on becoming human
Dec. 28th, 2025 01:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
in_seclusionWell, there went 2025.
What a weird year. It's been busy in many ways, but slower in even more. My health has gotten better in some ways, and remained quite ill in most of it, but I'll take the better where I can.
It's been a year of introspection, of allowing myself rest, of letting discipline mean less like I must push myself regardless and more devotion to one's self and one's own needs. I saw a reel that said something about reframing discipline as self-devotion will be healthier for those with the tendency to criticize and punish themselves, and it has proven itself true. Subconsciously, health discipline has turned into my own way of punishing myself, another outlet for self-hate under the guise of self-love and self-improvement -- and if that isn't a metaphor for my entire life, I don't know what is. Even as I try to expand my life beyond the lens of survival: my physical body and my nervous system can really only handle so much, when all it knows is anger and survival. I am trying to eat more of the things that cause me to react -- I know so much of the reactivity is due to stress and fear, so I am trying this thing where I convince myself I won't die because I had a sweet. And it has been working a little bit. As I stop stressing over my food my body relaxes a little bit - not too much, so of course I remain cautious - but my nutritionists have noted that I am living a life of depravation at this point, and mentally it won't do me any good. So I am trying to tackle it from a mental standpoint as well as a physical one: what would it mean in my body if I could learn how to live?
It's been a hard year of undoing and unlearning everything I've grown up with. But the space left by that undoing has been filled with the things of what I am growing, the person I am becoming. I have discovered new things I like doing now that I have the energy to explore it, now that I have the energy to devote to myself and the things that I want to do, instead of what everyone has told me to want or do. And I've allowed myself to stop doing things when I don't feel like doing them anymore, and to concentrate on the things I want to do.
I've stopped doing trapeze for now, which I miss, but I have such a complicated relationship with it right now. I loved doing it but at some point it felt like I was going it because I was expected to, because I was good at it -- and I ended up with an oblique injury in mid-September when I tried to come back. Maybe I'm not ready yet. Maybe I'm not ready to return to the things I've left behind, or at least not in this way. Not yet.
I've continued silversmithing though, and have made a few pieces for my friends. I realized I haven't done many pieces for myself, if any, so I'll start the year doing a project for me. I have found that I love smithing, so much more than I thought I would. I've gone to Japan twice to do engraving classes, and I think I've found the aspect of it that I really love. I love engraving, I love melting silver, I love the feeling of bending metal between my fingers and in my hands to create something completely new. To make delicate things out of metal, to burn things when I make a mistake, to start over -- it feels apt, somehow. It's been cathartic and a great lesson that no matter what mistakes I've made, no matter how far along in the process: i can simply melt it down and start anew. It's helped me be kinder to myself, to realize that I don't have to be perfect. After a lifetime of being told to be perfect, to feel like perfection was a prerequisite to being loved, it feels like freedom to be human.
I have also spent this entire month baking! I've baked over 300 cookies in the last two months: Christmas gifts, treats for the family, experiments, stress-baking. I have learned that I do like baking-- I like the exactness of it, how it leaves little room for surprises. I am in a period of my life where I appreciate straightforward things and just don't have the space to keep troubleshooting, so baking is very soothing for me. But more than that: I love creating things. Between the jewelry-making and the baking, I have learned that I just love creating things to gift to myself, to gift to the people I love. That these hands can still make something - that I can make something sweet, something solid, something beautiful, after a year where I burned my whole life to the ground and another of simply trying to survive - it has given me a catharsis and reassurance I so desperately needed. Not everything I create will be destroyed by neglect or not being good enough. I can make something sweet, something dear, and it will be greeted warmly.
That being said I have to bake another 4 batches of cookies next week because my family loved the lemon crinkles and oatmeal chocolate cookies so much lmao what have I done!!
PS I am also on the lookout for a good ube cookie or ube crinkle recipe for a friend in Osaka, will try a black sesame and chocolate cookie for another friend's birthday, and need a good earl grey and brown butter sugar cookie recipe for Raia! Any reccs, please send them my way!
tw: emotional abuse, trauma processing, family dynamics
My therapist and I had a long talk about my career choices being tied to the childhood trauma I am processing, the neglect I faced. As a child I often dreamt of running away to see if anyone would notice my absence; I didn't realize util now that that is not a normal thing to fantasize about at 7, 9 years old. As I got older those dreams evolved (or devolved) -- I no longer really thought of myself as a person, just a doll. I was very much taken with gothic lolita for this reason: I felt like if I dressed in gothloli or gothari, then the outside would reflect the inside. I was just a doll people around me took out to say they were proud of, then when my role was finished, would hide me away. My dad said that I was like a ninja in those days, rarely seen, never heard -- I told him that it's because I felt no one cared to see me anyway so I tried to erase myself from existence instead, to just get out of the way since it felt like I mattered so little to everyone anyway.
My therapist explained that the neglect was a dehumanization of a different sort, the kind of unreasonable strength expected of a child. I was expected to take an adult role since I was 9; since the birth of my brother I was sidelined even on my birthdays, and when my parents split I knew that I would have to take on the role as his third caretaker. I did that to the best of my ability (and failed spectacularly in many, many aspects) until I could no longer do so when I hit maybe 15 years old. I still hold a lot of guilt for failing him that way, for taking out my frustrations on him, for not being able to be a good sister when he needed me to be one, especially when I was around 18. I didn't treat him well at that point, the resentments of being denied a childhood and having to sacrifice things like commute safety for his comfort and the blatant favoritism my mother had for him which she later admitted overriding the little maturity I had and taking any strength I had left. I have apologized to him for it. He has forgiven me, but it is a guilt I will carry with me for a long time.
But it was that treatment that led me to my previous career choices in humanitarian aid, that contributed to an interest in war, genocide, and interfaith conflict, to help survivors of catastrophe. It turns out my desire to help other people in distress and facing dehumanization was a direct response to my own history of neglect and emotional starvation (abuse).
It sounds awful. It was awful! My parents loved me as best they could, and they loved me a lot. I lived a very comfortable life growing up, and my parents were always there. Our stability was sacrificed to see them both as often as we could, so that we never doubted their presence in our lives. But there are no perfect people, and my parents are also victims of their own less than ideal upbringings. The child of a refugee of war and emotional abuse, and the child of misogyny and catholicism and emotional abuse, they did what they could to raise my brother and I in comfort, but had no idea how to raise us as humans. My mom once joked that all the mistakes they made with me they would correct when raising my brother - it is true. He is much more well-adjusted than I am now: doing well in another country, married to a woman he strives to better himself for as they strive to better themselves and each other for their relationship, with a child, and financially stable as far as I can tell. He was always much better with people than I ever was, though he also faced his fair share of emotional suffering from my parents. He just had more people to turn to, where I had no one because I was expected grin and bear it. Such is the curse of every eldest Asian daughter. But I recognize now that my parents loved us the only way they knew how: to give us a financially stable upbringing at great cost. They cannot raise us with humanity if they were not afforded their own. It's something I try to keep in mind as I go through the difficult journey of healing wounds caused by them and forgiving them, because they did not mean to treat me so. They just didn't know any better.
Even now, I know they are trying to love me, as imperfect as it is. It is only because they still love me that I have the space and the privilege to take time off and to really focus on healing all these wounds inside me, to care for me financially as I recover physically and mentally, to give me the space and the time to peer at the abyss and find a way through. Not everyone is so lucky.
But not knowing any better does not make my wounds any better, or any less valid - nor does it ease the resentment, anger, pain, or the vast loneliness and emptiness that still sits in me, that fills me to overflowing on difficult days. December is a difficult month, Q4 is a difficult quarter of trauma anniversaries caused by the collapse of a life, the abuse of previous partner. The celebrations of Christmas and New Year, surrounded by extended family and friends who have their partners and their families makes me ache so much I could die from it, the longing for that stillness, that peace, that love that they have found so profound that I break down in tears at night, afraid that I will never find it for myself. The end of year reflections are always inevitable during this season, and I try to find ways to balance the wounds with the joys and gratitudes of the previous year. But joys and gratitude do not ease the wounds of trauma. Sometimes the abundance of others gives stark contrast to the lack within one's self, and to deny that is to deny a human reality for those that grew up lacking something.
Still: not all is lost. My father and I have been trying to repair our relationship -- I traveled extensively through Central Europe with my dad and my stepmom, our second time to travel as a family, and the first time I've ever traveled with my father solo. It was good to travel, to see the world, to open myself to different perspectives again, in places so alien to me that I had visceral reactions to culture shock that I did not know I could have. It was also a good time to get to know my father; for him to get to know me. It was a good time to reset a relationship that was never fully built, to lay new foundations as an adult daughter and her father, to understand each other a bit better. We both came away understanding each other more, with greater empathy,I think. I certainly met my father as a human being for the first time in my life, and he met me as a human person and not just the daughter he wished I was. It is a strange thing to meet your parents again, to tell them who you are. For them to try and meet you the human, for the first time, at the age of 35. A strange, alien feeling, but I am grateful that my father tried anyway.
Curiously I realized this is the first time I haven't traveled with my mother out of the country in the summer. There was simply not enough time. But the trip - and everything this year, the therapy sessions - has brought to light the lengths and limits of repair in my relationship with my father and mother. It is a hard process, with many discussions, many tears, so many difficult conversations and even harder introspections. To sit with the discomfort and the wounding, to discover the depths of the wounds that goes down to my foundation as a human being, to learn that the cracks upset the stability of everything -- my relationships, my self-worth, my finances -- has been profoundly painful. But it is an exercise in learning to become human, and to rebuild myself from the ground up in very real ways. I am still trying to build this foundation to become a stronger person. It is hard work, but work that is always worth doing as I learn to love myself and become a real person instead of a doll for everyone else.
My therapist also talked about extensively about what happened to me in 2023. I learned that in my previous relationship I was emotionally abused. I repeated the cycle unwittingly; I had no idea. It turns out that the emotional neglect, the stonewalling, the silent treatment, the discard -- all of it wasn't just attachment pain. All of it together was emotional abuse. It is something I still grapple with, the words for what happened to me. I couldn't look at it for the longest time because I had a moment in Geneva where I was crying on the floor of my hotel room begging my ex-girlfriend to forgive me for being too much for her to handle -- when I clear as day said out loud, oh my god I am my mother, and she is my father. And then I proceeded to stay in that dynamic for six more weeks because I thought that such pain was part of love, of any romantic relationship, of any partnership. I thought love came with pain, that relationships meant that the jagged edges of every person would cause wounds and bleed, and that the rivers of blood were normal. Such is the sacrifice for love, for relationships. Love has never been something of comfort, of safety, of joy, of softness in itself. I thought that such sweetness would always have to be paid for in blood, and because I would never be enough, it would require all that I had. And then verity said the words emotional abuse, and I brought it up with Riley and then my therapist, who said, I had always thought we were both operating under the assumption that you knew this was abuse. I am very sorry you didn't know.
It was difficult to accept that I trusted someone with my heart and she treated me so poorly. But it was also difficult to accept that I had allowed myself to stay in that situation because I loved her more than I ever loved myself -- and to realize that it was because I was never taught to love or value myself as a person, only for what I could give, only in relation to another person. Though it has been near-catastrophic to my sense of self and identity, it has raised the question: why don't I love myself?
It was painful to look at, because if I only stayed in that relationship because it was what it reminded me of home, and how my parents treated me... what was the name for how my parents treated me? If my ex was emotionally abusive and she was only acting the same way my parents did, therefore, by transitive property... I still hesitate to say it, but it is what it is. Neglect is abuse, is what my therapist said. I have cried a sea's worth of tears processing it, grief for what happened to me overwhelming. From both the relationship and my parents, for repeating cycles that I never wanted. For the pain, the sheer pain of it, that haunts me two years later. For allowing myself to be treated so poorly. For never knowing that love could be different. For only ever suffering for it.
Still:
I still grieve. But in that grief came clarity as well: that I didn't deserve any of that. It was absolution in the form of clarity, and the sea of tears within me gave way to a bigger space for love from friends who cared for me in the aftermath. I still struggle with relationships, with learning that love can be safe. But perhaps because of the shared vulnerability, my friends have loved me more than ever before, protective of me and ensuring my ex remains out of my life and out of my line of hearing or sight; being patient with me on the worst of my days as I cry over the same things, when I spiral out of control because my wounds have opened up and swallowed me whole. They have loved me through my emptiest days, reminding me that they are here, showing me that love can be kind, and soft, and gentle -- that I do not have to sacrifice who I am to be worthy of being their friend, of extending me love, of giving me comfort. Instead they have reminded me of everything I have done, of everything I plan to do; they remind me of everything I have survived thus far, have reminded me of how much they love me for who I am. They remind me to take up space, to ask, to allow help, to rest, to allow myself the grace of being human. They have gifted me the grace of being human. I have cried seas of grief on endless nights, but they have filled that void with seeds of their kindness and reminders of their love, and even as I have cried, those tears have watered a small garden, flowers decorating a void and reminding me that even in barren soil, love can still grow.
My friends have loved me back to life. I say it often, and I mean it each time. Without my friends showing me what love can be like, I would have continued to think I wasn't worthy of any kindness or love, would have thought love only ever meant suffering. But now I know better, and I have started to demand more from everyone around me. It has cost me a little bit, but I am still proud of myself for now knowing that I deserve better because of the love that I find myself surrounded by. I didn't do all this work just to throw it away.
I did find myself in a funny position a little earlier in the year when I liked a girl that made my system go haywire, and I followed it through thinking that this is just what dating is like these days. I really liked her. I loved talking to her; I think she's infinitely interesting and funny, cute, and so calm and steady. Then she showed me enough of her internal world which was in many ways familiar to me (and in many more ways completely different), and also reflected what I have since worked through since starting therapy in 2021. Instead of thinking I can fix her, I can wait, maybe if I contort myself just enough I'll be a girl she likes -- I just told her what I wanted and needed in a relationship to see if that was something she would be willing to do or to meet. And then she told me a couple more things that were straight out of a lesbian drama script and later her actions made it clear she didn't have the capacity or willingness to meet me where I need to be met, so I have since stepped back. I am simply not willing to be a character in your next Hulu lesbian drama sitcom, sorry! I did try to keep up communication but I do know when a person is pulling back and I also have a rule of reciprocal effort and it was not living up to that, so. It is what it is. I would have loved to be her friend but also I can't keep living in lesbian drama, Lord have mercy. I am too old for this. I am 36 in 3 months, I simply do not have the time or energy! if I was 20, probably. I am only human!! However I cannot keep playing stupid games and winning stupid prizes!!! I have nowhere to put those prizes in the warehouse of my mind!! Alas. But I can't sit around waiting for someone to realize their situations are unsustainable and unhealthy, hoping that one day they'll like me enough to do something about it. I liked her a lot, but I like me more.
I am not saying that I need a perfectly healed person to date -- nor am I saying that I am anywhere close to being healed myself! -- but I need someone at least already doing the work, or at least willing to do it, and willing to meet me where I am. I am not fixing anyone but myself. That's growth, I think! I have since realized she is just my ex in another woman, but maybe a little more self-aware, maybe kinder and less prone to casual cruelty. But I don't need my ex in another woman, I don't need my parents' wounds in another woman; I don't need a mirror of my 32 year old self in another woman. I need a woman who is also on her own journey, and for us to meet each other where we are and see if we can grow together from there. I think that's growth.In the meantime I would also simply like to get laid because I am also human
Still though, every person brings us back to ourselves in ways unexpected ways. Because of her I did find myself checking out the Filipino rock scene again after 10 or so years (everything stopped 10 years ago when I Locked In at work it seems) and it has grown steadily in both sound and popularity. Old heartbreak favorites have taken on new meaning, and new bands and new songs demonstrate the evolution of the OPM sound. It's wonderful to see. In talking to her and getting to know her I learned to ask for things and have them granted; I learned to take time and that my time is my own and I can nurture it as I please. More importantly, in a stranger sense: meeting her brought me to my spirituality in a way I did not think I could before.
It has been a deeply introspective year. I did start the year wanting to be more intentional in the way I lived, in the relationships I have, in the things that I commit to. What came from that is a deeper dive into my own spirituality, which has always been a hodgepodge of different beliefs and faiths, me desperately seeking a belief structure that would accept me for who I am, that did not alienate me, and one that gave me comfort instead of punishment when I prayed. Gay Catholics, you know what it's like. I can never escape Catholic culture (nor would I want to, that aesthetic goes hard) but I cannot live in it either, eternally condemned and punished for loving women.
I have been gifted a third eye and a powerful intuition since I was very young. I had an exorcism in 2017 to close my third eye because if I didn't I would have gone insane -- and the priests told me they could not fully close it because "what God has given man cannot take away." I have lived with the shame of having both, and whack ""spiritualists"" are making it even harder to embrace without appearing insane. But meeting her, who had the same gifts to a lesser extent, who treated these things like an ordinary Tuesday, who understood the experience of having it, the having to hide it -- to be able to talk freely, openly about these experiences with each other... it was a gift that I will always be grateful for. Our conversations on religion, spirituality, beliefs of souls in all things, shared experiences of intuition and Knowing helped heal some wounds around my own belief systems, and I have since learned to embrace it more. One of my friends, as it turns out, is also gifted with these things -- and she is much more powerful than I. We are both learning, but to be able to talk freely about these things, to study and exchange notes, has been such a freeing experience that I no longer feel the weight of the loneliness and shame surrounding these abilities. This is just part of my life now, and meeting her and my ate has been pivotal in allowing me to accept it instead of deny what I have always had.
It has led me to a deeper spiritual practice in Japan, of all places, where I have learned to pray in the shrines to its gods. The gods there have so far been kind to me, granting me clarity and peace when I pray for both, protecting me when I walk its mountains, and accepting my gratitude and prayers. Maybe it's because they have always known that I learned to pray in their temples when I was 12, praying for a way home after getting lost in Kiyomizu-dera; maybe because it's the closest to the animist tradition of my ancestors before the coming of the Spaniards; maybe it's because I have always believed in the spirits of nature and earth; maybe because it's just what gives comfort to my soul. But all I know is that these gods don't care if I love a woman, they don't think my third eye is a curse or an omen of ill-tiding, they don't care for the elaborate rituals and structures that I cannot give. To pray in the shrines has returned to me a peace I did not have before, and it breaks my heart that I struggle to replicate it here where I live. But for now, I have a spiritual practice to build on, one that does not reject or think of me as any less for being human. The comfort I have received after a year of breaking my own heart and rebuilding myself is immense, and I am so grateful to have found it in this strange season of my life.
I have learned so much about rest this year. Even as I have been on the go, even as I struggle with insomnia - I have learned the importance of rest and of accepting the limits of both body and mind. My therapist has unofficially diagnosed me with ADHD, and that has helped immensely in giving myself grace and also helping me plan and mitigate its impacts on my life. I still struggle with healing the CPTSD, the PTSD, learning to live with ADHD. There are many moments of resentment and anger, that I must live with the effects of people's neglect, that I must now pay for what was done to me in time and mental management for the rest of my life. I know it doesn't make sense, but the anger and resentment is still there. I did not ask for this, I did not deserve any of the trauma, and I did not do anything to cause it. It was simply a byproduct of peoples' inabilities to face themselves or do anything about it, and now I am paying for it. But still: I am trying to manage and live with all of it the best way I know how, in a way that enriches my life instead of starves it, that minimizes the damage and burden on my relationships but allows me to be seen, heard, and loved fully.
2025 has been such a strange year. I am not sorry to see it end. I am exhausted, physically, emotionally, mentally. I have yet to sit down with myself and think about 2026 and what it might bring. All I know is that in the coming year I want to continue being intentional about the direction of my life and my relationships. I want to learn to take up space without fear, to be able to say straightforwardly what my wants and needs are, knowing full well I will be fine if others cannot meet them, because I can meet them myself. I want to develop a self-identity, self-esteem, and assuredness so strong I no longer fear seeing my ex and remembering all the ways I made myself vulnerable for her in hopes that she would care for me and instead hurt me.Yeah that shit still stings girl trauma and emotional abuse is a bitch. I want to develop all those things for myself, to know I can carry myself and care for myself now and in the future. I want to love and be loved, to learn what love is like when it is safe, kind, and gentle - to be seen, heard, understood, and chosen for who I am. I want to learn kind lessons instead of tears. I want to trust in the hands of the Universe and know that I will be rewarded, that I will live up the name I keep closest to my heart. Maybe emblematic of all my wishes, I also have a new tattoo: a north star in a small galaxy on the wrist of my dominant hand. It is a reminder that I am my own North Star: may I always guide myself back home to me.
I burn a piece of paper every night in this period of in between - the 13 magical wishes to give to the universe during Rauhnaechte. I pray in my heart and in my mind in a shrine hidden in a park in Shibuya, asking for guidance and clarity, asking that I may be granted leave to return and offer my gratitude in person.
Maybe that's all I hope for 2026: that I will be treated gently, that my wishes will be heard, that my prayers be answered, my love found and returned.
Such simple wishes from a woman simply trying to live. 2025 returned to me my humanity. May 2026 return me to myself.
There are many things in play in the background; the wheels of time continue. These nameless days are coming to a close, and soon I will join the world again in its business, its loneliness, its camaraderies, its joys, its shared pains and sorrows. These days have been difficult, balancing between despair and hope, standing still and moving forward. I am going at my pace. May everyone close the coming year in peace, and carry only good wishes into the coming year.
Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!
What a weird year. It's been busy in many ways, but slower in even more. My health has gotten better in some ways, and remained quite ill in most of it, but I'll take the better where I can.
It's been a year of introspection, of allowing myself rest, of letting discipline mean less like I must push myself regardless and more devotion to one's self and one's own needs. I saw a reel that said something about reframing discipline as self-devotion will be healthier for those with the tendency to criticize and punish themselves, and it has proven itself true. Subconsciously, health discipline has turned into my own way of punishing myself, another outlet for self-hate under the guise of self-love and self-improvement -- and if that isn't a metaphor for my entire life, I don't know what is. Even as I try to expand my life beyond the lens of survival: my physical body and my nervous system can really only handle so much, when all it knows is anger and survival. I am trying to eat more of the things that cause me to react -- I know so much of the reactivity is due to stress and fear, so I am trying this thing where I convince myself I won't die because I had a sweet. And it has been working a little bit. As I stop stressing over my food my body relaxes a little bit - not too much, so of course I remain cautious - but my nutritionists have noted that I am living a life of depravation at this point, and mentally it won't do me any good. So I am trying to tackle it from a mental standpoint as well as a physical one: what would it mean in my body if I could learn how to live?
It's been a hard year of undoing and unlearning everything I've grown up with. But the space left by that undoing has been filled with the things of what I am growing, the person I am becoming. I have discovered new things I like doing now that I have the energy to explore it, now that I have the energy to devote to myself and the things that I want to do, instead of what everyone has told me to want or do. And I've allowed myself to stop doing things when I don't feel like doing them anymore, and to concentrate on the things I want to do.
I've stopped doing trapeze for now, which I miss, but I have such a complicated relationship with it right now. I loved doing it but at some point it felt like I was going it because I was expected to, because I was good at it -- and I ended up with an oblique injury in mid-September when I tried to come back. Maybe I'm not ready yet. Maybe I'm not ready to return to the things I've left behind, or at least not in this way. Not yet.
I've continued silversmithing though, and have made a few pieces for my friends. I realized I haven't done many pieces for myself, if any, so I'll start the year doing a project for me. I have found that I love smithing, so much more than I thought I would. I've gone to Japan twice to do engraving classes, and I think I've found the aspect of it that I really love. I love engraving, I love melting silver, I love the feeling of bending metal between my fingers and in my hands to create something completely new. To make delicate things out of metal, to burn things when I make a mistake, to start over -- it feels apt, somehow. It's been cathartic and a great lesson that no matter what mistakes I've made, no matter how far along in the process: i can simply melt it down and start anew. It's helped me be kinder to myself, to realize that I don't have to be perfect. After a lifetime of being told to be perfect, to feel like perfection was a prerequisite to being loved, it feels like freedom to be human.
I have also spent this entire month baking! I've baked over 300 cookies in the last two months: Christmas gifts, treats for the family, experiments, stress-baking. I have learned that I do like baking-- I like the exactness of it, how it leaves little room for surprises. I am in a period of my life where I appreciate straightforward things and just don't have the space to keep troubleshooting, so baking is very soothing for me. But more than that: I love creating things. Between the jewelry-making and the baking, I have learned that I just love creating things to gift to myself, to gift to the people I love. That these hands can still make something - that I can make something sweet, something solid, something beautiful, after a year where I burned my whole life to the ground and another of simply trying to survive - it has given me a catharsis and reassurance I so desperately needed. Not everything I create will be destroyed by neglect or not being good enough. I can make something sweet, something dear, and it will be greeted warmly.
That being said I have to bake another 4 batches of cookies next week because my family loved the lemon crinkles and oatmeal chocolate cookies so much lmao what have I done!!
PS I am also on the lookout for a good ube cookie or ube crinkle recipe for a friend in Osaka, will try a black sesame and chocolate cookie for another friend's birthday, and need a good earl grey and brown butter sugar cookie recipe for Raia! Any reccs, please send them my way!
tw: emotional abuse, trauma processing, family dynamics
My therapist and I had a long talk about my career choices being tied to the childhood trauma I am processing, the neglect I faced. As a child I often dreamt of running away to see if anyone would notice my absence; I didn't realize util now that that is not a normal thing to fantasize about at 7, 9 years old. As I got older those dreams evolved (or devolved) -- I no longer really thought of myself as a person, just a doll. I was very much taken with gothic lolita for this reason: I felt like if I dressed in gothloli or gothari, then the outside would reflect the inside. I was just a doll people around me took out to say they were proud of, then when my role was finished, would hide me away. My dad said that I was like a ninja in those days, rarely seen, never heard -- I told him that it's because I felt no one cared to see me anyway so I tried to erase myself from existence instead, to just get out of the way since it felt like I mattered so little to everyone anyway.
My therapist explained that the neglect was a dehumanization of a different sort, the kind of unreasonable strength expected of a child. I was expected to take an adult role since I was 9; since the birth of my brother I was sidelined even on my birthdays, and when my parents split I knew that I would have to take on the role as his third caretaker. I did that to the best of my ability (and failed spectacularly in many, many aspects) until I could no longer do so when I hit maybe 15 years old. I still hold a lot of guilt for failing him that way, for taking out my frustrations on him, for not being able to be a good sister when he needed me to be one, especially when I was around 18. I didn't treat him well at that point, the resentments of being denied a childhood and having to sacrifice things like commute safety for his comfort and the blatant favoritism my mother had for him which she later admitted overriding the little maturity I had and taking any strength I had left. I have apologized to him for it. He has forgiven me, but it is a guilt I will carry with me for a long time.
But it was that treatment that led me to my previous career choices in humanitarian aid, that contributed to an interest in war, genocide, and interfaith conflict, to help survivors of catastrophe. It turns out my desire to help other people in distress and facing dehumanization was a direct response to my own history of neglect and emotional starvation (abuse).
It sounds awful. It was awful! My parents loved me as best they could, and they loved me a lot. I lived a very comfortable life growing up, and my parents were always there. Our stability was sacrificed to see them both as often as we could, so that we never doubted their presence in our lives. But there are no perfect people, and my parents are also victims of their own less than ideal upbringings. The child of a refugee of war and emotional abuse, and the child of misogyny and catholicism and emotional abuse, they did what they could to raise my brother and I in comfort, but had no idea how to raise us as humans. My mom once joked that all the mistakes they made with me they would correct when raising my brother - it is true. He is much more well-adjusted than I am now: doing well in another country, married to a woman he strives to better himself for as they strive to better themselves and each other for their relationship, with a child, and financially stable as far as I can tell. He was always much better with people than I ever was, though he also faced his fair share of emotional suffering from my parents. He just had more people to turn to, where I had no one because I was expected grin and bear it. Such is the curse of every eldest Asian daughter. But I recognize now that my parents loved us the only way they knew how: to give us a financially stable upbringing at great cost. They cannot raise us with humanity if they were not afforded their own. It's something I try to keep in mind as I go through the difficult journey of healing wounds caused by them and forgiving them, because they did not mean to treat me so. They just didn't know any better.
Even now, I know they are trying to love me, as imperfect as it is. It is only because they still love me that I have the space and the privilege to take time off and to really focus on healing all these wounds inside me, to care for me financially as I recover physically and mentally, to give me the space and the time to peer at the abyss and find a way through. Not everyone is so lucky.
But not knowing any better does not make my wounds any better, or any less valid - nor does it ease the resentment, anger, pain, or the vast loneliness and emptiness that still sits in me, that fills me to overflowing on difficult days. December is a difficult month, Q4 is a difficult quarter of trauma anniversaries caused by the collapse of a life, the abuse of previous partner. The celebrations of Christmas and New Year, surrounded by extended family and friends who have their partners and their families makes me ache so much I could die from it, the longing for that stillness, that peace, that love that they have found so profound that I break down in tears at night, afraid that I will never find it for myself. The end of year reflections are always inevitable during this season, and I try to find ways to balance the wounds with the joys and gratitudes of the previous year. But joys and gratitude do not ease the wounds of trauma. Sometimes the abundance of others gives stark contrast to the lack within one's self, and to deny that is to deny a human reality for those that grew up lacking something.
Still: not all is lost. My father and I have been trying to repair our relationship -- I traveled extensively through Central Europe with my dad and my stepmom, our second time to travel as a family, and the first time I've ever traveled with my father solo. It was good to travel, to see the world, to open myself to different perspectives again, in places so alien to me that I had visceral reactions to culture shock that I did not know I could have. It was also a good time to get to know my father; for him to get to know me. It was a good time to reset a relationship that was never fully built, to lay new foundations as an adult daughter and her father, to understand each other a bit better. We both came away understanding each other more, with greater empathy,I think. I certainly met my father as a human being for the first time in my life, and he met me as a human person and not just the daughter he wished I was. It is a strange thing to meet your parents again, to tell them who you are. For them to try and meet you the human, for the first time, at the age of 35. A strange, alien feeling, but I am grateful that my father tried anyway.
Curiously I realized this is the first time I haven't traveled with my mother out of the country in the summer. There was simply not enough time. But the trip - and everything this year, the therapy sessions - has brought to light the lengths and limits of repair in my relationship with my father and mother. It is a hard process, with many discussions, many tears, so many difficult conversations and even harder introspections. To sit with the discomfort and the wounding, to discover the depths of the wounds that goes down to my foundation as a human being, to learn that the cracks upset the stability of everything -- my relationships, my self-worth, my finances -- has been profoundly painful. But it is an exercise in learning to become human, and to rebuild myself from the ground up in very real ways. I am still trying to build this foundation to become a stronger person. It is hard work, but work that is always worth doing as I learn to love myself and become a real person instead of a doll for everyone else.
My therapist also talked about extensively about what happened to me in 2023. I learned that in my previous relationship I was emotionally abused. I repeated the cycle unwittingly; I had no idea. It turns out that the emotional neglect, the stonewalling, the silent treatment, the discard -- all of it wasn't just attachment pain. All of it together was emotional abuse. It is something I still grapple with, the words for what happened to me. I couldn't look at it for the longest time because I had a moment in Geneva where I was crying on the floor of my hotel room begging my ex-girlfriend to forgive me for being too much for her to handle -- when I clear as day said out loud, oh my god I am my mother, and she is my father. And then I proceeded to stay in that dynamic for six more weeks because I thought that such pain was part of love, of any romantic relationship, of any partnership. I thought love came with pain, that relationships meant that the jagged edges of every person would cause wounds and bleed, and that the rivers of blood were normal. Such is the sacrifice for love, for relationships. Love has never been something of comfort, of safety, of joy, of softness in itself. I thought that such sweetness would always have to be paid for in blood, and because I would never be enough, it would require all that I had. And then verity said the words emotional abuse, and I brought it up with Riley and then my therapist, who said, I had always thought we were both operating under the assumption that you knew this was abuse. I am very sorry you didn't know.
It was difficult to accept that I trusted someone with my heart and she treated me so poorly. But it was also difficult to accept that I had allowed myself to stay in that situation because I loved her more than I ever loved myself -- and to realize that it was because I was never taught to love or value myself as a person, only for what I could give, only in relation to another person. Though it has been near-catastrophic to my sense of self and identity, it has raised the question: why don't I love myself?
It was painful to look at, because if I only stayed in that relationship because it was what it reminded me of home, and how my parents treated me... what was the name for how my parents treated me? If my ex was emotionally abusive and she was only acting the same way my parents did, therefore, by transitive property... I still hesitate to say it, but it is what it is. Neglect is abuse, is what my therapist said. I have cried a sea's worth of tears processing it, grief for what happened to me overwhelming. From both the relationship and my parents, for repeating cycles that I never wanted. For the pain, the sheer pain of it, that haunts me two years later. For allowing myself to be treated so poorly. For never knowing that love could be different. For only ever suffering for it.
Still:
I still grieve. But in that grief came clarity as well: that I didn't deserve any of that. It was absolution in the form of clarity, and the sea of tears within me gave way to a bigger space for love from friends who cared for me in the aftermath. I still struggle with relationships, with learning that love can be safe. But perhaps because of the shared vulnerability, my friends have loved me more than ever before, protective of me and ensuring my ex remains out of my life and out of my line of hearing or sight; being patient with me on the worst of my days as I cry over the same things, when I spiral out of control because my wounds have opened up and swallowed me whole. They have loved me through my emptiest days, reminding me that they are here, showing me that love can be kind, and soft, and gentle -- that I do not have to sacrifice who I am to be worthy of being their friend, of extending me love, of giving me comfort. Instead they have reminded me of everything I have done, of everything I plan to do; they remind me of everything I have survived thus far, have reminded me of how much they love me for who I am. They remind me to take up space, to ask, to allow help, to rest, to allow myself the grace of being human. They have gifted me the grace of being human. I have cried seas of grief on endless nights, but they have filled that void with seeds of their kindness and reminders of their love, and even as I have cried, those tears have watered a small garden, flowers decorating a void and reminding me that even in barren soil, love can still grow.
My friends have loved me back to life. I say it often, and I mean it each time. Without my friends showing me what love can be like, I would have continued to think I wasn't worthy of any kindness or love, would have thought love only ever meant suffering. But now I know better, and I have started to demand more from everyone around me. It has cost me a little bit, but I am still proud of myself for now knowing that I deserve better because of the love that I find myself surrounded by. I didn't do all this work just to throw it away.
I did find myself in a funny position a little earlier in the year when I liked a girl that made my system go haywire, and I followed it through thinking that this is just what dating is like these days. I really liked her. I loved talking to her; I think she's infinitely interesting and funny, cute, and so calm and steady. Then she showed me enough of her internal world which was in many ways familiar to me (and in many more ways completely different), and also reflected what I have since worked through since starting therapy in 2021. Instead of thinking I can fix her, I can wait, maybe if I contort myself just enough I'll be a girl she likes -- I just told her what I wanted and needed in a relationship to see if that was something she would be willing to do or to meet. And then she told me a couple more things that were straight out of a lesbian drama script and later her actions made it clear she didn't have the capacity or willingness to meet me where I need to be met, so I have since stepped back. I am simply not willing to be a character in your next Hulu lesbian drama sitcom, sorry! I did try to keep up communication but I do know when a person is pulling back and I also have a rule of reciprocal effort and it was not living up to that, so. It is what it is. I would have loved to be her friend but also I can't keep living in lesbian drama, Lord have mercy. I am too old for this. I am 36 in 3 months, I simply do not have the time or energy! if I was 20, probably. I am only human!! However I cannot keep playing stupid games and winning stupid prizes!!! I have nowhere to put those prizes in the warehouse of my mind!! Alas. But I can't sit around waiting for someone to realize their situations are unsustainable and unhealthy, hoping that one day they'll like me enough to do something about it. I liked her a lot, but I like me more.
I am not saying that I need a perfectly healed person to date -- nor am I saying that I am anywhere close to being healed myself! -- but I need someone at least already doing the work, or at least willing to do it, and willing to meet me where I am. I am not fixing anyone but myself. That's growth, I think! I have since realized she is just my ex in another woman, but maybe a little more self-aware, maybe kinder and less prone to casual cruelty. But I don't need my ex in another woman, I don't need my parents' wounds in another woman; I don't need a mirror of my 32 year old self in another woman. I need a woman who is also on her own journey, and for us to meet each other where we are and see if we can grow together from there. I think that's growth.
Still though, every person brings us back to ourselves in ways unexpected ways. Because of her I did find myself checking out the Filipino rock scene again after 10 or so years (everything stopped 10 years ago when I Locked In at work it seems) and it has grown steadily in both sound and popularity. Old heartbreak favorites have taken on new meaning, and new bands and new songs demonstrate the evolution of the OPM sound. It's wonderful to see. In talking to her and getting to know her I learned to ask for things and have them granted; I learned to take time and that my time is my own and I can nurture it as I please. More importantly, in a stranger sense: meeting her brought me to my spirituality in a way I did not think I could before.
It has been a deeply introspective year. I did start the year wanting to be more intentional in the way I lived, in the relationships I have, in the things that I commit to. What came from that is a deeper dive into my own spirituality, which has always been a hodgepodge of different beliefs and faiths, me desperately seeking a belief structure that would accept me for who I am, that did not alienate me, and one that gave me comfort instead of punishment when I prayed. Gay Catholics, you know what it's like. I can never escape Catholic culture (nor would I want to, that aesthetic goes hard) but I cannot live in it either, eternally condemned and punished for loving women.
I have been gifted a third eye and a powerful intuition since I was very young. I had an exorcism in 2017 to close my third eye because if I didn't I would have gone insane -- and the priests told me they could not fully close it because "what God has given man cannot take away." I have lived with the shame of having both, and whack ""spiritualists"" are making it even harder to embrace without appearing insane. But meeting her, who had the same gifts to a lesser extent, who treated these things like an ordinary Tuesday, who understood the experience of having it, the having to hide it -- to be able to talk freely, openly about these experiences with each other... it was a gift that I will always be grateful for. Our conversations on religion, spirituality, beliefs of souls in all things, shared experiences of intuition and Knowing helped heal some wounds around my own belief systems, and I have since learned to embrace it more. One of my friends, as it turns out, is also gifted with these things -- and she is much more powerful than I. We are both learning, but to be able to talk freely about these things, to study and exchange notes, has been such a freeing experience that I no longer feel the weight of the loneliness and shame surrounding these abilities. This is just part of my life now, and meeting her and my ate has been pivotal in allowing me to accept it instead of deny what I have always had.
It has led me to a deeper spiritual practice in Japan, of all places, where I have learned to pray in the shrines to its gods. The gods there have so far been kind to me, granting me clarity and peace when I pray for both, protecting me when I walk its mountains, and accepting my gratitude and prayers. Maybe it's because they have always known that I learned to pray in their temples when I was 12, praying for a way home after getting lost in Kiyomizu-dera; maybe because it's the closest to the animist tradition of my ancestors before the coming of the Spaniards; maybe it's because I have always believed in the spirits of nature and earth; maybe because it's just what gives comfort to my soul. But all I know is that these gods don't care if I love a woman, they don't think my third eye is a curse or an omen of ill-tiding, they don't care for the elaborate rituals and structures that I cannot give. To pray in the shrines has returned to me a peace I did not have before, and it breaks my heart that I struggle to replicate it here where I live. But for now, I have a spiritual practice to build on, one that does not reject or think of me as any less for being human. The comfort I have received after a year of breaking my own heart and rebuilding myself is immense, and I am so grateful to have found it in this strange season of my life.
I have learned so much about rest this year. Even as I have been on the go, even as I struggle with insomnia - I have learned the importance of rest and of accepting the limits of both body and mind. My therapist has unofficially diagnosed me with ADHD, and that has helped immensely in giving myself grace and also helping me plan and mitigate its impacts on my life. I still struggle with healing the CPTSD, the PTSD, learning to live with ADHD. There are many moments of resentment and anger, that I must live with the effects of people's neglect, that I must now pay for what was done to me in time and mental management for the rest of my life. I know it doesn't make sense, but the anger and resentment is still there. I did not ask for this, I did not deserve any of the trauma, and I did not do anything to cause it. It was simply a byproduct of peoples' inabilities to face themselves or do anything about it, and now I am paying for it. But still: I am trying to manage and live with all of it the best way I know how, in a way that enriches my life instead of starves it, that minimizes the damage and burden on my relationships but allows me to be seen, heard, and loved fully.
2025 has been such a strange year. I am not sorry to see it end. I am exhausted, physically, emotionally, mentally. I have yet to sit down with myself and think about 2026 and what it might bring. All I know is that in the coming year I want to continue being intentional about the direction of my life and my relationships. I want to learn to take up space without fear, to be able to say straightforwardly what my wants and needs are, knowing full well I will be fine if others cannot meet them, because I can meet them myself. I want to develop a self-identity, self-esteem, and assuredness so strong I no longer fear seeing my ex and remembering all the ways I made myself vulnerable for her in hopes that she would care for me and instead hurt me.
I burn a piece of paper every night in this period of in between - the 13 magical wishes to give to the universe during Rauhnaechte. I pray in my heart and in my mind in a shrine hidden in a park in Shibuya, asking for guidance and clarity, asking that I may be granted leave to return and offer my gratitude in person.
Maybe that's all I hope for 2026: that I will be treated gently, that my wishes will be heard, that my prayers be answered, my love found and returned.
Such simple wishes from a woman simply trying to live. 2025 returned to me my humanity. May 2026 return me to myself.
There are many things in play in the background; the wheels of time continue. These nameless days are coming to a close, and soon I will join the world again in its business, its loneliness, its camaraderies, its joys, its shared pains and sorrows. These days have been difficult, balancing between despair and hope, standing still and moving forward. I am going at my pace. May everyone close the coming year in peace, and carry only good wishes into the coming year.
Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!
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Date: 2025-12-28 03:06 pm (UTC)so so proud of you forever and ever and you DID kill me with the song choice after all of that lmfao