It’s been a while. Can I go back? Can I do it again or have I lost the touch forever and ever? Here goes.
* * *

It’s been a long while since I’ve written something that isn’t mindless rambling or cryptic. It’s been a while since I’ve written something that was from the heart; something that was direct without censor. I don’t know why I haven’t written of the such lately. Not sure at all. Maybe because when I started this journal, it was mainly for therapeutic reasons. To help me heal and get my feelings, my frustrations, my anger, and my emotions out. But lately, this hasn’t been the case.

Lately it’s just been mindless rambling of nonsensical lyrical whimsy; of head scratching “huh?” to philosophical jib jab.

My new found cousin Jun has made a comment about how “boring” my journal is because it lacked the “emotions” that she likes in journal writing, or blogs of this manner. So I thought I’d try to give it a try again..just to see if it’ll work. Just to see if I can find that part of me again.

I don’t know what exactly it is that made us “click” so well. Ever since we first met with our awkward “who the fuck are you?” hellos, we’ve been getting along fine. We are like long lost siblings, twins maybe, who were separated at birth only to find each other after 26 almost 27 years and realize that we never missed a beat. Strange how we just connected.

We hang out often at her place, just having dinner, eating, and recently drinking, and just having a good time cracking each other up. It’s funny how this familial stranger knows more about me and what is happening in my life than anyone else in my family that I’ve grown up with. Neither my mom nor my brother knows me as well as she does. She knows about me being burned, my current infatuation and crushes…..and my cynical romantic views of love.

We’ll talk about everything. Nothing, no subject, is a taboo to talk about. We share our thoughts, our opinions so freely and abashedly that there are no secrets between us. No thoughts that we ever held back…or so it seems. We are just comfortable around each other, and the funny thing is that we met about two months ago.

And again, she made a comment about my journal writing. She made a comment about how boring it is because it lack the feelings and the emotions that she knows that I’m so full of. So I am here giving it another go.

Maybe I’m just all fixed. Maybe there’s just nothing left in me that feels broken or feel the need to be dealt with currently. Whatever that was wrong with me is either fixed or repressed to awake at another time. I’m not sure, but I would like to think for the most part, I am fixed. For the most part.

I’m not going to lie to you. I still have some issues here and there. Some bitterness in me that has grown for reasons unknown, but it’s just there.

Where it came out to her that I was bitter, where it became so apparent that I am still bitter was when we were talking about my dad and how he passed away. I told her how my dad, the stubborn man that he is worked his poor body to death. Working two full-time jobs and not caring what the lack of sleep did to his body. He just worked. Again, like I stated before, maybe it was just to fill the void of having both my brother and I graduated and being on our own, or because I moved down here, or because it is his own suicidal mid-life-crisis? I don’t know, but when talking to her, my anger that I believed to have gone surfaced, my bitterness about the situation reappeared. And I do have a right to be bitter about it, but she has the point….what’s the point in holding onto this anger? What’s the point in being so bitter about something I have absolutely no control about? What’s the point?

I told her that most of my “emotional” writing in the journal are mainly the earlier ones, the ones I wrote in the first yean and a half of the blog’s inception. I held nothing back. No feelings or emotions were masked by the lyrical whimsy of a mad man where he rhymes to his own reason. All that was in the first half of this journal was me and my therapy.

This past weekend after hearing her talking about my journal, I reread some of the entries that I told her to read. I’m not sure if she read it yet, but I’m sure she will. I read the entry where I confessed my guilt toward my father’s death. That was the first entry towards my therapy. Even now, almost three years after his passing, almost three years to the day that I wrote that entry, tears still flowed. I couldn’t stop those tears from falling.

Those words I wrote touched a part of me that I thought was lost a long time ago. It touched feelings that I hid away. It opened up a part of me that is better left unopened. That is all in the past and I need to focus on what is happening with me now. But, there’s still a part of me who feels that I shouldn’t forget. There’s a part of me that feels that I shouldn’t hide those feelings away forever because they will always be a part of me, a reminder of who I am today. That I am my father. Very much so, as much as I don’t like to be compared to him, I am my father.

Reading words from friends and family who replied to my email, who replied to that entry, tears start to flow too. I guess it was just a cry that I really need to cleanse the soul. Everyone needs to cry from time to time right? So he knows that he can actually feel. I guess.

May 10th is fast approaching as my birthday is fast approaching. I wonder how I am going to take it this year? Will I actually be okay this year or will I feel depressed, angry, frustrated like I did last year? It was surprising to me what I felt about that day last year. It was a really really rough time for me last year, but I was really okay with it the year before. Strange how feelings work. Maybe because it was his memorial the year before, it was easier for me to deal and because last year was just a year…with no memorial, a year where we went on with our lives. I hated feeling that way; the anger, the pain, the disappointment, the guilt. Even now, writing it, I fight back the tears. But none will spill tonight. None will fall.

After reading about my father, I read the entry about my dear grandmother. I find it fitting how it still touched me. I find it comforting to know that she’s still constantly on my mind. I’m writing a script right now that has a storyline that deals with a grandmother that lives in a nursing home. In a way it is very autobiographical, but in a way it is pure fiction, pure drama, but the heart of it is still there. I read what I wrote, and again, tears flowed. Remembering how weak and fragile she was in there. Imagining how depressing it must be to know that your kids couldn’t do what they needed to do and abandoned you to someone else’s care. A convalescent home where no one speaks your language…a convalescent home where you just wait to die.

I remember writing and I remember how angry I was at my father for not telling me that my grandmother passed away. Again, I had to hear it from my cousin, and I thought that I deserved to hear it from my father when she passed away. But I didn’t. I was so angry at my father. I remember the next day after I heard, I went into work and just broke down in front of my new friends. I never cried like that in front of people before, especially people I’ve only known for a month. But I did. The tears wouldn’t stop falling and my anger kept boiling inside of me.

Stephanie said I should talk to my father about how I was feeling. She thought it would be good if I told him that I should have known about my grandma passing away much sooner. But I didn’t talk like my family never talked. We just kept things boiling inside hoping they will go away because we don’t want to bother other people with our own personal problems because these problems can be dealt with by ourselves.

But looking back now, remembering how I got the call from my brother that my father passed away, I could understand now. There were people that he needed to call first. I could wait.

It was a Saturday morning. I was at Blockbuster thinking about renting a movie, but nothing seemed to have interested me. I got to the H section in the new releases and I got a call from my brother. He was crying on the phone. In my life, I rarely see him cry or show any emotions of any kind, so I was taken back. I heard my mom crying in the back and hear him say “Dad passed away”, but it just didn’t register. I kept asking him to repeat it and he just told me again with a bigger wail.

It was a mean joke of some kind. It has to be. That’s what I thought, but it wasn’t. It still didn’t register. I stepped outside because I know I’m getting loud, thinking that will get me the answers that I needed. “What happened?” “How?” “Why?” the barrage of questions fire and fire, and he answered the best that his emotions can. Again, he rarely cries. I hear his sobs and my mom’s wails but it still didn’t register. My dad died of a heart attack. I still don’t believe it.

I walked back to the car and just think things through. I hear it, I processed it, but I still couldn’t understand. My brother told me to call all of my relatives down in California because I lived down here. I knew my job, but I still didn’t understand why. It was just a mass confusion and a jumbled mess of thoughts. I sat in the car, just processing everything and planning out what needs to be done next. When I thought it hit me, when I thought that it finally hit me it really didn’t. The tears that flowed seemed forced, seems fake, because it was. It absolutely was because it hasn’t hit me yet. It was like I was playing a part and that I was supposed to cry because the part asked for it.

I got home and made my first call. It was my Great Uncle. It finally hit me when I the first words out. “My Dad passed away” as I told him in Chinese. The tears and emotions that flowed after the first word was real. It was true emotions because it absolutely me hit me like a large semi truck running over a bunny rabbit; and I was the bunny rabbit. My father passed away. Me calling family confirms it. It’s no joke anymore because it is involving family that is other than me. I lost it. Couldn’t gather my thoughts, couldn’t hold together. Hearing my Great Uncle crack didn’t help either.

One call down, and many more to go. Once call down and many more to go. With each call, the more together I got. With each call, the fact sunk in. With each call, the shock wore off.

Now I understand why it took so long to call me. My dad had to make the same calls to my uncles and aunts and my cousins. He had to do the things I did. Though with my Grandma, it was partly expected, but still, the process is still the same.

With understanding, comes healing. With healing your anger subsides and you move on in life.

I remember those days clearly like I remember most days. Some of the details may blur, but I remember.

Bitterness. Anger. Why is it still with me? I don’t know. Maybe it’s what Jun feared, to have a goal and to die right after you reach it. Maybe that’s why I am still so bitter about my father’s death. It’s like that ultimate life long wish to only die right when you get that wish; to never really ever truly enjoy that wish, that goal. Maybe that’s why.

I believed I wrote about this in one of my many entries. In fact, I’m sure I did. But my father was a very distant father. My family was very emotionally closed off. Cold and distant. We never really talked about our emotions. The only emotions they ever showed was anger when my brother and I would do something wrong. Scolding. Overprotectivness. They did it to protect us from the world. What I really wanted was to able to just talk. To be able to talk about how I am doing, to talk about how he was doing, to bond the way family is supposed to bond. To build up that connection.

I finally managed that when I moved down here. My father would call me weekly just to check up and see how I was doing. I miss his calls. His weekly “what’s up man”? I truly miss them. What I wouldn’t give to hear those words from him again. We were bonding. My goal, my wish was achieved and then just like that, on Saturday morning right out of the blue, it was taken away from me. Bitterness.

It still lingers with me. Bitterness. From his death, from being burned, from life.

But like Jun said, I shouldn’t be bitter about that. There’s no reason for me to be bitter about his death. It was out of my hands. It just happened. Me moving down here didn’t cause him to have a heart attack no matter how much I believed it did. It just plain didn’t. Life happened. Life took its course. Life took my dad away. Life.

With that that bitterness will just “puff” and disappear. “Puff” Gone. Just like that.
* * *

All that is left if a bitterness of a different kind. All that is left is a bitterness that goes hand in hand with not trusting women. It was my fault really. It really was and I just let the situation got the better of me. I just hope that I don’t let this lack of trust get in the way of me finding truly something that is worth giving my whole heart to, instead of giving only half my heart because I just don’t want it to shatter again.

Bitterness from being burned. I hope it doesn’t happen, but sometimes I just have to go all in and see where things go. I’ve taken that chance before with all of my heart and I have survived. Just some mending time and look here I am, back on the saddle. So I should truly trust what is happening now and not be my cynical self and question it. Just go all in again. You’ll survive.

There’s nothing I need to protect. I’ve been hurt quite a few times with unrequited love. I been hurt by a relationship that I thought was more than what it really was. So why not with this one. Trust when she says that there’s no one else. Trust when she says that she hasn’t written me off just as a fuck buddy yet. Just trust her. Even if she’s seeing someone else, why does it really matter? It’s not like we are exclusive. It’s not like we are actually boyfriend and girlfriend. I think I’m just going to go with the flow like I always try to do.

She knows where I am coming from. She knows that I not looking for strictly the physical. She knows because of my “innocence”, my romantic ideals of what relationships should be, she knows I want the intimacy, she knows I want the relationship. She knows.

But it’s hard especially if I am the only one feeling this way. Relationships takes two people that feel the same way to work. Maybe we are just too different; in different times in our life, looking for different things. Maybe.

Jun feels that I should find someone with the same intentions as mine. She doesn’t want me to lose this “innocence” that I have, this sweetness that is me…the romantic ideals that I hold so dear. She doesn’t want me to lose that. She knows that I might if I get burned too many times, leaving only the bitter old man that I am capable of being. But my dear cousin needs to know that I must go through with whatever it is. Maybe I am a masochist and that I know this will go sour, but I need to go through with this because maybe she is the “one” that my cousins talks so hopefully about. Maybe this girl is my one true love and I can’t be sure about it if I don’t go through with it. I am willing to get hurt to try and see if it is meant to be.

If it wasn’t meant to be, then it truly wasn’t meant to be. Then I will get up, dust myself off, and try again.

I know I’ve said that I am done looking for that someone. I am finished. With this one, if it ends, it ends. I’m not looking any more. I’m not going to actively search to find the one that they call “my true love”. I give up the search, because things like this should never be sought after. It should always just happen. Again, maybe that’s that innocence talking, but it just feels right.

I know I am a big romantic at heart, always idolizing what love should truly be, but the cynic in me just makes my beliefs in love to be realistic. And I’m just torn between my idealism and realism, and sadly it just seems realism is winning out. Relationships happen and it never ever truly is what it is portrayed in the movies and novels. Love will always be Life, where it’s a mixture of good and bad.

Again, my search for love is done. It will not happen again. If this fizzles, I can truly imagine myself be all right being a bachelor for the rest of my life. I can also see my life content with someone in it too. I can go either way. This doesn’t mean that I am closed off to any relationships of any kind. No. If I meet someone who I get along with and develop those feelings for, I would bet that I would take that risk again, and hit or miss, I don’t know. But I’m willing to take that shot again. But, again, I’m not going to actively go out searching for it. I’ve come that that decision.

Fading. Fading. The light fades its once bright shiny ray of savior until it is just blackness. The Star that once shined so brightly shines no more. Dead. Silent. Cold…an ever expanding ball of fire that burned it’s last bit of gas, leaving nothing but a empty vastness of space, sucking in all unsuspecting souls too blinded to see her black hole.

Fading. Fading. The light fades from the once clear blue skies and fade into the darkness of night. Here the predators comes to find its prey. Only here do the strong survive. Survival of the fittest.

We move on. Our eyes adjust to the darkness. We feel out our surroundings. We adapt to the environment. We just be our bettered selves in the unconscious sun’s glory.
* * *

Typing away, sitting away, watching the screen as my once dexterous fingers type away the words that I think the second before, trying to come up with something worthwhile to write.

I cannot think of anything as I sit here, just watching. Just watching as things just go and go, never passing me by because there is nothing to see that can pass me by.

I am all caught up in all standards of life. I am all caught up on what is necessary to be a person. I am all caught up. I have a heart and a soul. A mind and a body.

Looking deep inside this little mind that is mine, I reach, I grasp for things to write. I struggle to find the all-echoing thought that once haunted my daily existence. The philosophical proverbs that ring so true and sounds so cryptic. I struggle to find the words to describe how my life has changed. I struggle to remember the things that I remembered just second, hours, days, weeks, months, years before. I struggle.

Life wouldn’t be anything if there weren’t struggle. Life will be one boring moment after another…no learning curve. Struggles make us wise, help us grow. As we learn to cope with these struggles, we become better people.

A fading star that shined so brightly has brought upon other connections that seem to be much stronger.

Never have we met but I could feel the bond we share. Words exchanged from the cold void that I am so familiar with, to the cellular dialogue that goes between us. Laughs, jokes, taunts, secrets and lies. Conversation. Light and deep. Enlightening and heartfelt. True.
* * *

Done. Search no more. No more. No more. These feelings of searching, the unnecessary needs of finding, of connecting once again exists no more.

I am done. I am through. I call it quits in this little game. There is no point. Things like these should never be sought after. Things like these should never be hunted down. Things like these should never be forced. They should just happen.

Things like these should just be for the sake of being. They should exist out of obscurity because it feels truer this way. There’s no point in searching, because all in all it will just end up being a DESPERATE search. Exhausted desperation that leads one to find a treasure of fools gold.

Again, The Alchemist wasn’t successful in turning lead into gold with the good ol’ Philosopher’s Stone that Van sung so joyfully about.
It may look like the real thing, smell like the real thing, feel like the real thing…but all of these things are just surface, just face to fool you.

Through trials and tests, finding the mass, displacing the water, we find that deep inside it is only black lead, painted with the shiny valued exterior that we all craved about way back in 1849.

Gold like this is something that you come upon out of the blue. Not looking. Not wanting. Not needing. A pleasant surprise that turns your fortune around. It just happens.

Once you get that inkling…once you find traces of gold dust, then you go searching for it. You go and work for it, to find the riches that are beyond your imagination.

You go to the river, you sift through the boulders, the rocks, the pebbles, the sand. You sift and you sift…wash and wash. Aching back, bloody fingers, creaky knees. It’s a long and hard task, but if you are ever so fortunate, if you are ever so lucky, you strike it rich. You find the most valuable gift known to man.

But only if you are ever so fortunate. For some, even though they never will strike it rich, the feeling of being only a step away to economic freedom is all they need. Others aren’t so fortunate. Turning bitter and angry, one step from glory but never tasting glory is just too much to bare. They could go on no longer.

Out of hope and with nothing but desperation, some do drastic things; become a outcast to society, left with nothing but that feeling of lost glory. They are a lost cause. There’s nothing in them anymore. Bitter to the end.

But would being one step away from glory and never reaching it prove my fate as a lost soul? Only time will tell. For the time being, I am content with gold dust.
* * *

How can this be? How can this happen? Where did this connection come from?

How can we be so close, yet we’ve only met a little over a month ago? It seems like we’ve always known each other….maybe from a past life or something…or maybe we both are sheep. Strange how astrology works sometimes.

Open. Close. That’s what we both are to each other. I am close to her than most all family that I’ve grown up and hung out with. Shit, she knows more about my life now than any family. I am more close to her than my brother. We talk about anything, joke about anything. Open. Close.

It’s just strange to share this connection with someone who I only just met. It’s strange indeed. Friends from a past life, I’m sure.

Maybe we are just two open people, unashamed of being ourselves, each accepting our faults and our virtues and presenting them to the other whole heartedly, not holding anything back because we both know that the other will accept us for who we truly are?

Words, thoughts, feelings, secrets, life flow between us without censor. She knows more about me in this short time than most family know in my lifetime. Just strange how the universe work sometimes. Strange.

But maybe I just got to the point where I am comfortable with who I am; comfortable with my faults and my insecurities; comfortable in my own skin to just be myself to each and all. Open enough to share my personal secrets for everyone who have open ears…maybe.

It sure feels that way to many down here.

Who knows what this sibling relationship will bring me…who knows what this sibling relationship means…who knows?

“Sex appeal”…apparently that’s what we share. Genetics maybe, but I disagree. There’s just no sex appeal in me. I think the thing that she can’t pinpoint, the thing that she struggled to come up with is genuiness..openness…comfort.

We have that much in common. We don’t try to be more than what we are. We don’t try to be less than what we are either. We are just who we are.

Humor. Personality. The same through and through. Sure she has more life experiences, but we are still the same. Different upbringings, yet we are still the same. Maybe my science and her God ran out of personalities in that part of Vietnam in 39 days and I ended up with the same predisposed personality that she had? Possibility…the world is full of them.

My new found family. My family away from family. My new life. My new skin. My new me. Me. Me. Me.

It’s all about me.