Testing pens

Today
Tomorrow
Today
Tomorrow

My mother wrote those words over and over on a piece of scrap paper. She loved doing that to test the ink and smoothness of pens. When we were testing pens in stores, she wrote those words on the stores’ scrap papers. There were hundreds of thousands of words in the 2 languages she knew and she chose to write those two words over and over.

I always assumed that was what everyone else was also doing. That everyone wrote some words to test pens, that there were something always on someone’s minds and if you gave them a pen, those words poured out. I grew up and realized that wasn’t true. Most people just scribbled long wavy lines of non-sense. My mother, she wrote with intentions.

Kyiv that year

I visited Kyiv in the winter of 2019. It was so cold that every time, before I walked outside, it took me forever to pile on top of myself layer and layer of clothes.

My husband with his US passport had to wait for me for hours because my Ukraine Visa was on a passport from a country the Customs people have never even heard of. I was called to a separate room, like those small interrogation rooms they showed on TV, and the customs people asked me why on Earth would I come from so far to see Ukraine? I said why not. I wanted to see your country.

The first night, we dined at one of the fanciest restaurants in Kyiv. It was so good that we came back for the second time a few days later. Though my husband was surprised that they served their best filet mignon with ketchup on the side. And he was stunt the second time when they served him a fish and the server stood right there and removed every single bone from the fish table side for him.

We went to Chernobyl to hear a story about how a small, poor country suffered a great disaster by humans, which taught you to never bank on humans’ perfect competence. That no man would be competent enough to be perfect all the time, that no man should handle so much power and the loss of so many lives. If hearing stories about people dying didn’t make you sad because they were just numbers, seeing an empty town of Pripyat would make you feel. Nothing sadder than the abandoned teddy bear in a children’s hospital. Nothing more haunting than seeing a house with an opened book on a table. We walked out of Pripyat through a radioactive scanner to make sure the sadness we picked up there wouldn’t be contagious in the world.

And in 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine. I thought about the great restaurants we visited, the people who poured us Nalyvka, the streets we walked down that might never be there again. I thought about the sadness that still haunt that land.

People

People are amazing and I wish everyone knows that.

There was a lesbian girl who is the funniest person I have ever met. There was a gay guy who fixed furniture like he has been for years. There was a guy wearing suits that has been dancing on the dance floor for hours that worked in Tax. There was a Republican guy, who hated everything I stood for, helped me get my car moving in the middle of the street. There was the quiet Asian girl loves metal music.

Even when they are just like the stereotype. When the Dominican Republic guy danced like he was a professional. When the lesbian girl could fix all the household items. When the quiet Asian girl is soft spoken.

Their life stories, I would sit down to listen for hours. Not everything has to be an argument to prove you are right. Sometimes people tell you who they are through the little things in their lives. And I realized people are amazing and I’m always sad when I have to leave.

Happy

I am probably at one of the happiest time of my life. I was happy before, but now I’m happier. I sang to myself in the shower. I skipped a little when I walked.

I haven’t written for months. And I wondered if that was the case – because I’m happy. Suffering makes arts. Geniuses are never truly happy. That’s the price you have to pay. As a averagely regular happy person, don’t I pity them.

My things get to retire

Photo by Anastasia Shuraeva on Pexels.com

Sometimes I wonder what happens to my things when I die. All the things that I need to support my life, what happens to them when I don’t need support anymore. Maybe someone would break in and steal them. Perhaps they would end up being in an estate sale. But knowing how cheap I am usually, my things will most likely end up in the dumpster. And I wish I can say I don’t care what happens to them.

I do care. The coffee machine that stutters in boiling water every morning, diligently making me coffee day after day, year after year – I want it to be retired properly. The cast iron that used to be too heavy for me, then no longer heavy, and then heavy again – it deserves to never rust. I never want to owe anyone anything, or anything anything. If they have spent their lives supporting me, I would like to be able to thank them, to put them to rest and retire properly. But I would be dead by then and I wondered if my things would ever get to rest.

Return

I traveled the world
And not in my wildest dream
I’ll be coming home to you.

But here I am
feeling like Dorothy
realizing what I have been looking for
I already had.
The world has been rough
but nothing pained me more
than knowing how I left
you
in tears
when I said goodbye.

You deserved the stars and the sky
and I was just a child
not knowing what he wanted in life,

so I turned left and right
looking for a light that’s for me
And

I found the light
I found my way back to you

I dreamed I was crying

Last night I dreamed I was crying

I woke up with sadness clinging

to my consciousness

I dazed through the clouds

trying to get rid of the doubts

without even remembering why I was crying in my sleep

And I wonder if my soul was weeping

somewhere deep
inside

Karma

Karma is a bitch

She is a woman

So if you ever makes another girl weeps

she’ll come for you.

Your ex-lovers marked a time in your life that you were a different person

Trước mắt là người trước mắt, trước mắt cũng là tháng năm.

(In front of my eyes was that person, in front of my eyes were also all those years)

– Bất Vấn Tam Cửu

Young loves failed. And most often first loves failed as well. But if we were lucky enough, we got over the pain of those failed loves and grew. We learnt about what we wanted and not wanted in a relationship. We learnt what we deserved and what we could achieve. All the things we learnt about ourselves being and getting out of a relationship were lessons we took with us for life. But not just that…

Years from then, when the wounds were all healed and we wouldn’t suffer from the intense aches anymore, we hope we would all be able to find peace and nostalgia. No more pain, no more heartaches, no more wondering why we let ourselves be treated that way, no more thinking we should have not gotten ourselves into those relationship. We would just think about those failed loves as fragments of our youth. Being able to love was a precious thing about being young, in age and in soul. Rarely any other times in our lives could we feel our hearts being so full like when we fell for our first loves. The warmth that your body felt simply by laying next to your ex-lovers. We were so young back then. We were so foolish, but so free. We were so unwise, but so brave.

Don’t think of our ex-lovers as the people who broke our hearts. Think about them as the pins that marked parts of our past, of who we were then. All those nights pulling allnighters studying with our ex-lovers right by our side doing the same thing. That was when our bodies had enough energy to stay up and our minds had enough purpose to keep going. All those times going to bars drinking with our ex-lovers. That was when we could wear anything we wanted because we felt confident, loved and beautiful. All those walks hand in hand with our ex-lovers when Spring came. That was when our lives were not overly busy yet and we loved life dearly then.

We were naive and unmarked by the tragedies of life. That was probably why we fell for the wrong people. But didn’t we love who we were then? Our young, hopeful, energetic selves? Didn’t you love you?

Next time, you saw an ex on the street or skim through their social media, think of yourself during that person’s time. You were marvelous. You loved and you gave with all you had. Didn’t you love you?

New Year New Me