In the last four months, I’ve somehow managed to identify two new sensitive spots on the inner sides of my molars. Any time anything very cold touches them, it’s like electricity flying because of my nerve endings being hit. It’s been making it difficult for me to eat cold things, so I started using Pronamel sensitive teeth toothpaste and have been eating cold things very slowly and deliberately. I usually try to chew on the front side of my mouth, away from the back where the sensitive spots are, and then I swallow.

This makes me sound old and pathetic. I haven’t even reached 30 yet and my teeth are already bothering me. The most frustrating part about all this is that I’m so good to my teeth; I haven’t had a cavity since I was under the age of 10, I brush my teeth twice a day and floss every night, and I even wear my retainer and mouth guard each night to Chris’s absolute disgust. I’m sure that despite wearing my mouth guard that my jaw still clenches at night. I guess there’s nothing I can do about that, sadly. I just don’t know what else there is to do to prevent any more sensitive spots from cropping up.

It’s these moments when sometimes, I think it may be easier to just have all false teeth. Then, there would be no nerve endings at the end of the teeth to sting my mouth.

My emotions have been going crazy the last week, and I’ve found myself tearing up and remembering how horrible this time last year was. I kept playing in my head the image of my brother walking up and down the Golden Gate Bridge, waiting for lesser foot traffic so he could get his moment to jump.

Last night, I dreamt that I was back home just days after he died, and I was going through all of his belongings. I was sitting on the living room floor surrounded by piles of papers and books and boxes of his many toys and collectibles. I opened a box with a lot of miniature figurines no bigger than my thumbnail, and I’m admiring each of them one by one, wondering how he had all these little things and I had no idea. In the dream, my mouth feels dry and my entire head feels numb. And the house is somber and I am alone, all by myself, surrounded by Ed’s things.

This dream was disappointing because I never even got to see him; who wants to dream about remembering pain and misery and losing someone? I think he might do this to me purposely. When he hasn’t visited in a while in my dreams, and I want him to come, he doesn’t come. And this time of the year will always be the worst because not only does it contain the anniversary of his death, but just one month later, what would be his birthday. And this year, it would have been his 35th. My poor Ed never got to see his 35th birthday. Yet life goes on without him.

I spent a lot of the morning in bed thinking about Ed and the words my friend had written me in that card I received last night. I thought about how his life was cut short voluntarily, and how he had so much more to breathe in and experience. And then, later in the morning, I find out that someone else I have seen regularly, about once a month for the last year and a half, has also died.

Our building has arranged for an exterminator to do regular checks of each apartment monthly, and for the longest time, the same man would come knock on our door on a Saturday morning and inspect and spray our bathroom and kitchen. He was generally a friendly person and always smiled. Today, another exterminator came in to inspect the apartment, and having polite conversation with us, he asked if we remembered him. Of course we did, we said. We saw him every month. Well, he died, this man said.

Apparently, he died of a brain aneurysm. He supposedly seemed completely fine beforehand, but the aneurysm ruptured, and he died. It was such a shock to both of us when we found out. We saw him regularly for so long, and now suddenly, he is dead and we’re never going to see him again.

I spent a lot of today thinking about this on and off. We didn’t really know him as a person; he was just the exterminator who came to make sure our apartment was roach and rodent-free. He’s someone we saw regularly but had no real, deep relationship with. It still makes me sad. He’s someone who was in our lives, but at the same time, not. He couldn’t have been any older than 40 or 45. How does one even prevent a brain aneurysm? Or are we all just going to die of something ridiculous like this, or as I keep hearing, of some stupid, new form of cancer that seems to be a result of the chemicals and additives in the food we eat in today’s “modern” society?

While it would be great if my entire wider family were functional and we all got along, that is simply just not true. You know it’s not true when you call your mother after work, and she asks you, “Did your Auntie X call you lately?” You answer no, and she says, “Good.” What kind of response is that?

It’s as though every time a family member contacts me, my mother hates it. She doesn’t want anyone reaching out to me or telling me anything. She especially doesn’t want me to tell them anything about my life, like where I have traveled to, what restaurants I have eaten at. Why? Because for some reason, all of those things seem negative to my parents because they can be spun in such a way that supposedly makes me look bad or snobby or careless.

My mother said to me yesterday while getting angry at me for getting exasperated at her, “You always think that your mom is so negative when I am trying to be positive. You are the negative one.” I think both of my parents define psychological projection.

I’ve realized that I’ve found myself silently fuming over my parents and all of their negativity and flaws this week. In the last year, I’ve had moments or hours when I would go over and over in my head why they are so miserable and negative when I think about my brother and how he isn’t with us anymore, but they would eventually pass. This week, it seems to be a reoccurring thing that comes and goes constantly throughout the day. When I least expect it, I am getting more and more angry with them. I am remembering one event after another that they have managed to make more difficult or just completely ruin.

I realized tonight that maybe one reason these feelings are re-surfacing to the extent that they are is because the anniversary of Ed’s passing is like a reminder to me about all the anger I’ve had against them and how they helped drive him to the lowest point in his life. As much as I want to have a functional relationship with them, a part of me will never forget how poorly they treated him, especially when you compare their treatment of him to their treatment of me.

Tonight, like I anticipated, my mother asked and obsessed over the same things I predicted. Since she knew I had dinner with my cousins’ cousins in Montreal, she asked me five hundred annoying questions about their family and made sure to add in the 100-dollar question, “I don’t mean to be nosy, but who paid the (dinner) bill?” There’s really no winning here no matter what answer I give. There are three possible answers: 1) I paid, which would infuriate her, 2) they paid, which she would be mad about because then she’d feel a massive, guilty need to re-pay them immediately because it’s impossible for her to truly believe that anyone would willingly do anything nice for me without expecting something in return as soon as possible, or 3) we split the bill, which also would drive her crazy because then we were all cowardly and none of us would take the initiative. Of course, when I said it didn’t matter and that my cousin paid the bill, she got annoyed and asked if I had bought them a gift. No, Mom, I didn’t immediately run to a store to buy them a gift after dinner because I’m not that transparent. But I will remember that they were so generous, and I will most definitely offer and pay the bill when they decide to come to New York eventually.

It’s a good thing that I’ve somehow managed to un-learn a lot of the stupid, negative things my mother has tried to teach me. I shouldn’t feel guilty when people are nice and pay the bill for me and feel like I “owe” them something ASAP. When I pay the bill for others, I shouldn’t feel like I am “waiting” for them to pay next time. It should just be what it is, and if I surround myself with good people, we should all be good and generous with each other. It doesn’t have to be negative if you can just look at it positively and think that maybe not everyone is out to “get” you.

I called my mom today after I got off work, and I could tell she was on edge because she kept asking me the same questions twice minutes after asking them the first time. I asked her what she was doing, and she said that she and my dad were getting ready to go visit Ed at the Columbarium. Since they weren’t here on the 22nd, they had planned to come see him after they came back from Monterey.

On the train ride home later tonight, I suddenly felt really solemn when I thought about all those times that Ed hated spending time alone with my parents, and all those calls he would make to me when both of them were not home to rant to me, or that brief period when he had a mobile phone, and he’d use it to call me to complain about them. As much as I love my parents, they always see the glass half empty and look for the worst in every person and every situation; it’s just the way they are, and I’m sure it has been shaped by life circumstances they have faced as well as bad experiences with others they’ve had. Ed knew this, and he couldn’t stand it. Even in their calmest moments together, Ed was always tense and uneasy; he never felt fully comfortable and was always scared of the next second when our dad would criticize him for doing something “stupid” or our mom would snap at him for something else nit-picky.

And when I thought about all this, I realized: the truth is that their calmest times together have been… now, when Ed is no longer of human form, and my parents go visit him on their own at the Neptune Columbarium. As depressing as that is, it is the reality of the situation. My dad can’t say anything to put him down, my mom is too overcome by her grief of losing him, now just over a year ago, that she can’t get mad about anything, and Ed… is just quiet and observes them observing him.

I don’t mean to be an offensive person, but sometimes it’s as though I have no choice but to say something that will piss someone else off. I spent most of my childhood being told that I had to be nice to everyone, smile and laugh, be charming, be agreeable, not stir things up. I’m sure the reason for this was a combination of my being a girl and being Asian, but either way, it’s not very conducive to making sure that people don’t think that you are a doormat, stupid, or have zero personality.

So I was on my way to dinner with some college friends, and I am telling one of these friends a conflict I am having. She immediately starts giving me advice, i.e. how to assimilate and be something I am not. She is dead serious. She is not even half joking. Anyone who knows me at all knows that I refuse to accept being a phony (and anyone who got anything out of Catcher in the Rye should know this, too), so I proceeded to tell her off. I told her that I am 28 years old working at a tech company, not in K-12 trying to “fit in” and struggling amidst cooties, boy trouble, and self esteem issues. If I can’t be myself now, when the hell am I ever going to be myself? If anyone has any desire to lead a meaningful life, s/he would not just walk around being a fake and doing things for the sake of doing them. At the end of my rant, she was obviously rendered completely speechless and just had this half stunned, half “you’re so evil” look on her face. So, I changed the subject.

Needless to say, I won’t be initiating any more outings with this person. In fact, I was reminded in this moment why I’d made no effort to contact her in the last five months since I saw her last.

Do I still get a grace period for feeling miserable that Ed is gone, or has that period already ended maybe six months ago? Or maybe the grace period recommences every year when we reach the anniversary of his passing. I don’t really know how people perceive these things.

I spent a lot of today wondering if anyone is actually thinking that it’s been almost a year since he decided to say “Peace out!” in his own way and leave us. I’m sure my parents are painfully cognizant of it. That would explain their sudden getaway trip as well as my mom’s voice being a lot softer and more gentle the last few days over the phone. Who remembers? Or really, who even cares? Who thinks about the fact that he died almost a year ago now? I wonder if any of his church friends ever think about him, or if my good-for-nothing cousins stop for a moment to contemplate his passing. Do they even remember the date? And then I get into an angry mood thinking about how embarrassing two of them were when they gave their version of a “eulogy” at my brother’s funeral, and I ask myself what made me more infuriated — that terrible, immature, shallow speech, or my third cousin’s rushed, mumbled, and non-enunciated recitation of 1 Corinthians 13 — all of this done within three feet of my brother’s dead body.

Maybe my friend was right. Maybe none of them should be invited to my wedding.

I was on the phone with my mom last night, and she tells me that she decided last week that she and my dad would drive down to Monterey early next week. They would leave on Monday morning and come back Wednesday evening. “Your dad works so hard that I told him that we should take a short trip and enjoy,” she said. My parents have been to Monterey more times than I can count (they like what they are used to), and I guess it is an improvement that they are going somewhere instead of just saying home all the time, but then it suddenly hits me today that the real reason that they are going away is because my mom doesn’t want to be at home when the anniversary of Ed’s passing comes on Tuesday. It took me over a day to realize this.

All those words still sound terrible to me and trigger tears and stomach knots in me: “Ed’s passing,” “Ed’s death,” “Ed’s gone,” “Ed’s not here anymore,” “the anniversary of Ed’s passing.” I don’t really want to face the reality that he’s been gone from my life for almost an entire year. Hell, when thinking about my bridal shower being in San Francisco, I still thought about it as though he was still living at home and still sleeping in the same room that we shared growing up. In many ways, his death is still not real to me, and maybe it will never really be fully real to me. I’ll never know for sure.

Today, we received news that another Malaysia Airlines airplane had crashed with almost 300 people over Ukraine. Initially, it wasn’t clear from the news reports what the cause of the crash was, but it was later revealed that a missile had hit the plane, causing it to go down. When I saw this news, I immediately got chills all over my body. Every time I hear about a tragedy of any sort now, I immediately remember the pain and shock I felt when Ed went missing, and we ultimately found out that he was gone forever.

On my way to dinner tonight, I was on the phone with my mom when she told me that she heard on the radio about the crash. She immediately got worried and said that she doesn’t want Chris and me traveling for leisure at all anymore because of the last two plane crashes that have happened. My mother is so predictable.