Posts in category "Thoughts"

The Bias of Insecurity

I like to think that humans are, in gen­er­al, cere­bral beings, unaf­fect­ed by bias or emo­tion.

But every time I’m met with a big­ot, who has noth­ing to cling to but the strength of their opin­ions, I lose this hope.

The more they speak, the more they prove them­selves as inca­pable of accept­ing any­thing but their own beliefs. Added to this is a lack of self-aware­ness, caus­ing them believe that they’re not closed-mind­ed, they’re just right.

Often it betrays an inse­cu­ri­ty. You can tell that under­neath their words, they har­bour a sub­con­scious feel­ing that they’re wrong. To make up for this, they express them­selves strong­ly enough to con­vince them­selves that they’re right.

As log­i­cal­ly as you explain things, step-by-step, premise to con­clu­sion, they won’t under­stand. They’ll nev­er be able to accept the truth, and remain com­plete­ly igno­rant.

It’s impos­si­ble to have a dis­cus­sion with some­one like this.

The dis­cus­sion is super­fi­cial, and the issue lies with­in the per­son them­selves.

The Diary Under The Bed

On the 25th of September, at 11:04 am, my mom Googled my e‑mail address, and found this blog.

She vis­its every day like clock­work; around 8:30 am when she gets into work, and some­times dur­ing lunch around 12:30 pm. Even though I told her nev­er to con­tact me again, she con­tin­ues to check on me.

It’s some­thing I’ve known for a while now.

The exis­tence of this web­site was a secret I kept from my par­ents for as long as I could. I felt like I owed it to them to over­look my child­hood mem­o­ries because they stayed togeth­er for my sake, so I nev­er want­ed them to know this seem­ing­ly unrec­on­ciled side of me. When they told me they were get­ting divorced, I wrote an entry (that’s nev­er been pub­lished) about how I stopped car­ing. It was their turn to start car­ing about me.

Of course, this was only true in the­o­ry.

To be hon­est, I was dev­as­tat­ed. Bronwen likened it to her mom find­ing her diary under her bed, and I tend to agree with the anal­o­gy.

Chinese kids don’t talk to their par­ents about much. Even after being out of touch for a long time, par­ents will only ask whether they have enough mon­ey, whether they’re eat­ing enough, and how their marks are in school, if applic­a­ble.

The dis­cov­ery must have opened a can of worms. This is where I share my prob­lems. My inse­cu­ri­ties. My sex­u­al expe­ri­ences. My past drug use. The bit­ter mem­o­ries of child­hood. On here, I’m no longer the dis­tant son they’ve known for 25 years. I’m open. Naked. Exposed.

Some were sur­prised that my mom would con­tin­ue read­ing my blog, believ­ing the things I say would be too painful for her to read. It makes sense though. This is the only way she can stay close to me.

So I have to ignore the entries in my serv­er logs that con­stant­ly remind me of her pres­ence. I can’t let it affect the only place where I can write unre­strict­ed. I just have to let go, and con­tin­ue writ­ing. Damn the con­se­quence, as some­one once said. There’s noth­ing else I can do. After all, this is a pub­lic jour­nal. I have no right to com­plain about who comes here.

When you let go, you can write about any­thing.

Letter To An Ex-Girlfriend: Introduction

An ex e‑mailed me out of the blue the oth­er day. She blamed it on the fall weath­er, caus­ing her to rem­i­nisce and Google my name. We had­n’t seen or spo­ken to each oth­er in over five years.

After feel­ing each oth­er out for the first part of the exchange, we caught up on each oth­ers lives. She’s been mar­ried for three years. Moved out to Kingston after liv­ing through the pol­lu­tion and over-stim­u­la­tion of down­town Toronto. She has a full-time job while work­ing toward her Master of Education part-time. Her hus­band’s an artist at heart, she says, try­ing to make a liv­ing off cre­ative writ­ing. No kids yet, but instead, two cats, Emily Wednesday and Shadow.

Me? I moved to Ottawa for uni­ver­si­ty, bought a house, recent­ly got out of a rela­tion­ship, been work­ing as the mar­ket­ing and IT man­ag­er at a den­tal lab­o­ra­to­ry. Oh, and I have one cat, but I’m think­ing of a sec­ond.

There were some things I’d been mean­ing to ask her for a while. Going through a series of rela­tion­ships since ours has changed my per­spec­tive, and I’ve always won­dered whether she’s grown in this way as well. I put a few ques­tions to her, but she told me, in an ami­able way, that she was­n’t com­plete­ly com­fort­able indulging my curiosi­ties.

What she had no prob­lem talk­ing about before was now taboo and off lim­its. Was she afraid of upset­ting her hus­band by dis­cussing such per­son­al things with an ex-boyfriend, or did she sim­ply change so much?

There are a lot of things I’d like to say to my ex-girl­friends, but the nature of a break-up can be that of ran­cor. Communication breaks down. People lose per­spec­tive. I’ve always had a tremen­dous need to express myself, per­haps to the detri­ment of my rela­tion­ships, but dig­ging up what’s past and buried for the sake clo­sure seems a bit self­ish. After hav­ing this ex tell me that she was uncom­fort­able, I real­ized that it may have been rather inap­pro­pri­ate of me.

It’s only here that I can say what I want.

The Letter To An Ex-Girlfriend series

  1. Introduction
  2. Ashley
  3. Michele
  4. Christie
  5. Jackie
  6. Louise
  7. Bronwen

Rebel Son

Rana pulled me aside the oth­er day and told me, I under­stand your cul­ture now. I under­stand your deci­sion.

She elab­o­rat­ed on a woman at work who had sent her daugh­ter to live in China. It was soon after the baby was born, and the grand­moth­er assumed respon­si­bil­i­ty of par­ent. The moth­er nev­er went to vis­it, only send­ing mon­ey for her upbring­ing.

That day, the grand­moth­er and grand­daugh­ter came to work, hav­ing flown into Canada to vis­it. No one at work had seen the child, two years old now. The whole time, she was ner­vous and shy, clutch­ing the leg of her grand­moth­er. When the moth­er tried to hold her, she would­n’t budge, only cry­ing the rau­cous, uncon­trolled, unin­hib­it­ed tears of a child.

Rana told me this with sur­prise and con­fu­sion in her face. It was hard for her to believe that any­one could do this to their baby. I wish I could say that I was sur­prised.

This child was too young to know bias or bit­ter­ness. She only knew what she felt, a being of pure emo­tion. The woman who was sup­posed to be her moth­er was no clos­er than a stranger, and for the first time, Rana was exposed to this.

I’ve always con­fid­ed in Rana about my own rela­tion­ship with my par­ents. She’s one of the few who real­ly care, ask­ing me if there’s been any news on a reg­u­lar basis, espe­cial­ly since I cut all ties. We nev­er argue, but she’s nev­er ful­ly agreed with me. She always tried to give me a mater­nal per­spec­tive, being a moth­er of three her­self. I’ve admit­ted that I don’t under­stand what it means to be a par­ent, but that day, she real­ized that she nev­er under­stood what it means to be a child of the Chinese cul­ture.

It’s cold. It’s mate­r­i­al. Most Chinese par­ents can only express their love with mon­ey.

In this way, my par­ents showed me that they loved me. They prob­a­bly think they did the best they could, but as a child of the North American cul­ture, I felt noth­ing. I nev­er knew what it was to be loved.

And Rana said, You were the one who rebelled against this.

Transparent Actions

We were watch­ing Boogie Nights, and in the movie, Scotty’s wast­ed at the New Year’s par­ty. He tries to kiss Dirk, but Dirk throws him off. I asked her if she knew Scotty was gay. Until that point, I thought he nev­er gave off any such sign.

“Of course”, she said.

“How could you tell?”. I had to ask, because I could­n’t tell. I’ve watched Boogie Nights with dozens of peo­ple before, and they’ve all asked if Scotty was gay before it even got to this scene. It must have been the 20th time I’ve seen this movie, but I still did­n’t see what so many oth­ers did. My gay­dar can’t be that bad, I thought to myself.

“Just from the way Scotty looks at Dirk all dreamy”.

Dreamy? So Scotty was­n’t being par­tic­u­lar­ly flam­boy­ant, he was sim­ply attract­ed to Dirk. It was obvi­ous to every­one but me.

Then I recalled Pat telling me a few years ago that a cer­tain girl liked me. He did­n’t have some kind of inside knowl­edge, he said he could tell just from the way she looked at me. I nev­er believed him, of course, because I had no inkling of such an mes­sage. I nev­er believed him until she gave me a writ­ten con­fes­sion.

It made me won­der, am I that obliv­i­ous? More impor­tant­ly, do I ever give myself away, do I ever make myself so vul­ner­a­ble, with such a look?

It took me almost a year to be com­fort­able enough to pho­to­graph Jenn (let alone get­ting over being so tongue-tied around her), because I was afraid of being too trans­par­ent. I always thought that by ask­ing to take her pic­ture, every­one could see how attract­ed I was to her. I would go around Aaron’s par­ties and pho­to­graph any­one but her. Now I real­ize that in doing so, I prob­a­bly gave myself away.

It’s scary to think that peo­ple may read me so eas­i­ly from sub­con­scious body lan­guage. A girl­friend once said that her mom asked how she would feel if I asked her out, about a month before I did. To this day I won­der how her mom knew I would. All we did was have din­ner togeth­er on Sunday’s. Did I steal glances from across the table? Did I look away when she looked at me? Did I lose myself in her face and stare?

Am I that trans­par­ent?

I’d like to think that I can hide such things, but how can I when I don’t even rec­og­nize what it is I’m doing.

How can I hide my heart, when I don’t even know that I wear it on my sleeve?