Tonight, before the show we were planning to see in the theater district, Chris and I spent some time browsing at Kinokuniya bookstore right across the street from Bryant Park. I hadn’t browsed in a bookstore in what felt like ages, so it was nice to skim a bunch of different books, from topics on business, travel, fiction, memoir, tidying, and even the kids’ section. I jotted down a number of titles that piqued my interest to read reviews about and consider reading, but funny enough, one book that really caught my attention was a children’s book called In My Heart: A Book of Feelings. The book has a big heart cut out from the center of it, and as you flip the pages, the heart becomes smaller and smaller. Each page describes a different emotion and why one would feel this way. I was so struck by the descriptions and the general heart depiction and how creative it was that I immediately noted it down as a potential gift for young parents.

As adults today, a large chunk of society struggles with showing their feelings, whether it’s physically or emotionally or mentally. It’s really sad. I realized that a large majority of my friends struggle to be really open with me about their feelings, whether it’s about things they think about on their own, or even if it’s around my brother’s death. When I messaged a friend earlier today that I was really touched by her generous donation to my AFSP donor drive, instead of making a personalized comment about my feelings or Ed’s life, she simply responded, “It’s a great cause.” Why are we so removed from feeling as adults — aren’t we supposed to be mature enough now to just feel? Is it because we were never taught these things growing up? Was it because it needed to be taught, to allow our feelings to be expressed and to be expressive in general?

It’s so frustrating. How do I meet and befriend people who can just be real with me and say it as they feel it?

I really hate my teeth. And I know I’ve had a lukewarm-to-hate relationship with them because ever since I can remember, I’ve always had nightmares about my teeth. I’ve had dreams ranging from teeth being loose (as an adult, which clearly is not good), teeth falling out, teeth chipping and cracking, to teeth just dangling from what looks like a string to my gums. Last night, I had a dream that when I took out my mouth guard (for teeth grinding), what also came out with them were some of my teeth. What remained in my upper bite were a few teeth dangling from my gums, threatening to fall out.

When I used to read dream dictionaries as a teen (yes, I really did this), the interpretation for teeth problems in dreams was that the dreamer was lying, and the teeth falling out was like a warning for the person to stop the fibbing. I don’t really have much to lie about right now, so that doesn’t seem like a very accurate interpretation, so I’m pretty sure this has to do with the fact that I’m painfully aware that a) I grind my teeth at night, b) I have a loose baby tooth in my mouth that is probably going to come out in the next couple of years), and c) I have sensitivity all over my freaking teeth.

Now, I can only dream of what it would be like to eat really cold food without having to strategically place it in my mouth and chew it a certain way. And I have to keep hard, crunchy foods on the left side of my mouth. These are not supposed to be problems of someone six months shy of 30.

My mom was so desperate to find out who paid for Friday night’s family dinner that she had to call me from the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses during one of her preaching outings with a worshiping friend. She couldn’t even wait until she got home to call me. She tried to delay it a lot by asking things like who actually showed up, what we ordered, how long we were out. And of course, the standard question finally came, “So who paid the bill?” I told her that my cousin paid the majority of it, my cousin’s wife’s sister paid a small portion, and I paid the rest. Then she annoyingly asked, “Russell didn’t pay the whole bill?” And then “Ellen and her husband didn’t even offer?” Notice how those questions are framed: in a negative, why-did-it-end-up-this-way-and-why-did-you-have-to-pay-at-all? – type way. It’s always negative, and it’s always as though she or I have been slighted. I didn’t feel slighted. I expected to pay a portion of the bill. I don’t like visitors paying unless they are staying for an extended time. She still doesn’t seem to understand this concept, so I have to reiterate it to her. Over and over again. My friend suggested to me to not tell her at all the result because it simply just does not matter (which it really doesn’t, and I agree), but I have a feeling that would result in far more nagging than I can tolerate.

I always knew that at some point, I’d probably butt heads with at least one or both of my parents-in-law. It couldn’t always be so bright and shiny, right? I couldn’t always see them as so great and warm and practically perfect. Something had to go wrong at some point. And how fitting that that “some point” has to be during wedding planning.

My mother-in-law had the brilliant idea to check to see what wedding invitation printing would cost in Chennai during her trip there to visit her mother, and given how expensive it is here overall despite discount codes and even my cousin’s employee credit for a high quality printing company, we decided to take her up on her offer because it would still be pretty expensive. However, doing this required my mother-in-law to be the “middle woman,” and me to write extremely detailed notes regarding what I was looking for regarding everything from font types for certain text, actual invitation and insert card text, envelope and invitation paper colors, to actual design. I wrote instructions on everything from font type for headers versus font type for regular text, to even the actual punctuation marks and how I wanted them to look. I thought I was doing her a favor for being so detail-oriented because that’s what she requested. And somehow, this backfired on me.

I guess my “details” weren’t received very well because there were mistakes made from missing or added punctuation, wrong header font, to even a missing word, which ended up driving me crazy today when I saw the finished (and fully printed – all 105 of them) product. I went back three times to look at the final wording I sent, and I just couldn’t understand how it was not printed like what I wrote to the T. It was very explicit — how did this go wrong? The most frustrating part about it was I actually caught a typo on the actual invitation days ago, and I pointed it out over Whatsapp to her. She got defensive and was very hesitant to call the printer to ask them to make that one small adjustment. I kept going on and on about it, insisting it needed to be fixed, and finally she relented on that one change. With the new typo I discovered today, not only did she say it was not possible at this point to change, but she actually went ahead and said that the text on the insert was exactly as I wrote in the e-mail — I was flabbergasted. Now, I was a liar?

Since the mistake is on the insert card, I’m not as concerned about it and will very likely let it go, but it’s more the principle of it that annoys me. I was asked to give very detailed instructions on what I wanted. I did that. And in the end, not only is it not followed, but I’m told it *was* followed and there are insinuations around my being overly anal and accusatory. And this is coming from someone who I thought was anal (this is someone who followed me around her kitchen every Christmas the last three years, wiping up tiny droplets of water or batter bits I’d leave behind on her kitchen counter within seconds after they’d appeared. Hey, I was going to wipe them up at the end of my cooking, but what can I do when someone else is hell-bent on it being done straight away?). Chris’s dad was not helping in this matter as he insisted the errors were not a big deal, but he only brought up the errors that I had already stated I was willing to gloss over.

Anyone who knows me at all knows I am extremely attentive to detail, and when I give instructions, I want it followed exactly. I’d do the same if I had a job as important as writing out someone’s wedding invitations. In fact, when I created my best friend’s bridal shower invitations, I re-read the text over 15 times before I actually hit “Submit” and purchased them. I read the text forwards, backwards, then forwards again, and finally caught a mistake probably the tenth or eleventh time I re-read it. That’s the kind of personality I am when I am dealing with anything writing related. I need someone who is almost as diligent as I am in that regard, otherwise, I rather just do all this myself, which I’ve mostly been doing since the beginning of wedding planning.

And the rest of the stationery for our wedding, whether it’s ceremony programs or menus or even the seating cards — I will be doing all of that myself. If I really want it done right, I will need to do this myself.

My cousin’s cousin who lives in Montreal contacted me today and let me know that she and her family (she has four kids and a husband) are all coming down for vacation to New York beginning tomorrow through Sunday, and they’d like to see me and my cousin in Brooklyn for a meal. I was happy to hear from her even though she’s quite distant family, and I wasn’t able to see her when I was in Montreal last summer. I told my mom she was coming, and as is the typical way my mother reacts when she hears someone is in town, she starts freaking out immediately over the possibility that I could be paying for the dinner bill. How is it that this is the very first thing she has to comment on when I tell her my cousin’s cousin is in town?! She also made sure to ask why she was even coming to town. Well, this may be hard to believe, but they want to actually… vacation in New York City. Is that so shocking?

“I don’t know if you realize this, but you have a wedding coming up, and it’s going to be very expensive, so you shouldn’t be paying for her and her entire family to eat, especially if your cousin and his wife come,” my mom admonished me for the second time (yes, she called me a second time later this evening to tell me again, because clearly I wasn’t really listening the first time we spoke when I left work). “I know you. You’re always so generous. So generous. You always want to pay for everyone.” I do? I didn’t realize that…

“I’m not going to pay for everyone!” I tried to control the volume of my voice. “Stop acting crazy and worrying about something so dumb.”

I also didn’t realize I had a wedding coming up. That is mine. That I have to pay for. Well, that just completely slipped my mind.

So all those thoughts I had yesterday of missing my parents, well, those are gone now. Can you guess why?

I took a red eye flight back to New York and arrived just past 7am this morning. I was bleary eyed, even after sleeping flat in business class for just over four hours. Four hours is not enough sleep for anyone. Who knew that I’d then be having a discussion on racism and gun control with my cab driver.

When I got into my cab to head back to the apartment, I made eye contact with my cab driver and realized he was not the usual Indian or Bangladeshi driver. After some small talk, I found out that he is actually Tibetan and had been living in this country for just over 15 years. He said he’s been married almost 15 years and wants to either go back to Southern India where there’s a large Tibetan community, or Tibet, where he’s from and where his family still lives. “I don’t feel safe in this country as a man,” he said, briefly mentioning the Charleston church shooting that has been all over the news in the last couple of days. “I don’t feel comfortable raising children here, especially boys. How can I feel comfortable knowing any random person can just get a gun, shoot, and kill me and my future son here?”

I felt so hurt hearing this. I realize that what he says sounds a bit paranoid, but given recent events, is it really that far fetched? Society is supposed to progress and get better as time goes on in an ideal world, and it seems like racism continues to persist. America, the land of plenty and opportunity, is disappointing immigrants and locals alike. What we praise as a melting pot that embraces all cultures, at this moment in time, just feels like a big sham, like a facade that we have to hold up to try to brag to the rest of the world that we’re the best (even when we clearly are not), to entice people to come into our country, and then be bombarded by arduous, senseless visa and immigration issues, a lack of gun control, and perpetual white supremacy that says that as long as you are not a white person in our society, you will never attain success as easily. You’ll always be seen as a black person or a Tibetan person or a yellow person. That’s what you are first and foremost.

I watched Jon Stewart’s clip on the Charleston shootings, and it resonated with me because that’s exactly how I feel. We will look at this incident of church goers being shot and killed during prayer as a tragedy, as a hate crime, but zilch will come of it because of politics, as Obama says. Nothing will change — at least, not in the near future. You and I may want change, but we have lots of neighbors who refuse to admit that guns are a problem here, that racism still persists, and turn a blind eye to all these deaths as long as their own loved ones are untouched by these terrors.

As a country, we’re so f*cked up.

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about Ed. About two years ago to this day, Ed did a hike with some church friends and apparently outpaced all of them reaching the peak. He powered through it and didn’t take any breaks. He never told me about the hike, but I heard that he went through our dad, who told me afterwards.

Why didn’t he ever tell me about these things when I asked him? I wondered. Every time I’d call him, I’d ask him what he’d been up to lately, and his answer was always the same: “Nothing.” It was like pulling teeth for him to talk to me on the phone. I’ll be honest: as much as I love my brother, he was always one of the worst people to speak with over the phone. He’s impossible to read when you are talking to him that way, and he hates the telephone. He never enjoyed answering the phone and preferred to let all calls go straight to the answering machine. It used to drive me crazy, and I would always get so exasperated. I know he would have been more honest and open with me about his activities if I had been there in person.

I remember the photo that his church friend shared from that hike via e-mail after I requested pictures. Everyone in the photo is smiling at the camera except him. His face stares into the camera, lonely, a little sad, distant from the world in many ways. I can’t even bring myself to look at it now because I know how upset I will be if I do. I look back at the time when he was alive, and I can’t help but think that there were too many things that were left unsaid, or perhaps not said enough, or emphasized enough, and now it’s too late. It’s been almost two years since he’s passed, and I still think about these things. It’s not so much my own pain that lingers as strongly, but more the pain he felt that seems to stay with me, maybe because I never fully had the capacity to understand it, and also because of the helplessness of his pain. It’s as though the pain was so deep that even God couldn’t help him at that point, and Ed just let go.

I had a very vivid dream last night. I was back home in San Francisco, and I’m in my dad’s car with my parents as my dad is driving up the hill. As we reach the top, I see Ed and my cousin standing there, seemingly in an argument. As I look closer, I realize that Ed has a gun in his hand as he waves it around, and I hear their argument: my cousin is trying to convince Ed not to shoot himself. Ed wants to end his life. I start yelling at my dad to stop the car, but he refuses. “He’s going to do what he wants, so just let him do it,” my dad says. “He never listens to anything we say, so what difference will it make?” I scream at him and tell him that’s not the point; we need to help him because he needs us now, at this very second. We keep arguing and screaming at each other, and I threaten to jump out of the moving vehicle if he does not pull over. When he finally stops the car, I run out and get to the top of the block to see that Ed has already shot himself in the head. Blood is everywhere surrounding his skull, and my cousin is lying over him, screaming and crying for Ed’s life. Our mom runs over and is wailing, and our dad stands there stoically and says nothing.

It’s like a reminder to me that Ed is never coming back, and my parents will always be who they are, as frustrating and painful as it is for me.