AFSP 2019 Out of the Darkness Manhattan walk

This year, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention Manhattan chapter had over 2,000 participants register to fundraise for our annual Out of the Darkness community walk. Each year I have participated since 2014, the walk fundraisers and crowds have only gotten bigger and bigger. Suicides in this country are only increasing as terrible as that sounds, and unless people start acknowledging it as an issue, the numbers will only increase. I was chatting with the director of the New York City walks this morning when I arrived at South Street Seaport for the opening ceremony, and she said that it was a bit of a mixed feeling for her every year: on the one hand, she’s so excited by the increased involvement and crowds we draw each year; at the same time, it makes her feel so distraught to think that more and more people are being affected by suicide, which is what is prompting them to show up and support. “It’s encouraging and depressing at the very same time,” she said to me with a half smile.

I don’t really know anyone who walks every year. I recognize the director and a few members of the board, but I don’t really talk to any of them other than the director. I’m not even sure what to say to them. It’s become a bit generic like most social gatherings. “Thanks for coming!” “Thanks for participating!” And although we are all there to support the same cause, as much as we say that people should be more open, a lot of these people are not open at all; they instead put generic fundraising messages on their fundraising pages to ask for donations. While it’s great that they are raising money with their canned messages, and while it’s amazing they are fundraising period, it doesn’t really inspire me. It doesn’t inspire people to be open and honest and real. So I don’t really have any desire to associate with them more.

I rather have real conversations with real people, even if it’s sad and painful, even if it brings up tortuous memories of suffering. We can bond over it. We can create solidarity. Because isn’t that what this walk, this desire to increase awareness, is all about?

I did meet one person who came alone this year. She lost her dad to suicide in this very city 17 years ago. This was her very first year participating and fundraising. I hope that given our conversations, she will come again and be open.

Not coming back

Most of the time when I go home and back to my parents’ house, I always get this vibe that Ed is still there in spirit, that he’s lurking somewhere around the corner and that eventually I will see him. I especially get it in the bedroom where he slept when I go in to dust his old dresser where we keep a large framed photo of him on top. This time, though, when I went up to the dresser, I didn’t feel the same. He didn’t feel the same. It was as though his being gone has been made more permanent now. He’s definitely never coming back, and perhaps he’s at peace with it. Or maybe I’m projecting, and it’s really that I am finally at peace with the fact that I know for sure he will never come back ever again to this house, to this life.

Still can’t believe it’s been over six years now.

Nobel Prize for literature

I’d been on the NYPL digital wait list to read Toni Morrison’s book Beloved for the last month or so, and have finally gotten off the waitlist. I’ve spent the last couple of days reading it on my Kindle and am so regretful that it took me this long to read any of her works. It is no wonder that she won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1993, as it was said that she is someone who “in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.” I’m embarrassed to say that her books have been on my reading list since I was 14, but I haven’t gotten to them until now. I’m only 19 years behind, right? She is one of the most famous, well respected African American female writers in the world, and was even given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by then President Barack Obama in 2012.

When Morrison passed away this past August, Obama wrote a tribute to her on his social media, which included: “Time is no match for Toni Morrison. In her writing, she sometimes toyed with it, warping and creasing it, bending it to her masterful will. In her life’s story, too, she treated time nontraditionally.”

As I reflected on Toni Morrison and her legacy and thought about the pages I’ve read of Beloved, I thought about how I’ve always loved reading and used to dream about being a famous, respected fiction writer myself (that dream is dead now, though). And then I had this memory pop up from my college years. I once said in front of friends and their partners during college that having a Nobel Prize in Fiction would be such a great honor, to which a friend’s ignorant and narrow-minded partner once said, “A Nobel Prize in literature is the most useless Nobel Prize. Who cares about literature? It doesn’t do anything for the world.”

I already didn’t like this person. He majored in computer science and was pre-med. He would start medical school the summer after graduating from undergrad, but since he had the summer free, he took on a full time job in computer science just to make money for the summer, and quit at the summer’s end without being transparent about his intentions. He just wanted the money, he said, and it was a lot of money to pass up, even with only three months’ time of work. Everything to him was about money; the idea of learning and growing and trying to do good for the world seemed stupid and naive to him, and he oftentimes said it. He would eventually graduate from medical school and go on to be a plastic or orthopedic surgeon, solely because he noted that these were some of the best paid medical professions to go into.

I look back and realize what a good decision it was to not only stop spending time with that friend, but by default, her chosen partner. If you cannot understand the importance of literature, of good writing, then you probably are a shallow and ignorant person, likely greedy and superficial and not a person of substance that I’d want to spend time with. Literature not only describes reality, but also adds to it, as so many notable writers have stated. Literature is both reality and art at the same time; it forces people to consider other states of being, other mindsets, other lives and situations that are so vastly different from their own. It encourages creativity and imagination, and what would life be without creativity and imagination? If you have been exposed to great literary works, then chances are also high that you have also been privileged to get far above average educational opportunities, as well. Literature is an opportunity for growth, for self-improvement, for viewing the world with a lens that is not like your own. And that is an invaluable thing that cannot necessary be quantified.

The crappy education of American schools

Since I was young, I was always an avid reader. It took me a while to read “classics,” but I eventually got there. Two of the books that I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t read until the last month, which were always on my reading list, are Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mocking Bird and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. They are both novels that touch upon the 20th century oppression of black people, and what is the worst part about reading both of these books in the year 2019 is that… not much has changed in the way that black people are oppressed today. It is simply masked in another way, whether it is the inordinate incarceration of black Americans, or the unarmed killing of black people by the police, the supposed protectors of our society.

Both of these books are oftentimes on reading lists for children in high schools across America. While reading up about both books after finishing each, I was disgusted to learn that both are still on a number of “banned books” list from American schools even today. To Kill a Mocking Bird is banned due to its “use of foul language,” because the N-word is used extremely often. Then, with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, this book has many warnings due to its very graphic depiction of Angelou’s own rape experience.

I have a lot of grievances with this entire attitude. The reason the N-word is used a lot in the first book is due to the fact that during that time, that was a word that was oftentimes used by white people to condescend and condemn black people. It is fitting for the time and era during which it was written. Therefore, it is only fitting to be true to that time and use that type of language. It is not a flagrant way of being disrespectful today, but rather a method to capture the time and hostility felt then. Context is everything. With the second book, the rape scene is depicted to show the level of personal atrocity that Angelou faced while a young child. How can you possibly expect young people to grow, mature, and learn from the past if we are constantly shielding them from all the brutality and the harsh history of our world? You cannot sugar coat slavery or segregation. You cannot make rape seem like it’s some quick event that just happens, passes, and is done. That is not reality. There is a lack of desire and even a resistance to be rooted in reality and face the painful facts and history of this country, and it has persisted for far too long.

Immigrants and the need to share our stories

Over the last two and a half years, open white supremacy, anti immigration sentiment, and anti women sentiment have been on the rise. With a president who is openly sexist, racist, and xenophobic, it all makes sense why the average American would think that this type of rhetoric would be okay. So it also makes sense that the number of hate crimes has steadily risen, and that mass shootings by white supremacists would also continue. But all the rants and the hate completely obliterate what really unites all of us to each other, and that is our humanity, our love for others and our love for the supposed rights that we think we have. 


Today, a friend shared this article entitled Swimming to America, a Love Story, in which the writer details her father’s treacherous path to coming to the United States during a Mao-ruled communist China, all via escaping the mainland and physically swimming across to Hong Kong. She highlights his struggles and ultimately, his love for this country. And she insists that every single one of us who can say our parents, grandparents, or great grandparents immigrated here — we’re all immigrants, too, and we have to not only remember that, but share that story to ultimately bring humanity into these cold, awful hate-filled conversations we see in the media, by ICE agents, by humanity-lacking right-wing politicians, and by our own president.


I wish we’d have this dialogue more openly, but my biggest fear is that the dialogue just cannot happen because we refuse to listen to each other anymore, and we selectively choose what “facts” and “statistics” to believe.

Libby app and annual reading goal

The Libby app that I finally synced to my New York Public Library card is currently my favorite app right now. I’m still marveling since Thursday when I renewed my card and synced my account to the Libby app that I have all these books I can either read on Kindle or listen via the app right at my finger tips, and for free! I’ve already put a number of Kindle and audio books on hold and have them queued up and ready to read. Before this year, and as of 2016, I’ve made a deliberate goal to read at least 12 books per year, or one book per month. A couple of those years I missed it by one, and other years, I just made it. This year, it’s only August, and I’ve already finished 12 books! So I’ve increased my reading goal for 2019 to 20 books total. The way I will get there is by setting a goal to read for at least 45 minutes to an hour before bed each night, and also to maximize my plane and walking time by reading or listening to books over mindlessly scrolling through Instagram or Facebook. The amount of time we waste on social media when it doesn’t truly fulfill us is getting pretty dangerous. Looking at my screen time tracking on my phone makes me feel embarrassed at all the time I have wasted.

Reading Maya Angelou

I got excited when I finally renewed my New York Public Library card after six months of delaying it. All I really needed to do was print out some proof of current residence, like a utility bill, but I kept putting it off until yesterday. I finally did it and renewed my card, which then allowed me not only to access the general public library system, but also to activate my library card and link it to my Libby app, which gives me free access to any digital version of a book that is available through my phone or Kindle. I successfully linked my account to the app, which now gives me access to any book I’d like for free. That’s tax payer dollars at work! The first book I pulled from my reading list was Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. I’m a little embarrassed to be reading this so late at age 33, given that in many schools across the country this is assigned reading, but hey, it’s better late than never, right? I also decided to commit myself to reading this given all the open bigotry and racism so overtly displayed by President Dipshit as of late. It’s always been going on since he started running to be president, but it’s truly gotten out of control in the last few weeks for anyone who has been paying even remote attention to the news.

This autobiography of Angelou is one of her most famous works, and the first of seven total books in her autobiography. She talks about growing up in the segregated south in the 1930s and 40s and all the bigotry and inequities she and her broken family faced. After her parents divorced, her mom moved to St. Louis, her dad moved to California, and they left her and her older brother Bailey with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. The book is easy to follow and immediately sucks you into her world; I’m already half done with it after two evenings of reading it for about an hour each. I think what has really stuck with me is how close she and her brother Bailey are, and how much she truly loves him and constantly expresses it, both in writing and to him. It’s so endearing, yet heartbreaking at the same time. While temporarily in St. Louis staying with their mother and her boyfriend, the mother’s boyfriend rapes Maya. He threatens her and says, “Do you love Bailey?” to which Maya of course confirms she does, very much so. He responds, “If you tell anyone, I will kill him.” She is so shaken by the thought of Bailey dying that she keeps this atrocity she faced at such a young age to herself for days, until finally she got so sick that she had to be hospitalized and was forced to admit the truth.

Bailey kept asking her while in the hospital, “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” over and over again. But Maya cannot stomach telling him the truth. She doesn’t want Bailey to know that she was trying to protect him, that she was scared that this man would actually take Bailey’s life.

That’s the power of sibling love. It just really stuck with me through the first half of this book. It reminded me of Ed a lot. He was as protective as he could be of me, and when bad things happened to me that he’d find out about later, he always asked why I wouldn’t tell him sooner. And I always responded the same way: I told him I didn’t want him to worry about me. Yet we did this to each other because he also hid so many things from me… because he didn’t want me to worry about him either.

Dreams from my brother

I used to hope every year, around the time of the anniversary of Ed’s death, that he’d come back for a visit. This time, as though summoned, he came back a few nights ago during the 6th anniversary of his funeral, which happened seven days after he passed away. We sat in a fully furnished room I didn’t recognize, and out of nowhere came my childhood pet Willie. Willie was my turquoise parakeet, purchased from a private breeder in Pacifica early in my elementary school years. He was just five weeks old when we took him home. He was my little pride and joy; I took care of him fully on my own, feeding and cleaning him and his cage. We tamed him and taught him to speak a number of words, which was impressive given his small size. He passed away when he was about seven years old, when I was in seventh grade. Due to his dangerous curiosity and finding things in our house that had lead, he ate his way to his death, causing a massive accumulation of lead in his tiny tummy. This spurred a cancer growth in him that ultimately ended his little life. I was shocked to see him flying toward me. To see if this was all real (at least, “real” in my dream), and to verify that it was really him, I stood up and ran to the other side of the room, put my arm out, and said, “Willie, come here!”

He recognized his name immediately and flew over to me, landing on my forearm. He then climbed his way up my arm to my shoulder, affectionately nipping the tip of my ear. This was really my little parakeet. It had been too long since I’d last seen him.

“Yep, it’s Willie,” Ed said, staring over at Willie’s little face. “Even after he’s died, he still doesn’t care about me and prefers you.”

Ed used to occasionally taunt Willie, and Willie did not particularly like him very much. He was only attracted to him in the house if my dad or I were not in the room. Then, he’d fly to Ed.

“Do you see him where you are?” I asked him. “Since you’re both dead, do you ever run into him?”

Ed: “Not really. But after you die, it’s not like your relationships get better. They pretty much stay the same with the same people. Where we are, relationships don’t improve or change.”

He seemed so solemn when he said this, as though there was some hint of sadness or regret in his voice. I couldn’t quite understand it.

I didn’t know what to say to him. I was still shocked we were even together, discussing how he and my childhood pet are dead.

“I miss you,” I said to him, looking over at his face. It’s as though all his acne had cleared up and he had perfect skin. Maybe that’s what death does to you.

He put his head in his hands and wouldn’t look at me. “I know… I know,” he said, nearly inaudible. “I can’t do anything for you anymore.”

Then, I woke up. I felt a little distraught, wondering where the heck I was and what just happened. Did I really see Ed, see Willie, in the same place at the same time? Was it real?

I don’t know what any of that meant. But it just made me feel even worse. At least I got to see the both of them again.

Suicide prevention advocate in action

I’ve been fundraising for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) each year since my brother passed away, and this year will be my sixth year walking in their New York City Out of the Darkness walk to raise awareness. Given that I have been actively sharing my story through the fundraiser and via social media to spread the word, what this has also meant is that many people over the years have also reached out to me in need of help and guidance. I’ve been happy to be that shoulder and support for them, and if anything, I’ve felt really appreciated that they would remember me and my brother and how I’ve tried to increase awareness about suicide and mental health.

While in town in San Francisco this week, a former colleague who had left my company about two years ago reached out randomly on Facebook. She was always someone I respected a lot; she’s extremely intelligent and had a way of working with colleagues that I’d never quite seen before. I remember sending her note before she left, suggesting we stay in touch. We did that, but just over Facebook to date. In her private message, she said that her good friend’s son had attempted suicide and was currently under close watch at a psychiatric ward, and they were all terrified and had no idea what to do and how to help, and the first thought she had was of me. In her life, she said, she’d never met anyone who had talked about depression, mental illness, or suicide, except me, and she’s over 40 years old, and found this fact embarrassing when she shared this with me. She asked if there was a way for us to connect, and so I met her at a local coffee shop near my office here. We talked for over an hour about the situation, navigating through different options, and advising her on things they absolutely needed to do (and not to do).

It was a gut-wrenching situation, and while I do not wish this situation upon anyone, it just goes to show exactly how prevalent mental health is ignored and how suicide ideation and attempts are so much more frequent that we could possibly fathom. She just kept expressing how helpless and alone they all felt. This friend was like a sister to her, and her son was like her own nephew in terms of how close they were. I kept prefacing everything by saying that I wasn’t an expert, that I certainly did not know everything there is to know, but she insisted that just having this conversation openly and without needing to think before she spoke was what calmed her down so much after this horribly intense week. I told her I’d follow up with some resources that might help her and the family, and that I’d be in touch.

If I could help save just one person’s life in my efforts of being open about my own experience through Ed with mental illness, that would be enough for me to know that everything I have done in the last six years has been worthwhile.

Mentoring

This afternoon, I met my mentee for chai to catch up, as I realize that I hadn’t even seen her since the end of last year. In between getting sick twice (which is so embarrassing) in two months and my work travel, I just haven’t been able to make it happen.

After we caught up for an hour and she left to go to her therapy appointment, I sat a bit at the cafe and reflected on my own experience as a teen. I never had someone I could officially call a mentor, but I had two former teachers who in retrospect, I realize I did see as mentors. They were the people in my life who were always so positive, asking me questions about my life and where I was headed, and never in a judgmental way. Their positivity was like a model to me about how I wanted to view my own life and growth. Aside from both being very positive despite frustrating circumstances in their own personal and professional lives, the other thing they both had in common was that they were both constantly learning and seeking new knowledge, always seeking intellectual stimulation.

I think about this every time after I meet with my mentee. I’m not always sure what value I am providing, and I am constantly second guessing whether I am truly helping her. But what I strive to do every time I meet her is to validate her feelings, make her feel heard, and help her see the hope and possibilities of the future. I encourage her to seek new knowledge, to read and be aware of current events and politics, to contribute to society. It’s not always easy for her to do those things, but I can see that she is trying.

One thing I finally got her to do was to wake up at a regular time every single day. She used to sleep until 1 or 2 and essentially waste half her daylight hours. She’d even skip class. But now, she’s consistently waking up between 8-8:30 each morning. It’s small steps that ultimately become big ones. She is definitely going somewhere.