cynosure

The first time I chopped off all (well, most) of my hair, I was 13.

That weekend, I was going to dress up as Tokyo Babylon Sumeragi Subaru, a CLAMP character– and arguably my all-time favorite anime/manga, or at least the one in which I was most emotionally invested– for my first convention. (Incidentally, Subaru means Pleiades in Japanese, ahem…)

It was the first time I got my hair cut by someone other than my mom, with whose skills I had been less than satisfied as of late. I handed the lady at SuperCuts a print-out of a manga scan of Subaru and his twin sister, Hokuto, and she told me she couldn’t use it– it was a “comic book character, for deity’s sake!” She would not give me the faux-sideburns that the character required– instead, she proceeded to hack off everything into something much less cool than a bowl cut.

I looked like a boy. (Wasn’t that the goal, anyway?) No matter. I was mortified. I had Chinese school in an hour. Could I get by with wearing a hat?

And more than just feeling mortified, I was incredibly depressed every time I looked in the mirror. I felt terrible about the loss of my hair. At least before I had my hair cut, I didn’t look too bad.

Worse, being that it was middle school (the new version of high school in terms of being the epitome of peer pressure and meanness– kids start to mature so much earlier these days!), I became the brunt of bullying.

Not just being teased that I looked like a guy (and dressed like one already, too). Instead, I was “worse”– I was “a lesbian”, they jeered, staring at me and my hair with disdain, treating me like something absolutely grotesque.

For the rest of 8th grade I was ridiculed for looking “not straight”. I didn’t understand; why could the girls with makeup and long hair slap each other’s butts, laughing, and hug each other tight… but if I hugged my best friend, people would look at me as if I were not just weird but disgusting? Because I didn’t wear cute clothes or “look” like a girl?

I had serious gender identity crises. Why did I see a cute guy that I might even be attracted to, when I looked in the mirror? Why, if I tried to see myself as female, I thought I was ugly?

After a while, though, I became comfortable with my short-haired self, even reveled in the fact that I didn’t look like everyone else– but eventually decided to grow out my hair, citing a goal to grow enough hair to donate to Locks of Love, and the fact that I had never really grown out my hair past a certain length.

The second time I chopped off all my hair was the year I turned 18. I felt like I had to reclaim a part of myself somehow before I teetered towards the first number of “adulthood”– I was heart and stomach deep within an eating disorder, a different kind of depression I didn’t understand, a sort of quiet numbness that made me feel hollow– I felt like having short hair again was like coming back to myself, to the self that actually knew how to feel once upon a time, knew how to cry bucketloads instead of being a stone. Anything better than the soul-paralyzed anesthetic I constantly felt then.

So I took a pair of scissors (I never trusted SuperCuts again…) and cut my hair. Unevenly and unperfectly, but I did it.

I also dyed my hair black, the last time I ever dyed my hair, and the first time my hair was its “natural” color in 7 years. (I had dyed my hair at least once or twice per year ever since I was 11, convinced that black was just “so boring!”)

And I felt like I transformed somehow. I felt like I returned to my real self a little bit. But I don’t know what I was trying to accomplish. I don’t know if I saw it as a panacea for all my problems at the time. It was still a symbolic action for me, though. Something changed.

And then I grew out my hair again. I wanted to dress up as Tifa Lockhart with my natural hair at least once in my life, and I still wanted to see how long I could grow it out.

Recently, though, I’ve gotten a little sick of having so much hair. I love my hair, surely, but it becomes a burden when I run, it rarely behaves, and it always seems to get in the way. Even after my first haircut this month, after I showered, the generic style I got didn’t want to replicate itself again without the prodigious amount of products the hairdresser had piled on at the salon.

So I decided offhandedly that I wanted to go back to short hair. I really did feel different when I had short hair. Like it was a way of being true to myself, to the way I saw myself inside, within my spirit.

But this time, after I got it cut, I didn’t feel too different as I stared at myself in the mirror, waiting for my sister’s hair to be done as well. I do feel a little more satisfied with my hair (no more bangs in my eyes and excessive amount of hair left everywhere I go!), and that short hair suits me better and expresses my inner self more– but I don’t feel like I’ve changed that much.

I don’t feel like just because I look different physically, my internal feelings will change, too. Not anymore.

That’s my milestone. How I look on the outside doesn’t affect my inside anymore.

And it’s not just hair. But my body– my nose, my lips, my eyes, my legs, my arms, my hips, my stomach, or how well I fit my bras.

As long as I’m healthy, as long as I’m happy… on the inside.

And that realization, cemented in my heart, brings me more happiness than any physical change ever could.

(I can’t wait to shave my head in a couple years, too. Originally it was scheduled for my 30th birthday, but I figure why not sooner than later?)

Thank you India.Arie for the title… I was stumped for a moment

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Turning twenty was supposed to be especially important because 7 years ago, I thought I’d be dead before I hit two-oh.

There was a time in my life when I thought that I would kill myself before I’d live two decades. That life, at age twelve, had already proved itself not worth living.

My first memory of the thought: I was eight. I had snuck into the kitchen and stared at the knives, already wondering if living was worth it.

I’m not sure how to put into words exactly why. When you’re young and you feel the rest of the world is just so damn antagonistic, what can you do? Of course, I had actual reasons, but their meaning in my life has drifted away, sand on leaves.

So it’s pretty damn amazing to realize that, in the course of little over a one year or so, I’ve moved forward so far. It was March of last year. I had reached the end of a line and knew I had to change or die. To go from a self-hating-bulimic-anorexic-bingeing-self-harming-depressed-and-once-upon-a-time-suicidal ball of self-destruction to happy, content, full of confidence and love and unconditional acceptance for myself… what can I say? In the past I couldn’t have even dreamt such blessings and joy.

Still, I’m not there yet. I’ll never really be there, and to me, that’s what makes life worth living. Always moving forward, because there is no end. No end to this growing, this living, this loving.

I can always stand to love myself a little more each day. We all can.

“To be honest” is, if not my favorite, then my most overused way to start a sentence. I feel compelled to announce when I’m being “especially” honest. It’s my ironically boring way of making “confessions” with a sprinkle of spice.

To be honest, I’m absolutely terrified of talking on the phone. I’ve been working on this for what seems like forever. In high school, I would lie and say I lost my phone.. underneath my bed.. for several days. I prefer anything to communicating telephonically. I actually prefer talking to someone in person (most of the time) to any other way.

To be honest, I have no idea what I’m going to do, you know, for a living, for an extended period of time. And that uneasiness of where I’m headed is clouding my mind, my actions. I don’t know what to do now because I’m not sure what I’m even aiming for. What am I supposed to do in a situation like that? I live in the present, but the present determines the future, and I don’t know what future I want. I want to be … better. That’s it. Smarter. More responsible. Wiser. More clear-headed. Healthier. I should focus on that one first.

To be honest…

This story is unfinished. It always has been. And I’ve been feeling like maybe it’s almost even a little false at this point, because somewhere along the way, I did start binging again. And I did start feeling.. utterly confused as to why. And problems have come back.

I’ve been trying to avoid it, and I think that’s the problem. Clarity comes back to me when I feel like I’m really experiencing life, even if I’m just seeking inspiration in beauty of words and images and life as depicted by others. But lately, very recently, and for several months before that, I’ve been eating mindlessly. Truthfully, weight gain is the least of my concerns. I’m more upset about how helpless, hopeless, and nauseous I’ve ended up making myself feel day after day. I’m more concerned with the fact that I don’t seem to even know why I started, let alone how to stop.

I feel as if I haven’t walked in days, let alone climbed and hiked and enjoyed moving my body. I’ve felt sedentary and sick.

Also, painfully, I’ve realized I have a small appetite and a not-too-swift metabolism. No matter how much I want to, I can’t eat very much. I used to be self-conscious of this. And I used to eat more, a lot more than my stomach could even handle, in company just because I felt others projecting their own insecurities onto me when they saw how little I eat. Ironic that when I was anorexic and hungry, for the sake of achieving an impossible body type I wouldn’t eat at mealtimes even when I was starving. And ironic later that I began to eat more for the sake of making others more comfortable with themselves. That’s not my job. Don’t pressure me.

It’s been hard for me to accept that my metabolism isn’t lightning speed, that my stomach can only fit a little food at a time. I’ve forced my poor stomach to take in much more than it needs for a week… all at once, in a day. I’m getting better, though. Or, I was, until recently I started not even eating healthy food. (Not that just because it’s healthy means you should binge on it, et cetera…)

But I have to accept it. I can’t change it. I have to love that part of myself, too. I have to stop wishing I had a faster metabolism so I could eat more, more frequently. When I eat what my body needs when I’m hungry… I don’t eat much. I CAN’T eat that much. That’s one confession.

(Another thing I have to accept: Depression is a big part of my past life. Just because I’m unbelievably happy now doesn’t mean I can ever ignore that and, especially, not be mindful when it flickers in my life again, warning me to pay attention and stop taking myself and my life for granted.)

I brought my old journal back from the dead so I could read some of my past scattered writings (and retrieve old content for the Never Give Up kit, of course). One particular impetus was to find again this quote, since I left my books on emotional eating somewhere else because I thought (yet again) “I’m ‘recovered’ completely, hurrah!”:

My students often say, “I want to be done with this thing with food once and for all.” But there is no place to get to, no such thing as arriving and never having to leave. If you take a big view and understand that eating, or thinking about eating, will probably always be the way you alert yourself to changes in your inner world, you can relax. You can use turning to food as a method of exploring the corners of your soul; you can think about emotional eating as a gift rather than a curse.

Geneen Roth, from When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull Up a Chair

It’s my gift, then, right? The problem is that I’m not using it to my advantage… why, why have I started this terrible cycle again? A few days I’m healthy… a few days later, I’m caving at the first twitch of stress. Why why why. (I’m figuring it out… slow and steady wins the race.)

I know I started this journal for you, but I started it for me, too. And my constant occassional “I’ll be honest” writings are my steps in becoming more open, more vulnerable. I want to tell you everything now, without all these censors I put on myself. I want to share. (And if what I write might move you, amuse you, or even somehow help you, that’s more than enough for me.)

About why my childhood and, more severely, middle school years were terrible enough for me to want to die. (Well, maybe not… that might just be yet another sob story. Maybe.)

About how I was taken advantage of by a 23-year-old classmate (whose girlfriend was in Japan…) on my sixteenth birthday. (I seem to attract guys who cheat on their girlfriends. Sigh. Maybe I’ll tell that story, too.)

About how I was mugged on the streets of Shanghai in the summer of 2007. (Actually, that story’s not as interesting as you’d think.)

About my first real “relationship” (I say it was real yet put the word in quotes… hrm), and my first sexual experience (it was far from “making love”).

About my first love that spanned five years and lasted as a flicker through two unrelated relationships.

About…

(It seems that most of my traumatic experiences happened as a result of males. Tough luck, dudes. Though a couple of males have also been, in a way, my saviors as well, so it balances out.)

One big deterrent was always that these were real people I was talking about, real people who could even be reading this now (though I flatter myself in thinking so). But that’s just one of the risks in putting a slice of one’s self out into the open, right? (And even more so with this medium).

Thanks for sticking with me this far. My story’s only just begun. It’s almost six in the morning and it’s another bright, new, beautiful day. Well, after I sleep and awake again, at least.

And if you were wondering what my first favorite word is… well, at first thought, I’d say it was love… which does happen to be a close first. But the truth is I don’t have one. I love (there’s that word again!) words too much to associate with such petty favoritism. Hah! (I probably should sleep now.)

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Yesterday, I turned 20.

I was 13 when I experienced serious ageism for the first time. I had applied for an “elite” Harry Potter online community and was barely accepted– because the vast majority of voters said that while my application wasn’t bad, because of that number, age, I clearly had to be immature.

I started lying about my age when I was 10– nervous little lies whose truths I hoped desperately would never unveil itself in the light. At my sister’s wedding, someone guessed I was 10 years older than I actually was (15). My first real relationship was with someone 12 years my senior.

At a certain point, I stopped telling people my age at all. It didn’t matter anyway, at least to me. A friend, the night before my birthday just two days ago, asked, “How old, 22? The ripe old age?” (I would like to take an intermission to say that I don’t think anyone with a two-digit number for an age is “old”. It’s ridiculous for me to hear peers lamenting how “old” they are. Whereas I’m gearing up for another 100 or so years )

I’ve been hesitant to reveal many labels about myself (age, ethnicity, even gender) because I don’t want to be judged. I don’t want anyone to look at me, see first a number, and then decide that on the basis of that number what I had to say was worth any less than the next person’s.

I was uncomfortable. I was scared. I didn’t want people to see me differently just because of (what I feel is) just a number.

Originally the first line of this post was going to be the last.

But it’s not.

This is the last line: Yesterday was my birthday.

Today I feel a little lost, a little out of sorts.

Today I don’t know who I am.

Today I’m staying with myself.

Today I’m taking care of myself.

Today I’ll have patience with myself.

Today I’m going to grow up a little more.

Today I feel a little lost.

And that’s okay.

I woke up yesterday morning, I had to be somewhere in half an hour, and instead of rushing as I would have otherwise, I just stopped. I stopped and sat, and something stirred within my chest and I started to cry.

Because I woke up with this song (from a Shaman King clip) in my head, and the same feelings that I had while writing the very first entry of this journal came back. Once again, upon waking.

Loneliness, loneliness, loneliness.

Loneliness, this deep sadness after the ending of almost every story I love because each of those stories (Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, Shaman King…) is about lonely people. Lonely people who find each other and maybe eventually leave each other. Lonely people who’ve been alone their whole lives and finally find friends. I love each character, empathize with them, relate to their solitary and lonely life. I feel as if I’m one of them, too– another lonely person who just wants friends, and finds them somehow in this other world. As if every character were truly my friend, the kind of friend and companion I’ve yet to encounter in real life. But at the end of the story, when the unreal world disappears, I’m the one alone. Of course… it’s only a “story”.

Ryu, the character from Shaman King who sings that song, spends his whole life searching for companions, for his “best place”– the place that he belongs. After he meets Yoh, he’s found it. He’s found his best place– through companionship, through friendship.

When I was thirteen I told everyone my biggest fear was being alone. But I was wrong: I’m actually okay with being alone. In fact, I love solitude, relish in it– perhaps even more so than most people. But loneliness is a completely separate being from solitude.

We can all be in the middle of, not just a crowd but people we know, even love and care about, and still feel lonely.

I know I am blessed; I am so thankful. There are amazing people in my life and I know it. And I’ve been fortunate enough to find and be with a great partner, too.

But I still yearn for that sense of companionship. It’s not even that I need it… I’m content with what I have. I really am.

But because of that, I understand lonely people. Because even though I’m not alone– none of us are; we are all interconnected, interdependent– I feel lonely. All the time.

(And I realize I don’t talk much about weakness– especially not my weakness. I try not to show it, to admit it. I’ve been eating out of stress lately and I didn’t even want to admit I was stressed… and still don’t. I don’t feel that stressed. But I do feel … a little tense, a little nervous… I’m aware that I’m using food to comfort and medicate myself, and I’ve made the choice to do so. I still refuse to be unconscious.)

Not everyone understands why I want to love everyone in the world. Truly love each individual being. I might not like them, even. But I want to love them, to wish them happiness, to help them out in times of need. I want to love him and her and you.

In fact, I’ve had the epiphany lately that not many people understand why I would want to love every being on earth at all.

“Maybe… the people who do bad things… maybe, they’re just lonely.” Said the ghost of a murdered girl at the end of Tokyo Babylon.

And I believe it. God, do I believe it.

Nobody is bad. Nobody is unworthy of love. “The people who deserve love least… need it the most.” (Heart Warmers)

Think about it.

I truly believe there is no such thing in this world as a “bad person”.

There is no good or bad. In the end: “The only true justice is love.” (Quoth Marco from Shaman King.)

That’s why I love Shaman King so much. It’s a story of a group of loving and naive shamans– who are really just kids– trying to defeat a man who, over the course of a whole millenium, spends three lives (two reincarnated) murdering and trying to exterminate the world of all humans. He hurts and kills so many, robs countless families of their fathers and mothers… yet in the end, it’s only because he is the one lonely and utterly alone, and it was humans who killed the only loved one he had.

Even those who do bad things have their reasons, their broken hearts. Their anger, their sadness. Their loneliness that may have no end to its depths.

Nothing can excuse their actions, but what if.

If we stopped to be more understanding and loving towards those we are quick to label “bad people” instead of creating more hatred… how might our world change?

If we forgave those who did us wrong, and set them and ourselves free from anguish, from the lingering pain of bitterness and resentment… imagine how different our lives would be. How free we would be. If we forgave ourselves.

If we realized that every rude and inconsiderate person we come across might be suffering from something terrible in their lives. If every customer that was impatient and annoying was in a hurry to go to the hospital for their loved one. (I learned this from customer service training at my second job as a hardware store cashier. Thanks, hardware store, for inculcating me with a lifetime start towards customer/client/human satisfaction.)

If we paused and tried to understand people who hurt us instead of reaching for pettiness and revenge.

If we stopped to consider that lashing back at and trying to hurt someone– who might be acting out of pain to begin with– just creates more animosity, hate breeding hate.

Forgiveness heals. Love always heals.

That’s why I try to love, trust, and forgive as many people as my heart can take. I’m human… but I can at least try my best.

I’m not telling you you should, too.

But the world, each individual in it– can always use a little bit more understanding. So turn the other cheek… at least sometimes. Reach out to the bully who’s acting out once in a while.

Behind every horrendous action lies a human who, too, has a heart.

Remember that.

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