Things I Like.

[thingsangelalikes]

Square Pegs

I look back at the writings of my life and I realize a couple of things. I’ve seen enough, and honestly, I’m a little satiated. I’m not sure if it came through the passing of my mother, but I’m okay with going slow. I’ve always loved love. It’s apparent in the dissatisfaction of my past relationships. The want for understanding, to be on the same page. I’ve forced a lot of square pegs into a round hole. I’m sitting now in a new space and new town re-reading my old entries and realizing how much time I’ve spent feeling not enough. I’m realizing that I’m holding that impossible standard for myself.

I’m 29. I’ve written and written since I was young. I’ve yearned for life, and honestly, I’ve lived it. I’m proud of what my life has been accounted to at this point...in the macro-level. I’m not sure if I’m more or less self-aware as I was younger, or really, if I’m just slightly better at pattern recognition within myself.

These days, I stay at a screen pleasing clients. I have co-workers who doubt me and I doubt myself at times. I find this job to be like my relationships. A square peg in a round hole, but it’s okay. I understand the process is slow, and I’m in no rush to change things until I’m ready. Maybe instead of going slow, what I’m really doing is listening to myself and respecting my thoughts.

It took some time. It took time to understand how my father affected me and in turn, how it affected my love life and self love.

[portable-rock]

‘Go Lim were short-lived but remain a much loved band in Hanoi’s underground scene. Despite disbanding in 2012 after just a year, their tracks emerge from time to time to the reminiscence of their devoted and loyal fanbase. Go Lim were important to Vietnam’s indie community, their songs defying gender and politics and transcending time, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that hardly any punk band can overshadow them in terms of both music and coolness.‘

[oftenminimal]

n.447 - there has been a lot of commotion in politics these last few days. please support and hear out the women around you. it is a heartbreaking feeling to have their bodies, on such a visceral level, governed by a group of white men (and woman). let us show we support each other. and now, two embryos, two souls, becoming one. or are they parting? https://www.instagram.com/p/BxnBT6jFZNG/

[danismm]

Kisho Kurokawa. Nakagin Capsule Tower. Tokyo Japan 1970-72

[wkwz]

In The Mood For Love (2000) dir. Wong Kar Wai

[myfairynuffstuff]

Dang Xuan Hoa (b.1959) - Raindrops. 2016. Gouache on paper.

[equatorjournal]

[historium]

Vietnamese woman carries her children and possessions, 1968

[vincent-anhson]

A little illustration of a flower merchant in Hanoi ! Drawn for the Gobelins exhibition “Garden”

[thingsangelalikes]

Hello Old Friend

When I close my eyes and I think about my life and my path, I can see the rivers easing through the landscape. “I’m lost.” I say over and over and over again, constantly searching for stability while yearning for adventure. It’s only with hindsight that I realize that I was never lost, but I was wandering and soaking up experiences wherever I could get it. Ebbing between feeling lost and being found. I’m older now and I believe that in this moment, surrounded by the sun, flora, and friends, I have been found. 

I’ve gone through three deaths in the past 2 years. In March of 2017, my grandmother, the matriarch and glue of the family passed away in her sleep. It was 3AM and she went quietly next to grandpa. I wheeled her casket in next to all the men in our family. We ate dim sum together and I watched as Lesley submitted her last paper for her masters after the funeral. It was the first break of the family who I’ve known all my life. It was heartbreaking, but we knew that it was her end of life and she was loved.

My mother passed. It cut a hole in me and shifted my thinking. I don’t think I’ll ever be the same person after that, but I’m grateful to her. She just wanted me to live a happy life. I lost a huge part of my life and my family will never be the same. 

My relationship ended. The longest relationship I’ve had, which could be due to the fact that I couldn’t fathom anymore change after my mother. I had tried to force our relationship so hard, I forgot that relationships shouldn’t have to be forced. 

and here I am in the aftermath, alive still and living. Realizing that these events while hard, are natural and will continue in the future. There’s something about the inevitability of pain that makes you feel lighter after the pain has subsided.

[thingsangelalikes]

This time

This time last year, I was dressing up with Kaitlyn to become aliens. We just participated in the hackathon at MIT and I finally felt that I needed to leave my job to grow. I have my two week notice in my hand. The next day, you called and you told me you had lung cancer. Stage 4 they said. I remember standing outside my workplace, mouth open, unable to really grasp the situation. I told everyone. I left work. I cried. I bought my ticket for two days from that day and cleaned out my desk and I flew home to you. So much has happened in a year. I spent months back home, unemployed, spending time with you during chemo. You were shaking once. You had this fever that went up to 104, and all you could say to me was that you were so cold. I ran up to the doctors with you and they placed all these blankets on you and you slept. I was so scared that day that you would die. We went to other doctors to get second opinions. They said you were going to be okay. I felt that I needed to get back to life. They said you had two years. I flew home after new years. You had a stroke. You died a week later while I was holding your hand and we were all singing Ave Maria. I wore your dress and cried. I remember the sky crying too. When I went back home, I didn’t have anything really. No sense of self, or family, or relationships, or career. I was just. there. empty and living. I went to a grief therapy group. The room always felt so heavy. Jenny got me a job at her work. I didn’t fit in the culture. It wasn’t what I wanted. I left. I did this apprenticeship. I’m still in it actually. Today is the day of my last interview for an actual full time job with a company that I respect and like. My family and I are in this new groove,  and my relationship is looking up. I miss you everyday and it’s hard to think that this journey had been so hard and confusing. I just imagine you somewhere up there reading books. 

[thingsangelalikes]

amazing *bravo*

[thingsangelalikes]

<3 <3 <3

[thingsangelalikes]

Miss You

I remember this one day we drove

I think we got some dim sum

and spent some time together

I drove us to the beach

you just needed to see it,

you didn’t need to get out.

I really wish you did though

place your toes in the sand

close your eyes

wish away the disease

When I called dad today,

I realized that we both have been avoiding each other

because of our pain

I broke down in tears because

I was afraid that Brian would be like Dad

who wasn’t a good father growing up

who was depressed and rarely happy

He cried because he realized he wasn’t a good father when I grew up

“We do our best,” he said.

and I accepted.

We cried over you.

Trying to get over your death

failing miserably.

We both tried to act cool

but you can hear our voices cracking.

I took out your tablet again

to see what you saw

to look at your photos

the ones you saved of me in chicago

I forgot that I missed you so much

but it all came back.

[thingsangelalikes]

day 30

i stood tonight, the month anniversary of your death, by the ice cold creek. a paper boat in my hand. I lit the candle in your honor…an effigy of sorts. I threw rose petals into the creek watching them swirl around in circles; neither moving to close, nor too far. The lantern boat floated down the river and came back to me. I took a stick and pushed it a little farther. As i watched it go, I saw the light…your light, grow dimmer and dimmer until like your life, like my heart, it went out. I think to myself, that you’d scoff at my ceremonious celebration of you, but you’d appreciate it none the less. Because you’d know that I love you and these ceremonies are the only way I know how to show it. I bought a book recently…because it was poems of Florida, because the cover was a holographic beauty. Only to receive it today of all days and find out it was about parental loss. I thought to myself, “what a story, what a coincidence.”

How this book came to me, how these mementos cemented in my head, the polaroid, the rosary, the jewelry, the dresses, always relating to you. How only 30 days ago, I was sitting by your bed, feeling overwhelmed and lonely. The house bustling. Filled with shocked people. quietly crying. whispering to each other. We watched them take you away, with their emerald green bowties, starched white shirts, and shiny black dress shoes. I saw you through salted wet eyes listening to everyone giving their goodbyes under bright artificial lighting. I saw you through salted wet eyes as the door opened to the pouring rain and blackness, and the men with emerald bow ties and starched white shirts wheeled you into the orange fluorescent lit wet night, until all we could hear is the sound of the engine starting, and you being driven away.

[thingsangelalikes]

I miss you mom. Mostly late at night, when I feel you here the most. I hear your thoughts and your worries and you feel so so real. So real, that I can hear you knocking on my door telling me to go to bed since I have an early flight in the morning. you gave me space and I left, and now I think about all the times I went to hang out with my friends, and I left you. it hurts, to think about you alone all those times that I could have spent with you. How we didn’t talk, and how I thought maybe, we would be closer when I started a family and had a home, how you could move into the tiny house that I would build for you. How you would love my children as you loved me. I always have ideas about how my life would end up, but I never would have expected you to die in them. your kind soul was always there.

you made my father happy. without you as a counter, I fear that he’ll always be cranky and depressive. It hurts me, because I don’t want him to take me down, and I don’t have your sun to shine on me.

Sometimes I feel you, and it brings me happiness. Sometimes I feel you and it brings me grief. I saw your videos you started recording. You named my 2nd birthday, “Angela so cute 2nd birthday”

Knowing after all these years, you look at me with endearing eyes.

I remember before I left and you handed me a bracelet that I loved from your mother and you handed it to me.

We sat together holding hands silently crying. I wish I could come back and visit you at that time. I wish I could have stayed and not left. I wish I could have prevented your stroke.

Mom, I read your memos.

The ones where you said you were happy to see the sun shining. The one where you said you have a fever and you were scared. The one where you wanted years to live and how scared you were to die.

And then you died.

and I’ve been living in this empty sleeve of a house, without you, with my brother, with my grieving father.

We all sit in this empty house.

[thingsangelalikes]

I think I love who I’ve become. A little more confident, a little more careful, a little more humble, hopefully I am a good person. That’s all I really want. Or anyone else really. <3 

Signed,

Angela