What We’re Up Against

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Tonight, we went with some friends to see a show at the Women’s Project Theater called What We’re Up Against, which is about the blatant sexism faced by the two women at a small architectural firm in the 1990s. The most enraging part of it is the “bro culture” and the blatant sexism that gets swept under the rug. The most disturbing part of it is that today, that’s still tolerated, and the most passive and subtle forms of sexism are so hard to define, but we just know it when we experience it. Like the sexism I faced at my last company, when you write it down on paper, it doesn’t seem so glaring. It’s very subtle. It’s like the time when my ex company’s former female legal counsel left (because of sexism), and she got replaced by a male friend and lawyer of the company’s president, my (male) colleague said to me that our ex-female legal counsel “just didn’t get it. She just didn’t know what she was doing. But (new male legal counsel) just gets it. He’s a dude (I kid you not — there was real emphasis on this word in his speech)! He just knows how to do this!” Oh, really? She just didn’t get it? But this man does, not only because he’s “bros” with the president, but also because… he’s a “dude“?

You try proving in a court of law that that was an example of sexism. You’d probably lose. But we both know that was sexism. This is one of many problems we face today even when we have it so much better than the many generations of women before us who got us to this “privileged” state.

Stressful

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I’ve been a little stressed this week because I had two meetings scheduled today with customers that we were ill prepared for, primarily because a colleague on my end didn’t really do his part in organizing the content, so I went to sleep last night feeling very uneasy.  In the end, both meetings went well, but I woke up this morning from a nightmare that really put me in a worse mood.

I dreamt that I was at my parents’ house, and we were all having a family meal together. Ed came home with a guy… who he announced was actually his boyfriend. I suppose this was his way of “coming out” to us. My parents were shocked and angry, and basically ignored the presence of Ed’s boyfriend. And the little bits of interaction they had with him, they were extremely rude and passive aggressive. It was not a fun meal.

Once he left, the screaming began. My mom screamed louder than I could remember, saying that he was already a screwup, but now he’s gay and bringing home men? My dad’s heard in the background, name-calling Ed. And Ed yelled back until he couldn’t take it anymore and ran into the bedroom and slammed the door. I followed him and comforted him as he sobbed in my chest. “It’s okay,” I soothed him, rubbing his back and holding his head. “We’re going to get you out of here. I won’t let them hurt you anymore. Fuck them. You’re going to survive this. We’re moving you out of here.” We started to pack his bags, and since we locked the door, our mom tried to enter the room but couldn’t. She banged on the door over and over, and we refused to let her in. “I’m not letting you in here to destroy Ed!” I screamed through the door. “I’m getting him out of here, and you can scream all you want! You can’t do anything! LEAVE ED ALONE!”

I think I’m going to have dreams like this until the end of my life. They will never end for me.

Delusional expectations

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I was on the phone with my mom, and she asked if Chris had any upcoming work travel given I’ve been traveling this week. I told her that he’s going to be in San Francisco all week next week for his company’s annual conference. Her voice lit up. She said, “Oh, he is? Well if he is, we should get together for dinner at least one night. Tell him.” I told her that he won’t have time to see her because he’ll be consumed with conference events. But what I really wanted to say, which I held back by literally holding my breath a few times, was, “Dinner together? You want to have dinner together with the man whose house you recently threw knives in, and who you said you didn’t have to respect because he’s ‘black’?”

Not all of us have amnesia and just forget stupid shit that she says. Ed never got over the hurtful words she and our dad used to say to him repeatedly over and over, throughout the course of his entire short life. And now he’s dead, and she’s wondering what went wrong. REALLY? YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED????

I don’t want him seeing them.

Seasonal blues

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For 18 years of my life, I had no idea what the changing four seasons meant. The weather never shifted dramatically in San Francisco, save for the few-day mini heat waves we’d experience, or the slightly elevated temperatures during our Indian summer between September and October every year. As I have spent more and more time on the East Coast, having just surpassed nine years living in New York and 13 years living on the East Coast, I think every time the weather starts turning from summer to autumn, I start becoming a little bit gloomier and more resistant to getting out of bed every day. I hate the cooling temperatures, the impending knowledge that right around the corner, the snow will be coming and the all the disgusting ice and muddy slush that follows it. I feel like either hibernating in my apartment under my covers, or taking every opportunity I can to run off to the warmer climates of the Southern Hemisphere at this time of year.

Genetically, some people are supposedly more predisposed to getting “seasonal depression” or seasonal affective disorder. Their bodies just don’t adjust as readily to the changes in temperature and weather. It’s not totally a mental block; it’s also partly physical, too. Your body starts physically rejecting the changes by making you more tired, eat a lot more or a lot less, sleep more. I feel like that this week. I wonder if there’s a way to test for that via our genetic testing that we’ve participated in. I wonder how predisposed I am?

AFSP fundraising update

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I sent out my fundraising update email this past weekend. I think it’s a good thing to do, to update your donors to let them know if you met your goal, and by how much. Most people don’t respond, which is fine, but it’s nice to know that the people who do read the updates care.

Two of my colleagues emailed me to let me know how moved they were by my fundraising update. One said that he reached out to a dear friend of his who he knew was struggling with depression. Another said he was struggling himself and found it inspiring that I would “bear your soul.” He said he found it so shocking how brutally honest I was.

I’m just being myself. We spend so much of our time trying to be a certain way around certain groups of people in our lives. When it comes to the way I grew up and my experiences with my brother, I can’t be bothered to mask anything or spend time fabricating stories. I rather just say what I want to say. I’m settled in my thoughts and emotions. If other people can’t handle it, then it’s really their problem to deal with and confront.

Glamping

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Our team is going to unite with our San Francisco counterparts the last week of November for a “glamping” team-bonding retreat. What this means is that we will all be driving about 1.5 hours south of the city to a retreat camp, and sharing bedrooms with about four beds each.

As soon as all three of us learned this in the New York office, we looked over our monitors at each other and grimaced a bit. We’re city people. We like our own spaces, the limited amounts that we have. The idea of sharing a room with anyone not a close friend or Chris makes me a bit uneasy, especially now that I am in my thirties. I embrace my alone time and my time away from “outside people,” as my mother says.

This just means that in my single night hotel stays between the glamping outing, I will be savoring my room even more now.

Body aches

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And the day after having our friends over for dinner and too much drinking, I have woken up with massive body aches. This is just a sign I am getting older and cannot recover the way I used to.

Or maybe this is a sign that I should have followed my doctor’s instructions to stay away from alcohol, especially in the evenings, two weeks after I stopped taking antacids and Tums for my laryngopharyngeal reflux. My body is rebelling against all this alcohol, and now it’s making me feel decrepit and achy everywhere.

 

Serving food that not everyone knows about

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I’m a sneaky friend. I will never, ever serve you food that I know you are allergic to. If you are pescatarian, I will never give you food that has chicken broth or pork bits in it. If you are deathly allergic to crustaceans, there’s no way I’d sneak it into the food I serve you because I don’t really want anyone dying or dialing 911 while at my apartment.

But if you claim to dislike something when I know there’s a strong possibility you would like it, especially when it’s made a certain way, I’m probably going to try to serve it to you. Why? Do you know how many people everyday utter statements like “I don’t usually like <lamb or insert some other food they think is gross>, but I had it at <fill in the restaurant name>, and it was soooo good!” Isn’t that a sign that you probably could like it if it was prepared a certain way?

So I made banh cuon, a Vietnamese steamed rice crepe traditionally filled with minced pork, shrimp, wood ear mushrooms, and shiitake mushrooms tonight — a very laborious dish that takes a lot of time and preparation, and I decided, what the hell, I’m going to keep in the shrimp even though my friend coming tonight says she refuses to eat it. When I described all the dishes at the table, I left out the fact that this dish had minced shrimp (she’s probably going to read this blog post now and call me out on my trickery). I felt a little guilty, but I did it anyway.

So she served herself, and she ate it. And she went back for seconds and thirds. And then she raved to me afterwards and even after she left via text how amazing the food was.

She just happily devoured shrimp. I wonder if she had any clue or inkling. I’m wondering if I should tell her this, or if I should just keep it a secret.

 

In light of Harvey Weinstein

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Today, I had a video chat with a new colleague of mine who will be based remotely in Minneapolis to service our customers in the Midwest. We do these random one-on-one sessions with new hires on our team to get them acquainted with the rest of us and to make everyone feel welcome. I actually really like that we do this. The intention is quite good here.

One sad thing I learned about my new colleague is that she is a former opera singer who finally got disillusioned by the industry when she was told she could move forward with the San Diego opera only if she was willing to “give a certain amount of sex” to the director and ultimate decision maker of the opera. “Well, what can you do for me — I mean, sexually?” he propositioned her. “You’re not very good looking, definitely not the prettiest person we could put on stage, so you’ll need to provide for me sexually to get anywhere with us.” She was floored and immediately declined and walked out. And she left California, never to consider opera as a career ever again.

These stories are so prominent everywhere for women. We’re treated and looked at as objects by men who have too much power and are driven by money, power, and the desire to ravage any sexual object they want. And they make excuses they can do this because of their money and power, or because of the “time” that they grew up in as Harvey Weinstein did. Just look — President Dipshit does the same thing and is now commander-in-chief of this incompetent country that willingly and happily elected him. I shouldn’t be surprised, but it only makes me sad because sometimes when I hear these things, I feel as though progress is being halted.

Psychologist

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I got so frustrated with my mother the other day that I actually told her that she should make an appointment to see a psychologist. Maybe this doesn’t seem that outlandish in the average family, but in my family… these are the things that get scoffed at. My parents thought Ed was weak when he was 18 for seeing one, that he merely used it as an outlet to “talk bad” about his parents to “some outside person” who gets paid too much money. Chances are that seeing one will never help her because she lies endlessly to “outsiders” not in her immediate, immediate family about everything and anything, but her constantly telling me that, “you know I am suffering from depression?” is driving me crazy.

Well, you know what? So I suggested this to her, and two days later, she says that miraculously, her “depression” has improved and she feels so much better. She has “God’s word” and her two good (and annoying) JW friends to keep her company and comfort her, and I call her a couple times a week, so that’s enough for now. Wasn’t that just so convenient?

She refuses to be helped. She just seeks attention and abuses terms like “depression” and “anxiety” to get what she wants. She gives a bad name to the people who are truly suffering… like her son once did, and she did nothing but make him feel worse.