Looking back to the arduous and reckless, yet vibrant and fabulous, two decades I have lived (miraculously), I cannot imagine how right my mother was about all the little bits of advice she has told me and forced me to live by growing up. The clichés are always true, no matter how old they get or how badly you hope that they weren't. And I wish I had listened to them when I was younger because all these notes of caution have come to pass one by one now. I've never sent any "to my younger self" or "dear 10-year-old me" letters to, you know, myself, as if writing articles like this one doesn't make me sound old already. These letters always end in "just be yourself" or "your future will be awesome" or "what you're going through now will be good for you in the long run", but let's be honest, you're just saying that because the one who's reading this letter is your present self. I am by no means cynical; call me realistic – it's the better facet of the word. The only thing that was bothering your younger self was the lack of notion of moving backwards, staying put, or going through. But having lived life long enough to give advice to your younger version, you can tell them that they're going through. We are always going through; never backwards – only ahead.
In my family, my sister and I were raised in a certain way that was meant to train us to become very polite and well-mannered children. There were strict rules for us to follow growing up, even way before we'd had a slight sense of the purpose they served. It was said that we should keep our mouth shut whenever someone next to us was talking on the phone. And when we picked up the telephone, we must answer it like this, "Hello, who would you like to speak to?" Another one was that there was a format for an apology: I am very sorry; I won't ever do it again, I beg your forgiveness. Or when someone apologized and asked for forgiveness, we must assure them that they were forgiven: It's okay/I accept your apology; and I forgive you. I recited these words like a poem even when I didn't mean what I said. Before we went to bed, we must say, "Goodnight." And whenever a family member says, "I love you," we had to reply with an "I love you too" or sometimes when I was too lazy for the whole phrase, I would just say, "Me too."
There's also a rule that told us to stop making noises when my father was listening to classical music in the living room. He was a big fan; the cupboard above our television set was filled with Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Paganini, Haydn, his favorite Chopin and more, stacked up and across in alphabetical order. He also took good care of his hi-fi set just so he could enjoy Sophie Mutter tell a story of the Four Seasons by Vivaldi on the strings, and pick out the flaws of the cellist in the second row; but he sure loved a right amount of authenticity in a concerto. My father loved classical so much that he hired a professional pianist to teach us when we were four. He said it was for our leisure time activity but deep down he hoped someday my sister and I could play him something like Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu Op. 66. He said we would like it after learning about it. I'm not sure if I was too used to classical music that I started to enjoy it or if I actually liked it. Either way, I listen to it whenever I write or try to overcome my anxiety. Last night as I ran my finger along the spines of the CDs above the television set, I recalled the times when I was still learning piano and lost my temper over the little notes that I mistakenly played. I would hit the careless hand with another one or just smash it on the piano keys as hard as I could until I got the few bars right. At the beginning I would cry while doing that and say mean things to myself so loudly that my mother would come out of her room and told me to take a break and be more patient, but years later I would just hit my own hand without hesitation or saying a word; it was almost like a reflex – wrong key? Take that pain. There was also a time when I threw a temper at my dad saying how I didn't want to go to piano lessons and he was so furious that he picked up my hair-straightener and pounded it on my left hip bone. I stopped complaining and practiced quietly with a big bruise on my hip for the following week. With Chopin's Scherzo No. 2 playing in the background, what my dad had said to me realized itself, and I wish I could play the song so flawlessly when in fact I can only do the composer's Spring Waltz without getting mad at my clumsy fingers.
Four days ago I picked up a call from one of my best friends, Julia, "Hello, who would you like to speak to?" I said habitually, even when I was answering from my own cell phone. I had to make her repeat herself several times because I couldn't hear her low murmur. She said she was drunk. I got a cab and rushed to Central to get her home. When I arrived, I looked around the area for fifteen minutes and still couldn't see her. Then after a while, I found her. She wasn't just drunk; she was proper wasted, sitting on the stairs outside a building next to HardRock. I was told that she broke up with her boyfriend. She insisted on calling him and asking him to send her back or else she wouldn't go home. It was very cold and she was in her Summer attire, freezing and crying, make-up smeared all over her eyes and cheeks. I couldn't convince her to go home because she was very resistant, and the best I could do with my physical effort was to drag her to a less crowded place where I could see more appearances of cabs, regardless of her refusal to get into one. We found shelter in a concave entrance of a Victorian building that resembled the tall and arched wooden doors of a church. Her ex-boyfriend was coming to pick her up after about twenty calls and numerous negotiations. Julia squatted down holding her own knees as a means to keep warm, and I stood in front of her to block the cold breeze that was blowing at us. She was slurring her words hatefully, blaming everything and having pity on herself, so I just responded with the regular and customary break-up consolations to dismiss her drunkenness. As she was getting more sober, she started telling me about her friend that passed away recently. She was sobbing as she told me that she didn't forgive that friend before he left. And it hit me hard when I heard that because it occurred to me that this guilt she was feeling couldn't be erased in her lifetime. She was blaming herself again, shivering in the cold like a helpless little kitten, and even her shadow was small, as if sadness had engulfed not only her existence but also the proofs of it. She reached out her hand and held mine, while saying how brave she thought I was and how weak and vulnerable she had become. She kept asking me how I did it, but I didn't know what to tell her. I put my other hand on her back to show my support and it was the closest gesture of assurance to understanding. I knew I would never understand what she was going through. The human soul can only be shared with others to a small degree; even though it craves the company of others, it must exist alone and look to itself for answers. And no matter how many boyfriends you get, how much therapy you engage in, or how welcoming the doors of the Churches are, these are all false justifications for the flaws and weaknesses in people's characters; they can never explain the complexity and mystery of human beings' ever-growing sense of isolation even in a world of activity and interaction. Her ex-boyfriend arrived not long after. He was suited up, polished and collected. He asked for a cigarette. "Come on, let's go home," he kept his voice low, looking down at Julia who was still squatting down, casting a long shadow that covered her entire body. "Put your scarf over her shoulders," I commanded, after acknowledging his lack of tendency to do anything to keep her warm from the deduction of his body language. A scene flashed across my mind and it reminded me of a chilly night in April almost three years ago which I wrote an article about. "Sorry for all the trouble," Julia said to me before I got on a taxi. "It's alright, I forgive you," I said. And I meant it. It was almost 4am when I got home. I went to bed right after and I cried till the morning.
The first day my mother sent us off to kindergarten, she said to us, "If someone hits you, don't cry about it; you either leave the problem out of our house or go back the next day and beat them up until their nose bleed." I knew she said it as a joke; she would never want us to get violent with others. What she meant to say was, you either endure it or you pay them back what they deserved. You compose yourself and come back safe and sound. Long before we knew the multiplication table, my mother was already teaching us how to brave the brutal world. Of course, in reality there aren't people that come beating you up out of the blue. People bully you with love, or to be exact, the murderous impulse that masquerades as love. The embodiment of the cruel side of human nature often appears to us as angelic and friendly beings, like the way hunters disguise themselves in camouflage. I can only agree with Carson McCullers to a small extent when he named his book "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter". All hearts are lonely, yes. But not all of them are hunters. There are two kinds of people in the world: lonely hunters and provocative challengers. The hunters go around looking for weaker souls to dominate and claim victory. The challengers seek confrontations with the hunters as if they volunteer to be the gladiators thrown into the pits against wild beasts. And that's me – throwing myself out to someone that would shatter my heart and coming back bruised and scarred. Then I would take pride in surviving the battles. All these achievements and sick little games that I do – I am just pretending to myself that I am getting stronger day by day, proving to people that I am unbreakable. Whether you're a hunter or a challenger, the soul seeks redemption and solace through the company of another. And the tragedy of the modern era is the never-ending battles between the two kinds of souls who both want and need each other but refuse to give in. I used to think it was hard to be with someone who's fully intact, because they wouldn't understand my thirst for domination. I never understood the endurance part that my mother suggested but I guess it was a call for truce. I used to look for someone who's not complete, but as I grow older, I just want to be with someone that's whole.
My father hasn't come home for dinner for quite a long time now. He wasn't home for his birthday either. And he's not spending Christmas with us this year. All these pieces of advice that my mother said to me, I always thought they were coming from her just because she was cynical – I used to think we all grew up to be cynics. But lately they are coming true and I am very certain that saying this doesn't mean I'm becoming cynical. The things that boys said in bed weren't real; not even half of them. I have this theory that life is constantly rendering lessons to us, and the ways that it gives them depends on our different abilities and tolerance. If we can't learn it the easy way, it lets us do it the hard way – and we learn it in the end nonetheless. Because like I said, we are always going through. Sometimes we've seen it coming because we learnt it in the previous teaching but refused to acknowledge what we grasped, so it would come at us again, tougher than the last one; and this time we see it coming too. One way or another, life will keep slapping us with difficult lessons until we admit complete understanding. The sooner we learn it, the sooner we can get it over and done with. We are going through not because we want to, but because it's not poetic to suffer. If I were to write a letter to my younger self, I would tell her to stop forcing herself to go backwards.
As I start to become aware of the purpose of those old rules I used to follow when I was little, I am also coming to the conclusion that my mother didn't intend for us to do it or say it just for the sake of seeming more polite, but to train us until we understand the real meanings of them. I haven't grasped the true meanings of each of these phrases yet, but I am saying them less often now. There has been a few times where boys didn't get any response back after mumbling "I love you" to me in the bedsheets; I think I am still several lessons away from learning what love is. And while all the other clichés are coming true, I am definitely anticipating the one that says "I love you too" to realize itself. I don't know what love is, but I do know for sure what it isn't. And if "I love you too" means waiting for someone who's not coming home for Christmas then I think I'll pass.
