about last week.

August 1, 2017

this minion perfectly illustrates my mood as it is now, as it was last week, as it has been the last few weeks.

last week was a [insert-adjective-here] week, what with the republican zombie healthcare bill that just won't die (or has it finally?!? i'm not holding my breath) and what with the cheeto vomiting more crap on twitter, this time about banning trans people from serving in the military, never mind that trans people display more courage in their day-to-day than the cheeto has shown in the entirety of his life — and never mind that trans people are apparently such terrifyingly formidable people that they should be barred from public bathrooms that align with their gender identity.

last week was also a low week personally, and it continues to be a series of low weeks as my insomnia continues to take its toll. my mood has been low, my dreams/nightmares/whatevers gone haywire, and i'm tired, tired, tired.

i wish i could sleep for days and wake up well-rested for once.

i can't seem to get that, though, so here, let's talk nice things.

when i think about nice things, i think automatically about food, so here is this: republique makes my favorite breakfast in all the land.

if you’re ever in los angeles, go to republique and order the regular breakfast with soft scrambled eggs (because they can actually soft scramble eggs), an iced dirty matcha latte (it’s better iced than hot), and a chewy chocolate-chocolate chip cookie (it has nuts, though, so nix this if you’re allergic). add a slice of tres leeches cake if you’re feeling indulgent (it’s not too sweet, don’t worry) and/or a hand pie if you’re starving and need something to tide you over while you wait for your food (they’ll heat the hand pie up for you; ask for sri racha).

come back and thank me for the bombass recommendation.

i spend a lot of time on twitter during the week, and i have no shame admitting that it’s my major news source, like, in that, it’s the source that alerts me to the fresh new hells being launched on the world — that, and the new yorker, which i also read religiously during the week.

there was a nice thread on twitter last week, talking about work and creating art and why that matters today. it talked specifically about why writing books matters, books about made-up worlds and made-up people, books that don’t make overt political statements and/or take moral stances, and i understand that struggle, that conflict, that desire to create something of meaning, except what does that look like? what does it mean to create something that means something?

the twitterer (whom i unfortunately do not remember) made the point that it’s not about being an activist or about taking political stances or about delivering moral messages. it’s about the fact that the work itself is hope; whether we write fiction or memoirs or treatises, doing the work itself, the act of creating itself, is an example of a way to be. the work in its own, the act of doing the work, is to demonstrate a way to fight back.

and, so, we work, and we create, and that looks different to each person. i take photos of light and shadows, of minions from mcdonald’s happy meals, of everything i eat. i read. i write on this site, and i edit my short story collection, and i rewrite that essay on living with depression and suicide and falling in love last year. i take ages to reply to DMs on instagram, and i give up on ever catching up on comments, and i apologize for that, but that’s just the way things are.

i think about buying an actual camera, like a DSLR, instead of just using the camera on my iphone 7. i think of new projects, earmark restaurants to try, envision future collaborations and chart amorphous ways to making those ideas a reality.

i try.

i also spend a stupid amount of time during the week tracking my lunch deliveries. it’s kind of creepy, the fact that i can do this at all, stare at my browser and watch the little icon that signifies my drivers moving along the map. it gets funny when they near the office, the rounds they sometimes make around the block, and i’m just like, i put a note on there, saying you can call or text me, and i’ll come down to the street. parking’s an ass in LA. LA’s an ass of a city for deliveries, too sprawled out to allow for efficiency.

LA’s an ugly, weird city, and, yeah, it’s got its charms, but i feel the frustrations when i’m trying to get from point A to point B, for example when i’m trying to get from koreatown to west hollywood for a reading. i think, god, this place is hideous, and, ugh, it’s like someone just vomited flat ugliness onto hot land, and i think, okay, fine, maybe i shouldn’t be so uncharitable — LA’s not that bad, and it gets great light. you can’t deny the fabulous, kind of magical qualities of california light, but see how i can't even give LA that? i have to generalize to all of california to make any praiseworthy statement possible, though i don't mean to impart hostility here — it amuses me, this mess of a relationship i have with this place.

sometimes, i wonder if i've simply become so accustomed to hating on LA that it comes so naturally to me. other times, though, especially when i'm landing at LAX and looking down at the sprawl below me, i think, nah, it kinda deserves it.

and maybe part of me feels entitled to this, kind of like how i also feel entitled to hate on NYC for all its ills. in some way, LA is also my city after all, and it bears the baggage of my history and trauma, and i feel unbridled in expressing my distaste of this place because i’ve lived so much of my life here and it is a part of me.

in some way, this is my way of claiming this place as my own.

all i’ve been craving these days is something cold and sweet, and that’s all kinds of terrible when you’re type 2 like i am. i feel like i spend an incongruous amount of time making bargains with myself — like, okay, i can eat three pieces of watermelon, but only three. or, okay, i can eat some ice cream if i walk there and back. or, okay, yeah, i know this is all bullshit, i should just be abstaining, should be more afraid of the consequences of not eating well, of not getting my glucose levels down lower, of not taking care of myself because self-care, blah blah blah, i want something cold and sweet.

it doesn't help that i've finally tried jeni's and am obsessed. jeni's delivers everything i want in ice cream — it's creamy and not too sweet, and it tastes like the ingredients it uses, instead of like processed, sugary crap. like, the mango buttermilk frozen yogurt tastes like a creamy, frozen, pureed mango (i. love. mango), and the roasted strawberry buttermilk is one of the best ice creams i've eaten, and the brambleberry crisp is like pie in ice cream form, complete with crumble topping — and, omg, i can't get enough of jeni's. i went again on sunday, and i'm going again this weekend.

i know, i know, self-care, blah blah blah, but four and twenty blackbirds is also in town this weekend, and they're going to be at jeni's, and one of my favoritest people is back stateside, so pie and ice cream, there will be. i'll make up for it by eating cleaner meals.

in 45 days, i'll be back home in brooklyn.

here's some big, exciting news: jenny zhang’s sour heart comes out into the world today!!! go hie yourself to a bookstore and dive into this wonderful collection!

cue storytime?

i grew up reading exclusively (and i mean, exclusively) from “the classics,” aka the white canon, aka mostly dead white guys. i mean, sure, there were a few dead white women thrown into the mix, too, but they were mostly men, and i didn’t read contemporary fiction until i was well into college. the closest i got before then was in the twelfth grade, when my AP lit teacher (still one of my favorite teachers) spent the year having us read existentialists and absurdists.

one day, several years ago, i was browsing the internet for one reason or another when i came across a blog called fashion for writers. at the time, it was written by jenny zhang, but it had been founded by esmé weijun wang (whose debut novel, the border of paradise, was published last year and is incredible), and there were links to their respective websites, links i followed to obsession, basically. i read esmé’s site religiously, and i mildly stalked jenny in new york, going to all her readings and totally having mini-omg! moments when i passed her twice — once, in powerhouse arena (in its former space) on my way to the bathroom and, once, on my way into mcnally jackson to pick up my preordered copy of the border of paradise.

it was so weird and so cool to read their writing, and you have to remember that i was this asian-american kid who'd always loved literature and loved writing but had never stopped to think that writing was this thing that i could do. i had no freaking idea that you could get paid to write, that people were doing this all the time, and, no, i wasn't stupid — i knew that people wrote for a living — i didn't think people like me did. you know. asian-american kids. asian-american daughters.

because, as far as i knew, in the world in which i grew up, we didn't write — we went to med school or law school or business school. we got married to nice [christian] asian-american boys. we had kids and stayed home and home-schooled.

we didn't write, and, more than that, we didn't write about mental health or bodies or the grimy, sticky areas of life. we didn't write about ourselves, our asian-american backgrounds, our experiences with sexism and racism and bigotry. we didn't write about sex or death or violence. we didn't do these things; we didn't put words on or give voice to anything that ran counter to the accepted status quo.

one of the things i have come to love the most is coming across a writer who makes me imagine different ways of writing, of being. jenny and esmé's writing introduced me to that, to new ways of thinking about myself, my asian-american identity, my own writing, and it's been an incredible experience since, seeing how all you really need is a spark to shed new light on the world and make it open up. i think about the women i've come to read and love in the last few years and have helped shape me as a writer — alice sola kim, patty yumi cottrell, nicole chung, rachel khong, krys lee, susan choi, celeste ng, women who do different things with their writing, who tell stories that illuminate different facets of the human experience and bring a rich vibrance to the world of books.

and i think about women in general, women whom i admire who live their truths and excel at their craft — barbara lynch, kristen kish, gabrielle hamilton, ellen bennett — omg, help me name someone who's not related to food — molly young, molly yeh, julia turshen — i suppose it's unavoidable; i love food; what can i say?

and all this loops back to what that twitterer said in that thread last week and what sherman alexie said to buzzfeed and what i wrote at the end of my hunger post — that what matters is that we are out here, that we are trying and creating and working. sometimes, most times, i dare say, at least on the everyday, day-to-day level, it's not about activism, and it's not about overt politicism. sometimes, it's just about telling our own truths, whatever those truths are, and all fiction — all good fiction, all good art — stems from the writer's truth.

and maybe that's how we effect change, not [solely] by converting those who stand against us but by bolstering and supporting those like us, by living alternate ways to be, to see the world, to write and tell stories and exist. i think we kind of undermine the amount of hope and encouragement that alone provides because it never feels like bravery or courage or like anything significant, just getting through the day and doing the work given to us, but it means something — at least, it means a whole lot to me, to be able to look up and see women who are doing the work simply by doing their work, whether it's writing, cooking, bookkeeping, raising children, teaching, whatever it is, women who are out there, living their truths and trying to bring about a better, more equal world.

and, so, i'll repeat what i said before because this is something i'll keep repeating, over and over and over again: stay.

we're out here, and we're women of color, and we're straight and queer and religious and not religious and able-bodied and disabled and you name it, we are it, and we write and cook and live, so stay. stay curious, stay open-minded, stay alive.

stay.

i ate at bestia last week. :3

it was delicious and amazing and everything i hoped it would be.

i want to eat there again.

here’s a summer reading list, given in no particular order, if you’re looking for something good to read in these last few weeks of summer:

jenny zhang, sour heart (random house, 2017)
rachel khong, goodbye, vitamin (holt, 2017)
patty yumi cottrell, sorry to disrupt the peace (mcsweeney’s, 2017)
celeste ng, everything i never told you (penguin press, 2014)
yoojin grace wuertz, everything belongs to us (random house, 2017)
esmé weijun wang, the border of paradise (unnamed press, 2016)
ruth ozeki, a tale for the time being (penguin books, 2013)
alexandra kleeman, you too can have a body like mine (harper, 2015)
julie otsuka, when the emperor was divine (knopf, 2002)
jung yun, shelter (picador, 2016)
susan choi, my education (viking, 2013)

unruly bodies, unruly lives.

July 22, 2017

writing this book is the most difficult thing i’ve ever done. to lay myself so vulnerable has not been an easy thing. to face myself and what living in my body has been like has not been an easy thing, but i wrote this book because it felt necessary. in writing this memoir of my body, in telling you these truths about my body, i am sharing my truth and mine alone. i understand if that truth is not something you want to hear. the truth makes me uncomfortable too. but i am also saying, here is my heart, what’s left of it. here i am showing you the ferocity of my hunger. here i am, finally freeing myself to be vulnerable and terribly human. here i am, reveling in that freedom. here. see what i hunger for and what my truth has allowed me to create. (304)

skincare teaches you about patience, and it teaches you about discipline. skincare takes time, and it takes routine and ritual and repetition to see results, and, you know, that said, i guess this post is kind of a lie because this is what my nighttime skincare routine should look like every night but, y’know, doesn’t.

most nights, i just rinse my face with water and call it a night.

when i was younger, i used to be [more] careless about my skin, much in the same way i was careless about my body, though, at the same time, it wasn’t in the same way at all because that’s only a partial truth — i was careless about my body in that i wanted to care less about it, but i couldn’t, so i was careless with it, about it, at least as much as i could be.

to talk about skin is to talk about bodies, and to talk about bodies is to talk about shame. to talk about bodies is also to talk about want, and i think that these are languages we learn, that we learn to speak. my body wasn’t something i thought of much when i was a child; it wasn’t something i was cognizant of, something i had to concern myself with or think about; and i realize only in hindsight what a privilege that was. gone were my young days of being sick all the time, laid to bed in complete darkness and total silence because of migraines and laid to waste by bloody noses so bad clumps would rain out of my nostrils and make me faint, and, as i moved on from young childhood to mid-childhood to pre-adolescence, my body was just a body, something that was there, something that was a part of me.

and, then, my freshman year of high school, i was taught that i had a body, and i was taught that it was something to be ashamed of. it was something i was supposed to make small.

and, so, it became something i wanted to disappear.

i became something i wanted to disappear.

01. double cleanse.

start with cleansing. obviously. i go for the double cleanse, which means you use an oil cleanser and rinse, then use a water-based cleanser and rinse. the oil will remove your makeup and the gunk that's accumulated on your skin during the day, but it won't (or it shouldn't) break you out. one thing i've learned is not to be afraid of oil, whether for my skin or in my food. oil, when used correctly, is great.

the first oil cleanser i used was banila's clean it zero, and i still prefer that because it's solid, not liquid, and melts onto your face. i love that korean companies provide a little plastic spatula with their products, too, because who wants to put her/his/their fingers into a jar, bringing bacteria and other stuff into the product?

when i think about roxane gay, i think about grace.

while i'm not necessarily the biggest fan of her writing style, i love her voice. she writes with so much grace, so much kindness and generosity, even for the people who have hurt her, which doesn't mean that she's a pushover who simply takes the shit she's given — and it's truly incredible, the amount of bullshit she has to contend with on a daily basis.

even in the midst of all that grossness, she carries herself with grace, and it's something i admire, something i aspire to, and i am not the look-at-someone-and-find-something-aspirational sort. i rarely look at another writer and think, hey, i wish i could do that, but, as i was reading hunger (harper, 2017), i kept thinking, this is the book about my body i hope i can write some day.

i mean that more theoretically than anything because i don't know that i'd ever write a book about my body (i don't know if there's necessarily a story there) and because i use "my body" as a fill-in for other topics. there are things i want to write about, things i will write about, things that are difficult for me to broach today for various reasons, and hunger made me think that, one day, it may be possible for me to write the things i need to write with grace and generosity, not fury and spite and resentment.

and i think that as well because i think i have come a long way in writing about my body. even a year ago, there would have been more anger driving this post; today, all there is is what i have; and all i have to offer is my truth. and maybe i'm not the best person to be writing about any of this because, at my heaviest, i was maybe what roxane gay calls "lane bryant fat," too big for "regular" sizes but not too big for plus sizes. or maybe i’m not the best person to be writing about any of this because, today, i may not be tiny, but i can shop comfortably, don't look at narrow seating nervously, can relax when someone takes a full-body photo of me.

and, yet, my body and i have a long and painful history of being at odds with each other, and physical size is no indicator of health, whether physical or mental, anyway. physical size doesn't diminish the fact that i've lived with disordered eating and severe body dysmorphia since high school. it doesn't mean the shaming didn't happen, the obsessing over my weight, the self-loathing and self-hatred and total obliteration of my self-esteem.

because that is damage i carry, damage that bleeds into every single aspect of my life, and that is damage i have had to teach myself mercilessly to unlearn.

mine is not a weight loss story.

02. exfoliate.

one day, i will venture into the world of chemical exfoliants. until then ...

the other day, my therapist tells me that all the cells in our body regenerate every seven years, that we are literally, physically not the same people we were seven years ago. i love that fact, that we are constantly in turnover, constantly changing and becoming new, but, sometimes, in weeks like this, it's also frightening. part of me wants to find comfort in the constant change. i know that i never really will.

because here's the truth — or here's a truth: i write this post at a time of intense vulnerability, in a moment of decline. the last few weeks were generally good, great even, and i was stable for the most part, despite dealing with swirling anxiety that continues to feed my insomnia. however, the fact is that things cycle — i cycle; my moods cycle; and, sometimes, most times, it's out of my hands.

as i struggle not to go tumbling down this slope, i remind myself that things aren't technically bad. i remind myself that i'm lucky. i remind myself that this, too, will pass.

i remind myself of all the things i remind myself of when things start to get bad again. to live in the now, in the present, that the future will arrive when it does, and i will reckon with it then. to maintain perspective, to remember that i'm not the only one suffering, that other people might have it worse — i remember how much i hate this idea of "putting things in perspective," how much i hate looking for that damn silver lining because that doesn’t stop everything from being shit.

but we slough off pain like we slough off skin, and we try to get through these dark moments. i do believe we are built to survive, but, more than that, the fact is that the only other option is not to get through any of it, to pass on and die instead, and, when those are your options, what do you choose? generally, i’m someone who believes in middle grounds and shades of grey, but, when it comes to surviving, i think it's either/or — we survive, or we don't, and that is it. how you define surviving is up to you.

03. tone and use essence.

of course, as these things tend to go, i took these photographs, and, then, i acquired missha's time revolution essence, which many swear is comparable to SKII without the high price tag. that acquisition happened through luck because alaska air decided not to board our luggage when we were en route to seattle, so we were left without our things for a night and day, including our toiletries, and they said they'd reimburse us for anything we purchased.

hence, missha.

to be honest, i still couldn't explain to you what toner and essence are. i've had them explained to me several times, but i still don't know — and i think koreans might approach toner differently from others. like, i know some people are obsessed with witch hazel toner, and i used to use that, too, except, as it turns out, it's not actually that great for skin because it strips the natural oils from your skin and dries it out.

truth to be told, no, i don't understand all the science behind skincare, but i do know that you don't want to strip the natural oils from your skin, and you don't want to damage the skin barrier, and you don’t want to throw off your pH levels. it's when you do the above that you can't regulate sebum production, and that causes your skin to become oilier and break out.

… have i got all that right?

you'd think i'd know better, but it’s like science has wings, flying way over my head every time i try to catch it.

there is a lot gay writes about in hunger that i sympathize with but can’t identify with because she is who she is and i am obviously my own person. she has endured trauma i have been fortunate not to have experienced. i’m sure she could say the same back to me.

i identify with a lot of what she writes, though.

i identify with her confidence in her intellect and her ability to write. i identify with so much she has to say about bodies and being body shamed and specifically being body shamed by your family. i identify with the self-loathing and the self-destructive behavior, with the bile that rises with every “i do this because i love you” excuse, with the way she had to learn to put her foot down and say this wasn’t acceptable, it wasn’t okay to keep making comments on her body.

and i identify with her when she says that she loves her family, that she is grateful for them, that they have always been there for her, supporting her, loving her, catching her when she falls, and i believe her. i believe her when she speaks lovingly, glowingly of her parents — her parents sound like amazing, loving, generous, brilliant, immigrant parents who would do anything for their kids.

her parents sound a lot like mine.

maybe it's one of the great cruelties of life that the people who love you most (and whom you love most) are the people who will hurt you most. it's not a one-way thing, either; the people you love most (and whom you love most) are the people you will hurt most. maybe it's to do with how, the more you care, the more vulnerable you become — the more you open yourself to the possibility (and probability) of hurt.

love is a complex beast, though, and love is complicated. love becomes muddled as it moves between human bodies, between human people, as it gets lost in translation, which it inevitably does because we all have our own individual languages for love. love gets tangled up in individuality. love invariably becomes intertwined with expectations, and expectations always lead to disappointment. love will always be disappointed.

when you're different, when you think differently, look differently, want differently, you start being acutely aware of this. you look at the people around you and wonder, how can you hurt me so? how can you reject me so? because, to you, these differences, whether they be physical or sexual or religious, seem like nothing to you. they don’t seem important enough to you to hang a relationship on, and, yet, so many of us are the ones who have to walk away to save ourselves.

one of the things that body shaming and body dysmorphia have taught me is that love is complex, that love is complicated.

it is possible to be angry at what people have done, and it is possible to acknowledge and confront the harm they have done you, and it is possible to love them fiercely all at the same time. it is possible to be disappointed by people, to be hurt by them, and love them fiercely at the same time. it is possible to mourn and despise the damage you carry and the years of your life you have lost because of people’s destructive behavior and still love them fiercely at the same time.

the existence of one does not negate or diminish the existence of the other.

i use son & park's beauty water as my toner, shaking some onto a cotton pad and swiping it around my face, and then i use essence. i really don't know what essence is. i've just used it for forever, and i will keep using it for forever until someone gives me a really good reason why i shouldn't.

04. apply serum, oil.

i love the ordinary's niacinamide/zinc serum; it’s been brightening and smoothing my face out beautifully, giving it a nice glow from within. i also really like its rosehip oil, and i like these two products so much, i purchased more products from the ordinary, all of which should arrive next week and i am excited to use. one's specifically supposed to help fade hyperpigmentation.

i'm obsessed with trying to fade my hyperpigmentation.

i even tried getting them laser-removed once, which was supposed to happen over two sessions, but, while the first was effective, the second was not, and i am still hyperpigmented all over my face, which annoys me to irrational levels.

i mean, skin is just skin, except it's not. skin is that thing we live in.

skin is that thing we sometimes mark.

in hunger, gay writes about her tattoos, and she talks about visibility when wanting to be invisible. i think about tattoos, how they mark us and make us seen, how they identify us and render us recognizable. i think about how tattoos are choices, exercises in taking control, a way of saying, this is my body, and it is mine. i will mark it as i will.

and, yet, getting a tattoo is also an act of letting go, of trusting your artist to take your vision and make it into reality and leave you with something permanent that will carry with it whatever significance you’re attaching to it, how ever great or small that may be.

there’s something i like about that, about how marking yourself is something you do with another person, and i think tattoos are very literal, visual reminders of the ways we touch each other and leave our marks on each other’s lives. in the case of getting inked, you’re [hopefully] delivering yourself into your artist’s hands, entrusting her/him/them with a part of your skin, your body, but, when it comes to the rest of life, we’ve no idea what we leave behind — we’ve no control over that — or of the impact others will have on us and our lives.

sometimes, we mete out horrible damage, and, sometimes, we do that willfully and intentionally. other times, we try to soothe and to comfort, try to do good, to be positive forces, but, sometimes, that doesn’t succeed and we end up doing harm instead. sometimes, though, we do succeed, and we do provide some healing, some warmth. we just never know.

these marks are invisible, though, not like the tattoos some of us, myself included, bear on our skin, and one of the things i’ve learned is never to assume. there is only so much we can extrapolate from someone’s behavior, and there is so much we project onto the people around us — we take our fears, our insecurities, our hurts and interpret others through those lenses. we see the world through the kaleidoscope of ourselves. there is so much we can’t understand, and, unless we actively seek to listen, not to hear what we want to hear or see what we want to see, we will never be better people, and we will never make a better world.

05. moisturize and/or mask.

i genuinely love glossier; their products tend to work very well on my skin; but i was not a fan of their priming moisturizer. i thought the texture was kind of weird, and i hated that smell, not like it was very strong (not to me) but just kind of ... strange and faint and kind of there but not, kind of unpleasant but tolerable.

when they announced priming moisturizer rich, i was like, pffffft, no thanks. and then this one korean beauty vlogger i love posted about her glossier haul and said she loved priming moisturizer rich — she loved the texture, and she even liked the scent, even if it were pretty strong and even if it did smell of lavender, which isn't the most friendly to sensitive skin.

i am fortunate enough not to have sensitive skin (i also have combination skin for those curious), so i was intrigued, so i went down the google black hole. people seemed to like priming moisturizer rich in general, so i went for it — and, you know, i love it. i love the texture. i love the scent. i love how my skin absorbs it happily, and i love the heaviness of it, especially during these dryass los angeles summer months.

because, of course, there's a reversal here — back home in new york, during the summer, my skincare routine gets much, much lighter because of all the humidity in the air. here, the dryness destroys my skin, so my skincare routine pretty much stays the same in the summer as it does in winter. i might hate humidity because i hate heat, but my skin hates the dryness, and i think i’d rather have happy skin.

priming moisturizer rich comes in a jar but doesn't come with a spatula, which, to me, makes no sense. i use the one that came with my laneige water sleeping mask, which i use occasionally instead of moisturizer when i want to give my skin an extra dousing of moisture. i love this smell, too — i mean, i love good smells in general, even in my skincare. again, i'm fortunate enough not to have sensitive skin.

and this, usually, is where my nighttime skincare routine ends.

06. scrub.

this is out of order because, on nights i use the bite lip scrub, which i do maybe every 2-3 days, i use it right after i cleanse/exfoliate my face and before i start applying anything to my skin.

i'm all about lips — when it comes to makeup, my fall-back, lazy routine is mascara and lipstick. my really, really lazy routine is just lipstick. (and sunscreen. always, always use sunscreen, even when you're staying indoors.)

lip products might be my giant weakness, and they're why i avoid sephora. it's why i've tried to enforce a rule that i can only buy new lip colors that are more than 3 shades removed from colors i already own — and i tend to gravitate towards oranges and cool reds. it is one of my great joys that i can wear orange lipstick.

i think that one of the reasons i love lipstick so much is that i love color, but i've shied away from color for so long in my clothing choices. i've been afraid of wearing anything bright, anything white, anything that might call attention to me or make me appear bigger than i already was, and that's something that stays with me, continues to linger, the way i stick to darker colors, to neutrals, to greys and blues, despite the fact that my eye automatically goes to oranges and purples and greens, to shades that are less conventional, more odd.

lipstick is a nice pop of color, and it offsets the tiredness that usually lingers under my eyes. i do tend towards chapped lips, though, so i usually apply some glossier balm dotcom under my lipstick (i have all the balm dotcoms; i love balm dotcom), and i use the bite lip scrub every 2-3 days. i don’t need to use a lot (a little goes a long way), and i love the feeling of scrubbing off dead skin, of getting my lips nice and clean but not dry and chafed. the bite scrub is a sugar scrub, too, so it smells lovely, though don’t eat it — it tastes horrible. i’m always careful when i’m rinsing it off and trying not to let it get past my lips.

after i’ve scrubbed, i slather balm dotcom on my lips. i keep the mint flavor in my bathroom specifically for this use. the rest, i carry in one of those pink glossier pouches with the rest of my lipstick.

i meant to write more about hunger in this post than i feel like i actually am.

07. pack.

sometimes, on sunday mornings, i like to do face packs. i’m not that into sheet masks, but i do love a good face pack — and i love these from glossier. (is there enough glossier in this post for you?) i use them one after the other, first the galaxy greens then the moon mask, and they leave my face feeling fresh and clean and moisturized. i like doing them in the morning specifically, too; that way i can enjoy the renewed springiness in my face all day.

and here is a massive tangent.

in a recent interview with buzzfeed, sherman alexie says:

there’s a fantasy, alexie thinks, that fame means power — or the ability to change things. “it depresses people to think that i have exactly the same vote as they do — that i don’t have power to change oil company policy, that i have not changed a single human being’s mind about environmental policy.”
what about soft power, then? the idea that his books can humanize native americans — and in so doing, quietly change people’s racist minds? “listen, i’ve never met a conservative person whose mind has been changed about natives,” alexie countered. “i’ve never received that letter. my primary power is for the weird brown kid who gets to know that they’re not alone. i don’t mean to undervalue what i do: me and my art can make some people feel less lonely; i exist because of the books that made me feel less lonely. we don’t have power. something like ‘poets against trump’ doesn’t change minds. what we can do is help people get through another day.”

when i first read those words, my immediate reaction was to feel discouraged. i thought, well, that’s kind of sad. if we can’t implement any kind of positive change, then what’s the point?

the more i kept thinking about it, though, the more i thought, what better way is there to change the world than to reach the lonely people, the kids you look like you, hurt like you, break like you? what better way is there than to help some isolated kid struggling with her/his/their personhood, sexuality, ethnicity, differences, etcetera that she/he/they is not alone, that it is okay to be who she/he/they is? that, yeah, the world is still a shitty, dangerous place, but, slowly, very slowly, as we all learn to live in our skin, we can and we will bring about that change?

why wait for the world to change when that change lies within us, within each other?

and i know these are words easier said than lived most times, and i know how horrible solitude is, feeling alone and weird and strange. and i used to think i was writing my book — a collection of interrelated short stories about suicide — so that non-depressed, non-suicidal people could understand what it is to be depressed and suicidal. i used to think i was writing it to help bridge these barriers of understanding, to help fill the spaces where empathy is apparently impossible and basic human decency is too much to expect.

and it’s not that i’ve stopped believing in the importance of dialoguing with people who disagree with you or see the world differently. we all need to learn to do it.

however, the more i think about it, the less important it becomes for me to try to change those people’s minds or hearts, and the more important it becomes for me to reach people like me and let them know, you’re okay. you’re not alone. you’re not broken and damaged beyond repair. you’re not ugly. you’re not unlovable. you’re not unworthy.

so stay.

don’t hide. don’t run. don’t try to disappear.

don’t harm yourself, and don’t take your own life.

stay.

halfway to everywhere.

July 6, 2017

much, if not all, of what i’ve been creating this year has been in response to these words shared by meryl streep, an attempt to take my broken heart and make it into art.

2017 started off with moving back to los angeles from brooklyn, with leaving home behind and returning to the place i grew up with my tail between my legs, and i came back because of financial difficulties and brain issues that would become body issues that would feed into brain issues. i was suicidal and depressed and anxious, and, as i drove across the country, from brooklyn to DC to charleston to atlanta to new orleans to austin to el paso to phoenix to LA, the fear churning through my brain was simple: that i would die in california, not from getting stuck there and getting old and dying but because the monsters in my brain would drive me to the point of no return.

and, yet, here i am, halfway into the year, alive and present.

it’s a miracle that i am still alive. it’s a greater miracle that i am still alive and doing fairly well, that i am looking to the future and fighting my way back home. six months ago, i didn't think this present me would even exist.

but then it's not a miracle at all because all i've done these last six months is simple: i've taken my broken heart and made it into art.

my mother doesn’t like that i talk so openly about depression and anxiety because she’s afraid of the impact such openness will have on any future prospects, whether professional or personal. i talk about it, though, because i feel i must, because i know how horribly isolating and alone it is to be locked away in your brain, to carry this damage and feel like you’re the only one in your world who must be going through this.

i know how depression and anxiety and ADHD make you feel like a failure, like a freak, like an already washed-up, sorry-ass excuse for a human being who can’t seem to keep her shit together.

i know how that feels. i know how that destroys you from inside out and makes everything worse.

and, so, i talk about it. i talk about it even though i don’t have a “happy ending” to share; i talk about it even though i’m still going through it, even though i still don’t know if i will “survive.” i talk about it in the mainstream, accepted language i hate because depression isn’t something i’ll ever “survive” — it’s something i’ll live with and will struggle with until the end.

and that is okay.

i’ve said it before and i’ll keep saying it, but i’m not a fan of survival narratives. i understand their place in the zeitgeist, and i understand that, sometimes, we need to hear the stories of people who have “made it through to the other side,” who have “survived.” i suppose that, maybe, it’s that, on some level, i don’t understand that because that’s not the way i’ll ever see mental health or trauma or whatever — we carry these things with us, and we can’t mark a clean end to them. the brain rarely compartmentalizes that way.

life rarely compartmentalizes that way, either, and one of the things i’ve been learning is how messy things are. love isn’t simple, want isn’t simple, family isn’t simple. everything is complicated, and, sometimes, it’s contradictory, and, sometimes, it feels like certain elements of things must cancel each other out, though that isn’t the case. maybe that’s vague and ambiguous, but this is something i’m currently thinking about in relation to roxane gay’s hunger (harper, 2017) and trying to put into clearer language, so i suppose we’ll have to wait for me to sit on that a little longer.

anyway, so things aren’t simple, and that’s fine. i was talking to my therapist about how, now that things are relatively stable, i’m running high levels of anxiety because i’m waiting for something to go wrong. she said that that could be an effect of my ADHD, of my being so accustomed to existing in chaos and instability that i’ve learned to embrace it as a coping mechanism, and i thought, okay, that could make sense. no matter how well i organize things, everything erupts into chaos within a day, anyway.

and that, too, is okay, and this is where we go back to my distaste of survival narratives. one reason i dislike them so is that i don’t like why society tends to demand them, this need for something clean and neat and categorizable. it feeds into how society tends to have certain expectations, how it wants to see certain [arbitrary] criteria met to indicate a certain way of being, how it shoves and enforces certain narratives depending on race, sexuality, gender, mental health, etcetera.

because, hey, here’s the thing: just because some of us live with chaos in our brains that might translate into seeming chaos in our lives doesn’t mean we aren’t functioning human beings who deserve respect and contribute our skills to society and thrive in our own ways, on our own terms. and, hey, here’s the other thing: even if we sometimes fall apart, that’s more to do with the fact that we’re human, and we fuck up, and we all have good days, and we all have bad days, and we are not our mental illnesses, just like we are not the color of our skin or our sexuality or our career. and maybe that’s why i talk about my depression and anxiety and ADHD so much. because, yeah, i might not have clear directions about where i’m going with my life right now, but i function well, get shit done, and write and create and think and read and cook and live.

and you know? i am not the only one with mental health issues to do so, and i am really done with the stigma and bullshit and condescension that wrap mental health in shame and inflict so much harm on real human lives. there is a cost for silence, and it is rarely the people enforcing the silence who pay the price.

sometimes, i think that one of my character flaws (i suppose, depending on how you look at it) is that i can’t do the same thing twice. what works for me once doesn’t work the second time (or third) (or fourth), and i suppose you can just look through this site for proof of that. like, for instance, last year, i was fairly diligent about updating my reading as i went along; this year, it has failed completely.

instead, i’ve been blogging more long-form, getting way more personal and open than i ever thought i would, playing with ways to integrate food and cooking. i’ve stopped caring about cordoning myself off into a niche and started intentionally branching off instead, trying to figure out how to integrate all my interests and bring them together. i’ve been thinking a lot about growth and what that looks like.

so here’s a weird transition to books i’ve loved so far this year because, even if i haven’t been regularly logging or reviewing what i’ve been reading, i have been reading a fair amount.

first, we’ve got rachel khong’s goodbye, vitamin (holt, forthcoming, 2017), which will be published very soon, and which i loved. it was the first book i read this year, and i read it while driving across the country and ignoring the various sadnesses exploding within me, and it made me laugh and made me cry and hit all these nostalgic, soft spots in my heart — nostalgia being kind of a theme with me this year because it's also what i loved about yoojin grace wuertz's everything belongs to us (random house, 2017). i did think the ending to everything was kind of weak, but i loved how wuertz tapped into this notalgia for 1970s seoul, which is weird, maybe, because i wasn't even alive in the 1970s, much less in seoul.

and, yet, the novel brought up all these nostalgic feelings for this era and place that i only know through proxy because my father was a student at seoul national university in the late 1970s. he remembers the turbulent times portrayed in wuertz's novel, and i've recently taken to listening to all the stories from his youth (and my aunts' youth) as i can. it's a project i'm trying to figure out, how to travel to each aunt and get her story, because they are stories that should be told and heard, if only because i find them so interesting. they've lived through a lot, first-generation korean-american immigrants. they've seen a lot.

dear friend, from my life i write to you in your life (random house, 2017) is the first thing i read from yiyun li, and it felt like a hug in book form. (i wrote about it here.) and then there was patty yumi cottrell and her fabulous sorry to disrupt the peace (mcsweeney's, 2017) (here) — i love writers who make me imagine new ways of writing and seeing the world and approaching fiction, and cottrell does just that, and she does it confidently, brashly almost, and hilariously. (jenny zhang is another such author; her debut short story collection, sour heart, is being published by random house in september; and you should all read it.)

and then there was bandi's the accusation (grove press, 2017), and this list is a little weird to me because these are all books published in 2017, but i guess, sometimes, i really keep up with contemporary fiction.

the accusation is the first collection of stories published by a north korean writer currently still in north korea. bandi is (obviously) a pseudonym, and the stories were smuggled out of the country, eventually making their way to the south. it's the first book my online book club read, and, hey, that's another cool thing to come from 2017 — this online book club i founded to satiate a need and loneliness, friendless as i am in los angeles.

and, then, finally, there's roxane gay's hunger, and i'd say more about that, but i have a lot i want to say about it, so we'll hold that off for the next post.

this is longer than i'd planned for it to be.

... and yet we keep going.

and, so, now, here we are, at the beginning of july, and the future is a murky unknown. it’s enough for me that the future has light, though, even if i don’t attach much hope to it, and i'm stringing trips into the next few months to keep me going.

next weekend, i’ll be in seattle with my parents. some time at the end of july or in early august or maybe both, i’ll be back in san francisco, hanging out with my BFF and meeting new faces. in september, i’ll be back home in brooklyn, mostly because i want to and mostly because of the brooklyn book festival, the event i look forward to all year, that marks the beginning of autumn and the wind-down to year-end.

i can’t wait to be back home again, to breathe that air and see familiar faces and feel my heart beating in my body again. i can’t wait to feel home again; i can’t wait to feel fully myself again.

and, then, next year, in late spring/early summer, i’m planning on peru, coaxing my cousin(s) to come with me. some time in the next two years, there will be spain because i’m resolved to travel more, to get out more, to see more and eat more and experience more. i’m resolved to pursue new opportunities,to keep playing with form and content here, to finish my goddamn book and push it out into the world and query it and hopefully see it published and do awesome, fun, scary book things.

because this is how i've survived, and this is how i will continue to go on, by taking my brokenness and turning it into art, by going about the world with my eyes and heart wide open, by seizing whatever it is that i can seize to get out, to get better, to get home.

progress report (may is mental health awareness month).

May 16, 2017

the most valuable piece i took away from top chef was that i was able to do something i didn't think i could do. [...] once i realized it was kind of okay, and i got positive feedback for being exactly who i was and keeping my head down and just cooking, i was able to be who i was. so that's what top chef did for me. all the other things — the shiny things — are just bonus. (kristen kish)

hi! so, may is mental health awareness month, and i've been back in california for five months now, in therapy for two-and-a-half and on medication for a little over one, so i thought, hey, why not post a progress report?

for the uninitiated, i have major depressive disorder, recurrent episode, panic disorder, and ADHD. i have a history of suicidal thinking and ideation, and i've lived with major depression for my entire young adult and adult life. i've only very recently started getting help for it.

it terrifies the fuck out of me to be so open about this. it's frankly unnerving to put so much of me out there to be seen, to be consumed, and to attach my face to it (at least, on instagram), to say, hey, this is me, this is what i look like, this is the shit i carry.

i ask myself constantly why i do this, and i suppose it boils down to a few things. one is that i want to be known, to be recognized. another is that i'd rather be rejected for who i am, flaws and deficits and all, than for this idea of a perfect being i could pretend to be. yet another is that i think it's important to talk about all this shit, not only after we've "survived" it but as we're going through it, in these dark moments when the future is uncertain and unknowable. i don't believe that only stories with survival clauses are worth telling because the bleak truth is that, sometimes, there are no happy endings, and, sometimes, these demons in our brains and bodies lead us to take our lives.

that's not the point, though. the end isn't the point. the point is that we try.

here is a list of lessons i've been learning as i've been seeking professional help.

it's not just about going to therapy or taking meds or seeing your psychiatrist. a pill is not going to fix everything; a therapist isn't going to put your life in order; and a psychiatrist is not going to keep you alive. it's about everything. it's about making the effort, being kind to yourself, letting people love you and care for you and support you. it's about showing up, whether it's to therapy sessions or doctor's appointments or lunch dates or special events or the gym. it's about listening to your brain and your body, knowing when to step back and rest, letting yourself have bad days. it's about everything.

it takes time. an anti-depressant takes a few weeks to start working, and they're not always the most pleasant few weeks. my first week on an anti-depressant, i was so nauseated, i couldn't sit up. my second week, i was so out of it, i couldn't focus on the smallest, most inconsequential task. my third week, my inability to sleep and stay asleep got even worse — and stayed worse.

when it started working, though, the anti-depressant (i started on citalopram, or celexa) did stabilize my mood, and, other than the nausea and insomnia, i did start feeling better. celexa totally exacerbated my sleep issues, though, so my psychiatrist and i decided last week to switch anti-depressants, to try good, old prozac and see if that will do away with the nausea and sleep issues. this is going to take a few weeks, too, though, and i don't know what the side effects will be yet.

so, again, it bears repeating: it takes time. it takes everything you've got. and it's not easy. i still wake up to panic; i woke up absurdly early this very morning because i was having a panic attack; and, still, hours later, i feel physically sick and nauseated and uneasy. i have nightmares almost every night, all around the themes of rootlessness, homesickness, and loneliness. i go to therapy every week, email my psychiatrist with concerns if my side effects are really bad, and take my meds as prescribed. i try to eat well, exercise regularly, keep a routine. i do everything i can, and some days are better than others, and some are worse, but they're all days to get through.

by all accounts, i'm a high-functioning adult who is, at least in this moment of her life, managing her anxiety and depression and ADHD fairly well. i get up in the morning, work out, eat breakfast, and go to work. i have meaningful social relationships; i create content regularly; and i read and write and think and function and, on some days, thrive.

which goes to my last "lesson," the thing i will say and repeat over and over and over again — mental health issues, mental illnesses, seeking professional help and/or taking medication — none of these diminishes your humanity. you're not crazy or psycho or subhuman, no matter what it is going on in your brain and/or your body; you're simply human. don't ever let anyone make you doubt that, that you are a sentient, thinking, feeling human being, deserving of respect and decency. people who make you feel any less are shit.

on saturday, i went to hear kristen kish, a chef from boston. she's currently doing a tour with macy's for asian pacific american heritage month (because may is also APA heritage month), and she was in los angeles for an afternoon taste and talk, and, obviously, i went.

i sat there thinking, god, you're fucking cute as hell, adorably fidgety with that smile, that ease, and i thought about visibility, about the comfort of being yourself, about the confidence and security that come from being out and open about who you are, as you are, and being okay with that. i thought about how it's kind of strange and kind of sad that that's something that we have to learn to be okay with, to learn to see ourselves for who we are and accept ourselves — and, consequently, to learn to be okay with the fact that people will see us as they wish, will project on us their own fears and insecurities, and we can't control that.

we can't control what people think of us, but we can control how they make us feel.

she said:

up until my mid-twenties, i projected what i thought i was supposed to be. [...] once i let go of all that, that's when things really took off.

kish also said:

[the attention] is absolutely fascinating. for the majority of my life, i'm slinging in the back of a kitchen and working my butt off and living my life, and, suddenly, now i'm out there, and i think my responsibility is to continue to put my life out there. it's the fact that i am who i am, and, hopefully, what you see and what you can relate to is helpful.

if you don't feel fearful in some ways, if you don't feel nervous, then it's not something worth doing.

and i think, okay, fine, maybe there's something to all this, to being so confessional and at least making the effort to be my true self and be known. i will never be able to share my full, whole self on this website, just like i will never be able to share my full, whole self on social media or in my fiction or, even, in person-to-person relationships. there will always be limits to how fully and deeply we can be known, even by the people directly in our lives.

we make the effort, though. we try to express ourselves, and we try to listen. we try to be there for each other, and we try to connect. and i believe that the discomfort and fear i often feel when i share so much about my mental and physical health, about my fears and anxieties, even about the things i love — i believe that, somehow, in some way, it is a discomfort that propels me on because it tells me that it is something worth exploring. all this shit is worth sharing because the thing i learn over and over again is that we are not all that different, that i am not alone, that these things — whatever they are — need to be talked about.

fundamentally, i believe in breaking stigma, in ending the shame and guilt that keep us silent about mental health, sexuality, body image issues, doubt, etcetera, and, if anything, i am here to say to someone out there, whoever you are, whatever you struggle with, that you are not alone. for what it's worth, here is a human being who is doing everything she can to stay alive and thrive, even though her mental and physical limitations scare the shit out of her every single fucking day, so fight. hold on. stay.

kish also said, "my culinary influences are every single thing that has happened in my life, from the fun to the hard to the whimsical — but the underlying thing under all my food is proper technique."

and, "my style of cooking is a general tasting menu. not one dish is supposed to stand out," and there's an arc to it, an exploration of different textures and tastes, and, "at the end of the meal, you should feel full and satisfied."

and, "i struggled a lot with self-identify and self-worth and who am i and what am i going to do."

and, "the one chef i get starstruck by every time — and i don't get starstruck — is gabrielle hamilton [of prune in nyc]."

and, she never cooked at home, but she wanted to cook for her ex-girlfriend, and "learning how to navigate a home kitchen was quite difficult."

anyway, all of which is to say that i fucking love her and am glad she's out there doing her thing, and i had a great saturday, then i woke up having a panic attack on sunday, feeling sick to my stomach because of anxiety-induced nausea. i gave up on sleep and took lorazepam in hopes that it would help quell the anxiety, which it did a little but didn't stop the effects of my early morning panic attack from incapacitating me for the rest of the day.

i managed to get out of my head to make dinner reservations for my parents at republique, one of my favorite restaurants, scrounged up enough energy to shower, get dressed, and drive out to la brea for one hell of a dinner. the kusshi oysters were sweet and creamy and so good; the grilled octopus was tender and succulent, though the salad had too much mint for me; and the brussels sprouts with friseé and bacon and a soft egg were awesome (and made for great fried rice the day after). the new york strip was perfectly medium-rare, dry-aged for 45 days, in this beautiful sauce, but the winner of the night was the spinach cavatelli with porcini and morel mushrooms and ramps.

(ramps. it's the season for ramps, y'all. and i'm starting to like mushrooms.)

i love a good handmade pasta; there is little that gives me the depth and fullness of joy and happiness that a bowl of great handmade pasta delivers. it's just so comforting and soothing, and i love it more because i love making pasta myself, understand what goes into crafting a bowl, though, of course, the pasta i make is nowhere near as great.

and, anyway, all of which is to say that mental well-being is about more than just therapy or meds or psychiatry appointments. those are important; i'm not diminishing how crucial it is to get help; but it's also about getting out of your head, doing nice things for other people (when you are able), finding enjoyment and pleasure in the little things. it's about meals and literature and women you have crushes on and think are badass, people who model the kind of life you'd like to live, the kind of person you'd like to be (while remembering that they are still humans, and they are not perfect, and they fuck up and have flaws and insecurities, too).

it's about being the best you can be and learning to live within limitations, and it's about remembering that everyone struggles, everyone flails, and everyone kind of fundamentally wants the same things from life. it's about remembering that you aren't alone, no matter how much the monsters in your brain and/or body try to convince you otherwise. it's about reminding yourself that you are stronger than you think you are, that the fact that you have made it this far to this point in your life is the very evidence of that.

it's about telling yourself, making yourself believe that you are worth it, so get the help you need, reach out to the people around you, and live.

2017 international women's day.

March 8, 2017

yiyun li, dear friend from my life i write to you in your life (random house, 2017)
julie otsuka, the buddha in the attic (anchor books, 2012)
annabelle kim, tiger pelt (leaf-land press, 2016)
rachel khong, goodbye, vitamin (henry holt, forthcoming, 2017)
catherine chung, forgotten country (riverhead, 2012)
susan choi, the foreign student (harper perennial, 2004)
min-jin lee, pachinko (grand central publishing, 2017)
esmé weijun wang, the border of paradise (unnamed press, 2016)
ruth ozeki, a tale for the time being (penguin, 2013)
krys lee, how i became a north korean (viking, 2016)
celeste ng, everything i never told you (penguin press, 2014)
jung yun, shelter (picador, 2016)
padma lakshmi, love, loss, and what we ate (ecco, 2016)
alexandra kleeman, you too can have a body like mine (harper, 2015)
shawna yang ryan, green island (knopf, 2016)

it’s international women’s day, so here’s a stack that i am so fucking jazzed i can even make: i have no substantial data to back this up, but i do feel like, in the last few years, we've seen a greater rise of asian[-american] writers being published. who knows, though; maybe i've only noticed this because i've become much more intentional about who i'm reading in recent years, so maybe it’s more correct for me to say that i’m jazzed that i have a collection of books that allows me to curate such a fine stack.

(is that too self-congratulatory? but i do generally stand by my taste.)

it's international women's day, and you might be saying that this stack is so narrow in scope as to miss the point. however, i wanted to make a stack of asian-american women, so here is a stack of women writers who are either immigrants or the daughters of immigrants because the point i wanted to make is simple and universal: that we, under whichever broad ethnic umbrella people want to place and stereotype us, come from a myriad of different backgrounds, carrying so many different struggles and concerns and fears, and one of the things we, as immigrants and immigrant children, bring to this country are our stories.

to be asian-american, to be anything-american, is not to be one collective person from one collective culture. it is to be a myriad of people, to contain multitudes of women, and i wanted to create a stack that would reflect this, the international backgrounds we come from that influence, in so many different ways, the stories we are compelled to tell.

in a political climate under a toxic administration that is feeding and fostering hate against non-white, non-christian, non-straight immigrants, this is what i wanted to celebrate today — that this is a country that has welcomed people from so many places, and this, this stack here is a result of that. i want to point at this stack and say, look, look at this wealth. look at the worlds these pages contain. look at the humanity these books expose. look.

so, here is to us, all of us women, regardless of ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, or the physical bodies we were born into. here is to the countries, the cultures, the peoples we come from. here is to the women we come from, women who have sacrificed much so we can be the women we are, women who have shown us strength and love and dedication. here is to the women who have failed us, to the women we will fail, to the women who are broken and fucked up and damaged because they are women, and to be a woman is to be human.

and here is to us. here is to the women we are and the women we are becoming and the women we will be. may we be strong and continue to tell our stories and refuse to be silenced.