Despair

Trying to take a sober look at despair, like a friend out of rehab.

Despair recipe: 1 part gin, 1 part root beer, healthy splash of lime juice.

Times I’ve spontaneously cried in despair this year:

Nothing in January. Not even during the insurrection or on the anniversary of my sister’s death.

Nothing in February or March, not even when dozens of Asian Americans are murdered point blank in the South and I am called into sixty different interviews and talk events to explain why this is a tragedy and “what we’re doing about it.” 

Nothing in April, probably because my blood pressure is at heart attack levels. You could have ran into me with a freight train in April and I would not have felt it. 

May: Reading a text message from dad on my birthday while at AAA with Jorge to transfer the title on his car over to me, unbeknownst to him it is my birthday and I’ve considered this a specific gift. I sob in therapy. I double our sessions for a few weeks.

Reading a letter from dad a week later.

June: Writing back to my dad to ask him to please stop calling me obstinate and cynical, to please stop sending me picture of landscapes and telling me not to take life and family for granted, and to tell me that being alone has been the most important tool for his self-discovery, because every time he says these things it breaks my heart, over and over and over again. Being alone meant leaving me. I, too, would give anything not to wait till my children are broken teenagers, in order to find myself.

Hearing gamelan and remembering the last time I saw an ensemble in Bali it was all female, thinking “wow,” and then I returned to America where everyone was male again.

July: During a guided meditation, I cry every time the guide says “surrender.” 

When I see the footage of the Gulf of Mexico on fire.

Entering drought season.

*I was a little drunk tonight.