Monthly Archives: August 2015

Wedding attendance

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It’s amazing. I just got an e-mail from my aunt, who is my dad’s younger sister, saying that she already had her time off request approved for the last two weeks of March next year. What this means is that she will not only be able to attend my wedding, but she is actually planning to come. She’s really only made the effort to attend one of my cousins’ weddings, which was in San Francisco, so clearly very convenient for her. The other two weddings, which were in Las Vegas and then in New York, she did not show up for. In fact, she didn’t even RSVP “no” to either invitation. She simply never came. When asked after the fact why she wasn’t able to come, she said that she “had to work.”

I don’t know if I should be flattered that she’s actually making the effort to come to mine, or worried that she is coming and may make a scene.

Management training

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I’ve spent the last three days in trainings and conferences. The first two days were for my company’s sales conference, and today was designated as management training day, where everyone in our company who is either a manager or a manager-in-training had to sit in on an all-day work shop on how to improve ourselves as supervisors of others. While a lot of the tips were very useful in terms of the usual known things (e.g. when pointing out an area where the employee can improve, make sure you don’t use the word “but” as a connector, and instead use “and” or just eliminate a connector completely), a lot of it ended up coming across as very generic. For example, the last session of the day included us identifying “problem employees.” These people were labeled things like “the criticizer” or “the one who goofs off/wastes time.” The problem with these labels is that as most human beings are, we’re multifaceted people and workers. Chances are, there are very few people who just fit into one of these categories; we all kind of embody a lot of these qualities, just at different times and in different circumstances. And just because someone may spend a lot of time socializing in the office and seemingly “wasting time” doesn’t necessarily mean that she doesn’t meet her deadlines or comes to meetings late. The workshop presenter’s advice was to be as specific as possible when giving feedback and managing people, yet her presentation just felt too general, without enough complex real-life situations. It’s almost as though she is not practicing what she preaches herself.

Two years later

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Two years later after the death of my brother, I am finally coming to terms with the dysfunctional relationship between my cousins, who are all brothers, and the relationship they have with me. For one of them, the relationship is pretty much non-existent unless someone dies. With the second, it’s superficial and we only talk about surface things, and with the third, well, it revolves around his young son. I’ve finally learned to accept that I will never have the relationship I wished we could all have as adult cousins, and I’ve stopped taking the things they do personally. It only took about 29.5 years to get to this point.

In two weeks, one of these cousins, who lives in Brooklyn, will be going out to visit San Francisco for the first time since Ed’s funeral, which is over two years ago now. This time, he’s bringing his wife and son. He texted me yesterday and today to let me know that despite the very much in advance notice he gave his two brothers, his brother who lives in Redwood City and has a wife and two kids has let him know he has no time to see him. He’s just too busy, he said. There was a lot of needless and fruitless back and forth. Finally, it took a ‘secret’ conversation when he called my Brooklyn cousin to squeeze in a quick lunch together. His wife was not with him when this conversation took place.

Two years ago, I probably would have thought about this for days and thought about how stupid my Redwood City cousin is, how he lacks balls and how stupid it is that his selfish wife controls his life and doesn’t even want him to see his own brother, who he sees about once every two years at this point. Today, I laughed it off and decided it wasn’t worth a single thought, other than that I am so happy that my own life doesn’t have even a tiny bit of that type of dysfunction.

Reading to soothe

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I had a lot of trouble falling asleep last night. I kept tossing and turning, flipping my pillow, looking at the clock as each hour would pass by. When I eventually fell asleep, I dreamt that I was back in my bedroom in San Francisco, sitting cross-legged on my bed while facing Ed, who had a large hardcover book open in his lap. I felt miserable, and I had asked him to read me passages from a book that would provide me hope and inspiration. He read passage after passage of who knows what large book it was, and with each passage he finished reading to me, I asked him for another one, and another one, and another one. I didn’t want him to stop. He didn’t seem impatient, though, and continued to read each time I asked him to continue and find another one that would be inspiring. In the back of my mind, I was scared that if I told him I was okay and that he didn’t need to find me another passage to read that he would close his book and leave the room, and ultimately leave me forever. I couldn’t risk that. I needed to keep holding onto him. If I could still hear his voice, I knew I would be okay.

Lonely night

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I’m having a bad day today. Nothing “bad” actually happened, per se, but I felt this overwhelming sense of loneliness when I woke up, and throughout the day, even when I had people around me, I felt so lonely. Even though I can be quite outgoing and from the outset seem to be an extravert, I actually think I’m more of an introverted person naturally. I’m usually very comfortable being alone, thinking about my surroundings and life in general. I like doing things that people do when they are alone: reading, organizing, perusing recipes and researching ingredients for a next dish, scrapbooking. These are one-person activities generally. But today, all of this annoys me. I don’t really want to do any of this, but at the same time, I don’t really feel like going out of my way to speak to someone or anyone. Today is just a dissatisfying day because of my mood. The 90-plus degree weather, for whatever reason, did not help it. I just want to sleep today.

Running into familiar faces

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In the last two days, I’ve run into two of Chris’s friends, one of whom is a former colleague of mine. New York is a big place with millions of people, and yet we managed to bump into each other and catch up briefly.

I don’t know how observant people are when they run into me by chance, but one of the first things I always think of when I run into someone I know is, when was the last time I saw this person? How different or the same does this person look? I don’t think I’d seen the friend I ran into today in over two years, yet she looked exactly as I remembered her; it’s like she hadn’t aged a single day. She told me that I looked even younger than the last time she saw me, which I found really hard to believe because I feel like I’ve aged ten years since then. We really are more critical about ourselves than we should be.

An even smaller world

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Tonight, Chris and I went to meet a friend of mine who is dating someone new that he met online, and as soon as I made eye contact with her, I knew immediately she was someone I’d seen before. I soon found out that yes, she was originally from San Francisco, and yes, she went to my high school and was three years ahead of me. The reason she was familiar to me was that she was actually the student body president when I was a freshman at Lowell. What a small world. Of course, she had no idea who I was since then, I was just a lowly freshman while she was a senior, but it was interesting getting to know someone who I kind of already knew, and who was dating a good friend of mine here in New York.

She was pretty spooked that I already knew who she was and that we went to the same high school. She said that she never really talked much about high school or being in student government, or even about San Francisco. Why? I asked her. She said she’s just a different person now and is so different than what she was in high school. “But every interesting person has a past,” I said to her, smiling. Our experiences are what make us. Sure, I don’t think it’s necessary for her to share with everyone she meets that she used to be student body president when she was in high school, but I do think it’s important that people know where she’s lived and been to see how she has evolved. I don’t think I’m the same person as I was in high school, but I do think it’s a part of my life that was important that’s helped me get to where I am today. Now, I know a world outside of San Francisco, as she clearly does, but I still have San Francisco as a part of me as she also does. We should never forget the past.

Laundry and cleaning

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I don’t know what it is about New Yorkers, or maybe it’s just my colleagues in my office, but I don’t seem to know anyone who does their own laundry. A number of my colleagues have laundry in their buildings, yet they don’t do laundry themselves. They have their laundry dropped off at a neighborhood cleaners’ and then come back a few days later to pick it up. A few others are using tech startup companies’ apps to have their laundry picked up from their apartments and sent back, all neatly folded and pressed. It’s like hearing about people doing their own laundry is a rarity. We do our laundry in our basement, but we had to get a few jackets of Chris’s dry-cleaned, so I was lucky enough to find a reasonably priced cleaner just two blocks from our apartment. I noticed they had a sign posted for cleaning leather bags, so I asked the worker how much it would cost to clean my small Kate Spade bag. “For your bag? Eight-five dollars,” she said. “It’s expensive because we outsource it!”

Eighty-five dollars to clean a bag that cost less than four times that same amount? No, thanks. People are way too high maintenance in this neighborhood if that is really a considered a “reasonable” price.

Donation from a stranger

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Yesterday, I got an e-mail notification that someone I did not know donated $100 to my AFSP donor drive. When I logged into my account and read the message from this person, I realized it was a friend of my cousin’s. She said she found my work admirable to help others in light of this tragedy, and that my cousin spoke often about my brother, considering him like a little brother. He told her that he thought about my brother often.

While that sounds very touching, the sad part about that is that it’s easy for an outsider to think that my cousin cared a lot. My cousin rarely paid my brother any attention. He hadn’t spoken with him in over three months before he died. Sure, he sent him birthday and Christmas gifts, but part of love is actually being there and giving attention.

I’m grateful for the generous donation, but I’m just sad that this friend has no clue what the real story behind my cousin is.

Degrees of shared experience

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I was in my office kitchen cutting fruit yesterday when a colleague walked up to me to express her condolences about my brother. She was on the limited e-mail list I sent out to colleagues, letting them know I was participating in the Queens AFSP Out of the Darkness walk this year, and requesting a donation if they wanted to contribute. She told me that she admired my courage in sharing and discussing something so hard so openly, and she found my story very well written and heart felt.

She also told me that her best friend from college had a brother who also committed suicide. It happened when they were in college. She’s in her thirties now, and she said that to this day, her friend won’t admit to anyone that the cause of her brother’s death was suicide, and she refuses to discuss it openly with anyone — even her, and they are best friends. How did you know it was suicide? I asked her. Apparently, they found her brother and were there when the EMT came and pronounced it self-inflicted. She said it was obvious from the scene that it was suicide.

“That’s why I think it’s great what you are doing,” my colleague said to me. “It’s amazing that you can be so open about it because I really think it will help other people be more open to talking about something so sensitive.”

That’s easier said than done. Every time I get another donation notification, I feel all at once this overwhelming sensation of gratitude, and simultaneously a sense of misery that my own brother is dead as a result of his own doing.