Did you ever have that feeling? That feeling of complete emptiness. Hollow. When you can’t even say that your heart hurts, because you just don’t feel it’s there anymore. And you force yourself to cry just so you can feel the tears trickle down your cheeks to know you’re still alive. When everything in your life has been taken from you, and you don’t have enough energy and hope to even dream anymore, how do you find the strength to breathe again?
I never knew the true meaning of pain until the day I was five minutes too late to see my mom take her last breath. I had missed the moment I never wanted to see. And I regret it till this day. She was the rock that held my life together, the one who wished me nothing but happiness, and the only presence that could ever calm me into believing that everything was Ok. I lost that all. And last night, at 27 years old, I found myself whimpering in bed, begging for my mommy.
What is it that led to my feeling of utter helplessness? Many things. You never realize how much the little things really build up inside of you until you just can’t take it anymore. Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t just a sob story. I had some ups sprinkled with my downs, as most of us do. To be honest, other than the day my mother actually passed, I didn’t really understand the impact of my life changing from the loss. I felt nothing, and I cared about nothing. I truly lived numb for exactly one year.
As a child, I had the biggest dreams. I would retreat into my head where I was this amazing actress. I often wasted the day away just daydreaming of this hopeful life that I was told, and even believed myself, just wasn’t possible. I’m Asian after all; the American dream only comes true for Americans. You can be anything you want to be, as long as you are White. Isn’t that the way the cliché goes?
So I listened to my parents and my own insecurities, and sought out for a career in medicine instead. To be a doctor is the most noble of professions, they say. A profession my parents could be proud of. I wasn’t too passionate about it, but I can convince myself of almost anything, even wanting something that my parents wanted for me. But in the back of my head, and behind my parents’ back, I still coveted the exciting world of acting.
I remember signing up with an extras casting company, and while I was struggling through my pre-med courses in my dorm room, far away from my parents, I still called the casting company every day. I never called in to work for them; I just wanted to hear what they were working on. I still wanted to dream. It wasn’t that I allowed my parents to control me; it was that I didn’t believe I could make my dreams come true.
I ended up transferring to the state college closer to home after just one year. I made believe it was to spend more time with my mom. Truth is I didn’t know why I did it. I didn’t even spend that much time with her after I moved back home. If I knew then she would only be around for five more months, I would have made more of an effort. Ok, that’s a lie. I don’t know what I would’ve done. She was bed-ridden, and I didn’t want to see her that way. So I stayed away.
I do remember one thing very clearly about this time. I would lie down next to her, not facing her direction so I wouldn’t have to see her face. But as I lay there, I felt a sense of peace, a peace that I have not felt since she was alive. It didn’t matter that I was failing out of school, or that my boyfriend broke my heart, or even that my grandmother made me put my own needs aside in order to wait on my older brother hand and foot. She was next to me, and everything in life was suddenly Ok. And that feeling alone is what made me lie to her when she asked me, “Are you happy?” “Yes, mommy.” Of course I was.
I didn’t cry at the funeral. Not when I saw the casket in the Church, not when my grandmother yelled repeatedly at me “Your mom is dead, your mom is dead,” not even when I threw the dirt and walked away. I was the new rock. The only daughter, though the youngest in the family. I was the one who had to pick up the burden of being strong. And I am. I developed a massive strength, forged by pain, through loyalty, loneliness, and fear of what would become of me if I weren’t. A strength as strong as a mighty oak, cracked on the inside.
No one really knows the depths of the black hole I fell into the following year. I didn’t drop out of school, I just plain left. I left without telling anyone, not even the school. I just walked out of my first class of the semester, and didn’t come back. A week later, my boyfriend of over a year broke up with me because he “couldn’t handle this kind of situation.” I didn’t care. I immediately fell into a relationship with a man that I knew only wanted me for sex. At least he made me feel good in some way. I decided I was no longer Catholic. I discovered weed, and clubs. Dancing all night in knee-high boots and leather daisy dukes with alcohol in hand didn’t seem so horrible anymore. Neither did my father finding another bride.
She was perfectly lovely, even if she did convince my father to marry her on the one year anniversary of my mother’s death. Either way, I wasn’t about to stick around to witness this union. I fell into a purposeful debt, so I could hop on a plane to New York City with my then best friend. Oh yeah, she’s a whole other tragedy.
I loved New York! It’s the only other city I could live in. One year to the day my life fell apart, I finally realized, I wasn’t the one who died. So there, collapsed on the front steps of Julliard, I finally cried. And I knew I had to find the strength to put my life back in order. But it wouldn’t be an easy task.
Back at home, there was endless fighting. My grandmother still lived with us. My mother’s mother would not give my new stepmother any kind of peace or welcoming. And so began the arguments and shouting back and forth throughout the night. It would be the last sound I heard before I slept, and the first thing I heard when I awoke. Ultimately, I had to choose sides, and bid farewell to my grandmother.
The same year my body decided to change on me. I contracted infection after serious infection. I became allergic to a wide variety of things including penicillin and products with high SPF in them. Every inch of me was covered with hives, and I could hardly breathe. I had burned the bottom of my left foot at a bonfire, and the second degree burns caused the entire bottom of my foot to remain an open wound that wouldn’t heal for a year and a half. Not exactly the greatest condition to start rebuilding my life.
Not too soon, I began to heal. I found my way back to school, back home, and back to God, though not in a Catholic Church. I felt a Christian Chapel and a city college was a good pace at the time. I was starting to find my footing again. I actually earned straight A’s for the entire year I studied at the community college. I found a job that I enjoyed. I even found a man that I would spend many years with. Life was looking up.
I transferred back into the state college I walked out on two years earlier, and decided on a career in public relations. I do like to write, after all. I was doing well, very well. But all good fortune must turn sour eventually.
Through some strange policy that isolated certain semesters of grading, including the one I walked out on, my grades were not up to par. And a letter arrived at my door informing me that I was kicked out of the university on January 15th…my birthday. I had to plead my case in front of an academic advisory board in the hopes of becoming re-instated into the university. I was eventually allowed to continue my studies, but I lost an entire semester’s time.
For the next two and a half years, I kept my schedule busy so that I could graduate as soon as possible. I worked myself sick. At one point, I remember holding down two part-time jobs, an internship, and a full class load at the same time. It was worth it to me. I didn’t even sweat it when another letter was sent to my house, this time informing me that my units didn’t transfer correctly and I was less than one unit shy of graduating. It was laughable. Yet another random policy that forced me to appear in front of the same advisory board for a second plea. Happily, it was granted. And soon I laughed at the autograph of Arnold Schwarzenegger stamped onto my diploma.
I had no problems finding a job after graduation. I accepted a position in one of the largest international PR Firms in Los Angeles. I sought out for success and to pay the massive debt I incurred while paying for college.
The two hour commute each morning and evening was brutal. The work load was unbelievable. I had not yet been there six months before I headed up a rather large campaign. I earned more money than I knew what to do with, though saving was not my forte. I had an amazing office with an even greater view of the Hollywood hills.
One day, I found myself a bit bored. My boredom grew rapidly through the weeks. I started working less and playing online games more. Sometimes, I would just stare outside of my window. There was no reason, I thought, that I should feel this way. But I started to care about my job less and less, though I had been with the company less than a year.
My then best friend, yes her again, sent me a fun e-mail of a website she found while surfing the Internet. It was a website announcing some event called ActorFest. I attended out of curiosity. That may have been a mistake, I’m not sure yet. Soon my boredom turned into unhappiness. I was miserable. All these years I couldn’t let go of that little girl who daydreamed of winning an Oscar. I always had her in the back of my mind, but tried my hardest to ignore her. I had signed up for method acting classes and was bitten by the bug. I had the bug before in high school.
I was fourteen and completely ecstatic my parents allowed me to take acting classes at a Beverly Hills school. My teachers raved about me. They made no secret in the fact they considered me the top of the class, which didn’t sit well with my peers. The night I appeared in a coveted showcase in front of many agents and managers, I froze. I let my fear get the better of me, and I’m the first to admit I really stunk. My mother was there. She looked at me with this look of disappointment that shook me to my core. I never went back.
Instead, I fell into the theater crowd at my high school. For two years, I practically lived in the theater. I acted in play after play after play. A couple of plays and showcases actually overlapped at one point, and I found myself frantically running from school to rehearsal to a performance and back home to pull an all-nighter doing my homework. I was exhausted, and very much enjoying my life. I was even made the student newspaper’s featured theater columnist, publishing my first-hand accounts of each production for the entire school to read.
These memories rushed back to me as I stared out of my office window. I loved acting. It was horrid; long hours, no pay, very little recognition, and it made me happy. I was scared now. I looked up at my view and caught a glimpse of the Hollywood sign. I knew what I wanted to do. I had known since I was a child. I had no savings, a massive debt, a disapproving father, a job promising a future with stability, and a dream I was afraid to pursue.
To this day, I have many creative outlets. Writing is one of them, obviously. I like to draw and create portraits with color pastels. Music is another. I don’t know anything about music, other than being forced to take piano lessons when I was eight and being given a piano as a birthday gift that is still collecting dust as we speak. But listening to music gives me an outlet to express my feelings through their rhythm. An outlet to express whatever mood I’m in and an outlet to escape into whatever daydream I need at the moment. I would listen to the radio often. It was my only escape I had as I endured the dreaded commute that takes me to the job I loathed so much. I listened to it in my office too.
I’m not sure what the name of the song is, but staring at the Hollywood sign one day I heard a line that made me weep. “I’m so tired of being here, suppressed by all my childish fears.” I would never forgive myself if I lay in my death bed and had to utter the phrase, “what if?” Succeed or fail, I had to try. I quit my job with no definite plans, no savings, and no idea what I was doing. The scariest part: having to tell my father.
His words echo in my head every day. “You will never make it. There’s no way that industry is ready to give Asian-Americans any kind of real opportunities. You should save that kind of dreaming for your children instead.” I resented him for that. But it did motivate me. Usually people are not surprised that a statement like that would motivate me to succeed. But they are surprised and a bit confused by my reasoning. I don’t want to prove him wrong. I want to prove him right. Except that, I will succeed and be the pioneer who opens up those doors for my children.
Am I naïve to think this way? Time will tell. But now I have my goal, my purpose in life. Forget the Oscars, forget the red carpets, and forget the fame and the mansion in the hills. I want to make history, to make a mark that changes this industry for those to come who are brave enough to enter into it. How I will do this, I have no clue. I don’t even know where to start. Sometimes when you see your future so closely, you can’t see all the baby steps you need to take in order to get there.
When I quit my job, I was left with a feeling of freedom, of exhilaration, and extreme fear and doubt. Money was a big issue. I couldn’t pay my bills. It forced me to stop taking acting courses, because I couldn’t afford it. Ok that was a lie. I was still scared. I was doing well, extremely well. My coach compared one of my performances to that of Meryl Streep. Um, yeah. I’m not sure if he said that truthfully or if it’s because I was paying for the course. Either way, doing well scared me. Plus, I really couldn’t afford it since I quit my job. So I finished out the year of classes I already paid for and didn’t come back for the second year.
Somehow I found my way to an extras casting company called Central Casting. I was earning some money doing extra work. But I wasn’t a member of any union, and $54 a day just wasn’t cutting it. I still had no idea what I was doing. My then best friend suggested I get a part-time job. It irritated me to hear that. I had quit an amazing job to pursue this path, though it may have been premature. I didn’t like the idea of starting another meaningless one, especially since the thought had already crossed my mind. Somehow it’s worse to hear your own thoughts come out of someone else’s mouth.
Oh yeah, my then best friend has a name, but I don’t care to say it because the thought of her makes me cringe. It makes my skin crawl. She lied, many times. She stole, many times. She hurt me, on purpose. It’s sad how your closest friend can, over the course of a 15 year friendship, become your most loathed enemy. Everything changed those two weeks I spent in New York; the way I looked at life and the way I lived my life. What didn’t change was her. And slowly but surely, our parallel paths skewed into opposite directions. She remained spoiled, selfish, unapologetic, very self-conscious yet completely full of herself. She was concerned only about herself and what she could gain from you.
She found no fault in borrowing money she had no intent to pay back to buy useless trinkets she would trash in a few weeks, knowing my financial disarray. She would sneer at me for earning any kind of male attention yet made a big deal to those men that I was her best friend. She would take things without asking, later claiming she had bought them for herself. She would ask me to meet her friends and family then became angry and jealous if they wanted to hang out with me. She even encouraged me to my face to pursue my dreams then turned around and laughed at me, poking fun with her friends when she thought I wasn’t listening. The last straw was how horribly she treated her mother, bleeding her of all her money without compassion. Sometimes she knew her mother would go hungry if she took the money, but still yelled at her until she complied with anything she selfishly desired.
The last noble thing she did was introduce me to a friend. This amazing friend was pursuing a dream of her own. She had started her own business and it had grown so much she needed assistance. I made it perfectly clear that I was pursuing my own dreams. I didn’t want to lie or hide it. Sympathizing, she agreed to hire me with a very flexibly schedule. Life was looking up again.
I settled into a comfortable position. I was earning decent money, and I was able to pursue my acting career openly. But I still didn’t know how to progress in that career. I was so infatuated by my new boss and her amazing courage and personality that I found myself compromising my work to be better available to her. She was not demanding, I did it of my own free will. I was so comfortable that I was starting to loose sight of my own goals.
I snapped out of it eventually. Though I was still happy to work for her, I became frustrated with my lack of progress in my own endeavors. My home life added tremendous pressures as well. I was still expected to wait on my brother hand and foot, now because he was the one that makes enough money to help pay the bills. And he and my father continued an endless lecture of the importance of being financially stable and stop dreaming. I also suddenly realized my boyfriend of three years was several years younger than me. And though I’m used to being the more mature and stable one, his own instability started to become a hindrance. To add instability to instability, my new best friend, ironically my old best friend’s niece, was 10 years my junior. As mature as she is, she is still a child in many ways. But I love her; I love her for her maturity, and I love her for her pure determination to succeed that matched my own.
In every success story, there is a moment or two of despair, the feeling that you want to give up. I’ve had many a moment, though have yet to see success. I was stuck, with no idea how to change my situation. Out of the blue, I got what I considered a sign from God to hang in there. I received an e-mail from a “talent scout.” I was very skeptical, but I decided to contact him anyway, just in case. He put me in touch with a man who will become my manager.
Ray was a God-send. I met him in New York with my boyfriend tagging along, can’t be too cautious. He had tremendous knowledge being in the business many years and being related to one of today’s biggest stars. He had a vision that mirrored my own, though on a grander scale. He later met me in Los Angeles and introduced me to his colleague that I would be working with out here. I couldn’t believe my luck, my good fortune. I was thrown into the world of industry parties and auditions that I only wondered about. There were no promises of stardom, no time table of success to follow, but I was hopeful again.
Money, however, was still an issue. I continued to work as an extra every so often, but those bills were piling up high. I hated the idea of taking out loans to pay for college. Instead I put all of my books, tuition, and school supplies on credit cards. I’m not so sure that was the best alternative. I finally had to bite the bullet and sign up for debt consolidation. Now, more than ever, did I need stability. I needed to pay a hefty lump sum each month in order to wipe out my debt in an unprecedented three years. Three years is a short time, but a long one as well depending on what angle you’re looking at. But I was happy with my decision.
My managers were very vocal in their belief that the end of this year and the beginning of the new one would bring much success. I believed them, mostly because I needed to. I needed to believe it was my turn. I’m too old for this. I’m too young to give up. I dream too much to lose hope. I’m too awake to ignore the problems. And I cannot sleep at night wondering who I am and who I’m destined to be.
The year is not going my way. Nothing is as planned, and every path seems to lead to a dead end. Money is unforgiving, family is disapproving, managers have become unreachable, and dreaming never ends. I am pulled in so many directions at once. And so I lay here, crying, wishing above all things that my mother was laying next to me.
Every so often, there is a point in my life where I forget how to breathe. My heart becomes hollow, my mind never stops racing, and I have no clue what to do next. I can’t always rely on a sign from God. Yet I still pray. Help me. Help me live. Help me dream. And if I never reach the top of this Mount Everest I have created for myself, give me the courage to keep going.
Two
What is the meaning of strength? Do you hold on to your convictions; stay true to yourself no matter who gets hurt? Or do you give of yourself in order to be a hero to many; give up everything you want most and live a silent, respectable life? They say before things get better, inevitably, they get worse first. How far down the rabbit hole can one person fall?
I’ve made mistakes in my life. I never pretended to be the perfect woman, the perfect girlfriend, the perfect daughter. I was never arrested, I haven’t gotten pregnant, I never killed, stolen, or hurt anyone intentionally. So what would cause my father to utter the words: “You stupid, stupid girl. You’re ruining you life. Stop dreaming, it’s never going to come true. Make me proud of you for once.”
I admit I’m a huge dreamer. I spend much of my time daydreaming I were somewhere else, doing something different, and being someone I’m not. But I found ways to continue living my life each day. I learned how to cook and clean do laundry. I learned how to wash the dishes. I learned how to shut up and do whatever was asked of me. I learned to be compassionate and never speak up. I didn’t learn how to be frugal with money.
I wanted a different life so much that I tried to create one for myself in secret. I wanted designer shoes and the latest clothing trends. I had to eat at the five-star restaurants the celebrities were spotted at. I took trips to New York so I could get away and strut down Fifth Avenue like I was somebody. Maybe I was out of control. Before I knew it, I had incurred a pretty hefty credit card debt, not too high I couldn’t climb out of the hole, but high enough to admit I needed help.
Throughout college, I always figured I had a lot of time. I still had time to graduate, get a job, and make enough money to pay everything back. I didn’t believe in loans, so I used my credit cards for tuition and books alongside the artificial luxury. Everyone expects that if you go to school and do well, you will find a job and earn a salary good enough to live on. It’s pretty much a given, a law of the land. But no one ever factored in happiness. Does following this laid-out plan lead to a person’s happiness?
I’m sure many people go about their lives working a job they don’t particularly enjoy so that they can live a moderate and respectable existence. They can buy a house, buy a car, start a family; these are the norm, what most people strive for. I cared nothing for these norms. I followed everyone else’s rules my whole life, and I was tired of it.
I decided it was time to follow my heart, my desires, and my dreams, no matter how silly they seemed to everyone else. They were mine. And it is my life. When I quit my job, I had plenty of bills left to pay. I didn’t care. I had spent 25 years living someone else’s way. I couldn’t take it any longer. I tried living without an income for about six months before I realized I needed to compromise with myself.
I started working part time so I had steady money coming in. I thought I was settling back then. But because my boss is so flexible and understanding of my dreams, it turned out to be less compromising than I thought. At least I had an income again. But it still wasn’t enough. The longer I held on to my dreams and took actions to achieve them, the more the bills seemed to pile up.
So much contributed to this dilemma even before I quit my job. I never thought when I first met Maria that I wasn’t making a friend, I was making a mistake. Her own destructive path was corrupting everyone else’s life. She was toxic, infecting everything she came across. She didn’t care for you unless she could benefit from you. I allowed her to use me.
I tried to help her with certain bills; she took more than I could give her. I asked my father to let her move in with us, and she took advantage of his hospitality and disrespected his household. I gave her a cell phone, twice, and she accumulated thousands of dollars worth of debt under my name. She even broke into my purse and stole money and credit cards while she thought I was asleep. She never apologized. I doubt she ever even felt guilty about it. Fifteen years I allowed her to do this to me because I thought I was being a good friend. I thought that a good friend would help her friend no matter what, and never speak up when you were wronged. Finally, I woke up, and I had had enough.
When I met my boyfriend, I didn’t care that he was younger than me. He didn’t have a car or even his license. He didn’t have a bank account or an ambition for any stable kind of career, not that my choices were all that stable. He didn’t attend school. I didn’t care. I loved him, and I even helped him pay off some of his debts. Years later, he still is not stable. No car, no license, no bank account, no ambition. And now that I need help, he couldn’t give it to me if he wanted to. I don’t blame him for my debt, but I wish he had his life in order enough to be dependable.
I don’t have much family or friends. My best friend is too young, my brother is too selfish. I had no one to turn to. But I didn’t want to give up. I researched and asked around. I decided, after much inner debate, that debt consolidation was the best alternative for me.
I was so proud of myself. I was finally taking some kind of responsibility and control for my life. I was getting my finances in order, I had released toxic people from my thoughts and every day routine, and I stood by my convictions and had gained my footing in the industry I had always wanted to be a part of.
This was the year of promise. Everyone had said it would bring much success. Just three month into it, and everything I have worked for in the last few years has unraveled. I can’t seem to move forward in my career, and the people who are supposed to be helping me most are causing much heartache. I can’t get a hold of them, and when I do they’re short with me. I don’t know why. I could be overreacting, assuming the worst like I always do. But the fact is, I don’t know.
After months of doing it on my own, something possessed me to tell my father the truth about my debt consolidation. His reaction was unbelievable; it shocked, confused, and angered me all at the same time. “You stupid, stupid girl. You’re ruining your life.” And so it began.
All of a sudden everything I have done to better myself didn’t matter. I cook and clean and take care of my older brother, but that didn’t matter. I help around the house and take on the responsibilities no one else wants; didn’t matter. I’m the disappointment because I don’t make enough money. This wasn’t the first time my family made me feel inferior because of my lack of funds.
For years my father and brother took turns lecturing me that I needed to make more money. Every day they guilted me, persuaded me, did anything they could to let me know I was a useless dreamer. I would never see my dreams come true, and I needed to give up and settle for anything that pays well even if it made me miserable. It wasn’t that they just made me want to quit; they made me feel so bad I contemplated suicide. What do you do when no one in the world believes in you, not even your own father?
I do understand the need for money. I do understand his need to make sure I’m self-sufficient. I do understand I’m getting too old to dream. I don’t understand why he would rather I sacrifice my happiness for stability. I don’t understand why money is the only determinant of pride and success. I don’t understand why all the pressure lies on me. And I don’t understand why I have to choose between living and dreaming, what I need and what I want; follow my head or my heart. Can I really not have both? Can you live without both?
All of a sudden, I feel numb. My father is trying his hardest to make me live my life the way he feels is best. No one believes in me. They make me doubt myself. Where is my strength, my massive wall I had built up when my mother passed? It’s cracked and ready to shatter.
I was born to a humble family in a Third World country. I was raised to believe I was meant to serve others and care not about my own happiness. And when I finally realized what I truly wished for myself and found the courage to pursue it, defying everything that I knew and am, still I am not happy. I think about giving up everyday.
I lay here, hollow, and I pray. My father thinks I abandoned my faith. Little does he know how much I really pray. I pray for a sign. What should I do? I pray for a tear, so I can no longer feel numb. I pray for some understanding, so I don’t have to feel useless. I pray for some time, time to give my dreams a chance. I pray for a miracle, some help to keep my dreams alive. I pray for some strength. I need the strength to stop my wandering mind from turning to the collection of swords in my closet. I need something, something to continue…
My best friend, Fina, and I did something pretty random last night. But fun! So I thought I'd try and list out all the wacky, crazy things we've done. This is why we were meant to be together...
