Suicide prevention advocate in action

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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.

When everything is filled with drama

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I had plans this morning to meet my friends for brunch and some time at the botanical gardens, and given timing, I told my parents that I would meet them at the Neptune Columbarium, where Ed’s niche is. I said I would leave the Golden Gate Park area at around 2 to meet them. Somehow, despite telling both of them this twice, they both “heard” me say that I would meet them at the Columbarium at 2pm. My mom called at 2pm as I was waiting for an Uber to pick me up, and she was panicking as she always days, asking me where I am and why I am not there. I repeated again what I originally said, and I can hear both her and my dad in the background claiming that I never said that, that I said I would meet them at 2pm. I told them that they both didn’t hear me correctly and that I was on my way.

Then, as I spent time at Ed’s niche, they both left me alone and wandered around, getting their free coffees from the front office as they always do, and sitting in their car. It’s a great way to bond with your dead son, making sure you are always getting free refreshments from the place that you spent tens of thousands of dollars on his niche at.

I got back into the car, and they immediately started arguing over where to eat for dinner. I told them that I didn’t mind, that they could choose; it wasn’t a big deal to me. My mom gave me an icy tone, saying she wants to “show respect” to me and have me choose. That’s her not-so-thinly-veiled way of saying that I should choose and “care.” I truly do not have a preference, so I said she could choose since she ate at these places more. Then randomly, my mom started marveling over the visit they had with us to the Salesforce Tower roof yesterday with Chris, and she said she really enjoyed the oat milk latte we ordered for her. Dad said out of nowhere that the free latte was tasteless and bland, and he had no idea how anyone could drink something like that. I told him he rarely drinks lattes and doesn’t know what they are supposed to taste like, plus he probably just had the oat foam. In his usual childish and defensive tone, he said I was wrong. Then, he continued to talk to himself and repeat the word “tasteless” about 10 times on our ride home.

Even after we got home, I could still hear him muttering “tasteless” over and over. This is after he not only had a free and beautiful visit at the tallest building in San Francisco to get a 360-degree view of the city, but he also got free coffee and food there, plus a gondola ride and a walk through the Salesforce Park with me, which he got annoyed about within ten minutes of walking around and said he wanted to leave.

I’ve read so many books and articles about mourning, about parent-child relationships, about death. One of the topics that seems to come up repeatedly is that once someone is dead, you start realizing that you end up missing all the things they used to do that would annoy the hell out of you and increase your blood pressure when they were living. For Ed, this could mean asking me really basic questions that I felt given his age, he should be aware of, or asking me the same question three times over the course of 30 minutes. In my parents’ case, it could mean… hey, one day, when my dad isn’t here anymore, I might actually miss how childish he is and how much mothering he needs. I could end up missing how he needs to ask you the same question three times in three different ways in an hour just because he probably wasn’t listening to your answer the first or second time when he asked. I could possibly end up longing for how ungrateful he is for experiences that I expose him to and how little appreciation he has of pretty everything in the world, whether it’s a beautiful view or a free coffee drink (that someone else is ultimately paying for, one way or another). For my mom, I will probably end up missing how she panics over my safety every second of the day, how she insists on packing me oranges or kiwis in my luggage even though I could easily buy these same fruits in New York, how she is overly critical of me and pretty much every human being on earth.

So when I get annoyed, I have to step back for a second and say to myself, maybe I should be grateful they are pissing me off right now and showing a complete lack of gratitude for how kind and generous Chris and I have been with them. Maybe I should be thankful that they are sitting here, able to complain and criticize everyone. Maybe I should be grateful because of the fact that they are actually still alive, and not everyone is as lucky as I am to have one or both parents still alive.

Annoying family meals

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Chris and I planned to have dinner with my parents tonight, but my mom told me last minute that she wanted to bring one of her good friends, as well. I think we all know the reason she wanted to do this: she loves being able to brag about how well her daughter is doing, whether it’s explicit or implicit. I really do not like it, but her friend is actually not the most boring of the people she spends time with, as she actually talks and seems somewhat cultured, so I figured it would be okay.

The conversation really just ended up being between her friend and me. We talked about her recent travels, her cruise, how well her husband, who is pretty much bed-ridden, is doing. And of course, she asked about when we were going to have a baby. She’s personally devastated because she has no faith that her oldest child, her son, will ever meet anyone and be serious enough to get married; then, her daughter, who has been married for over seven years now, seems to be facing some fertility issues. So as a result, she and her husband have decided they will not have children. And because she is so close to my mom, she claims she looks at me like her “second daughter,” so she has all eyes on me and a potential growing belly.

I told her she’d find out when anything new happened. I left it at that. But that answer apparently was not enough, as she asked a second time. “When will you have babies?”

I’m not really sure what kind of a different response you expect when ten minutes have passed, but it was not fun. And to add to the annoyance is my mom saying, “I’ve been waiting and looking forward, but I’ve heard no news!”

And then Chris, to stoke the fire, said, “We have no plans!”

I left to use the restroom. And Chris let me know afterwards that my mom and her friend proceeded to have a 1:1 conversation about why we were not having babies: they travel too much for fun, they travel too much for work, what are they going to do with travel once they have a baby; they might stop traveling; no, they will continue traveling.

When I hear conversations like these, I always wonder: are people choosing to have these pointless conversations because they truly have nothing else to discuss at all or look forward to?

Coffee and snack breaks

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Every time I come to San Francisco for work, I feel grateful that I have a number of colleagues here who I like, value, and appreciate, even beyond work, but I feel conflicted because I rarely get as much work done as I would like. The reason for this is because I end up spending a lot of time catching up 1:1 or in small group settings with them, whether it’s over coffee/tea, lunch, or snack breaks, that I never end up getting all the tasks I originally set out to do done.

The way that I circumvented that this time was by front-loading my month to ensure that the majority of my calendar was free while I was here this week. It’s the end of our fiscal quarter, so while sales is scrambling to close their last deals, I’m pretty much done with my planned customer engagements and can calm down a bit and catch up on other “nice to have” tasks that I don’t always have time for.

It felt much better this time around. I didn’t have to feel as rushed or time pressed. I actually could enjoy myself and my catch-ups, and I didn’t constantly have to check my phone for messages, emails, and the time. It was a “relaxed” state of work for me.

Back 12 years later

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In the summer of 2007, I had a summer internship at Fleishman Hillard, which is one of the largest public relations firms in the world, in their downtown San Francisco office. I was working for its technology practice with a very large and busy team. It was located at 555 Market Street, which I’m assuming it still occupies, one of two twin towers that shares a grand entrance complete with a ramp that runs over a waterfall and pond fixture.

Today, I went to its twin building for a customer visit, and it felt a bit funny for me to be entering these buildings again, 12 years later, as a working professional, visiting from New York to meet with one of my customers. I no longer work in public relations (and thank God for that), but I still am in the technology sector. I walked in, feeling grateful that I left PR to pursue technology for many, many reasons. Life would have been very different if I had continued in that career path, and it would have felt pretty lifeless and boring. That entire summer was painful at work, and I waited every day until 4:30 or 5 when it was okay for me to leave. That office was a sea of politics and favoritism, and knowing how low the pay was and how unattractive the benefits were made it even easier to turn my back on it.

A lot is wrong in the technology industry, particularly when it comes to women and people of color. But where I am today is far, far better than the choices I left behind from my college internships.

Sea of whiteness

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Chris and I were traveling today from New York to San Francisco for work on the same flight, and we both requested an upgrade via miles. Due to a system malfunction, AA failed to properly process his credit card for the mileage upgrade, so he got skipped over in favor of two people behind him on the upgrade list. I got upgraded in advance of our flight, so I was already set up in business class. He was not happy about this.

So I set myself up in the first row of business class, and as the flight attendants shut the plane doors to complete the boarding process, I stood up to take a look back at the rest of this cabin. Lo and behold, as with nearly every other upgraded flight I am on, it’s always the exact same view: a large sea of white men gracing the entire cabin. The few exceptions are the occasional one or two white or South Asian women, and of course, me. In this case, every single person in business class was a white male except for the white woman seated next to me and myself.

We have a legacy of racial inequality that we cannot escape, as much as people want to assume that race does not affect or factor into everything. Once someone claims he is sick and tired of viewing everything through a lens of race, that’s when you know he is blinded by his own privilege and the injustices he may never have had to encounter himself. Why is that? Because it is such an extreme privilege to not have to think about one’s race in daily interactions, how we are treated, how we are looked at. At this point in my travels, I shouldn’t be that phased by this view behind me. I should accept this as the reality of travel. But it still irritates me a little bit every time, particularly with these transcontinental flights. I am a tiny part of that change, but fliers like that white woman next to me and/or Chris are not enough.

Six years since.

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Dear Ed,

As we approached this date, I was in denial that it had really been six years that have passed since you died. I don’t know if it’s my heart and my mind’s way of not getting over you, but I still don’t really think you’re dead. Realistically, I know you are gone, but in my body, I do not feel this is the case. You still feel very much alive to me; maybe it’s just my internal organs’ way of denying the truth of your death. Or, maybe it’s my body’s way of saying that it is fully aware that a part of you still exists out there and is still connected to me.

It was hard this year for me to turn 33. It doesn’t seem like a particularly remarkable age or number, nor is it considered some milestone age. But the core reason is that I didn’t really think it made sense to be turning the same age as you were when you took your own life and died. At age 33, I have lived a very different life than you had, and in many ways, I felt like I wasn’t that worthy of what I had, that it would have been better if you had at least enjoyed half of the privileges and experiences I’ve been so lucky to have. Our lives were not even at all. And how could I possibly be the same age as my big brother? I kept asking myself. None of that makes sense at all. The whole point is that you’re supposed to be my older brother. That means you are older than me. But now, you aren’t. I couldn’t wrap myself around this. I just felt so upset. Logically, it makes sense. But I still didn’t want to accept this.

They say that everything heals in time. Grief eventually is replaced by gratitude, it is often said. Yes, I am grateful for our time together. I am grateful for having you in my life as my big brother. But I don’t think I will ever fully heal from your death… your untimely death, your suffering, your pain. I’ll be honest and say that as time goes on, the more and more I seem to meet people I truly believe are absolutely useless, have no purpose, and are just a waste of space, self-serving, self-seeking, and overly entitled human beings that probably shouldn’t even be called human beings. And then, I think of you, and I think… why do these people get to exist, and you do not? How is that possibly fair? If anyone with half a brain thought about this, there’s no way to rationalize that life is fair. Life is so far from fair that it hurts when I think about this.

Our mom has aged exponentially since your death. I don’t want you to worry about it, but it’s true. It’s like she really just doesn’t care how she looks anymore, puts together the most random pieces of clothing, and walks out of the house. She says, “it doesn’t matter; I’m old now,” as though older people shouldn’t want to look and feel good. She thinks she is somehow undeserving of looking and feeling good. It’s so sad. If you can believe it, she probably worries and panics even more after your passing than before. She really loves you so much, and she occasionally mentions it in quiet moments with me. I know deep down, she blames herself and goes in endless circles thinking about what she could have done differently. I know it doesn’t matter anymore because it won’t change things, but I can tell just from how she talks about you now that she definitely feels this way. She misses you every single day, even if she never fully appreciated you when you were here with us. I am guilty of that, too, though. I think we all are.

You know what is the most frustrating part about all of this? That I know no matter what I say or do, that I will never get to see you again. I still dream that you faked it all and that you never really died, that you faked your death, got a fake dead body and had it stuck in a casket to resemble you. It was never supposed to be like this. I never thought life would end up this way. I never thought I’d be married, living in New York, missing my dead brother who died by suicide. We were supposed to be in it together until the end, Ed. I still remember when our mom used to talk to each of us after we’d have fights when we were little, and insist that we had to find a way to get along and “show love.” Because one day, she said, our parents wouldn’t be around anymore, and we’d only have each other, and we’d have no one else who would unconditionally love us. So we had to look out for each other and stick together. That has been lost now for us, for me. Sometimes, I still feel really lonely when I think about you and how you are gone.

I miss you so much. I love you. I hope you are safe and at peace. I also hope that you still think of me with love. Because that’s the way I think of you, even when you were being annoying and insane like most siblings can be. Please don’t forget me. I’ll never forget about you.

With all my love,

your moi moi Yvonne

Brunch with a friend’s friend

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Today, Chris and I met up with my friend, her husband, and a friend of hers visiting from out of town. My friend and her husband live in San Francisco, but because her friend visiting from Singapore was in the States but had never visited New York before, she decided to take her to New York for some sight-seeing. She recently got married, and she and her British husband are settled and living in Singapore, which is where she was born and raised. She talked about always wanting to live in a place like San Francisco or New York, but she felt like she was too old for that.

“That’s the kind of thing you do when you’re young,” she insisted. “My friends all did that before they got married and had kids. Now, I’m too old to move around and have that kind of fun life.”

So, what is she saying.. that because she’s in her mid-30s, any exciting life prospects in terms of living and exploring are all just dead? I told her that anyone is really capable of doing what they want to do, and that the real limit is the mind and not the age. It’s actually really fitting to discuss this since the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times have recently published articles with themes of “It’s never too late to start a brilliant career.” Oftentimes, when we think of really accomplished celebrities and minds, we forget that most of them didn’t start that path until they were in their mid 30s to 40s. Success and adventure aren’t always something just reserved for the young and eager. My former colleague and friend, who is married with a one-year-old daughter, just relocated from Amsterdam to Hong Kong. She said she doesn’t want to move back home to New York and that she’s not done exploring and living in other places. She’s 36, probably a similar age to my friend’s friend today.

You kind of get what you want out of life. When you arbitrarily set limits, you limit yourself. If you want to make something happen, you can make it happen — assuming you are relatively self sufficient and leading a comfortable life. It would be a different story if you were living paycheck to paycheck, inundated in student loan payments or needing to support and take care of aging parents who had no other form of help. I always get annoyed hearing people creating these artificial limits for themselves and not even realizing that they themselves are doing this. Society can say whatever it wants, but what you choose for yourself is just that – choosing for yourself. I suppose you need to differentiate that for yourself first, if you ever get there.

When your parents snoop on your friends’ lives

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My mom has been getting pretty impatient with me, but she tries to hide it. Given she’s my mom and I’ve been in this mother-daughter relationship with her for 33.5 years now, I can always see through her, her facial expressions, her body language, her tone, her words, even over the phone. I always know what she’s thinking about, even if she never fully spits it out.

She’s not very pleased with me because when she asks me, “So, any news?” or “Is anything new?” or “Have anything exciting to share with me?”, I pretty much always respond no. What she really wants to hear is a) that I am pregnant, b) one of my good friends is pregnant, or c) one of my unmarried friends is finally either getting engaged or getting married.

She insists that she wants what is best for me and my friends, and that what is best for us is that we all get married and have children. She was in shock when I told her that one of my friends explicitly said she did not want children at all. “She’s making a mistake,” my mom said. “She will change her mind. Just give her some time. She will realize she wants children and then have them then.” That’s not really how it works, Mom, but I’m not saying anything to that because I don’t want to have this discussion with you.

If my mom had it her way, I would have gotten married by 25, had my first child by age 26, then had my second and third child by age 30 and been done with child bearing by then. That was 3.5 years ago, and since I don’t even have one child yet, I’m extremely, extremely behind the schedule my mom wants.

The greatest thing is that she doesn’t get to control my body or my reproductive organs, though. I will give her the “good news” when I’ve decided it’s okay for that. In the meantime, she can continue to wait and perhaps do something else more productive for herself.

When colleagues leave

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A colleague and I took a walk in today’s blistering heat to get some iced matcha tea. He’s been pretty unhappy for the last 7-8 months and has been actively looking for a new role. He was telling me about his latest offer on the table, the trade offs he’d have to make if he accepted this job. He said he realized that although he complains about his current job and our company now, he really doesn’t have it so bad after all because there are so many horrible jobs and companies out there that are 100 times worse than where we are today.

What I also thought about while on our walk is that when colleagues leave, it’s always kind of the same pattern: you chat a lot when you work together. You take walks and go out for coffee and tea breaks, you text and Slack actively and enthusiastically while you are working together. And then, when that person leaves, he will invariably say he will keep in touch, we’ll be friends, we’ll still meet for coffee or lunch. It might happen once or twice after he leaves, but then it will trickle off, and you’ll be nothing more than Instagram or Facebook “friends” — loosely connected, faintly aware of each others’ lives based on what you share on social media, but really, nothing else. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule, but this is generally how it goes.

It’s kind of sad. In that sense, we’re all replaceable as colleagues, friends, confidantes. No one really matters that much personally, even when you might think for a second they do. That “bond” you shared will be replaced by another bond he will share with someone else in just a few months.