Beauty and the Beast

 When I think of all the times and places where I've felt isolated, estranged, and having to survive on my own, this wave of smallness and imprisonment washes over me.  My life has always been on the outside, of having to be more and do more to get on the inside.  And when I couldn't get on the inside?  I had to forge an entirely different path to get to my destination.  

Nothing has been easy for me, whether it has been surviving the gap in my worth from child abuse, or finding acceptance from my tribe during transition, or even in forging my career.  I've always had to find my way alone.  I could never depend on my father to protect and to love me.  I could never trust that others didn't want to take me down as a competitive threat.  I could never look forward to that feeling that people were rooting for you and wanted you to succeed.  All my life, I've been the underdog, the one you counted out, the disabled one.  But those experiences forged me into an absolute monster.  I am strong beyond belief: mentally, physically, spiritually.  And it's that same strength which prevents me from truly experiencing the fullness of Who I Am and my presence in consciousness.

The act of identifying with strength is that it leaves no room for Unity.  To be egoically "strong" is to deny the tender, sensitive, and vulnerable aspects of the whole self.  Those parts of myself (places that are not allowed to see the light of day) have become the very thing that eats away at my soul, my source of pain and suffering.  "I can't show them who I really am, or they won't love/respect/fear me."  "If people knew how weak I truly was, they would abandon me, like all the times before."

It occurs to me just now that all the times when I showed my complete Wholeness, those around me abandoned me, and so I learned that being strong was the antidote to those feelings of betrayal and abandonment.  And what keeps the structures of strength and independence intact is the fear of abandonment.  "I have to be strong; otherwise, they will abandon me again."  "They will not see my worth if I don't put up this front; I am not worthy."   

I realize now why I choose to battle alone: cancer, career, love, life.  I'm too deathly afraid that I will be disappointed and abandoned again, like all the times before.  I'm not sure my little heart can even survive another infraction.  Thinking about it now makes me feel sad and small and on the verge of tears.  But the silver lining here is that in learning not to depend on others, I have come to rely on and trust myself.  I am absolutely the right investment to make, with a history of incredible ROI.  

What can bring down the cage I've placed around my heart?  "Beauty and the Beast" comes to mind.  Creating a life of beauty which can reflect and serve as the mirror which can then unlock the Beauty within.  I know my Beauty is not a person, and I also know it's not something outside of myself.  It is found within, and it is available to me now.  I will never abandon myself.  I am grateful that I can see the Beauty within.  Namaste. 

Alter Egos

 When watching the 5th episode of Moon Knight, we realize that Marc Spector completely fabricates his alter ego, Steven Grant, to deal with the trauma of his childhood.  It made me really wonder how much we truly compensate for trying not to feel the pain that is inflicted on us, and even though Spector has dissociative identity disorder, is it really that different than the persona I've created to deal with my own past?

I saw my mother being hurt and abused, and vowed to be the woman that nobody could ever take advantage of.  I get triggered when people underestimate me and welcome the challenge to become stronger, smarter, and wiser than anyone thought I could be.  I take pride in my ability to be strong and unbreakable.  But really, it's just a front for how truly weak I feel deep down inside.  

In my meditations, I've been exploring why this cancer is back.  Was it because of the breakup with Billy? Did Dani curse me, or did my mother?  Or was it just a matter of time before my avoidance of my trauma caught up to me?  Whatever the reason, I felt into the root of what this was, this E.O., and I realized that I've never felt safe or stable anywhere in my life, and I've always been trying to accomplish and work myself into a new future or a new set of skills or a new body - anything which wasn't my current set of circumstances.  I've been so obsessed with being unhappy with who I am and where I am, that I mistook being uncomfortable in my own life for drive and ambition.

Maybe this cancer is the universe's way of truly getting my attention, instead of the gentle hints life has been throwing my way.  "Get present with and become grateful for who you are and your life now, or else we'll take that very life away from you."  It's compelling, I have to admit.  You can't ignore the fatigue; it's so palpable.  And so you're forced to look inwardly or lose everything.  At the very least, ignoring it would be some incredibly twisted form of denial or radical acceptance.  Having said that, I have made my peace with allowing myself grace if my time here on Earth has come to an end.  What I'm not okay with is refusing to give myself the peace and security that I've craved all these years.

Heiros Gamos

 For the past year and a half, I've been toying around with the idea of polyamory: the idea that no singular person can satisfy all aspects of who you are; it literally takes a village.  I found my stability and safety in Billy, but I had to look elsewhere for animal magnetism and desire.  All this time, I've believed that you kept people around you to satisfy certain aspects of yourself: Aaron for spirituality, Alana for spontaneity, Brett for rivalry, Alex for boyishness, and together they would create the village that would help support and complete Quyen.  But what if I had it wrong the whole time?

Over the past four months, I've re-learned how to care and provide for myself.  If I needed spirituality, I meditated.  If I needed to express myself, I blogged.  If Heiros Gamos translates to "sacred marriage" or the marriage to oneself, then I was learning how to be my own partner, my own primary.  Previously, I had been wanting Billy or Dani or whomever to be my primary, and then to make up for their shortcomings with others.

What I realize now is that I am my own primary.  I know best how to love and care for myself and to give myself the things that I want and need.  Nobody else could possibly come close to caring for me the way that I want to be cared for.  The other people in my life serve as my poly family, helping to fill in gaps for that which I cannot provide for myself: intimacy, laughter, perspective, mentoring & menteeing.  It is not my primary partner's responsibility to cover 75% of my needs, just the other 25% which I cannot handle on my own.  And the perfect match would be someone who is like minded and doesn't need me to be their 75% either.

Feeling Alive

 I've been struggling with my health lately.  My labs came back and my low HDL cholesterol levels indicate someone that is either obese and at risk of a heart attack or has a marker for cancer.  I'm not surprised as my fatigue levels have been very high.  I feel like an old iPhone that just can't keep a charge.

Everyone around me has been very supportive and is encouraging me to fight.  However, I've been getting tired of fighting.  For what?  To get old in order to retire?  To try to make as much money as I can when others do it so much better?  To not have strong bonds with family and friends to support me?  To live for my students and professional community when I am truly not an important part of any of their lives?  

The older I get, the more pointless it seems to work hard and try to live a grand existence.  That may be a life of service and purpose, but it's in the moments where I get to hug Anthony or cuddle with the cats where I feel most alive.  It's those times where I'm not fighting to exist, but getting to simply exist instead that make me forget how tired I am.  All these ambitions just leave me in a state of lack and feeling "lesser than".

It's funny to think how a grocery list is there to remind you of what you don't have and need to try to procure.  A long to-do list is essentially the opposite of gratitude: "Concentrate on all the things you don't have instead of that which you do."  The things that eat away at me are creating an online program to create passive income, to make/save/invest wisely enough to buy a house/retire/travel if I so desire, to find the people who will feed my body/mind/soul, to be useful/loved/important.  These are all things which directly tell me that I am not enough yet. 

It's in the moments when I'm with Anthony, the cats, and meditating where I feel no sense of lack or need to perform.  I am simply me, and the enoughness I feel fills me up instead of leaving me drained.  *I* feel alive.  Not the me tomorrow, not the me yesterday.  Who I Am, in my body.  Right.  Now.

Telogen Effluvium

 In the same way that the biblical Samson's hair was the source of his strength and power, I think women derive a great deal of worth and self-confidence from their hair.  Much like a woman feeling feminine after a mastectomy, there is something emasculating/de-feminizing about having to lose a core physical trait which defines one as a woman in today's society.

Hair loss can occur after a traumatic or stressful event, and can even include fevers and illness, like Covid.  It had never occurred to me that my breakup with Billy could be so dramatic for me.  But I suppose, in hindsight, it was.  I was juggling talking with many different people with different wants and needs and trying to see how I could fit into their lives.  I was looking for a new place to live, with searches often ending in failure and disappointment, leaving me feeling defeated and desperate.  I was dealing with studio recitals and youth orchestra concerts, and the dissolution of a conducting job which I had wanted for so long, years before.  I was struggling with loneliness, worth, sexual validity, and building my life back up, one Target run at a time.

Looking forward, the hair loss I'm experiencing is symbolic: it is a literal shedding of my past self.  Who I was, who I've been, is literally not there anymore.  My hair was simply the last vestige of that.  I'm 23 lbs lighter than I was in November, actively go to the gym three times per week, cook and clean and maintain a home by myself, and am invested only in providing for and taking care of myself.  Like a caterpillar casting off its former body to morph into a butterfly, if losing my hair is what it takes to get me to evolve, then it's a small and worthy price to pay to see my true self on the other side.

The Strength of Mama Bear

My mother was made of steel.  I didn't know much about her life before she met my father, but even then, being a survivor of domestic violence, broken vows, and financial abuse, I watched her endure quite a lot. There is one memory I have of she and I living together in the backroom of her beauty shop, laying on a twin mattress on the floor, watching her 10" CRT TV (complete with wire antennae) which was perched on top of the mini fridge.  She would ask with a big smile if I was hungry and proceed to pull out one hotdog for each of us that she got from the convenience store next door.  She'd put them on a plate and heat them up in the same microwave that she used to warm wax for waxing facial hair.  Then, she'd wrap each hot dog in a slice of white bread and savor it like it was a ribeye steak, modeling for me how to enjoy my meal.  We didn't even have ketchup.    

I think about the strength it must have taken to put on a smile and pretend that she was happy just so her child wouldn't feel sorry for her or, worse, themselves.  I knew, even back then, that she would rather live in an 8' x 6' room than go home to an abusive husband who would beat her, then rape her, and if she didn't comply, then he'd beat her children.  We never spoke about it, but we both knew why she couldn't go home.  And that small room, illuminated by the glow of that small, staticky TV screen, was infinitely warmer than living with my father in that cold, expansive house .

I remember when she moved to San Jose for six months to start a new life away from my dad, and when we visited her, she took one look at me (sad and apparently malnourished) and broke down crying, wishing she never left us in the first place.  The amount of self-sacrifice needed to leave behind the new life you've created for yourself and the sheer delusion required to tell yourself that, this time, things would be different is astonishing.  This is the strength I inherited from my mother.

Thanks to my mother, I do not identify as a victim.  I have overcome physical and mental abuse, being "othered," and various health setbacks, to come into a life and career that others admire.  By all counts, you would never guess that I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth:  I have class, dignity, and enough grit to break rocks on.  But while I learned from my mother to always hide away those tarnished parts of yourself and your experiences, it didn't mean they didn't exist.  While my mother learned to survive by being able to compartmentalize her life, I grew up believing that compartmentalizing WAS life.  You weren't one person living two different aspects of the same life; you were choosing which life to inhabit and completely disowning the rest.  

This is why I grew up not acknowledging my weaker "twin".  I felt my feelings and emotions were something you could pick off and discard, like a piece of lint, and if I could remove that hindrance from my person, then I would be all the more polished and more beautiful for it.  As such, I never learned that my feelings and emotions also needed support and space to live.  My deep desire for survival only needed to engage that rational side of me that only chose the best possible options.  

You can imagine that when I woke up to essentially a panic attack for letting Anthony go so easily just because he didn't fit my definition of "best-case scenario" and felt my heart aching, I was bewildered.  Why was my weaker "twin," who was definitely making even poorer choices now, protesting so much?  Why couldn't I sacrifice the new life I had created as a result of exiting my relationship, and why couldn't I delude myself again and tell myself that, this time, things would be different with Billy, just like my mother had modeled for me all those years ago?  

If real strength comes from the courage to choose the more difficult things, then choosing how I feel over how I think is definitely a true display of strength, for me.  It's easy for me to prepare and plan for success and weigh out the odds in order to find the path of least resistance.  Do you know what's hard?  Taking a leap of faith, even with a high chance of failure, and deciding that learning through failing is also an integral and valid part of living life.  Whereas my mother's strength was found in being able to compartmentalize two competing aspects of herself, I believe my true strength is going to come from being able to integrate my estranged twin back into the wholeness that can, one day, be me.

Hiro-Kun

Dearest Hiro-Kun,

The first time I saw you, I knew you were perfect for me.  Everything about you is what I've been searching for, for a long time.  I'm used to being the smartest person in the room, and your mind runs circles around mine.  Your initiative in seeking out opportunities and your commitment to your work is impressive and admirable.  Your eyes are the most gorgeous eyes I've ever looked into; they make me melt, and I love your body.  The way you follow me around from room to room and hold me from behind is adorable, and I know this sounds creepy, but I love to watch you sleep; you look so innocent and content, and it brings out this deep desire in me which wants to love, nurture, support, and protect you.

Even despite all of the things I love about you, I realize I've unfairly pushed you away.  You see, I'm a very pragmatic and logical person, and those qualities have gotten me very far in life.  My ability to seek out the best possible solution and to look far ahead into the future has proven to be, perhaps, my greatest asset.  And whenever I would look at you, I saw the years of work that would have to go into teaching you how to take care of yourself and how to take care of me.  A part of me was also very scared of our age difference.  You're just discovering your career path, your interests, passions, and who and what you like, whereas I've had plenty of time to figure out what it is that I want from life.  I knew I wanted you for the long haul, but in five or ten years from now, would you also want me?  The prospect of investing into someone who would most likely leave you in the future was soul-crushing.  I felt like what I imagine an actual mother feels like after she's put so much time, energy, and resources into raising a child, only to watch them leave to lead their own lives.  It's bittersweet, at best.

And even though I could absolutely logic my way through all of that, my heart wouldn't let me ignore how I felt about you.  I couldn't just let logic and reason override my emotions this time, and I started to hurt.  Like "lay in bed for hours and mope" hurt or "check my phone a thousand times to see if you still cared enough to text" hurt.  I still feel like that, if I'm being honest.  What's undeniable is that I do, in fact, love you.  For as short a time as I've known you and how little I know about you, it sounds silly and unreasonable, but I do.  I want to do everything in my power to make you as fulfilled and satisfied and as successful as you want to be.  And I'd want you to have the peace of mind that you would always have someone fighting with you on your side.

After my cancer scare, I took a lot of time to take inventory of my life.  If I only had months left to live, why was I pushing you, the one thing I wanted, away?  The truth was that I didn't want to waste time: I wanted us to live together and to share unforgettable experiences together before we couldn't.  At the very least, I wanted to show you what real love and devotion felt like, at least once in your life, and I knew I could give that to you.  I imagined you raid leading your guild in mid-April, and I would silently make sure you had everything you needed (food, sleep, restoration) so you could focus on getting your team to World 1st again.  I'd make sure to encourage you to invest yourself into your work and education so that you could have a stellar career one day, too.  And of course, I'd give you lots of praise and head pats when things weren't always going so easy or so well.  These are all the things I wanted to tell you this week before I had to make a big decision.

You're probably wondering what was so important that we had to have a phone call about.  Well, my therapist felt I should tell my ex about my cancer coming back, and when I did, my ex offered to move-in with me to take care of me.  He was about to sign another year-long lease, but he had until 5:30pm on March 30th to pull out, hence my deadline.  I ended up telling him to not sign the lease and to go ahead and put in his 30 days notice to move.  But if I'm being honest, I really wanted the person who moved in to be there with me during this time to be you.  That's what I wanted: to see if that was even something that you wanted too.  I'm sad that we never even got a chance to talk about it.

You see, I'm a long-term relationship kind of girl.  My last relationship with my ex was nearly 11 years long.  I know how to make a relationship work, I know how to be a good partner, and I know how to compromise and when to stand my ground.  I also know how to love: not just the Valentine's Day greeting card or romantic movie type of love, but the real moments that we wake up to and feed our hearts throughout the day.  What I wanted to know is if you wanted that too, with me?  All you would have had to do was to say yes.  Sadly, we'll never have that conversation, and you will never know how I truly felt about you, nor you to me.

I will miss you dearly, Hiro-Kun.  I'm sure I'll be thinking "what if?" on my death bed someday, as I imagine an alternate reality where I had the chance to bare my heart to you, and I made a different decision yesterday, and we are both together and happy.  But for now, I have to close this chapter and put our story high up on a bookshelf.  I wish so badly to see how our story would have ended.  In my fantasies, it absolutely has a fairytale ending.  I love you, Hiro-Kun.  Goodbye.

Love Always,

Quyen