Monthly Archives: January 2016

Lingering pertussis

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When we came back from Australia and Hong Kong at the beginning of January, I thought that hopefully by the time we left for Los Angeles for wedding planning errands that my bruised ribs and lingering cough and other cold-related symptoms would be gone, but I wasn’t so lucky. Three weeks into January, and I haven’t been able to do a proper gym workout even once, still have bruised ribs, phlegm and a cough. My voice still breaks when I speak, and I still sound like I am getting choked up when I speak. My goal is to sound and feel better before I see my parents on Monday night… because sure, I can really control these things.

I’m hoping that the Southern California air, despite how polluted it is, will help with my breathing. It will be warmer than New York, which has a scheduled snow storm that will hit shortly after we leave. I’m so happy to leave the snow storm that is New York, even if I am heading into what will be a wedding planning storm.

Therapist thoughts

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I originally was supposed to meet with my therapist this week, but given that my cough seems to have gotten worse and my ribs are still in a lot of pain, I decided to cancel. I let her know over text that I wasn’t able to come two days in advance and the reason was due to my whooping cough. No response. I thought that maybe the text didn’t go through for some reason, so I proceeded to write her an email with the same message. She simply responds that she received my text and my email and to feel better. No response regarding the whooping cough or my pain – just a matter of fact confirmation of receipt and a generic “get well soon” message. I’ll be honest. I was annoyed.

I’ve been seeing her for over two years. For about the first six months, I was seeing her for free as part of the program she was in at the hospital I was referred to. Each session was an hour. Then, when she started at her private practice, she gave me a 50 percent discount given our prior relationship, so I had to start paying to see her, which was understandable. Yet somehow, my sessions got shortened to 50 minutes, which I could sense based on how she’d speed up the sessions and end them a bit more abruptly than before. And it got confirmed on my pay statements.

Now, I’m recovering from whooping cough in the midst of all my phlegm build up and my bruised ribs, and I get zero sympathy from her or even a response to my text messages. This is what they say about therapists in New York. They have the guise of caring, but maybe they really don’t at all and are simply more motivated by money. If I were to die tomorrow, would she care? Well, she wouldn’t have to because if I die, she doesn’t get any more payments from me. I thought that maybe after two years that she’d develop some sort of human feeling for me and actually care about me, but it certainly doesn’t seem so. So this just goes back to my original cynicism about the world: you can’t even pay people to care about you because even then, they still won’t. And if they try to show they do care, they will put in the minimal amount of effort and leave it at that.

Monsters

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Last night, I dreamt that Chris was outside the apartment fighting monsters. Yes, they were real monsters, like the type of over sized green monsters you imagine from old fairy tales from your youth that have fangs, huge claws, and scaly skin. He fought them, beat them up, and killed them.

Then, he came back into the apartment to report back his accomplishments. I was at the counter cutting vegetables, and I was completely unfazed by what he had said. Meh, I thought. It’s not a big deal. He got really angry and said I didn’t value him enough and that he questioned my devotion to our relationship. I told him he was overreacting and being too sensitive. “Monsters are monsters,” I said. “What is the big deal? There are all kinds of issues out there to face in the world, and you want to fight monsters?”

Treating a cold

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My birthday didn’t end so well yesterday, as coughing spells began again, and the night ended with a big headache and feelings that were very similar to when my pertussis was in full force. I was hoping to get better, not to get worse. I’ve never been sick this long in my life. “30 and thriving!” my friend wrote to me yesterday. Yes, I’d be thirty and thriving if I weren’t trying so hard to recover from this stupid whooping cough.

Maybe Ed sensed how miserable I was physically feeling because he came to visit last night after a long time of no visits. In my dream, I was at home, and I noticed he was coughing and blowing his nose a lot. He sounded congested. I told him he didn’t look or sound so well, and he agreed and said he felt terrible. I opened the medicine cabinet in our bathroom at home and started taking out the Vicks inhaler, some pills, and a thermometer, and proceeded to boil some water and prepare honey and lemon for him. He sat down, like a little obedient boy, and watched me as I prepared things to make him better. I put my hand on his forehead to check his temperature, and he seemed fine. He had no fever. I gazed at my sick brother and wondered how long we’d be together for until he’d leave me.

And then as always, I woke up. Stupid whooping cough, and damn it, Ed. Always leaving.

Thirty.

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All my female friends have dreaded turning thirty. I’ve mumbled negative sentiments about it, especially given that thirty seems to be an ugly age for Asian moms thinking about their not-yet-married daughters. “When would they have children — after thirty?” they think to themselves in horror (or in my case, out loud directly to me). For some reason, our society has decided that the beginning of each new decade is a big deal, a milestone of some sort that warrants extra love and attention — or maybe just the latter.

Today, I turn thirty. It’s kind of weird to think that my twenties are officially over, that now I’m headed into the next decade of my life that will likely be filled with more career development, hopefully deeper and more meaningful relationships, new homes, and future children on the horizon — if I am so lucky to have them. For the longest time, I always felt older than my age, but today, I don’t feel that way at all. I feel just right at this point in my life regarding my age and my level of maturity and awareness of my surroundings and the world.

What is scary about turning thirty or just getting another year older for me personally is that each year older I get, the closer and closer I get to the final age my brother lived to see. Each year, I am getting older and older. My number is increasing. The lines on my face will increase. My hair will gradually lose its youthful sheen and slowly but surely turn gray and white. My skin will grow less elastic. But his number stays the same forever. The way I remember his face will always be the same — that same youthful, nearly unwrinkled face, with a bit of acne here and there, and an innocent smile that was naive and ignorant to most of the world. He is 33 forever, and that is still something I struggle to think about. How can I be getting older each and every day, yet his age, face, and body are stuck in the same hour of his life forever?

If Ed were here, what would he say to my turning 30? He’d probably think it was weird to think that his little sister was more of an adult now that she had finished her twenties. He’d marvel over how far I’ve come, living away from home, supposedly climbing up the career ladder and being so self-sufficient. If I had to be fully honest, I don’t think I’ve gotten exactly to the point career-wise I thought I’d be at 30. In a lot of ways, I’ve disappointed myself. We are always our own worst critics, but I’m not satisfied professionally, and that should be one of the most important areas of my life now, especially since I don’t have children yet. Part of that is due to some level of laziness, and I’m sure it’s also due to timing, as well. You know things aren’t going well professionally when you stop feeling challenged, or when you feel like no one really respects your opinion at work. I never entered the work force wanting to be popular or well liked; I just wanted to succeed, as abstract and vague as that may sound. Ed would give me more credit than I deserve. It’s all relative in that way, I suppose.

Every birthday I celebrate, I think, I wish Ed were here to call me to wish me a happy birthday. I don’t expect or want any gifts — just a phone call. It won’t happen, though. It’s the saddest part about getting older.

 

With the prissies

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I finally redeemed my Drybar gift certificate I got from my boss today since I’m going out with Chris and friends tonight to celebrate my birthday a day early. I walked into the Drybar on the Upper East Side this afternoon for my appointment and was greeted with glasses of mimosas, a large selection of gourmet cookies, and stacks and stacks of beauty and fashion magazines. The boutique was brightly lit, decked in white and yellow, and every woman sitting and waiting for an appointment seemed high strung and as though they were regulars at this spot. Clearly, I did not fit right in.

I got called in and my stylist asked me what brought me in. I told her I was new and had never done a blowout before, but that I’d like the Cosmo, the look from their limited menu that has loose curls. I told her my hair does not take curls well at all… so good luck. She washed and conditioned my hair, and proceeded to segment my hair out and clip, clip, clip it all up. And she began her blowing out and her curling. And I felt too much heat at my roots and so much on my hair that as the minutes went by, all I could think was, there is no way this could be healthy. But at the end, I was impressed with what she had done in such a short period of time. I had a head full of curls, and it actually looked good — I had volume, curls, and bounce. I also felt like a different person when I looked at myself in the mirror. This is why this place is addictive, I thought as I walked out. Women love being treated and pampered, and we all seem to love the idea of being transformed into gorgeous specimens.

But I have too much prudence to make this a regular fix for myself. It’s not in me to get too obsessive about my hair and other aspects of my physical appearance, and I’ll never be a fashionista who makes what she wears a top priority in her life. Food and travel are so much bigger and more exciting.

Approaching another year

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Some colleagues this week have been asking me about my birthday and how I plan on celebrating it this year. When we were discussing it, I thought about all the people I’ve met over the years who dread reaching their birthday, saying it’s not worth celebrating, that getting another year older stinks, that they just want the day to be over with and move on. The more I have thought about all these negative comments, the more I have realized that everyone who says this absolutely has no gratitude for their life and health. I thought about my friend who battled cancer for two years who wondered if she’d even reach her next birthday or the one after that. I thought about my experience with whooping cough and how I had moments when I wondered if I was dying and thought how much I’d taken for granted having good health. I thought about the quick deterioration of my grandmother when she died over 20 years ago, how she was perfectly healthy in February, got sick in March, suffered a stroke in April, and finally died in October of the same year. We don’t really know what’s going to happen tomorrow. We might be healthy today and get diagnosed with whooping cough or a life-threatening illness tomorrow. Hell, my ribs are still bruised and I am still coughing a month after getting sick. Despite all of the pain and this extremely long recovery period, I feel grateful that I didn’t experience the worst of whooping cough — thankfully for me, no broken ribs, hernias, or brain damage here. I’m grateful I’m here to celebrate 30 years on this earth, even if I don’t think life is fair and I know that there are a lot of terrible, selfish, and frankly dumb people in the world. Because I know that even though all that crap exists, there are still good souls on this earth who want to help others and make the world better, and there are a handful of amazing people here who love me and would sacrifice for me. And that’s enough to be grateful and look forward to another year of life here on earth. I believe those articles I read about how just thinking about what you are grateful about can make you a little happier each day because thinking about those things gives you a little less time to think about everything that is wrong. It’s focusing on the positive versus the negative. You can’t look forward to tomorrow if you only focus on what is bad.

When money matters

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I was messaging a friend throughout this week regarding the death of her boyfriend’s best friend from cancer earlier this week. This friend had been battling cancer for quite some time, and he finally passed away this past Sunday morning. It’s always sad and difficult when someone you are close to and love passes away, especially when there were so many years of shared love between you. It’s even harder when that person dies, and you can’t even be there at the end of their life, and even at their funeral for a last goodbye.

He wasn’t too far away. He and his wife lived in St. Louis. The plane ride to get there wouldn’t take too long, but the more we talked, I realized the main reason they couldn’t go was that it’d be too expensive to fly there at a moment’s notice for them. I felt really terrible when she said this, realizing that money was the main reason they couldn’t be there to say a final goodbye and to help comfort their late friend’s wife. This is when earning more than enough money just “to get by” really matters, I thought. This is when money itself actually matters. Money gives you the freedom to make choices like this in cases of emergencies and things out of your control. And they don’t have this freedom because of the jobs they’ve chosen.

We all make our own choices, right? And I guess we have to live by them, for better or worse, and when we aren’t happy with the choices we’ve made, we have to change them. When I look back at the time when Ed passed away, I would have ended my own life before I wouldn’t have been there that terrible week… to be there for my parents, to say farewell to the brother I loved so much for over 27.5 years of my life. It wouldn’t have mattered if it cost $800 or $8,000 to be there; I had to be there no matter what. But I chose a job and a profession that allowed me that ability. And not everyone has that. But if I were in that situation where I had to go into debt to be there, I’d probably reexamine my life and how I live it and make sure that if this ever happened again, I wouldn’t have to get to that point of not having that freedom.

White elephant

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Even though I’ve definitely exchanged quite a number of Christmas gifts and participated in Secret Santa, I’ve never actually done a White Elephant gift exchange before until tonight. After two grueling days of sales conference time, we had a big revenue team party tonight, which included a white elephant gift swap. A few interesting gifts came up: a cocktail shaker (redundant for us since we already have a nice one) with a fancy two-inch cube ice tray; a Snoopy imprinted toaster/waffle maker (the child in me got so excited when I saw this), a chipmunk shaped hat. We are limited with space here, so what was I going to select? I’d always been attracted to those fancy and perfectly angled ice cubes, and so I decided to “steal” that from someone else who opened it. At the end of the night, I got to keep it.

When your goal is to rid your small apartment of clutter, being extremely practical isn’t so bad after all. These perfect and large ice cubes are going to get some use here.

Mentee “grows up”

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I met with my mentee in the high school mentoring program I participate in tonight. I felt bad because I haven’t been able to make a single session for the last four months because I’ve been out of town every single time a meeting got scheduled. I’d always apologize in my emails to my mentee, and in each email that approached the next session, she’d always say that she hoped to see me then and that she missed me. It always made me feel like a negligent mentor.

So, I finally see her after not seeing her since last May, and what has happened to her since then? Not only has she curled her eyelashes and put on eye shadow and lipstick, but she’s even curling her hair now and trying to wear heels! She’s still growing into her body and is very awkward when she moves. I’m sure that was like me when I tried to wear heels and stand up tall when I was around her age. I told her she looked really cute with her hair, and she gave me a disgusted look and said it looked terrible and that she messed it up several times that morning.

She says she’s been an hour and a half late to school for her mentoring class each Tuesday because of the train and bus, but I wonder if it’s because she’s spending extra time doing her hair and makeup in the morning. These are the issues of teen girls across the country, if not the world, regardless of socioeconomic background or English language proficiency.