would you believe i just quoted mary oliver's wild geese at a friend. the first three lines! 

thoughts on that conversation: i think we are cruel to ourselves in the hope that the cruelty will wash away the harm that we have caused, in some chase for goodness. i no longer desire to be "good" which i think is a strange nebulous thing & ultimately whether or not i am good is not for me to decide. i think kindness and compassion are more concrete and achievable. 

today i was reading a lot about radical acceptance and flipping through illegal copies of different dbt workbooks. this is very fun & also many of the examples are about made-up people whose stories i care little for & phrasings that are oddly stiff. this makes me want to make a synthesized version of things that work, for me. i miss my six ring binders and this one cassykicks notepad that i left behind. i want to journal i want to scrapbook i want,i want,i want to make a silly junk journal which is all therapy thoughts that i can enjoy revisiting.

in the conversation with my friend, i realized something about one of those radical acceptance statements because he mentioned hating it. "it's the best i could do," is not a thing you say to other people. this is said in your own hole of wretched despair & when you are in the depths of self-punishment over harm you have caused to other people. it's not for my parents to say to me, it's not for me to say to others. it is a statement of self-absolution so i can move on with my life and do more productive things. 

chris i admire you and have screenshots of all your responses to my "help how do i stop destructive behavior" and "help how to stop self-sabotage" thank you endlessly for bestowing your thoughts. 

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i've put ALL the crochet down this week and have gotten through most of my "seven-day, time-sensitive new years resolution list" of which I have ONE more day to complete. peaches told me that all i had done was make a to-do list and called it resolutions, which hadn't occurred to me…know that i am simply acknowledging the resolve it takes to finish these tasks!!! much of it is cleaning the house & making lists and plans. i have home goods on the way! and benzoyl peroxide to finally kill off the acne that has been plaguing me all year. organizing is so personal, the way you have to know where you instinctively look for certain things, where the hand will reach. 

because i have been cleaning i have been thinking about privilege. which is so crippling, so anti-pakikipagkapwa. there's a certain kind of incompetence that is a result of shelteredness that also goes hand-in-hand with expecting that things will be done for you because that's how it's always been. it's the middle-class filipino experience! it is so insidious and i think of me, i think of my brother who were taught to fear the world, taught that we must be cruel, that we must be suspicious, that we must subjugate in order to be safe. i think of the way i had never truly taken jeeps before now because i was "too chinese, too pale" to commute on my own & the way my mother shouted at me in highschool for going to the mall with my friends without having a yaya come along with me (I ACKNOWLEDGE THE KIDNAPPINGS OF FILCHI IN THE 80s BUT THEN IS NOT NOW...). i feel ashamed of things that were not in my control, ashamed by the things i don't know how to do even as i go about learning how to. 

i think of my brother who has not escaped, has fallen deeper into codependency, who has bought in to jordan peterson, who was just so much softer and more fragile and sensitive the way filipino-chinese boys can be, in the beginning. i mourn him even as i doubt i will ever talk to him again because he is trying to defraud me of inheritance my grandmother left me. he texted me happy birthday and merry christmas and happy new year and i ignored him. 

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i made that  "new year, all year" resolutions post on twitter which is so low stakes, high reward. i am pleased with it. i feel a little ridiculous from the high the new year has bestowed upon me & also i think i deserve it after how awful the holidays were. i've spent three christmases with my dad's extended family and i still feel like an alien! as i said i would do, i was mentally ill and off-putting.

last year i needed people to be around that were NOT destructive but this year i think i needed people who actually truly care about me & not in a familial obligation way. that i can be sad around and who will ask why i am sad. there were a few days in those three weeks where i felt so choked by the incursion of my moroseness upon the happy atmosphere where all i ate was three pieces of bread. i'd like to not do that again. anyway i'm glad to be back in the city and in charge of my own meals. maybe for 2024's christmas i will plan to be with friends. 

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there's a comic in my head about the arowana we had in my childhood. in the wild they jump up into the air to catch prey. in captivity they jump into the air and die. in a way, all my desires to die and self-harm were like that—just a longing for freedom. it's something i'd like to illustrate properly eventually.

anyway. just a ramble. just a mourn. just an endless dump of thought i needed to get out even if my writing is stiff and i feel unbearably run-on and adjective-filled and even if it's something i am ashamed of.