Running Log: 12 miles

Yesterday I completed my longest run yet in the preparation for 26.2 miles.  12 miles used to seem inconceivable—l mean—growing up in Murrieta, everywhere I needed to go was less than 12 miles away from my house.  My high school was 1.5 miles away and the pizza shop where I worked part time was 3; the mall was 6; my boyfriend’s house was 7.  Getting into half marathons in the last couple years, 12 miles meant I was almost done.  Now, 12 miles isn’t even half way to where I need to be. 

But I’m enjoying the way my routes take me to views I’ve never experienced by foot.  I notice things about my city that I’ve never noticed before.  The smell of thick green bushes with white flowers that remind me of our world famous Zoo.  The graveyard of fruits fallen from trees my refugee parents’ say they used to eat back in the old country, strewn on the pavement; thumb-sized yellow bodies mashed into the ground.  My Nike’d feet tried to avoid the seeds that remained roasting in the sun. 

I pass car stores with immigrant names like Ferrari, Bugatti, Lamborghini, and Maserati.  But unlike immigrant people, the stores sit comfortably in rich communities where Asian tourists peered in through the glass at the models on display. 

But every street I looked down, whether it was a newly remodeled mansion or a weather-worn cottage sitting at the corner, I had the most beautiful view of ocean and palm trees.  Each restaurant patio was filled with people enjoying sunshine and sidewalks with families headed for the beach. 

I am not a professionally trained runner; but I’m not sure a trainer could help me enjoy running more than I already do.  I love the feeling of discovery that running allows me—a discovery of self, a discovery of the world—and the connection of the two. 

Things Hmong Women have taught me about packing light

My aunt married her husband when she was 16 years old.  In her senior yearbook, there is a picture of her 6 months pregnant with my cousin.  After 21 years, she and her husband are finally moving out of her In-Law’s.  She said she’s leaving everything except her unused wedding gifts—unboxed pots and pans and table settings she’s stored away in dark narrow spaces like all her teenage dreams. 

I can’t imagine holding on to anything for that long.  Hoping for a glimmer of light one day in the future. 

Maybe it’s the Hmong in her.  It’s in all of us.  Sometimes I wonder why we weigh ourselves down so much.  Like bombs, bullets, and escaping a communist government is the only reason to pack light?

One thing I know is that I don’t want to give myself a reason to hold on to 20 years like it is a Polaroid in a photo album in an attic.  Life doesn’t wait the way we keep our possessions. 

Another aunt asks me if I’ve ever hiked to Eagle’s Peak.  She tells me it’s a hike on her bucket list.  When I tell her we should go next weekend, she looks away and becomes busy with kitchen work.  She doesn’t mention it again—and I don’t press her.  I’ve learned that some dreams are like ghosts.  And my aunt is haunted in the form of things she will never do and places she will never see.  

I don’t believe bucket lists belong 10 feet underground.  You can’t fill a Pyramid with it or burn it to the afterlife.  But even so, my aunt fills her list like a hoarder. 

My uncle’s wife asks me if I still plan to move into my car.  When I tell her I am—she asks me, “Why?”

I wanted to tell her ghost stories horrified me, but instead I say, “I want to pay back my loans and get rid of my debt as fast as I can so that I don’t have an excuse to not do what I want to do.”

She says, “But in life you’ll always have debt.”

Another aunt tells me, “Don’t do it. Stay where you’re at.”

“Why not?”  I ask.

“Because it’s wrong—you’ve forgotten what your goals are—“

I interject vehemently, “I know exactly what my goals are; how can you even say that?  You don’t know what I’m doing to facilitate the life I want to live.”

“That’s not the right way of going about it,” she says carefully after a long silence.

Of all people, I wouldn’t qualify her as a specialist on doing things the “right way”. 

All my life, I’ve looked up to these Hmong women as examples of strength and hard work.  But I don’t want to live my life the way they tell me I should.  I refuse to wait for 20 years to unbox my life, to keep a bucket list with no intention to follow through, to stay exactly where I am even though I’m not happy, or to let my mother say that I just need to find someone to marry in order to gain direction in my life.  Whether or not I attain conventional success is beside the point.  It’s about living my best life and I want to pack light.

“Landscapes tell us stories about time.”

 He smiles at me and I wonder if he notices the erosion of my lips from all the thru-hikers leaving their footprints across the surface.  Can he still see the path he first made, or have there been too many trails off the original?  The first time he kissed me, he parted my lips like a river parts rock and my mouth was a canyon waiting for him to fill it with love.  I didn’t know then that sometimes canyons get so big they become empty.

Outside the restaurant, he opens his arms and gives me a hug.  And it’s not quite like how I remember it.  I felt taller.  Like elevation had nothing to do with my height, but the length of my spine.  Could he feel the earthquake that still trembled inside of me after he left?  Or the ridgeline of my shoulders, where he staked his flag for first ascent? And did it count if I’ve grown?

I cross my arms over my chest.  The valley of my breasts is now a meadow.  He used to linger there like morning mist.  But sunlight evaporated what remained of him.  Wildflowers grew in his place.

He says he can’t believe he hasn’t seen me in years.  I say he made sure of it.  He stayed away like I was volcanic activity spilling on his Pompeii.  He bows his head and tries to explain.  I tell him I understand.  I am no longer rigid like granite.  I break more readily.  Weathered by heartbreak. 

When they seat us, I sit across from him, my fingers laced together on the table—the way I learned to pull myself up on days I couldn’t get over him.  He tells me he never forgot my number.  A fossil from a time of flip phones and T9 texting.  We catch up and rediscover shared commonalities.  Sometimes he confuses my scenic views for those of other wilderness’ he has explored. 

And it is okay because no one remembers the past as it is.  It is a function of how we feel.  And time changes everything.  It buries the hurt like sediment in a lake bed. 

I sigh in relief. 

No longer does he feel like sunshine spreading across snowcaps in the Sierras.  He is not sunshine.  He is just a man with a broken compass.  When men backtrack, I need to learn that I am not their final destination.  I need to learn that I am not thunder and that I am not rain and that lightning never strikes the same place twice.  So this time I let his words pass through me like wind and I bow but I do not break. 

We split the check.  Right down the middle.  Clean.

I ask him if he wants to finish my birthday beer with me.  He agrees to get in my car and we drive to the bay.  We catch up like real friends as we sit on a bench in the dark and watch the fog roll in.  The street lights ripple across the black water.    

He says he needs to do this more often.

To do what, I ask.

He says, to be outside.  

Cheers to being picked last, eating lunch alone, and experiencing FOMO

They talked about what they would name their not-yet-conceived children as I drove down the single lane highway, admiring the unfolding landscape of the San Diego countryside.  The golden sunlight kissed the pastures while the cow grazed, framed by blue skies.  I sighed in awe of the nature while two of my long time friends chatted about engagements and weddings and buying homes and having children.  All I wanted to do was celebrate my 26^th birthday.

As a single, unattached 26 year old female, I find that I don’t know where I fit in anymore.  On the one hand, I’m not ready to settle down.  And on the other, all my friends are.  That leaves me in the middle.  Neither here nor there.  Just somewhere in between being a “real” and “young” adult.  This middle is terrifying.  I admit it may only be FOMO (fear of missing out) but the panic is real when you’re the only one in the car that doesn’t have anything to contribute to the conversation about baby names. 

FOMO is stupid.   

I don’t relate, but I also don’t care to and I don’t try.  For me, adulthood has been like a road trip where I’ve opted to take every back road instead of the one that will get me to where I need to go the fastest.  And I’m perfectly content to explore at my leisure whatever comes along the road that interests me. 

At 26, all of the commotion about marriage and mortgages and children is overrated. 

But because I feel this way, I find that the road less travelled is also more lonely.

People partner up so damn fast—like its 8^th Grade P.E. and no one wants to be picked last for a team.  Desperate glances and nervous hands link as if to say “You’ll do”, just glad they’re not alone.  But that’s the thing—even at 13, I was never one to rush a good thing.  I turned down dates and broke from friendships and waited for time to reveal who would remain.  Sometimes I ate lunch by myself—but I learned you need an empty table in order to fill it. 

The conversation turns to travel plans with the boyfriends.  It’s funny how “We” can sound so exclusive.  And even though we were all together in my car, heading out to the desert to camp for my birthday, it was hard not to feel like I didn’t belong to the club.    

But I’m realizing maybe this is the adult version of eating lunch alone in the cafeteria.  That this emptiness is only making room for new people and new experiences to come.  I’ve never rushed a good thing, so for now I’ll stick my nose in a book or journal.  I’ll run new routes around the city.  I’ll drive until road meets ocean.  I’ll summit mountains and chase the sunrise across different continents.  I’ll keep doing me—confident that I will receive exactly what I put out into the universe.  A little kindness and whatever human connection I can find along the way.

Black Coffee Kind of Love

He drinks his coffee black.  He says that it is bold and decisive.  But I like mine buttery brown like croissants in the morning with Grandpa.  For me, coffee has always been about that feeling of intangible comfort.  It’s nothing like a hug or a kiss–those kinds of physical comforts dissipate after the moment of impact.  I like to think of coffee like a warm memory–the kind that you can revisit and will kindle into a fire long after that time, that place, or that person is gone.

We sipped black coffee out of a shared mug the first time we went camping together.  Sitting in his car, listening to songs on his high school iPod, waiting for our phones to charge, we reminisce on the night before.  About how fortunate we were to find a camp site, about crispy spam, glasses of whisky, and campfire conversations.  The morning was cold and I had forgotten my jacket so he gave me his to wear.  It somehow felt like I was shedding more layers than I was putting on.

We sip black coffee on the mornings that I sleep over before we each separately head off to work.  After our first date, I saw him two more times before the week was over.  I was never one to put down a good book–and he was the kind of character that teenage me worshiped in young adult fiction.  It was a long time since 17 years old felt so familiar.

Tonight we sip black coffee as we have dinner.  We spent Saturday in the desert under the Milky Way.  Last night I cried as I told him about the growing distance between me and my sisters.  About how it felt to be alone because all my friends and family were in different places in their lives.  When he kissed me, I finally felt that someone understood–the only way a person can understand because he too knew that loneliness.

Sitting beside him at a tiny table in Souplantation, I have never felt more unambivalent about who I was at 25 years old.  Somehow I have become the kind of girl that jumped over rattlesnakes on dirt trails and made sweet passionate love under the stars in the desert.  The kind of girl that hangs out on the side of cliffs and shares gritty coffee with strangers.  I have just met this part of me and am fearful that this girl will disappear with the touch of him.  That I will never again be so wild and uninhibited.

When it is over, will black coffee have taught me to be bold and decisive? Or will it only serve as a warm memory of who I was with him?

 

A little fall of rain

I’m glad it is raining on my birthday.  April raises the curtains and we see the crystal drops on the window.  It’s the kind of pretty that makes you forget you’re in a hospital room.  The machines go off every few minutes for one reason or another.  They take my uncle’s blood pressure.  They squeeze and unsqueeze his tiny legs.  They monitor his heartrate.  They give him additional oxygen to breathe.  Nothing in this room is without a flashing light or a loud beep. 

Last night I cried and I commended myself.  Because to hurt means that one has put oneself in a vulnerable position—and there is nothing more human than that.  It’s my body’s way of flashing and beeping.  Telling the world I’m still alive.

And in the words of Eponine, “I don’t feel any pain.  A little fall of rain can hardly hurt me now.”

And sure, I feel silly.  But silly is better than never knowing how it felt to have that wonderful feeling—even if just briefly. 

Short nothings

I don’t know how some people can talk with so much conviction about who they are when I am so ambivalent about myself.  And maybe that’s the problem.  Why I can’t convince anyone else to love who I am—it’s because I don’t know who I am and they know it.  Like BO I can’t hide under deodorant.  I stink at love. 

Turning 26 in an ICU ward

I spent the eve of my 26^th birthday in my great uncle’s room in the ICU. 

What had started off as a weekend of canyoneering and camping with friends in early celebration of my birthday, ended with a Snap from my brother of a hospital waiting room.  It was 10:30 PM on a Sunday, and many hours since I came back from the desert, yet I had received no message or call from my family.  Warning signs immediately went off in my head.

The first ring felt like forever, and then my sister’s voice broke through the static silence.  “Hello?”

“What’s going on?”  My voice was frantic.

“Haven’t you checked the Snaps?” 

My heart dropped.

“What Snaps?”

“Shake my head—“ She said, her voice condemning.  “Grandpa Her was rushed to the hospital this afternoon.  He had a stroke.  Mom and dad are with him right now.  He’s in an induced coma.”

They say the first stage of grief is anger.  It is true.  Devastated by the news, and infuriated by the delivery (Snapchat?! WTF), I began roaring at my sister through the phone despite how I heard her own scared voice tremble.  We argued—not about my uncle—but about communication.  About how I don’t have the time to sift through 800 seconds of Snaps in the “Family” Snapchat.  And suddenly I felt like it was an attack on how I’ve spent my time this year. 

I really wasn’t around as much this year for my family.  I mean—I was, to any other normal family’s standard—but not in the same co-dependent kind of way that I used to be.  I went camping with friends, ran half marathons with friends, partied with friends, rock climbed with friends, traveled and played national competitions with friends, toured South Korea with friends—and all this rage that I felt kind of melted into deep guilt. 

I called my mom.

I talked to her about my uncle’s condition.  She assured me there was nothing to worry about.  My mom was never the most warm and loving person to me when I was a kid.  When seeking comfort, I’d choose her last.  But in that moment, I wondered how many times my mom kept her cool in times of crisis to protect us from a scary or sad situation.  Even if that meant bending the truth—she wanted us to feel safe. 

On my 26^th birthday, I want to talk about my Grandpa Her.

I wrote an entire short story based on him.  It went on to win an award.  The writing was nothing special—it was his story that was remarkable.  A story about miracles. 

My grandfather tells it the best.  He recalls bullets zipping past his back.  The river water running red.  Turning around and seeing his brother, my Grandpa Her, getting swept up among the bodies.  Gasping for air.  With gun strapped to his back, without a second hesitation, he dives back in to save his brother.  His bumbling, schizophrenic brother.  And then when they get to the refugee camp—they lose him for three weeks.  My grandpa looked diligently for his brother and refused to leave the country until his brother was found.  To this day, no one in the family knows how my Grandpa Her ended up at a different refugee camp across town.  But they found him just in time to take the next flight to the United States. 

The real life unedited story is about brotherhood, home, and what we each believe is valuable in life—and, that, to me undoubtedly is family.

Tonight, I watched as my Grandpa Her, confused and scared in his big hospital bed and looking so small with all the tubes wrapped around him, opened his mouth for his brother to feed him ice chips.  I wanted to cry.  Love stories never quite seem to be this beautiful in the movies. 

Guys of Christmas Past

We laughed over dinner we cooked and chased our food with swigs of beer.  I felt the heat rising in my neck as he gazed at me across the table.  His expression was contemplative.  A sideways smile curved at the corner of his lips.

“What?”  I asked, blushed and looked away.

“What would you say is your pet peeve?”  He asked and leaned closer across the table. 

I didn’t like the way his eyes were searching for mine—like somehow he was going to discover his truth in the brown depths of my own.  I am only human, not a search engine. 

I shrugged. “I guess…I don’t like it when people are closed minded.”

“What do you mean?”  He asked.

“Well, I don’t know—I guess in the last year I spent so much time realizing that there’s not one way to live a good life.  People come from different circumstances and situations and I think everyone’s just doing their best sometimes—and I can’t stand people who can’t see that.  Does that make sense?” 

I laughed, the alcohol finally made me feel hazy.  “I’m sorry, if I’m rambling.”

He scratched his head, “No, not at all…yeah I get that.”

“For me,” he said, “I don’t like it when people waste food.”

“Oh no!”  I joked, scraping the left overs on my plate, and he laughed.  I scooped up the remaining potato crumbs and licked my spoon.  “Do you hate me now?”  I pouted.

He grabbed my hand and I dropped the spoon.  I was looking directly at him then.  We didn’t say anything, knowing full well what was going to happen next. 

“Do you mind helping me clean up?”  He asked, finally letting go of my hand.

He did the dishes while I cleared the table.  While he worked up the lather, I stole glances at his back. 

“You like what you see?”  He winked over his shoulder when he caught me staring.

I giggled and pretended to wipe the already clean table. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I shook my head.

“It’s okay.  I’m a marathon finisher.  I’m pretty hot.”

I rolled my eyes.

He dried his hands and stood there watching me.  Not moving.  Not saying anything.  When I moved to throw the dirty paper towel away, he walked towards me and picked me up into his arms.

“Hey!”  I laughed, dropping the trash on the floor, as I curled my hands around his neck.

“Let’s go to bed,” he whispered into my ear.

I wish I could tell you I remember his name.  I don’t.  Or that I feel bad for forgetting.  The thing is—its deceptive—when you first start to date someone and it’s refreshing to think that someone understands you—but they only see you for what they want you to be.  And I don’t need anyone to tell me who I am or who I should be.  If they don’t understand I’m doing my best, I’m not keeping them around.  

I Had A Mental Breakdown In Front Of My Supervisor

“I feel so bad,” he said, “I want to give you a hug but we recently had so many sexual harassment trainings and so I can’t.”

Those were the words of my supervisor.  Except, he wasn’t really my supervisor anymore.  My department recently underwent a structural change.  I got a paper promotion from “Assistant” to “Associate” but they told me my role was “equivalent”.  It sure as hell didn’t feel “equivalent” over the last three weeks as my work days have extended from eight to twelve hour days of grueling time sensitive testing in the lab.  These have been days with no breaks or lunch—just me trying to breathe in between gowning in and out of a biosafety cabinet. 

To say he looked beyond uncomfortable would be an understatement.  Sexual harassment trainings probably didn’t prepare him for the tears of an overwhelmed 25 year old woman. 

In my defense, I didn’t mean to lure him alone to his peril.  I was mortified when the words got caught in my throat and the tears started forming in my eyes.   And the more I tried to force words through my mouth, the tears began falling with the weight of what could not be said–until I was just gasping and we stood in silence as I cried.

I tell him I feel terrible for making the mistake.  That I should have caught it.  That I don’t know why I missed it.  That it had been late when I performed the test.  That it was my 9^th hour of the workday and I felt pressure to complete all of my assignments. 

He asks how he can help.

And I tell him that I’ve voiced my concerns to teammates and they’ve dismissed my feedback.  They told me everyone was busy.  That this was just the way it had to be.  So I decided to suck it up and take one for the team.  It was “temporary”, they said, as the official deadline for our new roles is in January.  But day after day as the unfinished paperwork piled up and the samples continued to fill the “To Be Tested” bins to meet deadlines and fulfill contracts—I felt like I was drowning.  

He said he felt bad.  But how many times can someone say they “feel bad” until the words lose their meaning?

Among the many new experiences I’ve had in 2017.  This by far—crying in the work parking lot (not even 10 AM) to my ex-supervisor—has been one of the most humbling experiences in my career.  I mean, is one even a passionate career woman if she hasn’t had a mental breakdown in front of management?  That’s a thing right?  Like a grown woman milestone?

No?  Just me?  Well, it happened.