Something That Lasts

In late 2019 I was trying to escape the impending stress of illness, emotional fall out, and what I didn’t know yet would be the sudden halt of not just my personal life but soon the world around me - and I found myself feeling inspired to watch new movies.

That may sound pretty uneventful of a hobby to start making time for, but as someone who has always gravitated towards watching the same media over and over again, maybe for comfort, maybe because I was avoiding facing any form of the unknown, to dedicate myself and my emotional energy to watching new films was actually something of a leap in my spirit. It was a time in my life where my agoraphobia was at its most gripping, leaving me unable to leave the block my apartment was on besides going to the job I’d been at for 6 years and had become absorbed into my ever shrinking comfort zone. It felt like a small miracle that I was able to motivate myself to go to the small independent movie theater in my neighborhood that had been a childhood staple and was only about a ten minute walk away. I purposely picked films about the loneliness and isolation that happened spiritually and physically in womanhood, the tough forks in the roads we all must face between our deepest desires versus what might actually be best for us, and the quiet deaths we endured in the moment of decision. The two films that struck me were Little Women and The Farewell.

Both of these films, though very different in plot and genre, gave me a familiar feeling of the distinct and heavy burden of being a young woman and it’s seemingly inherent relationship to suffering and necessary pain needed for transformation and survival.

I felt deeply drawn to them and their atmosphere because I had entered a time in my life where I was in near constant physical anguish and had finally run out of the words to describe or emote it. I wouldn’t be given an actual diagnosis till mid 2020 during the height of the pandemic’s first wave and lock down, and my life would look completely new by then, but in that cold and gray winter before the new year I was quietly trudging through the waves of discomfort and pain with my determination to bring new feeling into my life that happened between me, old musty theater seats, 3pm, and the big screen. It felt like a small light in the darkness that glowed just brightly enough to call me in without hurting my eyes and giving me a headache like everything else seemed to.

The first one I watched was Little Women which featured one of my longtime favorite actresses as the lead who had previously played a bleach blonde deadpan action star in her first role I knew her in as Hanna, a film I had a strange everlasting taste for despite it having violence and thrills that I usually avoided. I watched the re-imagined classic tale of the March sisters as they moved through different phases of life, at times unshakably close, and then suddenly soon after beginning to depart from each other. This theme resonated so deeply with me having just lost so many important and foundational relationships as I had gotten sicker and sicker over the course of a few years, first manageably and then eventually leaving me unable to maintain a normal friendship outside the bounds of 20 minute panicked voice memos and hastily published bandcamp singles full of metaphors about my body and it’s rapid decline. The swan dive of fearless fun and devotion turned to resentments and heartbreak shown between the cast of characters made me feel comforted, like maybe it was the most natural thing in the world that even our most cherished promises end up broken by adulthood. That maybe the magical bonds we all feel in childhood are meant to be shed when we grow up because they are the sacrifice we must learn to willingly make when we choose a life for ourselves and all the responsibilities that comes with. Seeing Jo break down lonely and defeated by the trials of ambition felt like a gentle and honest mirror of the frustrations I felt in my own life, as the world had ended for me time and time again even though I was only 24. I walked home from the movie theater with cold air prickling my eyes and making them water and I enjoyed the feeling of crying without having to force the emotions out.

I wanted very desperately at that time to re-frame my isolation as a journey, a temporary place I was currently at on a large map of my life that, although dark and daunting, was unmistakably necessary and leading me towards something important and worth the suffering. Coming of age style movies always gave me the feeling that things move at their own pace in a way that’s natural even if while we are in it it can feel so harsh and cruel. I was especially comforted at the idea that it was a classically old story, one that had been loved and held dearly by many women before me, and that maybe that meant my pain belonged somewhere like a speck in a large ocean made up of the same parts, not out of place ever for more than a moment when crashing into each other.

Seeing The Farewell for the first time was a very different experience. It was a very “new” story, based on true events, and with an unfamiliar cast I had no relationship to. It was the sort of leap in media I do not usually make (I am agoraphobic even in my movie choices), but was undeniably up my alley centering on the Asian American experience, cancer, and learning how to say goodbye to the people who have anchored us. 2019 was a year for me where I was perpetually in my house alone - which I felt like I needed. I spent most of my time going through old photo boxes searching for images of my mother to burn into my mind. I felt rushed to memorize her face, like I was making up for something I had forgotten. I sorted through many different years of her life, and many impressively trendy hairstyles she sported, all of which looked natural and beautiful on her classically enchanting face. I’d rejected the part of my identity surrounding her existence and the weight of losing her when I was not even 3, and was only reminded begrudgingly in the cool soft hands of the women who remembered her and pet me each time we visited Taiwanese run restaurants that she had been like family at. No one ever told me I looked Asian, but people always told me I looked like my mother - which confused me endlessly. I secretly worried they only said it out of pity, so that I might see myself in her, like proof she really was once there and maybe still was in some sense. I doubted their motives in private - but the unyielding look of mourning in their eyes pierced through me like a shot to silence my fears I had not once said out loud. I sat hunched over eating perfectly salted edamame in contentment and did not dare let the feeling sink in.

The Farewell is a story in some part about the divide that exists both generationally and personally in being attached to a country and culture that separates you from family and tradition. The change in expectation that can become like a poison between child and parent, that goes beyond and trickles into even our relationship to ourselves and whether or not we have the self assurance to trust our own decisions, let alone make them when we need to be brave.

I saw so much of myself in the fumbling and dishonest main character who was viewed as unapologetically Americanized by her relatives that both at times envied her freedoms and also felt a disgust towards them. It feels like both a privilege and a taboo to be able to depart from expectations set before us, and the idea of individuality was explored in an emotional and honest way in one of my favorite scenes where an uncle talks about the difference in the Chinese ideaology surrounding oneness and being a part of a whole as well as the responsibilities of family ties most especially in times of crisis and decision vs modern American independent self serving thinking. It was framed as culturally inherited burden and a prideful sense of duty that was alien to the main character who was busy in her own failures and self concern.

I cried alongside the main character as she grappled with her failure to be able to provide any real resource and stability to her unknowingly dying grandmother, and how her unbridled emotions became a unwanted obstacle to the people operating around her who were ultimately more capable of the difficult tasks surrounding taking care of a loved one at the end of their life. My stomach sank scene by scene watching someone I saw so much of myself in fail to understand the maturity of the people around her and her childlike fantasy to be able to offer things she did not really have.

My phase of watching new films was 6 whole years ago now, and the more I look back on that period of time the more I feel moved by how serendipitous those story lines arrived in my life.

I am thinking of them today because it’s my Nai nai’s birthday and I am being hit with a sense of being remarkably powerless in my ability to care for her or show up in her life. No matter how bursting with opinions I am on what caring for her in her old age should look like - I need to face the reality that I chose to not live in my hometown and am otherwise unequipped to do anything important for her surrounding her living situation, health, or happiness. I have left those things to my father and brother, who especially in these moments, feel more like real and capable people than myself who has spent her time going through illness and therapy on loop.

Most of the time I do not feel useless - my therapist and husband have worked incredibly hard to make sure I know that and feel rooted in it as a reality. But I have a creeping fear that although comparison might be unfair, that what I have to give is not enough. I want to be able to take care of not just myself, but the people I love. I want to be resilient, and to put aside impossible things like diagnoses and traumas of the past. I want to be able to stand on my own skills and worth when I am needed and to be able to give freely without fear of retaliation from my body for not honoring it’s limits that are so different from the people around me.

I sat waiting for a call from my father at my dining room table with my hair neatly braided and tiny cup of hot water I was sipping at anxiously for the 3 minutes over the phone I knew I’d have to express my love and worry to the woman who raised me in my mother’s absence - who has felt further and further away from me each passing year for all of my early and mid twenties as my life had become harder to describe or stand by. It felt like when I finally got my footing the best I’d ever had in my adulthood, the distance between us had already grown so large that I did not know how to traverse it. Like many things, it was connected to the shame I had for my faults and failures and eventually came between me and my grandmother, who for many years, I could not seem to face.

I have found that in my worst moments - the last person I would want to see is someone who loves me, because I am terrified to see the hurt on their face if they were to know the pain I was so often in. Instead of reaching out for help or care, I backed away inch by inch promising myself I’d come back when I had figured things out, when I could show them how the love they had given me was not wasted or thrown away, but made even more precious by my own efforts and successes. I repeated this emotional pattern till I was all alone and at a breaking point of surgical intervention and a full stop to everything in my life. I let myself hit rock bottom, then came up for air and realized there were people waiting for me, but not everyone felt like I could still reach them. I spent a lot of time since then buried in guilt and regret about how dishonest I had been with so many important people in my life, and even now I struggle to name it. Despite coming such a long way - I worry not all gaps can be bridged simply because I am ready now.

I find myself gravitating towards those themes of isolation and powerlessness that I found in the films I keep coming back to from then. The parallels between self determined but ultimately lonely women in the throws of important chapters of their lives being pulled in different directions by their wounds and their ambitions. The importance of family bonds and what it really looks like to see yourself as part of a whole and not just as an individual with desires or pain to carry alone. These concepts are blistering in my mind as I race up towards the things I need to be able to do for myself and others this spring.

When my brother sent me a picture of my Nai nai and her birthday cake she wasn’t smiling.

She, like most everyone, has had a difficult last few years full of change, loss and transition. Much like me she is deeply a creature of comfort and habit, if not even more stubborn than myself in her need for control over her situation and privacy. She’s recently been moved to a new living arrangement after a lapse in her health, which despite being in her 90’s, has been extremely rare for her. I sat shivering in my apartment looking at the picture of her on my phone and I felt more desperately far away from her than I ever have. I felt my heart clench for control I do not have - and then I let myself sink into a cry because I do not want to keep letting my emotions get stuck in me and then give me more health problems to wrestle with.

I told my husband how conflicted I felt in what I could do for someone I felt I owed everything to but could provide nothing for. There is no healthy way for me to live in my hometown. There is no way for me to go back to my old career that allowed me to be financially independent without it costing me the slow progress I’ve finally been making in my health. I feel weighted with the truth of my own limits, and desperate to slither out of them even though I know there are never any shortcuts in life when it counts.

When the call finally came in it was over in a flash, and despite the uneasy photograph sent to me, my Nai nai still sounded like her normal self: chipper and maternal. I couldn’t squeeze any comfort out of hearing her voice because I was already too sped up with emotions and worry, but there was a tiny bit of relief when I heard something so familiar as her calling my name. I couldn’t remember what I made for breakfast when she asked - so I fumbled over my words describing my husband’s new sourdough baking hobby instead. I have always observed my Nai nai and I feel anxious to be with one another, unable to communicate well, and yet desperate to talk.

I’ve sent her two long letters these last few years. Both were more affectionate and honest than I have ever felt capable of being with her in real life or even over the phone. I expressed how much her love had molded me, and turned me into the person I am today that I feel like I can really start to love now. I wanted her to know nothing was wasted on me… every jasmine tea party, every winter Nutcracker ballet, even her wise direction and compliments at the department stores in the mall we loved to walk together has all sunk in one way or another and made me someone who is loved and belongs somewhere. I told her I think of her in everything I do, whether it’s the shimmering pearl nail polish I choose or the affection I feel for plainly made wonton soup at cheap Chinese food spots. I told her most of all I miss her and that although I struggle to express it, that she is endlessly important to me.

When we moved to our new house in upstate New York last summer the first thing I did to adorn our new home was buy a ornate antique picture frame for my desk that was otherwise pretty bare, and had an old photo of my Nai nai my brother scoured around for printed so I could look at her each day. When spring finally came, I pressed the first snow drops in an old book so I could send them to her soon. When I watched the first few episodes of new Anne Of Green Gables anime coming out weekly now, I wept and thought of the quiet and intimate understanding of me my Nai nai has always had as she gently pushed those books on me when I was a little girl. All of it feels connected and soothing even when there’s things I think will always sting too.

I think a coming of age can happen at any time in life, maybe even 29. I don’t know if I am self romanticizing enough to say it’s “right on time”, but I do believe in better late than never.

Doing our best in our own way is not just something we say to ourselves to cover our bruises with pandering comfort to avert the gazes of the people in our life - it’s an important truth that if we cannot be courageous enough to reckon with, we might end up letting those relationships pass us by.

It still feels impossible some days to confront myself with the people and moments I’ve let slip through my finger because my head was buried down in the ground while I thought I was not good enough to come as I am.

I can’t say with perfect confidence that I never run away from important things anymore.

To change for the better does not need to mean becoming an entirely new person, free of scars and mistakes that follow us.

I think it means being able to open our hearts and let new things find a place even with the threat of opening those doors meaning new pain and failures meeting us there too.

I have decided I will take all of it on so that my life is full and real,

and I will think of you

in everything.