Happiness is a fickle

In the pursuit of happiness there is really no path that leads to happily ever after. There is a midpoint, sure, where you could convince yourself that you are happy and fulfilled; and if someone came into your life at that midpoint, you'd be dismissive.  You think you are better off without them. Then when you snap out of it, you realize that you've been missing that something. Someone, some part of yourself all along.

You go back, go way back and find those who meant something along the way. You try to figure out if that person could have worked out, if you had lost the opportunity because that one word that you did not say, you did say, the one opportunity that could have changed your fate, your path forever.

You test it out, by saying - "what happened?"

You hear the other person says - "timing, circumstance."

A memory lane appeared out of nowhere, and there ten dancing fireflies guide you through the walkway, until you could see the other end. A different future, a different family, a different life, a different ocean, a different set of reality.

You've always been passive, submissive to a fault. You don't like to take charge, be demanding, you'd rather follow than lead. You don't like to pursue, yet you can hold your own. You just don't want to, you are perfect at being alone and you are perfect at being in a relationship. You are perfectly content one way or another.

Under the right circumstance, you'd even be a perfect wife, a perfect mother, and a loyal, passionate, devoted person who would do anything and everything for the other.

That's what you've been told.

The two of you would have continued to date, until he wanted children, you'd given children to him. You'd not wanted to get married, until the other wanted a marriage. A proper family. You'd agree because that's what being a supportive, submissive person would do. You'd do all that you can to please the person you are with. You'd become domesticated, be known as the wonderful wife, mother, an excellent cook, a jack of all trades.

You'd be praised, admired and you'd be the perfect little wife that the other always wanted. The hot wife.  He'd be happy, content, and he’d thank his lucky stars. For having said what he said, to keep you and fought for you when he did. He'd be proud of his accomplishment.  Until one day he’d take you for granted, he'd think you are who you are because what he brought to your life. You had grown a lovely garden, full of fragrant plants, exotic, rare plants that every neighbor envied. You'd have a career, a group of good core girlfriends, some guy friends, but you'd find the guys tiring. You'd find them boring. You'd call them Peter Pans because they never wanted to grow up. You'd self congratulate. You'd kiss the other as he went to work every day. You knew that it was worth it to uplift your roots, move all the way for him, for this world that you had finally become part of. You'd tell friends, how you first met. In your early 20s, and how the unlikely story of getting back together after all those time, when you finally gave up, then he asked you to be with him. The rest was history. You'd say.

Your girlfriends would be so envious of you, the big house, the fancy car, the husband who had it all, and the beautiful children who you knew would keep him around, for as long as you care him to be around. You gave him a beautiful, healthy son and a daughter.

One day, one day as you looked yourself in the mirror, you did not see you anymore, you looked middle aged, tired, spent, and passionless. You take on a new hobby, change your job, dye your hair, get Botox, a tummy tuck, and you stopped all that made you the motherly you - cooking, gardening, ironing, taking children to the park. You became fashionable, you take up a new passion, triathlon or running perhaps, increased your core training, and before you know men are saying to you, "You don't look like the type who ever cooked. You must be used to men doing things for you. You don't look like someone who took public transportation." You had become the woman you used to both despise and envy.

You looked at the other. You stopped appreciating the way he fought for you, you started to resent having uplifted and moved 3000 miles away for him, you start to ponder if the boy before him could have been the one, he was too tall,  now a little too gray, too predictable. The boy had the perfect body for you, and fair colored hair reminded you of the summer beach, and he was unpredictable. You should have given that boy another chance, yet you had given your life to the other.

Boy travelled into town, you two met up for dinner, then dessert, then back at the boy's hotel, boy had become man, but never married, never would, still unpredictable, intoxicating, and a player, just like you already knew but this time you didn't have anything to lose. So an affaird. You quickly forgot about the other person, the man who fought for you, who said that he'd love you until the end of the day. He never would know, he still saw you as the 22 year old girl he knew when he first met you, the innocent, caring, loving girl who adored every inch of him, But that's not you any more. You are down to the rabbit hole, playing a dangerous game with boy, knowing that you won’t lose because you are clever.

You stop.  Fireflies disappear.  The lane disappears.

You ask the other. "Is this the future you'd envision with me? Don't you remember how I dated a boy while I was with you? Don't you remember that you told me that I'm not the marriage material?"

The other is still full of faith, "Under the right circumstances, you'd be an absolutely perfect wife."

You stop and take a deep breath. Then you find tears. You had called him, and no one else, “my sweetheart” once. You know when the boy came crashing into your life, you had him to fall back on, until you told him about the boy and broke his heart, yet, all those women he bed, he chose to believe in you. Even when you have lost faith in yourself.

He’s the only person who ever called you by your first name’s initial. Simple, direct and you. “My little X.” That’s how he called you.

"So here we are, what now?" You ask.

It's benign and innocent, it's just talk because you are three thousand miles apart. You never uplifted your life for anyone, he never asked you to take that leap of faith.

"Now, we wait and see." He says.

“Wait for what?” You ask.

As usual, he says, as he said many years before.

“Wait for the stars to align.”

You are reminded that one night, the summer wind blowed curtain. You had just said goodbye to the boy, beach blond boy who laughed and played, an expert who played the field nearly as good as you once did.

“I will see you in a couple of days.” Boy casually said, leaning down to kiss you as you laid in bed, but he was never to be seen again. But boy was not the only one. You never heard from your sweetheart that summer either.  You waited, and waited.

You went to see movies, in the rose city, alone. You arrived at a hotel, the blinker was on and when you listened to the answering machine, thinking it was your sweetheart, it was not, it was a man calling his wife, saying how much he loved her. It was a wrong room, wrong number. You cried, you cried like a baby in your large king size bed. You just wanted to be loved. You had so much love to give and no one wanted you.

You waited for the call that never came. You waited for that email that never arrived. Because you were passive, and full of faith, for the one you loved, you simply waited. You never made a fuss. You never demanded anything. You cried but you never cried in front of anyone. Until one day you wiped away tears, stopped waiting and started living.

You never saw the stars aligning the last time. You know you will not see the stars align this time.

This is real life. And in real life, happiness is a fickle. It does not belong to someone like you.  Not really, not for long.

A prelude to Life Through the Looking Glass

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Paul Auster says life is like seasons (Well, Shakespeare said it first but who's counting.) Winter being the last one of all. I thought, how appropriate. Ever since I was in my 20s I was never quite happy with the present (American way of thinking and living), or the past (Confucianism – Chinese way of thinking), I had always focused on the future.

Future is one that you could amend past mistakes and the present discontentment. You can still write a future. What’s really interesting though, is as I got older, my vision of future is no longer the summer, or the fall, it’s the winter. I have been told summer is now (30s – 50), fall is (50 – 70) and winter is (70+). Yet, when I think about the future, I go straight to winter. When I was in my 20s, I wrote about a woman’s summer: white picket fence, Victorian house, two children – one boy and one girl. I wrote about a woman’s yearning for the love that would fail her, and the man who would one day regret the decision he did not make. I don’t know if it’s life imitating art, or if that you can will a future if you try hard enough. I do know that this is not too far from a reality I know so intimately.

So now I begin to imagine the protagonist’s last future, the winter.

I have read so many sad, regret-laden stories about the wintery future. I don’t feel that way about the version of my future.

I see optimism, confidence, and strength. Optimism I never had or current have. And for the very opposite of the present me, I actually believe in love will find its way and love can and will conquer it, once for all.

How interesting then, about this version of me. Present = San Francisco Summer, cold and foggy; Near future = fall, absolutely no idea what that is like and I dare not to think about it. Future future = winter. This version I know. I can see it so clearly. Hand holding hand. Love finds its way. She finally gets to find and keep her true love and spends the remains of her day in happiness and contentment.

I wonder, then, how much of it will be true; and how much of it is me hoping to find some hope, in a world that hope is the only luxury a woman like I, cannot afford. 

Life Through the Looking Glass

How could it be already a week? If I miss you so much, and being apart makes my heart hurt, then, where did the time go?

If I don’t know when we’d see each other again, if I don’t really know anything about you, then, how could I know I’d love you until the end of the time?

If this is what a grown up relationship feels like, if I see my life through this looking glass, then, may I tell you what I see?

I see you and me, in matching charcoal black wool coats, and thick, hand knit brown hats, holding hands. It’s the dead of winter, the sun has long set, yet the moon has not risen, northern lights or the arrival of a commercial flight? Blearly, reluctantly, penetrating lights finally ready to be swallowed whole by the same darkness. Who are those passengers? Are our children, our children’s children on board? The snowstorm has finally stopped, icicles hanging low, break they shall, dimmed snow-covered streetlights, a black cat stretching on the side of the slightly elevated road, green shining marble eyes staring down.

I’m finally gray, and you are finally frail, we are not saying anything; we need not say anything. Footprints are slowly forming on the snow-covered walk. You know I have always loved you. And this is the end of the road.

Life is uncertain, eat wontons first

Had gone to my designer to do a fitting – yes I take my birthday bash seriously and have 3 custom made dresses. Then my girlfriend and I decided to grab something to go as we both had meetings. Instead I found this noodle house on Montgomery, across from the park in Chinatown near Commercial street. It was a hole in a wall kind of place, with an older man with a severe hunchback walking in slow steps serving small bowls of steamy noodles and wonton soup. There was something strangely familiar that drew me in, so I suggested for us to dine in. A bowl of wonton soup cost $4.79. It took five minutes for two bowls to arrive at our table. Staring into this chipped china bowl, it somehow transported me right back to Hong Kong or Guangzhou.

The restaurant was manned by three people: a man behind the counter to cook up noodles and wontons, a woman who was the cashier and the server, who also scooped up soups with a ladle and added beef briskets from a crock pot behind the counter, and then the hunchback elderly whom I saw earlier, who occasionally brought noodle soup bowls out to customers but often disappeared into the back kitchen, presumably to take a nap. There were some counter space for people to sit by, but the restaurant was not busy, so we took a table instead. The portions they served were more in line with what you’d expect in Hong Kong or Guangzhou, as in, it was appropriate and not super-sized like most American Chinese restaurants tend to serve these days. The wontons were crispy skinned and tender inside, with minced shrimp and pork as fillings, the clear broth had been scooped out of a big aluminum pot, which appeared to have been simmering on a stove for hours if not days. The chunks of brisket and tendon were at once tender and chewy, like the ones you’d find at Long Kee Noodle Shop, a place that Anthony Bourdain dined at in Hong Kong, and of course I ate at when I was in Hong Kong in 2010.

I was reminded of those early summer evenings when my mother took me to a nearby wonton shop outside of the school in Changsha, Hu Nan. Along the dirt road were sheds and stalls that served up different kinds of Hunan specialty – rice noodles, wontons, steamed sticky rice buns, often topped with pickled red chilies. My mother taught Chinese literature, and we lived on campus. My father travelled constantly for work, often leaving us a month at a time. He had women throwing themselves at him when he returned, and I supposed often on the road. My last year's therapy work uncovered suppressed memories of father taking me to visit his various women. It would not take a shrink to figure out why then as an adult, I could only be attracted to men who were rarely around and traveled a lot for work, and to this day, I do not have a jealous bone in me. I also felt that men should be free to mate as they please, and I had never based on my decision to stay with a man by how faithful he was in a relationship. 

My mother was not a happy woman. She had a thriving career, adored by men, and her students, but she was jealous, suspicious, for good reason, mind you, and she was often very upset, fought with my father and then later on, with those women who hovered. She shed tears, and finally attempted suicide. I observed and watched her suffer silently, I felt at first sorry for her but then I was annoyed. I found her ways of living difficult, incomprehensible, exhausting. I believe people are often disillusioned into believing one's love for another is dependent on promised physical loyalty. If you love someone, you ought to let the person be free and you ought to not have any expectations.

In those years of eating bowls after bowls of wonton soups and staring into a world in a way that only a helpless sad child could, I witnessed girls not much older than I being raped and molested by neighbors, teachers and strangers. I was a subject of an attempted rape once. I fought him off - he was the husband of a woman who was and still is my mother's friend - for that, I couldn't forgive my mother. I didn't recall how the subject of being forced down and having an grown man on top of me came up, I was barely 8, but I suspected no one believed me. I was then subsequently molested by another person repeatedly, by then I was 10 and no one seemed to care. I was horribly beaten by drunk or angry father, yelled at constantly by my unhappy mother, and I anticipated when that hand might come striking down on my face, for no apparent reason. Around autumn, on the heel of me turning 12, I found myself abandoned in a military hospital by my parents, suffering from an actual heartbreak. There, injured soldiers befriended me and we'd run into the woods and pick fallen chestnuts. When I was merely 13, my mother entrusted me to a male summer camp counselor, you know how that story would lead and end. Yet, throughout, miraculously, my grades never suffered. I was always at the top of my class and won academic competitions at a city of ten plus million people. My therapist said that I suffered from multitude of PDSD, and had I been born into U.S., 9 out of 10 I'd have become a crack addict. Yet, somehow, my soul never got crushed. I was still whole.

If you ask me today whether I’d wish for my life to change, I’d tell you no. I am who I am today because of my experiences. However hideous my past was, it made me whom I am today.

Plus, I always had fond memories of being very young, and in a stall, sitting on a little wooden chair, slurping up warm wonton soup. Steam rose covering my face, and there, one could cry and everyone would think you simply had taken one too many bites of chili peppers.

My shrink thinks that I should be more assertive when it comes to emotions. I shrugged when I heard her saying that. I’m not a demanding person. I will be the first to admit that I have intimacy issues. Which is why I had only one real boyfriend in the past, we dated on and off until I was married. I considered him my only boyfriend because he was the only person I loved unconditionally and he was the only person who adored and loved me affectionately. Of course he was never really around, he went to grad school in Boston and took a job in Wall Street. It was a long distance relationship at best; more like an illusion of a make-believe relationship. We barely talked on the phone, we wrote emails to each other sporadically. I went to visit him in Cambridge, he came to visit me in San Francisco. We never said "I love you" to each other. But in the end, when I decided to leave for good, to be married, he felt frantic and upset. He thought that I deserted him.

He told me that I broke his heart and it would never recover, he claimed. I couldn't tell if he broke mine or not.

I knew going in, I loved him the only way I knew how. Non-demanding, generous, unconditional, and never ever broke a promise. I knew he saw other women - it did not bother me. I knew he had trouble keeping promises - trips he failed to show, calls he failed to make, and emails he failed to write. I never gave up. I knew he had trouble committing; it did not bother me either. I believed in him. He was the light at the end of the tunnel.

Then, just like that, the light went out.

But that was before I was an adult. Before I grew up. You don’t become an adult until you pass 35.

I have children of my own now. They hug me and tell me that they love me. My children would have different lives than mine, thankfully.

What if the world is uncertain, and the only thing that one finds comfort in, is that bowl of wonton soup, served steamy hot, with beef briskets and a ladle of clear broth?

But suppose, let’s just suppose, for once, what if the old wonton shop had long been torn down in a city full of ghosts that you vowed to never return, and what if you found another restaurant, on the opposite end of the world, and just like that, you were given another chance to life, to feel alive, what then?

Winter is coming, darling. I would like to spend the last season, sharing the last bowl of wonton soup with you.

An except of "Declaration"

Since this is NOT the double secret site, I try not to write too explicitly. 

So this is just a short excerpt. The "cleaner" version for a story called "the declaration"

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Boyfriend brought me to the bathtub. I was stripped naked. hair a bird's nest. Bathtub was basic in size, but the corner room was nice. It had a 180 degree view of the city. granted, it was the freeway heading to a dead end into the city street. It had a view. It was lit, the city was getting dark and we'd eaten. I missed his place. Our place. I called it "our" place, but it was not "ours,' it was not even his, sometimes. Like as in now. It was occupied by others.

I knew what he wanted to do. He had a hand held video camera. He was holding it because he had been recording us, recording me.

I told him only if it was good. Boyfriend laughed and said, "Of course it is good. It is great."
...

As I laid down on the hard bathtub, and as he entered me, his body against my now soaked, wet body covered by ...

"I love you." I said.

"I love you too." He answered.

...
He said that he told his sisters about us. About seeing me.

He told his friend about me. About seeing me. 
....

I love how we could go through a full circle. And now we were connected in more than one ways  Through his friends, family and images he painted of me, I was alive in other people's lives. Others who cared about him. Therefore, I had become an extension of their lives too. They would ask him each time they saw him, "How's that girl you are seeing? Are you still seeing her? How are you guys doing? Would we ever meet her?"

I suspected the answer was always, "She's well. Yes. Great. No."

I feel like sending boyfriend a survey every 45 days. Every 45 days a survey goes out to boyfriend that says the following:

"What do you like the most about her?"
"What do you like the least of her?"
"What would you like for her to continue?"
"What would you like for her to do more?"
"What would like you for her to stop?"

That's how each relationship should be like. It's a job performance. You survey to get feedback. You improve. You make an conscious effort to maintaining a healthy, strong, productive, open, transparent relationship while seeking constant improvements. You take criticism in strike.  You just keep on working on it until it's better.

No fuddy-duddy "I love yous." No butterfly-everything-is-great-until-it's-not mirage. Just plain facts.

Relationship maintenance was just a continuous improvement plans. Until you had fixed all the issues and then you survey again. And then after you had fixed those issues, you'd move onto others.
....

What if

This is not a poem, this is just a stream of consciousness...

What if I loved you
What if I loved you as I never did
with another

What if you put junior to sleep
opened your book to read
and thought of me

What if you woke up in the middle of the night
couldn't fall back to sleep
and thought of me

And at that precise moment
I felt you
I could feel you, you know

When you opened your book
When you woke up in the middle of the night
I stopped reading
I woke up too
I was wired that way, you know

I had always loved you
this way, always
I knew
I just knew

But it would be ludicrous
irrational
unconventional
illogical

You denied me
often
frequently
knowingly

But you knew I loved you
So there
we had settled it

I thought you liked to think of me
this person with tears streaming down
because you wouldn't reply
because I was denied
of your affection

Or you didn't think of me at all
what if you never did

What if
I just made this all up
in my head
you loved me too

On Friendship

Was having a rough day at work. Yes, I work in the corporate world and things happen. Friend was accommodating. Waited for me to finish my work, until near 7 PM and then met me for a drink (hey Sonja is right, Yelp app works, found the wine bar that has a 4.5 star rating nearby Cafe Prague, a place I wanted to go the last time I passed by with another but didn't get a chance to check out until now.) Sat by the (fake) fireplace, just talked and talked. Surprised myself with the ability to forge new friendship. Because, let's face it, the older you get the harder it is to make (real, close) friends. For one, you gravitate towards those who are similar to you, financially, politically, hobbies, interests, way of life, and way of living.  And the older we are, the more we are set in our own ways. So we tend to become more eccentric/peculiar/unique, or just plain odd.

Things as small as - "Do you like to travel?" or "Are you conservative?" or "Do you like Indian food?" or "How do you feel about public transportation?" or "What books are you reading?" can really make or break a friendship.

I was, for instance, turned off by someone who did not like Vietnamese food. So I wrote that person off - how could one not love Vietnamese food? Granted he was also very demanding of my time, which let's just say, was unsightly. Don't be texting me every day and get pissy with me because I have not responded. Let's face it, you are not that important. I prioritize according to my level of affection. Com'on, we all do!

So back to my questions above, in my case, yes, no, yes, pro, non-fiction. The last question is the most difficult one because what you read is often a representation of (the current state) you. So friend says "Thinking, Fast and Slow." I was like - "Hmmm. did you read my FB's posting of what I like to read? I read that book like eight months ago." Friend said "No."

OK, I suppose of all the books he picked, he did not say "Mocking Jay, Book 3 of The Hunger Games," which I also happened to read and "liked" at the time, when I went through a phase of teen novels (not proud, but hey, we all regress sometimes.)

I told friend about my impression of book clubs - "bunch of women reading sappy book and one or two lonely men show up trying to get a date." He said, "Oh just women drinking wine." Hmmm... If no men are in those book clubs, perhaps I should join one, if anything, drinking wine sounds good. As long as I don't have to be with bunch of bitter feminists bitching about men. How no one really know how to love them, how they are not appreciated by men, how men are flaky, unreliable, not to be trusted. I had been on that bandwagon once, it's called "Salad Bitch Night," back in late 1990s, in Cow Hollow, in Marina, a bunch of single women in their twenties trash talked about men while eating salad (well, not salad in reality, more like pasta.) But those were Ironmen chicks, they could eat whatever they wanted and still looked willowy. I was the hypocrite, bitch bitch then booty call. Always followed by a booty call.  Heck, men were easy to hunt when you were in your twenties.

Now I can be honest (see above about the many attributes about being old.) I like men. Heck, I love men. As long as they don't annoy me.

We promised to exchange the top ten books from each other’s Kindle collection.

I was reminded of another conversation about a month ago when I was going to get a book for someone, I picked up this book called "How to be a man" and then sat it down on the counter, somehow I knew he'd like it but I didn't know if he's already read it. When friend was saying he had learned to cut his hair because he ran out of time and he was reading this book, I blurred it out, "How to be a man" question mark. He said, "Yes."  I concluded I know him more than he thought I knew him, or for that matter, more than I thought I knew him.

It's good to know what friends like to read. Either that, or I'm a psychic. I'm not a psychic, by the way, otherwise, I'd predict that I'd have a horrible day at work.

So here is what I think about people. Agree with NYTimes, the older you are the harder it is to make friends - Kathy, I'm right there with you.  But on very rare occasions, we meet new people and we grow fond of them and we learn, to our surprise, that we are still capable of making new friends. Granted, the older you are, chances are, those whom you meet, are going to be younger than you, because they have yet to reach the conclusion of "the older you are, the harder it is to make new friends." As long as one person is open to the concept of new friendship,  it could still happen. The other, the beneficiary, aka the old dog, can still learn new tricks.

I don't believe in rushing things (I think I should be a wine maker,) I believe in still water runs deep (yes, my 1997 writing theme still stands,) I believe in time. Specifically, the passage of time, and if friends are to be friends, it must stand the test of time.

I look forward to sharing my life with my friends, old, and new.

You are my constant, # 2

One thing I hate more than uncertainty is certainty. Predictability is the kiss of death. In life, there should always be a revolving door of different characters. One in, one out, a few constant, a few distractions. (No, if you are reading this, it’s not you. You are not a distraction and this is not about you.) There should always be something new occurring in our lives. I am generally tremendously good at reading people, I’m rarely wrong (Yes if you are reading this, I said “rarely”.)  I know when to walk away. This is me walking away, but not from you.

Like a few people in my life, I have decided you should be my constant, as you have stood the test of time. You, the proverbial you, have been in my life long enough to also know just enough about me; to know where my weakness lies and where my strength is. You find me both irritating and remotely interesting. You think you know me but you won’t admit that to yourself. You are both secure and insecure in your assessment of me, for I have known to walk away. History has a strange way to paint pictures. I was told by a few that I tend to walk away. I don’t like closures so I simply walk away. I walk away when I was hurt, I walk away when I knew this won’t end well. But enough time has passed. Enough history has been written, told and retold. Each layer of history tints the truth just a little, and soon enough there won’t be any truth left. It’s just two people, trying to figure out how to begin, how to re-begin, how to repair, how to amend, and how to pick up the pieces and imagine a world anew.

So as I said before, I shall be your constant, always.