Where are you?

Growing up, I had a dysfunctional family. Who doesn't, right? Still, I feel I was deprived of the sense of "family" during my childhood more than my friends were. My parents divorced when I was just entering the first grade. My older half-brother, who was 20+ years my senior, moved out of my house after an altercation with our dad when I was just four or five years old, and I wouldn't see him for at least another decade. I only met my mom's side of the family once, as they all live in Korea; to this day, I don't know who all of my uncles, aunts, and cousins are in Korea. My dad forbade me from ever seeing his side of the family, and I never dared question why he hated them so much. I just obeyed.

Still, mama knew me better than I knew myself, and knew that I would one day crave for a sense of family, if I wasn't already. She went behind my dad's back to get me to start seeing his side of the family. The matriarch of the family, aunt Jannie, who I rarely ever saw. The eldest male in the family, uncle June, who potty-trained me and sympathized with me about my dad and "his ways." The youngest male in the family, my "little dad," who owned a popular restaurant in one of the biggest Asian marts in northern Virginia. The youngest female in the family, Kathy, who sadly gets dubbed as "the crazy one" and the drama queen of the family.

Aunt Jannie passed away from brain tumors in 2004. It was at her funeral that I was re-united with my own brother, and the first time I hung out with all of my cousins as a "grown-up" and not just as a child. We played poker, they let me have some beers, and my brother won me some seed money for college in poker. I would start seeing the family more regularly--and not just during the 4th of July and New Years--for the next few years. Then, I went off to college and spoke to nobody but my mom. I never heard from my brother, I heard from my dad maybe once or twice a year, and I was once again only reunited with my cousins during the 4th of July and New Years.

I graduated college after four years of learning just how selfish/selfless I am, how much I want to belong somewhere, how much I crave love & affection from friends and family, and how I can drive myself into madness with thoughts of loneliness and remorse. Shit happened during those four years. I lost quite a few friends, I gained many more, I learned secrets about still others that had been my friends this entire time that I was oblivious to. I was ostracized, I was celebrated, I was hated, my character was questioned (by both others and myself), and I was still loyal (to others, but not to myself). I lost myself, but found myself in the way I care for the people in my life. I lost myself again when I realized I care too much for the other people in my life and not enough for myself. I pushed myself. I took things for granted, and appreciated them when I lost them and promised myself I would learn more about gratitude as I entered the real world.

Graduation day, mom told me about you. And I realized just how mortal we all are.

Certain things stopped being important. I don't care if that boy loves me or not anymore. I don't care what that girl is saying about me to her sorority. I don't care if plans are cancelled, because I have somewhere more important to be anyway. I don't care if I have to spend a ton of money on gas to drive 90 miles to Maryland and back just to catch a feeble dozen crabs. I don't care if I got three useless degrees from university, because your degree was useless, too, and you still did very well in life. I don't care if much of our time together was spent in silence, watching television and drinking beer. I don't care that you never asked for anything in return, because I still wish I could have done more.

Where are you? Why are you gone? How did this happen to you? You were the best one out of all of us. Can you come back, somehow?

You were the protective, funny, street smart, cool-but-dumb, don't-fuck-with-my-family older brother that I had always wanted. Of all of us, why did you have to go? Why wasn't it me? It could have been any of us. The illness clearly runs in our family. Why was it you? Where are you? Can you hear me?

After you left us, I started working in food service. I know you would have given me so much shit for that: "Why is your life going ass backwards? You're going from working in government to serving food? Can you at least hook me up? What's good there?" And then upon learning that we had no seafood or barbecue dishes, you would have scoffed and walked out. Your dad passed away two months later, following you to the afterlife, a father going after his son. Is there an afterlife? Where are you? Can you hear me?

I then picked up a job in retail. You would have still given me shit for delving further into the service industry, but then begrudgingly would have told me you respect my work ethic and that "you gotta do what you gotta do to get by." I was working 60-70 hours a week dealing with other people so I wouldn't have to deal with myself and my grief. My dad didn't show up to either your nor your dad's funerals, by the way.

I got a job with the government around a month ago. Sub-contractor, actually. You would have given me shit for that, too. "You suck so much that you can't even work for a contractor for the government, but you work for a contractor for a contractor for the government? What's wrong with you?" You were such an asshole. You had a way of making fun of me for absolutely everything, and I loved you for it. Any time I fucked up in life in the past few years, I would tell you, and you would just laugh. You would help me realize that mistakes are just funny stories you can tell to people in the future (and to your cousin with cancer that will make you sheepishly realize that things could be worse). You helped me see the humor in life. You would sometimes tell me about your own similar fuck-ups--which actually ended up being worse than mine--which made me feel better. There was one fuck-up of mine where you didn't even want to know details, because you knew I was so ashamed, and it was no poking-fun matter. But you helped me out anyway, shoving a wad of cash in my hand and telling me not to worry about it. And I knew you knew what it was. But neither of us spoke about it out loud, and that's when I really started to get who you were as a person.

You were the one that really helped me feel like I finally had a family. You brought us together. You always talked shit at poker nights while smoking your cigars, wearing those stupid sunglasses, bragging about how you've got a huge dong. I knocked you down a peg, when you referred to your manhood as a "Jimmy Dean bratwurst," by replying: "I think you mean Vienna Sausage." Weirdly enough, I think this is when you started to respect me--when 15-year old me made an unexpected dick diss.

I have more time to myself now. I've quit my retail job. I only work about 60 hours a week now, but 40 of those hours are a desk job where I honestly have nothing to do, and so I am left alone with my thoughts--the thoughts I refused to acknowledge about your absence, about uncle's absence, about dad's self-alienation from the family, about the evanescence of life. And I've been fucking up a lot lately with friends and my mom and finances and job stuff and friends and ambition.

I need you to laugh at me again. Where the fuck are you?

Day 13: "Describe 5 weaknesses you have."

I'm pretty sure a lot of these overlap or are direct effects of each other. Yay for positive feedback loops...

Hypocrisy. I tell people not to be late, and then I myself show up past due. I preach direct confrontation and straightforward honesty, and then I myself sometimes pussyfoot around things and/or twist the honest truth into a wispy white lie. I look down on arrogant people, yet I, too, hold myself in high regard at times. I despise inconsistency, yet I am inconsistent--a hypocrite. I'm definitely making an active effort to practicing what I preach, but I don't always catch it. Please help me do so, if you are one of my best friends.

Over-analysis. I have a habit of reading into things way too much. It's ironic, because I can't read between the lines and pick up on hints and identify motives for passive-aggressive behavior. However, it's because I am aware of this unawareness that I make an extra effort to analyze the crap out of things (and all the wrong things, too). I end up driving myself into insanity by contemplating different "what-if" scenarios and exploring the myriad of possible meanings of what somebody did or said and scrutinizing why what I did might have been wrong and what I need to do to ready myself for the consequences of said wrong action and wondering if someone favors me or dislikes me. I overanalyze texts, behavior, 'signs' in life, conversations, body language, everything. I have a constant headache from making mountains out of molehills. What's worse is that sometimes, I end up being right in my over-analysis, and so I am only reinforced to keep doing it.

Inconsiderateness/insensitivity. I never mean to be inconsiderate. That's just what it is: non-consideration. I never considered that something I did or said would offend or insult or hurt you. I was most likely joking and/or simply not realizing that you were sensitive to the matter at hand. Yes, I can be inconsiderate--but this does not mean I intentionally am trying to offend/insult/hurt you. Being inconsiderate really sucks because it's a self-sustaining trait, and people get mad at me without me realizing why. I then get deemed cold or selfish or bitchy or demanding because I failed to consider other people. I didn't mean to fail to consider you; I just simply didn't consider you. It wasn't an active effort. I realize this only makes me sound even more like the traits I just mentioned. And maybe people don't really care about intentions as much as I do. I would hope it's some sort of consolation to your increasingly-negative perception of me that I don't hurt you because I mean to; I hurt you because it's collateral damage of my blindness. After all, it's not like my thought process is, "Oh, have I considered his/her feelings yet? Maybe I should. Nah, I won't." It just never even crosses my mind. I'm sorry to those who have had to put up with me through this, but I am even sorrier to those who don't call me out on it--if you don't call me out on it, I'm never gonna improve, and you're most likely going to have to keep dealing with my bullshit. Please, please speak up if I am doing something you don't like or if you want to have more of a say.

Complaining. I don't realize I'm complaining until someone tells me I'm complaining. Another part of being inconsiderate, I guess. I just thought we were venting/talking... but neither the word 'complaining' nor its connotation sits well with me. So when someone tells me I'm complaining, I really try to shut the hell up. I don't even readily know what the opposite of complaining is. Appreciating? Praising? I do know, however, that I stopped expressing gratitude for positive things going on in my life because people kept saying I was just bragging. "I'm humanly unable to please everyone at the same time, so now I find my peace of mind living one day at a time..." To be frank, though, I think I would rather complain than appreciate; complaining helps me articulate what is wrong in my life, which then leads me to wonder what I can do to fix it. Please know, people, that when I complain, I don't do it for the sake of complaining. I'm trying to think out loud and brainstorm something (preferably with your input, if I'm indeed 'complaining' to you) to get rid of the dissonance in my life.

Overcommitment. I'm known as an overachiever among my friends, and it's more of a vice than a virtue, really. I tend to bite off more than I can chew, and the only reason I end up being able to follow through with everything I signed up for is because of the next item on this list. But if I could back out of things without any negative consequences, then I would. I sign myself up for all sorts of performances and events and trips and hangouts that I end up burning out. It doesn't happen often anymore, since I am rather used to it now (and I actually kind of thrive on it now), but back in college, I was just constantly running on fumes. I think I've achieved a decent balance of when to chill out and when to go full force into everything in my life, but there are times every now and then that I hate myself for not really thinking when I say 'yes' to things/people.

Stubbornness. I know it says to do only 5 weaknesses, but I have more than just 5 primary ones. There are a bunch more of secondary/tertiary weaknesses, too, I'm sure. I get my stubbornness from my dad, my family says. Too prideful to back down, too determined for negotiating or compromising, too hot-headed to yield to others' suggestions. Sometimes, I just do shit just for the sake of doing it, not because I even particularly feel like doing it anymore. I just don't want to go back on my word, and I want to try and be consistent, but also I just feel like doing things my way and my way only. I've wasted a lot of my time and resources because of my stubbornness, I'm sure, but I'm too stubborn to care.

Overapologetic. My mom raised me to believe that this is a good trait. By reinforcing me with accolades of my character, I ended up becoming a fuckin' martyr. Everything is my fault, everything is my responsibility. I need to take responsibility. If I had just done this or if I hadn't done that, then things would be fine. People would be fine. Somewhere along the road, I realized that I heard myself say the phrase "I'm sorry" more often than I heard it coming out of others' mouths. I started to resent apologizing, and I still do, honestly. I hate apologizing now. In trying to alleviate others of their guilt/responsibility, I ended up taking on the burden myself and losing myself in the process. Like I said, a martyr. Why can't people apologize to me, for once? And no, it doesn't count if you follow the phrase "I'm sorry" with a "but." No "but"s in apologies. Also, someone pointed out that it's awfully presumptuous that I apologize for everything. This kind of entails (although I never saw it this way) that I'm in control of everything and nobody else is; I knew/know what's best and nobody else does; I apologize because it's the higher road.