bitter 30

I am turning 30 tomorrow. And while I have never really felt or looked my age, the last few days have all been about reflection. Just what have I accomplished in my life? What do I want to do next? What do I want now? Seems like the older you get the less clear your goals and ambitions become; and the more clouded your judgment and decision-making get.

I am turning 30 tomorrow, and there’s a big void in my heart. I don’t have a best friend; I don’t have any really close friends, and it’s near impossible to get anyone to come out to do anything with me. I’ve lived in Vancouver for 19 years and still haven’t found someone I call close. I feel like I don’t belong here. I am a product of immigration, amalgamating cultures, and discrimination. English isn’t my mother tongue and I am not taught to think critically for myself. But when I’m back in Taiwan the locals can tell I am ‘foreign’ just by the way I dress! So I am nowhere and here, stuck in between one homeland and the next.

10 days of working the Vancouver Queer Film Festival have never made me feel so close to being a part of my community yet so lonely. No one besides the staff working at the office knows who I am, because the nature of my job is always behind the scenes. While I enjoy the solitude of my job, I also resent the fact that I remain mostly anonymous. I don’t have a name tag, I don’t have friends, I don’t exist if I don’t show up. I don’t have a QPOC community to which I belong; I don’t have any QPOC friends who shows up for me other times of the year. Once the festival ends I don’t see any of my festival ‘friends’ until the next year. I often volunteer to stay at work later than I need to because I have nothing to come home to, or friends to hang out with if I depart early. Nothing is home except my insanity and the occasional guitar music therapy.

I am turning 30 tomorrow, and I am a queer woman of colour. There. I said it. Checking all the boxes. But that doesn’t make me more memorable than the other white boys on a work shift. No one recognizes or remembers who I am even though we’ve worked together or crossed paths numerous times. I remember who they are, why don’t they remember who I am? Do I have a very forgettable face? Do the things I say not have any weight? Why do I have to keep re-introducing myself? I am practically invisible.

I am turning 30 tomorrow, and I wish I could celebrate with my family. I can’t believe I’ve lived without my dad for 11 years now. Where did the time go? Am I stuck at age 19 from the trauma and shock of losing my father? Would he have been okay with me being into women? Would he have fought with my mom in disagreement over accepting who I am? Would he have been on my side? Would he have defended or disowned me? Would he have shared relationship advice – because that’s all I think about when I encounter difficult situations in relationships? Would he have performed Peking Opera again, just for my amusement? Or maybe we could have worked on a show together? He was definitely the best at giving advice though, and I know that when I turn 30 soon he would have said something wise.

Well, here’s to turning 30: fatherless, friend-less, and hopeless.

Death has always won the last hand

It has been an exceptionally emotional week for me. At the beginning of the week I received news that one of the bosses of my many AV employers had passed away. His death came as a shock for me even though every one in the company knew his health was in grave condition. Days before his passing I came upon his crowd-funding page and learned that he was waiting for a double lung transplant. From his updates he sounded optimistic and that he was waiting for specialists to check out his condition. Even a day or two before he died, he was still posting updates and thanking people for their outpouring support. Little did everyone know that he would be gone from us so soon! He was one of the nicest and kindest supervisors I’ve worked with. He had a friendly approach and would always joke with his crew on gigs.

It is hard to wrap my head around his death, and I’m not sure why it’s affecting me so much. Perhaps it’s that he is leaving behind a 5-year-old son, or the fact that no parent should have to live to see their child die (both his parents were at the memorial). Perhaps I felt that there was always something relatable about his interracial marriage. I’ve never lost a colleague in a workplace before, and I’ve definitely never mourned for the loss of a grown man I barely knew. But somehow the circumstances surrounding his death reminded me a lot of my own father’s death. The fact that he passed away so suddenly alone is enough to bring a connection to dad’s passing in 2007. It has been two days since the memorial; even though I am busy with work and my mind is occupied with other things, I still can’t shake the shock-factor…

To add salt to the already raw emotions, I went to see Ga Ting at the Cultch tonight. The play is about how a son’s [Asian] family deals with his sexuality after his death by inviting his [white] boyfriend over for dinner. Needless to say, the plot already resonates a great deal with my own life: me being Asian and my partner (and ex’s) being Caucasians, and the fact that my parent(s) don’t accept my sexuality. The blatant stereotypes of each culture is addressed and often laughable because the stereotypes are just so ridiculous.  I did not expect the play to be hilarious and remained so through the majority of the show. Then, ‘bam!’, out of nowhere towards the end of the show, the story quickly got serious and emotional. I wavered back and forth between identifying with the boyfriend and the dead son. They both have struggles that I have faced or still am facing – I have come out to my mom and most of my family, but my mom is still in denial. Or she refuses to acknowledge that it’s actually a part of me, just like the parents (more so the dad) in the play.

Guilt, shame, and blame are the three stand-out themes from the show; three things I recognize so strongly having grown up in an Asian family. Miscommunication, or the lack of communication, rather, also stood out like a sore thumb. The show made me wonder how my dad would have reacted if I had come out before he died. Would he have been the moderator between my mom and I and help us negotiate or communicate, or would he have been like the stern, difficult and rigid father in the show? It reminded me how important one’s sexuality is in identifying ourselves – or at least it is for me. It is part of who I am, how I behave and conduct myself. If I can’t be myself due to your close-mindedness, then you’re not getting the full ME. If I can’t even tell you that I am happily dating someone of the same sex, then you won’t know who’s important in my life and how I’m prioritizing my time. SO MANY of the lines uttered by the actors tonight I’ve heard in my own conversations with my mom. The show also briefly touched on mental illness, for it is depression and bipolar that prompted the son’s death.

There wasn’t one issue in the show that I didn’t identify with; I could say that I’ve experienced everything the show depicted. I saw the show by myself, wishing everyone I love in my life could have seen the show – my ex, my girlfriend, my brother, and most of all, my mother. I was jealous how frankly the characters talked to and confronted each other, but was also deeply saddened by the fact that it took a son’s death for the family to finally recognize their son for who he was. If my death does half of what the son’s did in terms of reconciliation within the family, then my death will have been justified and I’d happily meet the Grim Reaper tomorrow.