Monthly Archives: October 2018

My uterus no longer belongs to me

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As soon as we got married, I realized I had relinquished ownership of my uterus because my mother-in-law prepared her house in the southern hemisphere for little ones running around that December, and my own mother immediately asked within days when I would get pregnant. I was 30 that year, and to my mom, I was old to not have a child. It was as though the clock was ticking, and every second that passed by, my eggs were slowly but surely being depleted one by one, and the mothers were watching. Their eyes were upon me…. me and my belly. And when it didn’t grow, I disappointed people. When I said yes to a glass of wine, my mother-in-law would be deflated (while my father-in-law rejoiced at “another drop”). When I ate raw fish and they heard about it, they were unhappy. All eyes were and are on the uterus.

On Monday when I talked to my mom, she asked how things were going, and I said I had a lot to do at work and was pretty busy. Then, when I talked to her again on Wednesday, she said, “You said you had a ‘lot to do.’ What did you mean by that? Are you pregnant?!” No, I AM NOT. She was not happy. “Well, you know you have the right to get pregnant, right? You’re married now!” Oh, really? I had no idea I had the “right,” nor did I remember I was married, but thanks for reminding me!

Today, I talked to her again as I was leaving work, and she pressed me about being pregnant… again. “Are you sure your belly isn’t growing?” It’s actually funny that she asked that because my entire core is sore this week because I’ve finally had four consecutive days of rigorous workouts for the first time since July due to my hamstring and back injuries. So if anything, it should not be “growing,” but it should be strengthened and tighter. So, no growing. She was not pleased.

These days, no “news” is good news to either mother unless a grandchild is on the way. This is the life I lead now. I am a constant disappointment.

#worldmentalhealthday

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I was taking a break and scrolling through my Instagram feed today when this Rupi Kaur post came up:

yesterday

when i woke up

the sun fell to the ground and rolled away

flowers beheaded themselves

all that’s left alive here is me

and i barely feel like living

depression is a shadow living inside me

We always say that it takes a village to raise a child. It also takes a village to help someone out of their depression, to help them separate the idea that ending pain does not necessarily mean s/he needs to end his/her life. The saddest part about that statement, though, is that even when people do show obvious signs they are struggling, the people who should care and give more attention do not. And then, it is suddenly too late, and those remaining have all these regrets of thoughts of what they could have done — should’ve could’ve would’ve. 

The laziness and inaction of human beings never ceases to anger me. That applies to voting, too, in today’s heated political climate.

Meeting in person for the first time

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The funniest thing about today’s day and age with social media is that people can “know” you and ongoing details of your life without ever having met you. It’s almost like in some ways, you are both celebrities to each other, but when you finally do meet in person, it’s as though you’ve really known each other this whole time. That happened when Chris suggested I meet him at a bar in midtown after work today, and lo and behold, there he was, having drinks with one of his direct reports who is living in Chicago, but who I’ve known of and who has known me pretty much as long as she’s been at the same company as Chris. We both follow each other on Instagram; she “friended” me on Facebook years ago, and has even donated to my AFSP fundraising drive. She even comments on my Instagram photos and occasionally sends me private messages through it. We chatted over drinks tonight, and she actually did not feel like a stranger at all to me.

There are certainly many evils to social media, but I can say that I am still on it and still feel like I benefit from its existence. These are some of the fun moments that happen as a result of it.

Crappy American healthcare

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I was disappointed a few weeks ago when I received a notification that my primary care doctor, who I’ve been seeing for the last two years, had stopped accepting my current company’s health insurance. In this city, it’s one of the most aggravating and trying experiences to find the right doctor for anything. Her assistant said she’d happily see me as an “out-of-network” provider, but I immediately declined. My company is paying enough for health insurance for me; why should I have to give any doctor even more money out of pocket?! No one is that good in this crappy American healthcare system where we are constantly getting gouged left and right.

So, I was relieved when I called my gynecologist’s office today to find out that they have no changes in the insurances they accept and that I could still come in for a visit “in-network.” Well, there was a clarifying question.

Me: Does Dr. XXXX accept Blue Cross Blue Shield as in-network?

Assistant: Is it Blue Cross Blue Shield through your employer?

Me: Yes.

Assistant: Then great! We certainly do accept them.

Hmmm. What could this be about — the healthcare exchange through the Affordable Care Act…? We cannot even have those who are getting their own health insurance covered in the same way that we are covered because we have the luxury of having healthcare through our employers, whereas those others will just constantly get rejected left and right? This stupid healthcare system makes me more and more mad every single time I read an article about it or have a phone conversation with a provider like this. This should not be our normal.

Lamb barbacoa

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When the circumstances of our country are out of my control… which is pretty much every day that I am not able to vote, I just have to throw my energy at the things that I love, like food and cooking. I spent the last couple of days shopping and prepping for our lamb barbacoa meal tonight. I made the ancho and guajillo-chile-based marinade on Friday, purchased the tomatillos for the salsa verde yesterday, and then wrapped up the Australian lamb leg in banana leaves today and roasted it for just over two hours. I wasn’t sure how long to roast it for given the original recipe had an eight-pound leg and said to roast it for eight hours, and I had a five-pound leg. So I started researching roasting a lamb leg and decided that just over two hours would be enough… but it really wasn’t. It was certainly done. It tasted good and certainly tasted like lamb and barbacoa, but the pull-apart tenderness was not there likely because I didn’t roast it for long enough. Then, I went back to the harissa lamb leg recipe I used last time I made lamb at home that was very tender, and that was a four-pound leg that I left in the oven for five hours. The roasting also wasn’t long enough for the banana leaf flavor to really penetrate the meat. I cut up the meat feeling disappointed.

This is one of the reasons I hear when people say that even if they are meat eaters, they don’t like or just completely avoid preparing meat at home. It can be hit or miss with the timing, doneness, and tenderness. Then, there’s also the factor of messiness because meat fat tends to get everywhere, even when you don’t expect it.

The Winning Side

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We are certainly not feeling like we are on the winning side today after seeing the news alert on our phones that Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed as the next Supreme Court justice, but we ended up seeing a show today called The Winning Side, a play about the true story of Wernher von Braun, the chief rocket engineer of the Third Reich and one of the founders of the U.S. space program. He was technically a Nazi working for the Nazis, but through Operation Paperclip, a secret program in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians, were recruited and granted U.S. citizenship, he gained citizenship and thus became an American. The play is probably one of my favorites that we have seen lately, and it does a very compelling job in asking its audience to question our views about science, technology, politics, and ethics. Was it really okay to bring someone like von Braun into the U.S. so that the U.S. could benefit from his great intellect and experience in rocket science despite the fact that he was a Nazi and basically overlooked what Hitler was doing to exterminate all non-German people? Can you truly remove yourself from politics when you are a rocket scientist on the Nazi side, trying to help future humankind while at the same time saying that you don’t really identify as a Nazi?

In the play, von Braun has an affair with a French woman who (fictionally) is an actress. While he was able to continue his life and move on to the U.S. and become a citizen, one who was quite respected, on the other hand, she got caught for this illicit affair and was called out for “collaboration horizontale” — French women who were involved in some way with any Germans during WWII. Along with countless other French women, she was publicly shamed, her head shaven, her body beaten, stripped naked, and spit on constantly by the crowds. She was then ostracized by her country and forced to flee to French Morocco, where she ended up destitute.

What is this, an ongoing theme of white men getting away with and even getting rewarded for all the crap they do, and women just having to suffer all the consequences of what the men did? It’s almost uncanny that we watched this just hours after hearing the Kavanagh confirmation news.

It’s like pain on top of pain. This was the case then. This is the case now. The unfairness goes on.

 

When life is truly not fair

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Since President Dipshit got elected almost two years ago now, it’s been pretty difficult to have faith in humanity, or at least, in the American people. When facts are no longer facts, it’s hard to believe that “progress” will persist in a country that claims to be the land of the free. When your fellow citizens decide that it’s okay to elect a human being who doesn’t take his marriages seriously, has potentially raped his former spouse and sexually assaulted dozens of women, thinks nations that are not predominantly white are “shit hole” nations and lesser than, is an advocated of white supremacy, and has likely committed tax fraud, you realize that you can’t really take your “peers” seriously anymore and constantly sit shocked at how insane they all are. At that point, it is impossible to talk sense into these people because these people think we, on the progressive side, are the crazy, out of touch ones. And at that point, no compromise is possible.

So when the allegations of sexual assault against a Supreme Court nominated judge came out, my cynical side figured… who cares about what Anita Hill went through in the 1990s when Clarence Thomas was about to be confirmed? People don’t really care about history in this country anyway because they don’t pay attention to it, remember it, or value it. She went through painful hearings, all for nothing because Thomas was confirmed. And when this all started, I figured, it will be the same thing because we as a people cannot learn lessons of the past because we do not understand the past, nor do we care to. Christine Blasey Ford testified, respectfully and gracefully, with credibility acknowledged from both sides of the aisle. Yet, Kavanaugh will be confirmed because he’s just yet another privileged, wealthy white man who can get away with whatever he wants because he is white and he is male. Even if we put aside the sexual assault allegations, even if Ford did have the wrong guy (which I highly doubt based on the testimony), even if none of this ever happened… this man is not fit to sit on the Supreme Court. It doesn’t matter that he revealed poor temperament during the hearings. It doesn’t matter that he was clearly partisan during the hearings, literally screaming against the Clintons and the Democrats and saying they were trying to  “get revenge” on him for his involvement during the Clinton scandal in the 90s. What, we demand bipartisanship and mature temperament of a Supreme Court justice? Nah. We’ll pass on that.

We are passing on that. Because the potential “swing” voters on the Senate already declared today that they will vote “yes” on him. And now, for probably the rest of my adult life, I will not be able to have any trust in the Supreme Court. How can we trust the Supreme Court when in my lifetime, we have denounced two extremely brave, intelligent, strong women for coming forward and exposing some of the most intimate and excruciating details of their lives to then have all those testimonies thrown away by confirming both of those vile men? It was as though it was all for nothing. Ford’s time was wasted. She risked her life, received many death threats, and had her house surrounded by media; she is the one who had everything to lose. This white male had everything to gain. And tomorrow he will when he gets confirmed.

When people say life is fair, I look at moments like this and think, what the fuck is “fair’? That white men get away with whatever they can because of their race, gender, and money, and that pretty much everyone else, even white women, have to suffer at their expense?

 

 

 

when someone’s death gives you perspective

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A former colleague who was let go from my current company and I got together tonight for happy hour drinks. Around the time he got let go last year, his romantic relationship of over five years also ended shortly before that, so it was a massive double whammy in life for him. Although I knew that he had experienced a breakup around that time, I had no idea of the details behind it, or that they were together for such a long time. He revealed all this to me and what a shock it was tonight. I felt pretty terrible; I don’t even know how I’d react if I lost my job and my life partner at the same time. It would almost feel like a complete life failure in some ways to know that two such significant things came to a halting end all at once.

He said that although he had some really low moments over the last year, some much darker than others, when he read stories like the one about my brother in my fundraising drive message, it was like a reality check to him that his life really wasn’t so bad, that he actually had a lot of good things going for him, and that a lot of things made him happy. It made him happy to go out and run, smell fresh air, hike in nature, and be around his good friends. He had it really good, he concluded. Stories like my brother’s, as tragic as it sounds, gave him perspective. He eventually got a new job, and he’s been dating occasionally here and there to see what else could be out there for him. He seems to be taking control of his life as opposed to allowing his life to control him. I felt happy for him hearing this.

I do hope that when people read the story about Ed that it does give them some perspective. There’s a big difference between ending pain and ending life. I only wish Ed had been able to see that.

A walk with my dad

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I woke up from a dream this morning that seemed far too ordinary yet again. This time, it was a walk around the block of my parents’ house with my dad. It’s my parents’ “thing” to exercise by walking around our block a few times. This seems extremely mundane, repetitive, and ridiculous when you think about the fact that they literally live across the street from Golden Gate Park, one of the nicest parks in this entire country, but my parents claim they don’t have time to walk all the way across the street to Golden Gate Park for daily walks. They also said that since the avenue above us is a steep hill, the incline helps with their exercise. While that second part may be true, this has always sounded pretty pathetic to me.

My dad and I were walking around the block on this walk. He does this walk every day even when I am home, and I’ve never gone with him, nor have I ever offered to go with him. He’s never asked me to go, either. But for whatever reason, we were walking this boring walk together in this dream, and we were surprisingly having normal father-daughter conversation. When I say “normal,” I mean.. if our relationship were a “normal” father/daughter relationship, which it isn’t. We had a reasonably decent conversation about work and things that were annoying me there. We talked about my friends and their lives. We talked about New York and potentially staying… forever. This conversation was too good to be true, and halfway through the dream, I thought, yes, this is definitely a dream. There is zero way this could be a real walk and a real conversation.

Then, I woke up and confirmed my suspicion. And I also hoped that given how strange this “normal” dream was that nothing bad was waiting for me around the corner in reality.

Knots in my back

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My back has been acting up since last week. It seems to come and go depending on what I am doing, which is really frustrating. I tried running again today, and my lower back is tight now. So throughout the work day, I laid out a mat on the floor near my desk, laid down, and stretched.

What this led to was others in my office getting on the floor and stretching, too. Then, one of my colleagues said he was in desperate need of a back massage, so he asked if I’d be willing to take off my flats and walk on his back.

This was, by far, the strangest thing any colleague has ever asked me to do. I wasn’t sure how to respond to this, so I immediately said no.

He kept insisting. I told him that it seemed like an awkward request, and it would look really weird. But then again, as if it really mattered given our office was mostly empty anyway, and only a handful of people were around to witness this potential event. So I finally gave in and walked on his back… literally all over his back. I guess the pressure seemed to help relieve some of his tension.

I actually walked on my colleague’s back today. Never thought I’d ever do that, but I guess you never know what you are capable of in an office setting.