much I enjoy reading it. For me, the New Testament reigns over the Old, simply because Jesus is one awesome guy. No seriously, that's my reason. Reading the four Gospel books that begin the entire Testament is an old joy of mine, pouring through the biography of a man whose footsteps I desire to tread in.

But the highlight of tonight's reading session was not found in the New Testament. It was in Proverbs, one of those delightful books that I esteem above most others. Proverbs 14:10:

Each heart knows its own bitterness,
and no one else can fully share its joy.

When I read that, I paused for a few moments to meditate on it, and then re-read it three times over. Its conciseness, its pithy wisdom, its almost fragmented structure, it all comes together into a single verse that is just so alarmingly beautiful to ruminate over.

Even though I flounder back and forth in my faith, toppling far over the edge at times -- even then there's something undeniably ataraxic about reading my favorite books in the Bible. Some parts of the Bible, I will admit, I find horrendously dull, or horrendously offensive. I cannot read the book of Jobs and come away feeling satisfied at the conclusion; the book drives me to confused distress.

A verse like this, however, is beautiful. In ways I cannot convey, it resonates with me. Even in print, it is mellifluent, it is calming, it is like the hum of angels barely audible over the din and clamor of life.

There are some verses, some passages, that anybody can read and enjoy and admire at its strident and poetic wisdom, religious or not. I suppose for many, this verse will have little effect and meaning for them. But for me, this is a stellar example of how a few words strung together can needle its way into my mind and click itself into the mainframe.

It is like that wonderful moment when you read some line or phrase in a book or an article that completely describes you or your feelings or your situation in ways that you could never even imagine.

The Bible is a thing of solemn beauty; that verse is a thing of quiet reflection. It is followed, a few verses after, by another one that I find resonance with:

Laughter can conceal a heavy heart,
but when the laughter ends, the grief remains.

So gorgeous.