In journalism, they teach you that when somebody dies, the proper words to use are just that: "So-and-so died," and here's what you need to know about their death. No need for "passed away" or any other euphemisms of the sort. Just say what they did, what happened to them: they died. 

We were taught this in our journalism classes. I was told this over and over again at NPR, where I spent the final few weeks of my internship cataloguing and updating obituaries. I was reminded again at MSNBC as we reported about tragedy after tragedy until I finally reached NBC and was the one telling the younger reporters just that: Just say what they did, what happened to them.

But despite all of that, I have always struggled with it outside of my former profession. In 2015, when a good friend from college died, I sent an email to our former newspaper colleagues to let them know of his passing but couldn't bring myself to use the word. In 2018, when one of my best friends died, I found myself again in a position where I was telling people the news – but that word continued to elude me. And for the last couple of days, I'm once again scared of that word because it's so final, so real: another person who I loved so deeply and so completely is gone.

Just say what they did. Here's an exhaustive, yet still non-comprehensive, list:

• Greg had a respect for work that began in college (and probably even before that): I met Greg in 2010 when I interviewed and hired him for a staff job at the New University. He walked into the interview wearing a suit and we made fun of him for it later because what 20-year-old kid shows up to a college newspaper in a suit? Greg did. 
• Greg painted pictures with words: Greg was quiet and reserved, but the first time I edited one of his articles, I knew he had so much to say. "A world of color unfolds behind the museum’s drab brown walls. On their individual platforms, the clay blends a thousand times over: red, green, brown, purple, blue and yellow cease to be separate, mixing into a single entity as each person leaves their mark." I loved it and loved it beyond college, even when I was mercilessly editing out his descriptions of tumbleweeds years later in an NBC feature I sent him to Manzanar for.
• Greg was the life of the party: The life and, more often than not, the source of chaos. I won't go into the exact details (if you know, you know), but after the infamous Night of the Living Groog, we knew there was no going back. A party without Greg (and Groog) definitely felt more boring. Years later at a bar in New York, we were cleaning up spilled popcorn off the ground and I was slightly annoyed, but then I looked over at Greg's face and he was grinning and laughing, and it instantly made me laugh too.
• Greg made time count, even if time wasn't on anyone's side: I graduated in 2011 and Greg stayed at UCI a fifth year. One morning in DC, I was up and getting ready for work and saw a Facebook Messenger message pop up from Greg, who was pulling an all-nighter across the country. I called him and we talked for less than 10 minutes, but it was nice to hear a familiar voice before I began my commute. It became a regular thing when he'd pull all-nighters to hear from him as I was waking up, but I think it was one of the things that kept us close when we were 3,000 miles apart. 
• Greg didn't just make an effort; he always made the effort: No matter how far Greg needed to drive, he did it to see and to help the people he cared about. In 2013, he drove almost 200 miles (and that's just one way) to visit with me when I was in Albuquerque and he was in Farmington. If that isn't an expression of care, I don't know what is.
• Greg loved journalism: He loved writing the news, reporting the news, reading the news – and even in those times he was exhausted by it, he never doubted it was his calling. Some of my favorite parts of my visits to his cities were seeing the newsrooms he called home. He was so proud, and I was so proud of him.
• Greg loved Los Angeles: Greg is Los Angeles. Even when he was living away from it, the two were so intertwined. When I was re-learning how to drive, I was in a car with Greg panicking about the 101 and he kept pointing at the buildings and the sky and saying, "Just look! You can see the city! Look at LA!" And I screamed at him, "I CAN'T, I'M LOOKING AT THE ROAD." (Today, I drove down the 101 in the car Greg helped me choose, and I looked at LA and I saw Greg in the beauty of it all – and I know that will always remain.)
• Greg loved people. Full stop. If you knew him, you felt it.

"In the words of the Russian poet Boris Pasternak, 'Let’s scatter our words as the garden scatters amber zest, absentmindedly and generously bit by bit by bit.' I hope now that as I scatter my words, they blossom and bring me into a world beyond my imagination — a beautiful flowering of the infinite." 

 

"So what have you been doing this summer?"

Honestly? I've been talking to people.

Let me explain. In my "9-5 job" (that was more like "6-10"), I talked to a lot of people: colleagues, freelancers, potential collaborators. I talked at at least one meeting every day. I talked about web traffic and trending topics and whether or not we really needed that semicolon. I talked about invoices that got stuck in a system and how I wasn't ignoring an email, I just never received it because of some spam filters I have no control over.

It was, like I said, a lot.

What I felt I never had the time or mental energy for was to talk about myself. It sounds selfish, I know, but even in those moments where I'd meet up with a friend and they would ask, "How are you doing?" I went into autopilot. "I'm fine," I'd say, or, "Doing alright." I never felt like I had the right – the audacity – to tell them how I was really feeling: Burnt out. Tired. Even more anxious than usual.

It's not that I didn't think they'd listen or care, but I felt guilty even expressing an ounce of dissatisfaction after being told over and over that I was lucky to be doing what I was doing. Those who had chastised me for daring to call myself a manager at 26, with no professional managing experience beforehand, constantly reminded me of the privilege I was given and the opportunity I was wasting by being unhappy.

It was also a reminder of what I'd been told my whole life: Life is hard and you're lucky to have your head above the water. Those feelings you're feeling? Put them aside.

When I was 15 and had my heart broken for the first time, I went down to the living room in tears and sobbed on my mother's shoulder. She allowed me a few minutes before telling me to go to bed and the next day, we never spoke about it again. In my family, it was uncomfortable to openly show emotions and to talk about feelings. Doing that took up too much time and space when we could be focusing on other things like school, work, etc. If we had intense feelings about something, the message was clear: keep it to yourself and get over it. Life moves forward.

Of course life moves forward.

Since leaving my job, I've been sitting down with friends – people I've known for years, people I formed friendships with out of work and collaborations over the last year or two – and really talking about feelings (not just mine, but theirs too) and how I haven't been "fine" or "doing alright" for awhile now. In the immediate aftermath of saying "goodbye" to the career I've known, I was feeling pretty good, but then something triggered a crash and I was brought back to 15 years old again and being told to go to bed instead of expressing an emotion. Every anxiety and insecurity I felt that had built up over the last couple of years ballooned into an uncontrollable mess and by the time I realized I hadn't eaten in 2 days, I knew I had to do something before I drowned.

So I started talking – over coffee, boba, meals that kept getting rescheduled because work had consumed all of my attention. I wrote (a lot) and even sold something (which led to more talking with friends and strangers). On the Fourth of July, I spent nearly 4 hours at brunch and then another 4 hours that night on the phone. I got off of social media – for the most part – and started sleeping earlier. I caught up on podcasts and binge-watched Superstore and read Tan France's book. I made a shit ton of salad.

I came to realize how much my identity had been tied up in my work, and how suddenly lost I felt without it. It didn't matter how burnt out I was; I thrived off of having this routine that took over my life. Without it, who was I?

But in those catch-up sessions that became conversations, I was reminded by somebody how not-alone I was in having any of those feelings. Isn't that why we read personal essays and listen to music and tweet our thoughts into the void of the internet? On some level, we are all anchor-less, searching for a connection that will help us stay grounded the second our ropes are loosened and the wind kicks up.

That metaphor isn't perfect, but neither are feelings and emotions – and I'm OK with that.

When you're a nostalgic person like I am, it can often turn into becoming a bit of a pack rat. I used to savor movie ticket stubs as if they were snapshots of the film itself, every coffee stain on a page of a book reminded me of a place or time, and even worn out pens had a story to tell.

But since I left home for college, I've moved every year (in D.C., I moved every month), and in the process, some of those things went into storage boxes or got lost to the wind. Sometimes, I'd carry things from place to place, even if they were never unpacked, because having them was some sort of comfort that I could learn from the past: from the mistakes, from the stories, from the triumphs.

When I moved to New York in 2012, I had no sense of how long I would stay – let alone, how long I would stay in one apartment. 2016 is coming to an end, and I've been in the same room. Sure, there's now a bit more furniture (and a lot more books), but this one space has been mine for almost five years.

I'm in this process of throwing a lot of stuff out. The idea is to tackle the room in sections – corner by corner, drawer by drawer – and re-examine the importance of holding onto items that aren't exactly necessary to keep in my life. In doing so, it's also led me to a box filled with old bank statements and birthday cards and deeply personal letters exchanged with friends from the other side of the country and, occasionally, the other side of the world.

Hey dude. This feels weird writing something long to you because we were always rapid-fire texters/Gchatters/emailers/etc-ers. But I'm gonna try right now because I've got a lot in my heart and on my mind. I know I won't be able to get it all out, and there's a lot I'll probably forget, but it's not like this is the last time I'll ever get the chance to say something to you. I know we'll hang out again someday.

2010 New U banquet. You and Mengfei taught me how to class it up.

Dear Old Friends,

I feel like I'm constantly writing letters in my head to re-introduce myself to you all. You see, the person I was five, 10, 15 years ago is so different from who I am right now, and I have this need to let it be known because I think these changes are for the better. I've grown up. I'm still growing up.


I think there are a lot of things that can cause a person to change: fear, adversity, love, death. And simply living--that, too, is enough to transform a person. At least it should, right? There are times I'll say I wish I could have a do-over, and that I miss certain moments from the past and wish I could recreate them in the present. But what made those moments so gorgeous was the fact that they were fleeting. Moments like that can never really be infinite, can they? I wouldn't want them to be--how else would I have come to appreciate them for what they were?

"And if it means I don't get an apology for something I feel entitled to (let's be honest--are any of us really "entitled" to an apology from someone else? We might believe we deserve an apology, but an apology--at least a genuine one--is not ours to demand from someone else.), then that's OK."

When I wrote that in last week's blog post, I wasn't thinking about the apology I've long thought I "deserved." Maybe "deserved" isn't the right word for it; it's more like: the apology I want. There's a difference between the two.

You can want apologies from a lot of people for various things, ranging from the small indiscretions to the big mistakes. But you can't always get what you want, and at some point, I think we have to learn to be OK with that.

There's this Wreck This Journal page that asks you to tear the page out and lose it--toss it, let it blow away, give it away, whatever--and then walk away and accept the loss. Now imagine doing that with your anger: remove the anger from your heart, abandon it it, and accept that you might not get the apology you want.

"Don't be sorry. Be here."

One of the most difficult words to say sometimes is "sorry." I don't think anyone actually enjoys apologizing. It means acknowledging you wronged someone. It's a blow to your pride. Sometimes we say sorry and don't really mean it; other times, we say it but follow it up with a cushion for our ego: "Sorry I spilled hot coffee all over your laptop, but..."

Recently, someone from my past sent me an email that was a straight apology for something that happened about two years ago. There was no ego in it, no hidden subtext. It was am "I'm sorry"--period--and it can't have been easy for her to send. Two years ago upon our falling out, there had been a lot of finger pointing and false apologies on both ends. But this email was different. There was something gracious about her words, something admirable about the way she took on the burden of responsibility on her own. Although I know both of us played equal roles in the end of our friendship then, her email, to me, meant there were more important things in the world than our bruised feelings from the past.

With no expectations, she humbled herself by reaching out. It made me think about the "prisons" we keep others in, whether we intend to or not, because we're angry or hurt. Sometimes, someone says something to you that really hurts you, and rather than try to fix the situation, you close up and turn down a different road. Perhaps a year ago if she sent me this email, I wouldn't have responded. Or I would have emailed back and reminded her how much she upset me.

Don't stop reading because I'm beginning with a Sex and the City quote, but...

Carrie: Will we still be friends when we're this old?
Miranda: Sure.
Carrie: What do you mean "sure"? l could barely get us together for the weekend and we're all mobile!...How are we gonna make it to 70 if you've already zoned me out?
Miranda: l'm listening. Talk fast.
Carrie: Friendships don't magically last 40 years. You have to invest in them. lt's like savings. You don't expect to wake up when you're old and find a big bucket of money. My point is, we need an emotional retirement plan. This is important, making time for each other and taking trips like this. As we can see, at the end of the line, it's gonna be us ladies riding a bus.
Near the end of the night, my coworkers and I were discussing--among many topics--the real, true importance of having friends to vent to when things in life are rough. I was surprised to hear them state a concept I had tried to articulate before, but to no success: "I don't need someone to fix my problems or tell me exactly what to do. I just need someone to be there."

That concept of "being there," of "showing up" when the time calls for it. I always thought it was intuitive--a friend needs you, so you're there. That's what I was always taught, but maybe there was a part missing: don't get taken advantage of either. I learned this from my mom, but sadly the hard way. My mother, the most caring and wonderful person I know, always showed up when people needed her. She made sure she was always there. She's reliable, dependable, and she always tries to do her best because she loves people--that's just who she is.

And she would never tell me this (because I think it hurt her a lot), but my dad told me that somebody whom she loved made a comment about the fact that she never got a four-year college degree. The context is a long story, but the basic fact is that somebody my mom was trying to help was frustrated about something, and basically called her stupid in front of a lot of people.

Which infuriates me, but that's another story for another time. The point is: despite all that, I think that my mom would still show up for those people, no matter how hurt she is, because she's never been the kind of person to make her life about herself; she's spent her life nurturing and loving people, and doing her best to lift them higher when they fall.

I've been wrestling with this idea lately, though, because in all of my attempts to show up for others, I hadn't really sat back and wondered if those same people would show up for me. Over the last few months, I'm afraid I've gotten my answer, and so I'm learning to set the boundaries I guess is necessary to make sure I don't end up spent.

But I think, at the end of the day, I am my mother's daughter: I would still show up for the people I care about. I don't like cutting people out of my life, and so I almost never do it. Maybe that makes me weak, but if I could spend my days nurturing and loving people, and doing my best to lift them higher when they fall...well, I think it would be worth it.

Friendsgiving 2012.

Thanksgiving was my favorite holiday growing up. It was a time when dozens of us would gather at my grandparents' house, in matching outfits when we were kids, and watch movies and laugh and eat. There was something simple and fun about the evening, something that set it apart from the other times we would gather to watch movies and laugh and eat.

Things were already changing when I left for college, but I knew that turning point would never be the same. I've missed four years of holidays and birthdays and other family events--from sicknesses to celebrations. Leaping across the country after graduation was another major step away from everyone I knew and who knew me.

Thanksgiving last year in Albany was lovely; this year, I wanted it to be just as wonderful here in the city. It truly was beyond any expectations, and I forgot how wonderful it was to spend time with people you never thought you'd be looking in the eye on a Thursday night and thinking, "I love them."

For the past month or two, I'd been feeling like New York was another dead end, a place I wanted to run away to only to be chased and hurt within the walls of my own home. I'd already run from the west coast, run from every place that held too many memories that cluttered my mind, and I was looking to start over. When that was taken from me here, I thought there would be nothing that could help ease me away from the stinging pain of loving back into the joyful pain of living.

The city is changing in a slow yet subtle way and I, with it, can only imagine a future where everything that once burned is now bright.

January 26, 2004
Dear (Senior) Self,
This is odd. Just a couple days ago I got my 8th grade letter to myself from retreat and now I have to write another letter to myself!...Uhm...I dunno what to write about. I can guarantee  that I'm going to forget about this until I receive it. Frosh year is interesting. I've made loads of friends and I hope I'll still keep them through high school and "beyond"--Liz, Katie, Cienna, Manda, Cait, Janelle, Emily..so, my senior self, I hope this promise is true and that I still keep at least these friends. So what's important?...Hmm...that I actually make it to senior year so I get this letter! And, well, there's a lot of things that are important. Family, friends, school...and what are my hopes/goals? Well, that whole getting to my senior year is pretty much a major goal. And I hope to continue in the Shakespeare Society...and I hope I go into acting or film or entertainment or literature...and, if anything, I hope to be happy! Hmm, I dunno what else there is to say. Oh, let's hope that Janelle and I actually say what we're going to do: visit New Zealand, visit Europe and go cross-country! We want to visit at least a zillion landmarks. And where should I go to college? Oh, I don't know...Let's hope that I will still be best friends with my current friends--No regrets!
Love from, my freshman self

Wow, that was incredibly painful to type up--mainly due to bad handwriting and grammatical errors. The content itself is forgivable (kind of)...I was 14. Like none of you have those skeletons in your closets as well.

I like finding these letters and old blogs, as embarrassing as it all is. I do regret destroying my old high school Xanga though because it would've been amusing to read now--even though the reason I deleted it in the first place was so I wouldn't have to read it again.

"My Grown-Up Christmas List" quartet - Dec. 2006

Checklist of the above items:

• What did I even write to myself in my 8th grade letter? And what was with these schools and having us write letters to ourselves? I believe at Senior Reflection we also wrote letters to ourselves for one year into college...did those ever get mailed to us? I feel like they did because I remember talking to Rosa about it in the dorms.
• Of the seven "best friends" I mention, I only remained close to two of them by the end of senior year, though our paths haven't crossed much since I left; three of the friends I mention became distant acquaintances by the end of my freshman year; one friend left Loretto at the end of Third Year and we fell out of touch; and one provided a thoughtless end to a destructive friendship.
• I did make it to senior year (and stayed with the Society and Festival for four years) and to college. Cool.
• My career goals seemed vague, though they're still (sort of) vague now. I've abandoned acting and music since I moved, and I don't realize how much I miss it until I remember the post-wedding declaration of love between Benedick and Beatrice or I think about four-part harmonies. 

On that note, Christmas season is coming up. This time, six years ago, I was preparing for my first Christmas concert as a part of concert choir; five years ago, I was up until all hours of the night memorizing old English as a part of chamber choir; four years ago, I was re-writing arrangements for Harnoor, Cort, Rosa and my quartet--I listened to the recording last night and the part where I messed up still makes me cringe, ugh.

I'm sitting here in an empty apartment surrounded by a few things that should make me very happy, and yet I just spent the past 10 minutes crying my eyes out...for honestly no goddamn reason. I don't even know if the best thing to be doing is blogging because now this is just a Livejournal, but bear with me - I have a point, or as much of a "point" as my blogs normally have.