April 28, 2010: death-sorrow and self-pity

Death-sorrow
He had been crying and I hadn't even noticed.

"My teacher died," he said.

"I'm sorry. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. I'm fine."

"It's okay not to be."

"I know it's okay not to be," he said in anger, and left, slamming the door. I never say the right thing.

But death-sorrow is not beyond empathy, and image-memories of death surfaced, uninvited. My grandfather, 阿公, in his icebox. 阿公, bloated and disfigured. 阿公, who was not that bloated, disfigured man in the icebox. But it was, and the image-memories would not stop. My grandmother, wiping the condensation from the tiny window atop the icebox that framed his face, whispering, whispering to the corpse that would not hear. Everyone was in tears. My uncles, standing stoic, guardians of his shrine--they had been there for days, in shifts, honoring the man, my grandfather, who had lived paralyzed on his left side for half a lifetime, who had made a fortune in the plastics industry, who had provided so well for his family that none of his grown children worked, who had stood tall and proud, even pulling off his white-hair comb-over, who had given and given and given until there was nothing left to give. Everyone owed him, and if it was not money that they owed, it was love, or both.

Voids
Death-voids are not so different from friend-voids, those created by people leaving in frustration and slamming the door behind them (the door slam echoes in your heart, and your brain aches and bruises as if it had been hit). Both are mired in regret, all the things one could have said but did not, all the things that one should not have said but did, and then it's too late to say or un-say any of them because they're gone. When CW came in again (the first time, AW had been crying, and I had been mute beside him), it was me that was crying, alone, thinking about how I had failed those who tried befriending me, how people were not encouraged or uplifted the first time or the second time (and they would attempt a second time only if they were particularly hopeful) they talked to me about life-difficulties, because there was nothing I could give, not love, not money (I am not my grandfather's granddaughter). Is anyone so loveless, so self-involved, so useless as I? I crawled beneath my blankets, wrapping myself in the cocoon of soft warmth that would not judge me, and I cried.

But it was intolerable. The self-pity and self-loathing and me--I was intolerable. I asked MF if I could stay at his place for the night (I was trying to get away from myself) and couldn't help but smile when he said he had a couch with the same pillows and blanket that he'd bought from Salvation Army two years earlier. I remembered the pillows and the Bob the Builder blanket. I could remember falling asleep on them, two years before, when my own bed was a mere minute's walk away, because it had felt so much safer to fall asleep with MF and BM's whispers and soft laughter in the background than the mutterings of my own fears.

At MF's
"Look at yourself. You've lost all your self-confidence," he said, kindly, as if that were the key to everything. Self-confidence: the Secret to Success in Society, a new book by breakthrough life coach, MF.

He was confident. He had always been confident. That was what I had fallen in love with two years earlier, and what I imagined lured others in--the charm that beamed from a clarity of will, a tenacity of spirit. I couldn't imagine him chasing after a girl and not winning her; but he talked about his failed conquests, and I believed him.

"I talk too much," he said.

Perhaps, but I couldn't agree. His words were genuine, logical, caring. The mind-fog, the confused emotional melodrama and inner inarticulate turmoil, all of it, cleared before the force of his will in the shape of his words.

"Who are you?" I asked, incredulous. The question had been on the tip of my tongue all night. He was twenty years old but he wore only dress shirts. He could outline exactly what he wanted, ticking them off on his fingers as he explained--they were ordinary things: 1) a comfortable lifestyle, 2) a family, 3) enough money to support 1 and 2, but he declared it with such conviction and pride that I was amazed, as if he said (he might as well have said): This is what I want. I am not ashamed. I will not sugarcoat it with self-delusions of world improvement, intellectual curiosity, sickening youthful optimism, etc. He seemed old already, and I was having trouble seeing what I saw, because what kept coming up was the image of the 18-year-old I had known, who loved five things in life (anime, movies, music, girls, and one more that I forget). These, too, he liked to tick off on his fingers, and perhaps I should have realized he had not changed so much.

"I'm still the same person," he said, laughing, "I haven't changed."