For most of my life, I have been careless with the idea of being alive.
I used to think I was fearless (a liar’s spin on it). But it wasn’t a lack of fear that drove my self-destructive actions: staying out by myself until 4am, getting drunk, getting high, getting into cars with strangers, staying in strange places, sleeping with strange people, allowing myself to be robbed of my personhood. It was a lack of attachment to living. I didn’t care what happened to me, which enabled me a certain degree of apathy to everything and everyone.
Ironically, it’s only been recent—as of the last two years—that I’ve started to feel like a human being that exists fully in this world. I got on anti-depressants, which saved me from myself. I started making genuine relationships in Los Angeles and deepened my bonds with people I’ve always kept at arm’s length. I stopped doing drugs. I am adjusting to this thing that most people have been doing effortlessly: living.
Two years ago, statements like “there’s been a rise in AAPI hate crimes” became my reality. I have a complicated relationship with my heritage, but there’s nothing complicated about the statistics and headlines telling me that an Asian woman my mom’s age was pushed on a subway track or how Asian elders across America were getting acid thrown on them. It goes on. And on and on. Like most of us who live in a trauma-infused state, I became numb.
It’s only been recent that I became attached to the idea of being alive. It’s also occurred to me that staying alive is also not entirely up to me.
There was a shooting on Lunar New Year—a widely celebrated Asian holiday welcoming in the new year, the Year of the Rabbit (or cat) per the zodiac. I have not always been connected to my heritage, so it might surprise people to learn this was my first year celebrating it. I spent it with my best friend’s family and it was a lovely time—an evening that I am grateful I was present for, another reminder that this life can be filled with joy.
That same night, over ten people were murdered and many more hospitalized because someone took an assault rifle and violently shot up an entire community of people welcoming in a new year. It was pointed. It was meant to make a statement. And I am grappling with the knowledge that those people looked like me, ate like me, and could have been me.
(I feel selfish pointing attention to that. I do not want to take attention off the actual victims or their families. I am still learning what it means to be part of a greater community and how being alive means having these attachments that will tether and destroy you at the same time.)
As a child, I did not have much experience in being cared for. As I sit on my feelings, I am yearning for a comfort I’ve never had: to be held tightly in someone’s arms and be told that I am going to be okay. I recoil at vulnerability, but I want this desperately. I want someone to look at my sadness and powerlessness and not flinch away from it or bat it away. I want to sit, or lay, in silence and be very young. I want to hugged tightly and feel safe, for possibly the first time in my life. I want to not push them away and feel someone else next to me, witnessing me, holding space for me. I want to stay like this for a very long time.
And in return, I hope to do the same for them.