I don’t think any of us will ever fully understand our parents. Regardless of generation, what year you were born, what life experiences you may or may not have had, I think that because of the hierarchical relationship between parent and child, a child will never fully know her parent, and at the same time, a parent will never fully know her child. I mean, does anyone ever fully know anyone, anyway?

I came back to my parents’ house tonight for the first time during this trip back. The last time I was here was at the end of January. And when I went into my room, I noticed that the framed childhood photo of my brother and me was no longer on the shelf where it’s been sitting ever since I was a toddler; it was missing. That’s one of my favorite photos of us together. Where was it? Who moved it, and why?

So, my dad moved it. In fact, he moved it and cannot seem to remember where he put it. “I was just clearing away things and getting rid of junk, and so I may have taken it down,” he said nonchalantly. “I’ll try to see if I can remember where I put it, but I may have thrown it out.”

Junk? Childhood photos of your own children…. are junk that need to be cleared away and even thrown out?

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Tonight, we went to see Ronny Chieng, one of the Daily Show correspondents, perform some test material, and his opening act was Adam Lowitt, who is also a Daily Show contributor (I think his official title is “Senior Jewish Correspondent”). If anyone has any doubt that “white privilege” exists and is real, they should have heard what he had to say tonight.

He talked about how he and his wife were driving with their infant baby in the backseat in Jersey, and he was speeding because that’s just what he does. A police siren goes off, and he realizes it’s for him. So he pulls over, and the police officer approaches and starts speaking in a loud voice. Without even realizing why this would be a bad idea, Adam immediately says “Shhhhhh!! (looks to the back of the car) The baby is sleeping.” And not only does the police officer lower his voice in response, he lets Adam and his wife go simply on a warning.

Adam admitted it. He said he took advantage of his white privilege then by speaking in such an irreverent way to a police officer without even thinking. If he were a person of color, he never would have done that, and if he did, he probably would not have been treated as well as he was.

If that were Chris driving, or if that were a black or another brown person who tried to “shhhhh” a police officer, what do you think would have happened? I don’t think any person of color would even dream of “shhhh”ing a police officer. In fact, Chris and I have gotten pulled over twice, once for speeding and another time because Chris forgot to turn his headlights on at night. The police officer who pulled us over for the lack of headlights was angrier than angry that Chris didn’t immediately pull over (Chris said he got confused and wasn’t sure it was for him), and then got even more mad when Chris answered one of his questions the wrong way. I always look back on those moments and think, would that police officer have responded the same way if Chris were white?

Sometimes, the world seems like a very large place. That is, until you realize that the people you have met know other people you know and associate with even though they are all from very different places, and then you find out that your friends are sharing scandalous details of the lives of people you interacted with only once or twice.

I recently interviewed with a company that I decided in the end I was not going to be serious about, and the primary hiring manager seemed unusually kind and sensitive. If I had to be a little paranoid about this, I’d even go so far as to say that he may have been interested in me. While all that is flattering, what is not flattering is what I just learned about him through a friend, whose company partners with his. My friend told me that he found out recently through a mutual source that this guy was fired from a previous company for using company dollars to take out over 20 different women on dates, and also was caught sending naked photos of himself to female employees at that company. My friend said to me, “This isn’t the kind of person you want to associate with!” I laughed and said, “Well, it’s clear you don’t want me to associate with him because you’re trying to be my protector.”

Good friends want to protect you from crap. And good friends also want to make sure you know the truth. I told Chris this story, and he responded, “But that is just what happens every day.” He doesn’t think this is scandalous. I guess in some ways, it isn’t because the expensing of personal expenses — it’s very likely true (as I have personally seen from those around me without naming names) that people do this all the time; what ends up mattering in the end is who gets caught. This is the world we live in. Integrity is not a given anymore.

My head has spent the last week being a bit muddled. There have been highs and lows, but mostly conflicting thoughts. And when that tends to happen, Ed tends to show up out of nowhere in his sneaky, subtle ways.

In my dream, he was sitting at the dining room table having a passive aggressive argument about the house with our father. Our father didn’t want to address him directly (which was usual behavior), so he made indirect comments that were obviously meant for Ed. Ed muttered negative things under his breath, which no one could hear or make out other than me. I sat there silently, which was also the norm in my dreams.

Muddled subconscious really means I will just have more conflicting and uneasy dreams with my parents, which inevitably include Ed.

Since I was 11, I’ve been actively reading about mental health, illness, and suicide. It was obviously influenced by my brother’s first suicide attempt and his condition, as I’m quite certain the average 11-year-old doesn’t seek out information like this in his/her free time. Now, as a suicide loss survivor (as I’m told I am labeled now), I still actively read news and publications around mental health and suicide prevention. It seems as though it doesn’t matter whether I am 11 or 31, or whether I am a loss survivor or potentially one day a social worker or mental health educator; we will never fully know “enough” to completely and truly understand the complexities of depression, the desire for suicide, or the ultimate ways to rationally separate the notion of ending suffering from ending life for someone who is in need.

So a few days ago, a TED Talk from November 2016 popped up in my Facebook feed, and it happened to be done by Sue Klebold, the mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the two teenagers who were responsible for the mass murder at Columbine High School in 1999. Her son was deeply depressed, but his depression went completely undetected by both her and her husband, their older son, and the school and its staff. That then begs the question of: how does a suicidal tendency become a homicidal one at the same time? She doesn’t answer the question in her TED talk, as that would be very difficult to answer given the sparse data we have on this, but she does touch on the suffering that can go undetected with even the most careful eyes, and the idea that no matter how loving and attentive you are as a parent, you may never fully know your children at all.

It was only about 15 minutes of presentation, but it was still really hard for me to watch. We forget this when we remember Columbine, but it was a mass murder and a suicide. Two boys took their own lives after killing 13 others. Their parents have to live every day knowing that not only did their sons murder over a dozen people, but their sons also shot themselves dead by choice. I still have moments throughout the day now when I acutely feel the pain of losing my brother to suicide, and it’s been over three and a half years now. I cannot even begin to fathom the pain of losing him and knowing that he could have taken the lives of others, as well.

Isn’t that a scary thought, though, that you could bring human beings into the world who you never ultimately know or understand at all? The thought is so chilling.

That’s kind of how I feel about my parents. Except at least I’m not a mass murderer.

I called my dad from the airport today before we left for Melbourne, and as is his usual tendency, he started talking about all kinds of depressing topics like life insurance, what he’d do if he’d officially retire (watch a lot of YouTube videos all day), and my future inheritance and death taxes I may have to pay.

I always wonder during these conversations if these topics actually give my dad pleasure. He loves to discuss logistical things even when they make no sense or are overly cautious, and he stays far away from discussing anything about feelings. It’s hard to relate to that stance in life because I’m not like that at all. In fact, when I try to show feelings, most of the people I’ve chosen to spend time around, both family and friends, tend to change the topic.

Repression is the worst.

There are endless reasons I love to travel, but one of those reasons is that I love being exposed to other languages and cultures that I’m not accustomed to being around every day here in the U.S. I actually love listening to people speak other languages, especially the ones I cannot readily recognize. So when I hear people, all American, tell me that they get tired and frustrated being in a “foreign” country for as short of a period as just two days and not hearing English, I always feel part annoyed, part embarrassed. I feel annoyed because — why are you traveling to non-English speaking countries if you cannot handle hearing other languages constantly? And I feel embarrassed because these people are representative of my country: they feel entitled, as though the rest of the world needs to learn and speak and know English just because we do and we are clearly the center of the entire universe, and they think that our way here is the best way. And sadly, what this ultimately reveals is our own inner prejudices and biases against cultures other than what we are used to.

I don’t know where we learn this from – it must be the inane American exceptionalism that is taught in a lot of classrooms across this country. It is absolutely atrocious. But hey, we live in Trump Nation now, so I guess this will be part of our everyday rhetoric that I better start getting used to.

On our flight back from Madrid to New York, I finished my North Korean defector book The Girl with Seven Names, and watched two movies: Race the 2016 movie, and The Man Who Knew Infinity. Race is a movie that highlights the racial tensions of the 1930s in the U.S., and how that compared with Nazi Germany during the same time. Segregation was all over the U.S. at that time, where blacks were separated from whites for everything from entrances to bathrooms to businesses. Yet, when Jesse Owens comes to Berlin, he is confused and surprised when he is told that there are no segregated dormitories for blacks and whites. In Nazi Germany, he can actually coexist with whites, and it is fine. So when Hitler gets negative press in American newspapers for not congratulating Owens for winning the first race, Owens comes back to the U.S. and says, “Hitler didn’t snub me – it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram.” The often elevated and revered FDR didn’t even shake his hand or acknowledge his four-time winnings at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. It wasn’t until 40 years later that he would be recognized and given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ford.

FDR isn’t the only president who is forgotten for terrible things he did and failed to do. JFK was similar in that he didn’t really seem to care about civil rights until he was absolutely forced to; this is highlighted very vividly at the National Civil Rights Museum in Tennessee that we visited in October. I mean, FDR and JFK were rich white men in power; why did they truly need to care about people who looked different than them? It’s all about pandering to their parties and making sure they get the vote. It’s frustrating to be reminded of these sobering facts at at time when we’re about to usher in one of the most openly racist and intolerant presidents in history.