DIY Curly Hair Gel Recipe

The worst thing about online recipes is they don't give you the dang recipe. First you have to read a whole history of the person, then how and why they made the recipe, then all these details about making it, and finally the last damn thing after many paragraphs is the actual recipe buried at the end somewhere. Please allow me to do all of this backward and give you the recipe first.

• 1.5-1.75 cups okra gel
• 1.5-1.75 cups flaxseed gel
• 0.5 cup aloe vera juice
• 0.5 cup agave extract/nectar/whatever it's called
• 2/3 cup marshallow root extract/tea/whatever
• 1.5 teaspoons pectin powder 
• (might just use 1 teaspoon next time?)
• 1/4 cups xanthan gum 
• thickener
• (might use just 3Tblsp next time) 
• SEE USAGE WARNING BELOW IN THE INSTRUCTIONS PLEASE DON'T DIE
• 1/2 cups propanediol 
• preservative & moisturizing alcohol
• Good Smelling Stuff/essential oils

You must store this finished gel cold. I ended up with three good sized jars, so I froze two and kept one in my fridge to use now. CLEAN AND SANITIZE your whole workspace and every utensil you'll be using.

Now I will give you:

1. Instructions on how to make it
2. Where to find some of these ingredients if you're living in Taiwan like me
3. How and why I bothered learning how to do this in the first place; or, the stuff that would be at the beginning of the recipe on one of those other recipe blog posts. The backstory.
4. Lastly, if you prefer listening to someone tell you these things rather than having to read them yourself, I'll post a link to my IGTV videos for accessibility. Scroll to the end and look for this color to find those links.

Finally, if you can't be bothered to make it yourself, I completely understand, and I will start finding out how many people want me to make it *for* them, and figure out what's a fair price to sell it at.

Instructions!

The equipment I used was: 

• DISTILLED WATER, not just filtered. I found an 800ml bottle which was enough for my recipe.
• measuring cups and spoons
• a colander with holes small enough to keep cooked flaxseeds out (you might prefer cheesecloth but that stuff gets thick and sometimes the gel won't pass through)
• a cutting board and knife
• a saucepot
• two mixing bowls one medium and one large (I don't actually have a large one so I just used my soup pot for that)
• a whisk
• a blender
• the jars to put the gel in after
• spray alcohol to sanitize all my surfaces and tools... We're using lots of fresh organic stuff here, and my first batch started to get a weird pink mold on it because I wasn't as careful.

Please be aware: every time I mention water below, I'm talking about using our DISTILLED WATER! Never filtered, never tap. 

1. Make your okra gel
1. I've seen recipes that range from 5-7 pieces of okra per cup of water. I wanted more finished gel, so I used 8 pieces and poured two cups of water over. Cut the okras lengthwise, put them in your saucepot, let it simmer until the okra looks mostly cooked and strain off your liquid through the colander into the smaller mixing bowl. At this point I found I had only 3/4 cup of liquid gel, so I threw them back in the saucepot with another cup of water and like two new pieces and let them simmer a little more until I had enough liquid gel. Measured it into measuring cups to check my volume and added it to the big mixing bowl.
2. Make your flaxseed gel
1. A quarter cup of seeds goes a long way. I poured two cups of water over and let them simmer. They might try to clump so just jiggle the pan around in a little swirly circle and they'll bust back up. Don't cook them too high or they'll make a crazy foam that wants to boil over real bad. Run it through your colander and measure it out, you ought to have enough. If not, use the exact same seeds and just pour a little more water over and simmer again. Pour it into the big mixing bowl with the okra gel.
3. Make your aloe juice
1. I ordered aloe leaves online but so many people just have the plants around, maybe you already do, too. You're gonna ever so carefully take off the outer green skin with a knife and put the jiggly jelly guts into your blender. The first time I did this I made way too much juice, so I've just frozen it and I thaw out what I need as I go. Some people like to strain their juice and maybe you would too, but I'm not bougie. I like my ingredients hearty.
4. Make your marshmallow extract/tea
1. I ordered marshmallow root online. I put about 1/4 cup of the dry stuff into a container, and pour about 1 cup of boiling water over it. When I strain it off, I end up with 2/3 cup tea. I also threw a bunch of mint sprigs in mine because I have fresh mint, it's good for your scalp, and I was feeling sassy.
5. Add your agave gloop.
6. Take your pectin powder and let it dissolve in 1Tblsp water in a tiny little bowl before you add it to the rest of the mix. Honestly maybe let this start dissolving earlier on and let it set for a while until you get near the end of your recipe.
7. Xantham. Gum.
1. IT IS NOW TIME FOR THE AFOREMENTIONED WARNING.
2. Everything I read online said hey, this is a thickener of liquids, please remember you are also mostly liquid, including and especially the insides of your mouth, nose, and lungs. SO WEAR A MASK when you're using this. I'm so paranoid I wear a mask and also hold my breath. It's best to add this also to a liquid, so maybe your pectin stuff above, or I try to sprinkle it in while whisking, but since I put it all in a blender at the end anyway it works out fine, clumps be damned.
8. Propanediol
1. This is an interesting texture! But again you can just measure it out and stir it in.
9. Good Smelling Things
1. I used a tablespoon of rose water, I had the mint magic in my marshmallow root extract from above, and I put 1/2Tablespoon each of rosemary essential oil and lavender essential oil. You can read online about what essential oils you think might be good for your purposes, or you can just follow my lead. Personally I prefer to find an actual essential oil rather than an "extract" or flavored oil because I want the real good magic not just the flavor. Even though sometimes those smell better.

Okay that's all the real meat of the information! Maybe at this point you feel empowered to go forth and make your own, in which case good luck and godspeed, please just use this recipe as your jumping off point and feel free to change it as suits your needs best. PLEASE the first time you use it remember that a little goes a long way. This was my first successful recipe - all the others had been too watery - so I was thinking about them when I added two tablespoons of gel to my hair and it got CRUNCH. EEE. Start small. And to avoid contamination, don't reach your hand in to scoop gel out. Instead, shake it out into your palm.

But maybe you need some more info, for example:

Where to find these ingredients in Taiwan!

* Okra: Any wet market or grocer honestly

* Flaxseed: Sometimes the hippy/organic section of Carrefour; I ordered mine off shopee.

* Aloe: Your balcony, the friendly neighborhood AYi, or again I ordered mine off shopee.

* Agave: I actually spotted a bottle at Jason's Marketplace and scooped it up! I hadn't been able to add it to previous recipes because I thought it wouldn't be a thing here. I hadn't even checked shopee, maybe they have it too. It was over in the section by maple syrup.

* Marshmallow Root: I definitely ordered a bag of this off shopee.

...Now for the weird guys...

* Xanthan Gum & Propanediol: There just happened to be a business outside of the school where I work that sold additives to people making their own food products. I knew from my searches that I would need a thickener and a preservative, so I wrote down all the ones I had found listed in ingredients of gels I trusted to be curly-friendly and safe. I put them in a little word document and searched online to find their Chinese translations - sometimes Google could help, sometimes I had to find the English Wikipedia page and then look at the Chinese version. I went into the store, and of all my list, those were the only one thickener and one preservative they carried, so that's what I left with. Then I did a whole lot of searching to find out what ratios they ought to be added in for best results, and even after that I still had to dial it in troubleshooting earlier recipes. I think I've got those particular ingredients where they need to be now. However as far as helping you find them? The name of the business outside my school was 鑫隴興業有限公司. That might not help you. I guess maybe ask coworkers, search shopee, and I wish you the best of luck in this department. Feel free to message me with any questions and I'll try and help as best I can.

And now finally...

The Backstory: How & Why

aka the stuff that would be first in annoying people's recipe blogs

When did I first start learning about the Curly Girl/Guy method and trying to implement what I was learning? I think some time in 2018 I started doing it actively, although anyone with curly hair can tell you there are some things we already knew before we heard there was an online movement about it. Like never brush your hair when dry for example! Anyway I had started trying different products because I had gone back to the USA and had access to them in stores. I was troubleshooting and dialing in what my hair did and didn't like. I know a lot of people swear by oils, but the woman who first started publishing books on this stuff now says that oils and butters are really harmful, because what our hair needs most is hydration from water, and oils and butters seal our hair's cuticles and we all know they don't combine well with water. I found that my hair was much happier with hydrating products rather than those that contained any types of oils or butters.

Most importantly, I found a woman named Adria making a product called Ecoslay was making the stuff my hair liked most and responded to best. This woman is amazing and I hold her in the highest esteem. When I encountered her, she was still making her products largely from ingredients she had grown herself! She's gotten a little too successful to keep that up these days, and more power to her. I recommend her if you live in a country where you can afford to have her products shipped to you.

But I was leaving the USA for Korea in early 2019, and my previous years in Taiwan had taught me that when I lived in a racially homogenous country with perfectly straight beautiful shiny hair, products would be hard to come by. Fortunately for me, at that time I was able to find a dropshipping service and get things shipped to a US address and then affordably sent along to me in Korea. But then I came back to Taiwan, and that wasn't an option any more. More than that - I got here right at the beginning of the pandemilovato, when worldwide shipping became difficult everywhere.

So I started reading the ingredients in my favorite of her products, her flaxseed and aloe gel called Orange Marmalade. Truly I recommend that stuff so highly - and unlike my preference for avoiding oils it has great reviews from people of all races and ethnic backgrounds. Later, when I couldn't import her stuff any more, she started carrying a new product, Jello Shot, which people with kinkier hair seemed to like a lot and it claimed to have stronger hold. So I reached out to Ms Adria and tried to get in touch with her.

Man I couldn't get her to respond for anything! When she was less successful she would communicate with people but maybe she's just too busy now. I reached out to her three or four times, both though IG messages and also through emails, trying to pay for a consultation on how to start troubleshooting my own recipe - because I kinda hate when white women steal ideas from Women Of Color and I really wanted to compensate her for any possible advice. But despite my efforts I never heard back. Since I wasn't able to pay the woman whose ingredients I based my recipe on, I choose to make my own attempt at a recipe free to the public, because I know most of what we've learned about naturally curly hair has come from WOC (usually Black). So if one of you out there has a need for a recipe, please let me just give this to you.

Now if you can't be bothered to make it yourself:

I get that. It's intimidating at first. Believe me when I say by the second time I tried a recipe I had the whole thing finished in about two hours, so don't be too scared. However maybe you just don't wanna. If there is enough interest here in Taiwan, I will start making batches to sell. As for the price, I will go check out what most hair products go for in stores and make my price fair and comparable to those - and since I got my ingredients from reading the products made by a Black woman, I will always offer 15% off to any Black woman who wants to buy it.

That's it and that's all for now! If there are any good questions in the comments I'll answer them there and also edit the answers back into this post.

Finally, when I manage to make the IGTV videos I will post the links to them here. But I feel like I need to wait until wash day and record them with my hair styled from the gel, right? So give me a couple days please.

Dear Shangning:

"Dear Rufus, ... Today a kitten called Jenson was returned to us because of his biting... I wished I could just talk to you to ask you what you were feeling when you bit someone... What were you trying to tell us? What can we do to help Jenson?"

My Dearest Shangning:

You asked about a biting cat. I can answer, but I'm afraid I can't answer directly without first sharing a lot of things that will seem very disconnected. Or they will seem very connected, depending on your perspective.

*

First: not a lot of people know, but I'm divorced. I got married at 19. I thought I was too young, but he wanted to be married, and I thought I'd better go ahead, otherwise he'll dump me.

I wasn't ready. I hadn't finished becoming myself yet. I learned things about myself that were incompatible with what he wanted in a partner. He also lied to himself about who I had been all along. 

Obviously it didn't work out. I wanted to stay together and try to grow back together but his father insisted he divorce me.

*

When I adopted Rufus from The Cats' Cradle, you told me he'd been returned twice already. You also gave me an information sheet about his vaccination history. It said when he arrived on the 13th of April, 2019, the vet estimated that he was 1 year and 11 months old. How old is that in people years? Was he 19 yet? Had he finished becoming himself? Did he learn things about himself that surprised him, or pushed others away?

*

There's this surge of a theme online recently, an attitude for (usually) women who've been treated badly by (usually) men who can't handle them. There are tons of platitudinous quote images to be found if you google "you are not too much." They look like this:

*

My second long-term partner came to me in my mid to late twenties. We had two amazing years together before he went to war in Afghanistan. When he came back, things were much more difficult. I didn't understand what had changed or why, but he no longer seemed to be interested in me. I no longer felt wanted or desired so much as just kept around, and quite often I felt he found me annoying. I spent two more years trying to save things before one night I realized I was planning suicide and stopped myself. I put myself and my dog into my car and drove two days across the US until I arrived at my father's house. I arrived around midnight, crying at his back door, saying, "Can I stay here for a while?"

*

I wonder what it was like for Rufus the first time he was returned to The Cats' Cradle. 

I wonder what it was like for Rufus the second time he was returned to The Cats' Cradle.

*

*

I have so very many flaws. I try to work on them, even though I know I will go to my grave before I finish fixing them all. But I've made a lot of progress on my anger. Once when I was younger, I got so angry I blacked out. When I came to, my mother had been punched in the head and my hand hurt. In my defense, she'd been abusing me for over a decade at the time. I had to run away from home I was so afraid of what she'd do. When I got in touch with my sister, she told me that my mother was in my bedroom, putting my belongings into bags to donate to charities.

I know what it's like to have to heal from trauma. I know what it's like to never be completely healed. I know what it's like to have so many strong feelings that you can't stop yourself from hurting someone. I know what it's like when someone whose love you desperately need instead decides they don't want you anymore.

*

The ex-partner who went to Afghanistan is married now. I found photos online of him and his new wife, whose name is Fawn because of course it is, and they ride horses together, because of course she's into horses, across beaches in low tide and they splash in the surf and laugh at their reflections.

I guess he found his forever home.

*

My ex-husband also married his next serious partner after me. They have so many daughters at this point I've lost count whether it's four or five. She's a child psychologist, I think, or maybe psychiatrist, or counselor. Something like that. Right before he left me he told me a terrible story about childhood abuse he'd been through.

I've also lost count of how many of my exes married their next serious partner after me. Where is my forever home?

*

*

In March of 2020, I left my partner of nearly five years in Korea to move back to Taiwan. It was a happy relationship, but I was unhappy in Korea and was once again fighting suicidal ideation. I had to go back to the last place my heart remembered being happy. Corona was just becoming big news at the time. The borders of Taiwan closed four days after I arrived. In June or July I asked him to marry me, and he said yes. But by August he dumped me.

We were friends for a year and a half before we ever considered dating. He knew exactly who I was during all that time. But I think he started lying to himself about who I was when we got together. Because something that has always been a part of who I am, something he always knew about, came up, and suddenly he declared it a deal breaker.

*

When I adopted Rufus, you told me the story of his rescue. You told me he had loved the smell of a steak restaurant so much that he actually got his head stuck inside a hole in the roof and you had to go and get him out of it.

I can easily understand what it feels like to love something so much you hurt yourself trying to get to it. I wanted to stay with my ex-husband until his father pushed for the divorce. I tried to fix the relationship with the veteran who wouldn't acknowledge PTSD for two years. I think my last partner knew he would eventually dump me when I first left Korea. But I still proposed to him.

When I pictured the story you were telling me, it wasn't Rufus's head I saw stuck in that ceiling. It was my own.

*

Sometimes when I'm angry I lash out. Sometimes when I haven't slept enough, I get cranky. Also, I'm a poet, a chef, and a teacher. I'm a good listener and a caring friend. Honestly overall I'm a great person 99% of the time. But who among us is perfect? Do you know anyone without flaws?

*

Rufus teaches me many things, but most of all he teaches me mindfulness. I suspect I still have some of the ADHD I was diagnosed with in my adolescence because I've never been successful at meditating, despite trying for years. I simply cannot quiet my thoughts for any length of time, and I mean, I truly have tried it so many different ways with different teachers and texts and all sorts of approaches.

Rufus comes to me and he makes this silent, breathy, squeaky meow. And I realize I have my face in my phone and I'm not doing anything important at all. Literally nothing in any of the different apps I'm switching between has any great meaning or will accomplish anything helpful in the long run. So I put it down.

I get down on his level and I start speaking to him. He meows back in that strange, almost-silent way. And he will take as much attention as I want to give him for as long as I will stay focused on him. He never runs off. He stays right there, meowing at me for more.

I know what it feels like to need more.

*

Did you do the time math earlier? I said my ex dumped me in August. I adopted Rufus the first weekend in October. I had been looking for a place to adopt from for over a month. I needed to rescue someone because I needed to believe rescue is possible. That trauma doesn't make us worthless. That a hurt thing can be loved. That a flawed thing can be cared for. That a difficult personality can still attract someone who won't give up on them.

*

*

Another of my exes who married the next serious thing used to make me feel very strange. He was a hardworking capitalist who loved to blow money on his poorer friends. One day I was finally able to put my finger on how he made me feel. He wasn't loving me as a full, complex individual. He liked me as an accessory. Just like he would spend $300 on shirts randomly, to make himself look good, just like he adored his French cuffs with cufflinks, he liked having me on his arm. Me, the poor bartender. The poet. The activist. I gave him a sort of credibility, a boost to his personality. I made him feel good about himself.

A lot of people keep pets without loving them as full, complex individuals. To that ex, I was just a bird in a cage.

*

I work a lot. If I ever go a couple days without really focusing on Rufus for a while, and really giving him attention, I find out. He reminds me. As he's following me from room to room, like he does, at some point he'll let out a strange meow and rush past me, biting my leg on the way. I don't think it's painful, but I do have a high threshold for pain. It's more of a warning. Or sometimes on the arm, if I'm just lying on the couch ignoring him.

I know what it feels like to be ignored.

But just like me, and just like cats kept in cages, and just like dogs kept on chains, Rufus is a whole, entire, living being. He has a personality. He has desires. He has needs. 

He prefers to be watched at mealtimes. He loves falling asleep in my armpit. He adores chicken liver so much that once I forgot some on the counter and he ate a quarter kilo in one go, even though he'd already had his meal. He doesn't scare or startle easily. He always wants belly rubs and will never do the hind-leg-kick so many cats do when they ask for belly rubs. He likes his ears to be petted. He goes crazy for catnip. Sometimes if I'm eating something meaty for dinner he wants to get his face all up in it, just like that steak restaurant roof, and it's really hard to convince him to leave it alone. His ginger spots on his nose look like a funny moustache. His white-tipped ears look tie-dyed. He loves climbing and jumps like a gazelle. He truly enjoys it when I sing him lullabies.

And sometimes, he gets moody.

And sometimes, I get moody.

I wonder if Rufus ever has nightmares about being returned to The Cats' Cradle once again? I had to board him one weekend and chose the poshest place I could find. They had a camera in his cubby and every time I checked on him he was curled up in his bed, doing nothing. When I returned, they asked me to come get him out of the cubby because he wouldn't come out for them.

When I came into the room and said his name, he heard my voice and his eyes went as big as Baby Yoda's. He poured himself into the cat carrier like liquid, ready to go home.

Home. Forever. Forever home.

*

So to answer your question, "What [was Rufus] trying to tell us? What can we do to help Jenson?"

I think Rufus was trying to tell you, I'm hurt. I don't understand why, or how to get better. What I really need is someone to be patient with me, and focus on me, and make me feel safe. Someone to treat me not as an accessory, but an actual living individual.

I think to help Jenson, you need someone who will give him those same things. Someone who understands a thing or two about trauma. Someone patient. Someone forever.

*

Dear Shangning, thank you for helping Rufus and me find one another.

Dear Jenson, so many of us know what it's like to feel so strongly that you hurt people. But there's someone out there for whom you aren't too much. I pray they find you soon.

Love,

Someone who was also too much.

*********************************

Rufus and me the day we first met, heading home from The Cat's Cradle:

The first time Rufus slept on my lap:

Rufus sleeping in my armpit:

Cuddling at home:

Would you get a load of this cuteness?

A couple of clowning lovebirds:

After I brought him home from the boarding place, he fell asleep holding onto me:

i meant to say

When I said I had to leave I meant:

these 13th floor windows look too much like doorways. I meant:

I'm a fish drowning in all this air.

When I said I missed you I meant:

you are my water, my ocean, my sweat,

tears and blood, meant

everything smells like metal since

we said goodbye.

When I said it had been too long I meant:

time had become a foreign language.

I meant every number rhymed

with "alone."

When I said I needed to take a lover I meant:

I know no other names but yours.

I meant: every graven idol

eventually crumbles before God.

weightchange

when one breath costs

more than your marrow

costs the world

when a meal is more

than a mountain

when a shower is a snake

and a pillow

the softest prison,

everything around becomes 

a bully.

when your head is heavy

like

an old dog is heavy

when your hair knots like riddles

when the smell

of your own sour body

is a song overplayed

when your eyes fail to focus

when your slow, dry tongue

loses how to language

when atrophied legs refuse

to stand,

you will look in the window

above the bathroom sink and see

a stranger, a sad ghost,

someone to be pitied, someone certainly

not the least of yourself.

Rambling thoughts of a recently dumped fiancee

 In June, after four and a half years together (and my record to date), I asked him to marry me. By August I was dumped. I have needed desperately to write about it but have been unable to write. So instead, I turn the recorder on in my phone and just talk it out to the open air. Below are abridged transcriptions:

Fri, Aug 28 3:17AM

Always. After heartbreak or trauma I crave a tattoo.

I think because my emotions are so strong and overwhelming that they aren't just feelings or brain synapses. They are truly tangible to me and I need evidence of that. I need physical pain to match my emotional pain, to leave a mark on my body as part of my healing and processing. 

What's interesting is that I just thought about this today. Today marks two or three weeks since we had that conversation and it's the first time I've thought about getting a tattoo. And I wasn't even thinking about getting a tattoo, I was thinking how I usually would have gotten a tattoo by now. And I haven't even thought about getting one, only just now to think about how I haven't thought about getting one.

So if that's how I process emotions, what does that mean? Does it mean I'm not processing this? Does it mean I'm numb to the emotions? Does it mean I'm not emotional about this? I have no idea what it means. I think because I have no idea how I feel about it.

How I feel about it is changing from moment to moment. So for my own sake I'm going to start documenting the things I feel from moment to moment so that I can process what the fuck is going on with me.

For example: I have become unfamiliar with my body. And this manifests in a lot of ways. I had been wearing glasses every day but I just bought some contacts... but that's a minor thing and I don't understand why I did that enough for it to be a good example of what I'm trying to say. 

I could say that I have lost eight kilos. I only know this because I have to weigh myself every time I go to the psych clinic for medicine and I was 88 kilos and I knew that I had dropped to like 83 but now I'm down to 80. 

True to form I will always find the silver lining, which currently is: the weight is leaving what I have considered my problem areas mostly, like 75-80% is coming from areas that I wouldn't mind to see a little flatter, and only a small portion is leaving my tits and ass. Like, I've still got the significant majority of my tits and ass and that's what matters, so there's that silver lining.

In the meantime, I feel like I'm eating less but I don't feel like I'm eating lose-eight-kilos less. And I should note that I have no idea how many pounds eight kilos is at all. My last shitty breakup was extremely traumatic, and I lost twenty pounds, because I was still living in a country that measured pounds at that time. 

How else can I talk about what's happening in my body? I feel unfamiliar in it. I have forgotten how to sleep. Am I a side sleeper or a back sleeper? I feel like I occasionally used to be a stomach sleeper but I haven't done that in some time. I'm unsure if it has to do with the mattress I'm on, but it's been the same since mid-March. It hasn't changed, so it's got to be me that changed. So what changed and why?

It's like I sleep better on my back than I used to. I sleep better on my right side than on my left side. And that's because when I sleep on my left side, my heart starts getting a little palpitate-y like it's struggling under the weight of my lungs? sitting on top of it? Is that what's going on? What else would make it do that. I used to sleep on my back only rarely but now I might spend most of my night on my back, I don't know.

I have lost interest in taking care of my hair. And I have naturally curly hair so that's saying a lot, other natural curlies will know. I have found it really challenging to keep up basic maintenance on my fingernails and toenails. It's like, oh they don't need attention (repeat) OMG they all need attention at once oh they don't need attention (repeat) wait exactly 47% of my nail ends need attention right now stop everything and fix it now. It's so weird it's -- but then other nails haven't grown at all. Even my breakouts are different. 

I'm trying to make this new pillow work for my needs. I'm not sleeping properly. I'm sleeping entirely too much like I'll get out of work on a Friday, let's say last weekend I got out of a meeting at 4 or 5 and I came home -- 

oh, I don't know how to DRIVE any more! I used to be a very aware, conscious driver, even a little bit aggressive, like compassionately aggressive, because you have to be a little bit aggressive to drive in Taiwan without dying. But now I space out, not even thinking about anything, I just become an empty head and I drive at a perfectly boring speed and I try to keep to the right so all the other aggressive drivers can just go around me. I see something on the drive and I realize, I just missed the last three blocks. For three fukkin blocks I wasn't paying any attention at all, oh okay, I'm here now. 

What else is weird. Eating is weird. I was brought up in a food insecure household, so now as an adult having food gives me a sense of security. When I feel depressed I start spending money on food. However, when I feel depressed, I have less of an appetite so I'm buying food because I feel the need to have food in my house because it will give me comfort to know that there's food in my house but I'm not fukkin eating it, so it goes bad, and I have to throw it away, and then because of how I grew up I have guilt about throwing away uneaten food that I allowed to go bad or spoil and that just makes me more depressed and it's this fucked up cycle.

I really can't even begin to address how it's affecting my work performance because I'm trying to fly under the radar at work right now. If I start to talk about it and catalog all the ways in which I've been a shitty employee lately then I would have to face the fact that I've been a shitty employee lately and I prefer not to do that. I have been flying under the radar. I've only turned up as a blip maybe twice, and it has been resolved, and they know what I'm going through. I'm managing to get enough work done so that when classes start I won't be behind, I'll be able to do my job and god willing there won't be any more blips.

So what's weird: My eating my sleeping my body my driving my work - that's pretty much everything right? 

I feel like I need to catalog these thoughts that I'm having just to keep them straight for my own sake, because I don't really understand what I'm going through. Maybe this can help me make sense of myself. As far as what I've been thinking... I will start with a couple of thoughts that I just had and then leave it, then come back to it and continue to add thoughts as they come to me just to show how completely all over the spectrum my thought process has been. It's exhausting. I'd rather be fucking duct taped inside the world's craziest roller-coaster for 24 hours nonstop. Like that would be easier than my thought process these past weeks.

So the thought I just had was: He knew who I was. We were friends for a year and a half. He saw me picking up a different hookup for every night of the weekend, every weekend. He knew that I was nonmonogamous. He saw me in a relationship with another person and we were both dating other people, happy with it, happy with each other, having a great time. And so when we started becoming a couple and he said what he said on that bench on that beach on that island, when he said I don't know how I feel about it but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, and I just believe that we can get through anything.... I believed that. It had been such tooth pulling work to get him to say even that much that when he finally did say that much, I just considered it a win and backed off. When instead what I should have done was right at that moment pinned him to the motherfucking ground, put my fukkin knees on his chest, pinned his arms above his head and been like, Say more about that NOW. Tell me how we're going to get through it NOW. What's your plan NOW. What's your thinking about that NOW. Now not five years from now, now. And I tried to bring it up again (repeat) throughout the years, the five years, the half of a decade that we spent together and he just kept being evasive. And I kept letting him be evasive. 

And it speaks again about the ways that the unequal burden of emotional labor falls upon women and the ways in which that fact repeatedly manifested in our relationship, that I kept bringing it up and he kept avoiding it. Even I am now saying I should have forced him to talk about it -- no he should have forced his fukkin self to talk about it, but since his ass wasn't doing that...

I keep waffling on my feelings toward him. In one moment I'm all--you know what fuck him and the thousands of dollars and the sixty fukkin months of my life that I wasted on him while he was pretending to love who he pretended I was.... and in that moment I mean it 100% from the poisonous pits of my blackened heart. And then fukkin 20 minutes later I'm saying to myself, if only I could have found a way for us to get married online on Zoom or whatever then he'd be stuck with me. And he'd be forced to work through it and deal with his feelings about it and work out a compromise that could work for both of us.

How do I feel right now right this second? Right this second I feel like if he wanted me in this moment, he oughta know what he oughta do if he wanted me, and he's clearly not doing anything, which must clearly mean he doesn't want me. And if one conversation about my needs can cause him to pivot that drastically, one conversation, then after 5 years! of me going through so many different kinds of hell just in order to stay by his side he can't be bothered to do what little it would have taken to keep me or even to get me back, then he Does Not Care At All. Clearly. That's where I'm at right now. 

Another moment and I'll think to myself, if he were to come back, I wouldn't want him. Knowing what I know now, I wouldn't take him. And then in another moment my fucking heart cries out, I would take him back right now, he would only have to say one word, and I would take him back with each and every one of his faults that hurt me over the years, I would welcome all of those faults and that man who hated me so, I would welcome it all back in a fucking heartbeat. 

That's not where I'm at right now, but it's where I have been as I flit from moment to moment. I guess that about brings us up to speed.

Fri, Aug 28 7:47PM

Right now I feel like: I'm so relieved. Because I was willing to put up with a lifetime of his self-defeatism, his irrational anger, and his general negativity, but now I don't have to. I don't have to be frustrated by someone who just gives up and then complains about a situation while refusing to do anything to resolve it. 

This bedroom that I'm sleeping in right now, that I have been sleeping in for five or six months, has got the loudest air conditioner of any place I've ever lived in my entire life, and I just... go to sleep! But he wouldn't be able to spend even one night in this room without losing his mind. He would go insane he'd be so angry about it. And guess what? I'm doing just fine.

Sun, Aug 30 2:09 AM

From my perspective, nothing changed! Nothing has changed. From my perspective, nothing changed except we had a conversation. 

From my perspective, I am the exact same person right now that I was before the conversation, so... I guess I just don't understand how having that conversation means he can throw away... ME. and US. and EVERYTHING that we went through together and everything that we meant to each other, and all this is past tense now because it's been over two weeks, maybe three weeks, feels like a year, and I just keep waiting for him to fall all over himself to apologize and reach out to me and be like oh my god I'm so sorry what was I thinking I'm a fucking fool what do I need to do to make it up to you -- because from my perspective nothing changed, all that happened was we had a conversation and so I don't understand.

Because he is so defeatist and so pessimistic, I wonder if he believed before I even left Korea that we were gonna break up. Even though I never wanted to do that at any point, because he's so defeatist and pessimistic, he believed that and made it come true. That's what I wonder. I wonder if, when the conversation happened, he was just like, ope here it is, may as well just sever the cord and get it over with just like I knew nothing good could ever happen! 

If that's the case then that makes it even worse, makes it so selfish of him just to indulge his sick pessimistic fantasies and punish me, make me have wasted thousands and thousands of dollars, half of a decade, and to hurt me the way that I've been hurt just because he's such a pessimist and he just wants the worst thing to come true at all times and just insists on it. Maybe that's not what happened, maybe he never saw it coming and he was really blindsided and it just goes against all of his principles but that's hard for me to believe that because for me nothing changed! I am now exactly who I was five minutes before the conversation, during the conversation, immediately afterwards, and even five years ago, six and a half or seven years ago when we first met! I'm still the exact same person that he always knew me to be. I'm so furious for him doing this to me.

Sun, Aug 30 9:29PM

Right now if he called me up or if he sent me a message and said, I'm an idiot, I'm sorry, what was I thinking, please take me back so we can work this out, I would. No conditions, no questions. Right this second he could have me back. I wouldn't make any -- okay well we have to -- no I would just say thank god.

If I'd found out a way for us to have gotten married online then when we had the conversation he'd be stuck with me. He couldn't just say that's a dealbreaker and be done. He would have to talk it out, work it out, but because I couldn't find a way to do that he was able to just cast me aside.

Tues, Sep 1 1:19AM

I wonder if he has started cataloging all of the little quirks and traits and things about me that he won't miss. All of the little annoyances that used to piss him off but he would let it go because we were in a relationship. I wonder if now he's looking back, kindof the way I am and thinking to himself, well at least I'll never have to hear her say (whatever) again or never have to find her underwear on the couch again for example. We've all got little things that annoy us; Lord knows I'm over here thinking I'll never have to be the only one fighting to save us anymore, only have to save myself. Over here thinking at least my air conditioner isn't causing someone to get irrationally pissed off and just run their mouth bitching about it nonstop every day for hours on end. I wonder if he's over there doing that, thinking to himself, God I'm so glad to be rid of this and that and the other, never to be given a lecture on feminism ever again never to be told I'm using the word "triggered" wrong ever again... Is it shit like that? He's over there singing hallelujah? Is that why he isn't contacting me at all? 

I get -- philosophical is too big of a word for it and pensive is too small. I get caught up in my thoughts  in the rare times like these, which are times that I don't feel one way or the other about him. I don't feel broken hearted desperate that he would reach out to me and say oh my god you're the best woman i'll ever find, nor do I feel that fukkin asshole how dare he create a false pretense for five years and waste all my time and my money. I do not feel I wish we'd already gotten married nor do I feel I wish I'd never met him. Very rarely do I get caught in this I-don't-know-what-I-want middle place. I'm usually oscillating wildly back and forth like a pendulum on crack. 

When I get in this ambivalent indifferent noncommittal place it's almost more depressing. When I feel unaffected by any desires regarding him is when I feel most lost, and maybe that's because he has been an anchor for me for so long that when my purpose is tied to him (whether it is I hate his guts or please god come back to me) at least it's still tied to him. And the times where I don't know what I want, that's when I start casting out the longest fishing lines. 

I sent a letter to a director of education up in the aboriginal mountains and villages to say like heeyyy my contract will be out this time next year, are you going to be looking for anybody sure would like to hang out in the mountains... or I looked at google earth and I found the upper and lower latitudinal coordinates between which reside climates that I enjoy, and I started where I currently am on the globe and started rotating west, and wrote down the name of every even semi-inhabitable country. Like it had to be notoriously war-torn for me not to write it down (which is a surprising number of countries unfortunately). And when I got back to where I started then I scrolled down into the southern hemisphere, found those same opposing coordinates, and scrolled east, writing down the name of every country that fell within the two latitudes of the climate that I like. Now I've got a list of somewhere between four or five dozen countries and I'm writing down what is required to teach English (there some of these countries I haven't found any information on teaching English there, maybe it means they don't want foreign English teachers, maybe it means i haven't looked in the right place, or I would have to do something else or they don't want foreigners at all)...

but the ones I can find, I'm writing down cost of living, salary, whether I could save money, whether the jobs provide housing or I find it, what is the health care like... and then I'll use those things. (and there's a few other categories I can't remember) but i'm finding this on like 60 countries give or take right now in these moments where I don't fucking know what I want. That's the scale of how seriously I have no idea what I want, that I'm literally looking at the entire globe to figure out what I want. I am so ignorant, I am so devoid of any knowledge about my wants or even wants at all that in order to narrow it down and find what it is that I want I first have to start with the entire planet.

I know a few things I don't want, that's a little helpful at least for now. And I know that for now I should just keep living where I am, keep working where I work, keep saving what I can and just... keep taking my medicine, waking up in the morning, going to work, rinse, repeat... because apart from that I really don't have any wants. I have a few needs like I need to sleep, eat, shower...  But even those things become difficult to force myself to do. I'll stay up on Sunday night until fukkin 3AM putting off a shower when I know I have to wake up at 6AM to start the school week but because I don't WANT to take a shower or even work or I don't want anything ... 

I don't even want food so I just keep snacks around in the house. Because I start feeling hungry and it's the time when I would start preparing and getting ready for a meal, but when I start thinking about food my brain is like nah not interested i'm good and so I don't get anything together until the moment when I finally have enough hunger that I can't ignore it anymore. At that point still nothing sounds good so I have to just have snacks like small bread things that I can just put in my face, chew, drink water and they'll expand in my stomach and my stomach will just shut up and leave me alone for a few hours

so yeah basically i'm doing great.

Day 5/30 (we'll catch 1-4 later maybe)

With thanks to NaPoWriMo for the prompt:

This country is a child with a grandfather’s history

and here, I am a newborn.

So the light blinds, life’s soundtrack deafens, each new smell becomes

an instant shared taste while phantom electrics prickle my flesh.

I feel the smells. I taste the lights and the sounds

dance in the air.

In Táiwān, my name is Freedom. Zìyóu. from the motto of Clan Wallace,

and here, I am a grandmother.

Who on this earth loves their chains?

My whip is only three or four horses;

because of this I am always outdoors.

“Nǐ hǎo,” they say, or if they really mean it, “Lí hé.”

The genuine greeting of a people mixplaced.

Snaking roads take you straight to where you should be

and I fly with my horses to every home I find.

Zìyóu and her tiny team of horses

will never tire of traveling here,

this raucous country, these patient beaches, these smoking hills.

Born 150 degrees from here but this is my home.

Lí chia̍h pá bōe? Chia̍h pá-ah!

My three horses together are one humble scooter, carrying me like a newborn,

a grandmother, feeling the language on electric skin.

I'm going to get her back.

I went to first through fourth grade at the same school. After that it was one year here, one year there, one and a half, two and a half, two… Then university became one here, one home, one there… I was usually the nerdy outcast. All of this is to say, some people have things in their lives that others don’t. And that’s okay. Some people have nice cars. Other people have fifty year marriages. I had a fascination with books. Other kids had friends.

Not a big deal, I didn’t have close friends. Not long term anyway, but it didn’t really upset me that much. I had other things they didn’t have. I learned about philosophy while they had sleepovers. Who cares. That’s life.

One thing I do have is extremely vivid dreams. Quite frequently I have a memory and I’m not sure if it actually happened or if I dreamed it. I mean to say these dreams are indistinguishable from reality. I wake up disoriented and confused. Last night I could fly. I should be able to fly now. Sometimes I’m in waking life and realize what just happened was in my dream the night before. That’s disorienting, too.

The first person who became a real, long-term, close friend was A______ W_______. I don’t know why she picked me. We were working together, and she was simply kind to me. She’d share some of the food she brought in. Then she started bringing in special things just for me. I didn’t understand what was happening. I thought she was hitting on me. I didn’t know how friendship worked. After the third time we hung out I walked her back to her car and asked to kiss her. She laughed and asked for a hug instead. She wasn’t scared off. She helped me understand what friendship could be like. She was my friendship teacher. She moved to Florida before social media was a huge thing. I was sad. We still loved each other very much but the distance meant we drifted a little.

Another thing I have that some other people don’t is cooking skills. I mean I’m really good. I don’t know how to make bad food. What does a lifelong friendship matter when I can rock your world with chicken saltimbocca? You know how people make food with weed, and it always tastes like compost? Not my cookies. I make the butter first with a secret trick, and then I add delicious strong spices. Maybe ginger, orange peel, and lemongrass. Maybe cinnamon, clove, and vanilla bean. My pot cookies are the talk of the town at any party they decide to visit.

I think Andrea found another queer student before she found me. We were at university, and I had just changed from social chairperson to president of the campus queer straight alliance. If I remember our first encounter correctly, it was a sunny day in a long hallway, well-lit with natural light from windows the whole way down. It was one of those days, it was some of that light, that just gets inside you and lifts you up. And there they were sitting, the beautiful pair of them, and maybe someone had told them I was the QSA president, and they shouted out to me, and in that magical way that only exists in oppressed communities, we instantly fell in love and became friends. We started planning our “wedding.” It wasn’t real, of course, except that it was. If you know, you know.

That’s a thing I have. A skill at making communities. At bringing people together. You have family vacations at Hawaii every winter? I put people together who support one another and stay in touch for life. That changes the world, you know.

How exactly did Andrea and I become so close? What were the steps? I can’t retrace them. One thing I don’t have is a great memory. Seriously, I can forget anything. Once, a friend told me that the two years we spent having nightly conversations on the phone had meant so much to them. I have no memory of that at all. This is to say, I cannot remember a time when Andrea Milligan was not my very best friend in the entire world. Once it happened, it had always been that way.

I still wasn’t one of those long term friend people yet though. Andrea and I were friends in university, but I was only there three years. But somehow, it lasted. Bless technology I guess, the introduction of social media, messaging through phones, video chats. We were never not in touch. She was my best friend, and it lasted and lasted.

We used to do everything together. I mean we were a single unit item. You didn’t see one of us without the other. More people than I can count assumed we were a couple. I mean it happened a lot. Straight people, queer people, people who knew us well, people we’d just met. They would either ask outright, “Are you together?” or they would invite one of us to something and say, “Bring your girlfriend.” We would collapse into laughter and fall upon one another, which maybe didn’t help their perception but we didn’t care.

We’d have sleepovers four-fifths naked. She helped me unlearn my shame around my body. Look, sleeping in your underwear is just more comfortable than sleeping with clothes on. And one thing we had in common was how much we embraced how lazy we were. We could sleep all day. One of us would wake up and take video of the other one snoring, then fall asleep and the other would take video of the first one snoring. We’d share it later and laugh.

We’d cook together and laugh. We’d go to movies together and laugh. We’d go to protests and chant and march. We’d get new partners and gush over them. We’d go through breakups and have nasty cries and get sloppy drunk. I’d host parties with my famous cookies and all our local community and beloved chosen family would come and eat and giggle. After 7 years as friends she shared with me an article she read that says, if a friendship makes it to seven years, you’re going all the way. We were going all the way.

So much so in fact that when she got a new partner that refused to meet me on my trips home from the opposite side of the globe (I think Andrea never forgave me for moving so far away from her, but she still loved me), I didn’t mind. We’d both seen each other through terrible choices in relationships. This, too, would pass. I mean, the woman was literally married. That’s not sustainable, right?

My friend Keith killed himself over depression. My roommate Angela killed herself over depression. My roommate Tommy had an accidental overdose. My classmate Aaron fell asleep driving and crossed the median. My dear friend Sean killed himself over trauma. My adopted baby Nic killed himself over depression. Lucie laid down to sleep and never woke up and we never found out why. This is a short sample of the long list. Death must be one cool motherfucker. She takes all my favorite people to hang out with her. My first brush with a suicide was in sixth grade. My grandparents were dying before I was born, when I was two, when I was in fourth grade. Death has always been close by, eyeing my nearest and dearest. We’re very well acquainted. I am quite accomplished and practiced with grief.

Once after my roommate Angela died I had one of those vivid dreams. She was dancing around in a corset and a billowing skirt, her famous red lipstick flaring across her smiling mouth. But I thought you died, I said. She threw her head back and laughed. Please, she said, like something as weak as death could stop me. Then she kept dancing and I just watched and watched. I woke up disoriented and confused. It was so real. Was she back?

When I finally met Andrea’s new partner, who I will not name, she seemed nervous. Things seemed off. Whatever. Then she flew off the handle over something that was nothing. Weird. Then she demanded Andrea leave my vehicle and go into hers and talk about how horrible I was for the better part of an hour while I waited. Okay.

I had come back for another visit and to finally meet the partner. The spin was, some friends and I were actually having an intervention for Andrea the next day and she didn’t know it. We thought she might be abusing painkillers. We didn’t know we were having an intervention for the wrong substance.

Yeah, the painkillers didn’t help. But now we know who was placing them in her palms to be swallowed down. If that woman, who is already in trouble for physical assault with a deadly weapon, doesn’t stand trial for the murder of my best friend, … it’ll be her loss. As many people as loved Andrea, the woman would be safer in jail honestly. This is not a threat, it’s just a fact.

Have you ever met a person that just… like was the literal embodiment of unconditional love and support and who would celebrate and affirm you exactly who and how you are at all times? Maybe you think you have, but if you never met Andrea, no you really didn’t. That person you’re thinking of wasn’t a third what Andrea was. Honestly, fuck that person. How dare they pale in comparison to the greatest platonic love of my entire life? They should just retire and stop failing to hold a candle to my Andrea.

That was the thing that Andrea had that no one else had.

She once went to a party with red duct tape across her mouth. She managed, without ever speaking, to simply gesture and convey her meaning to enough people that an entire photo album exists of her “kissing” random strangers at this party. She would find lost kids and bring them to our QSA. She was in touch with more people than I have ever met, at all times, telling everyone sincerely and thoroughly how much she loved them. She brought me so many wounded birds that we would nurse back to self love together. Once a meeting at my house spontaneously devolved into a party where three of us were naked and the other six were painting all over the naked ones. This magical joy would just happen around her, and you felt loved and accepted and part of something, something good, something whole. That was her thing. She had that.

We did the intervention. It was hard. She agreed to go to a facility for an intake interview. She aced it because of course she did. She was a boss at stuff like that. They sent her home. I went back to the other side of the planet. I heard The Girlfriend had Andrea locked in a bathroom with a gun. Another friend went over to try and save her. The Girlfriend almost murdered two of my closest long term friends. Andrea didn’t file a restraining order. I get it. I was in an abusive relationship before. It happens. They make you crazy. You think only you understand your relationship. The outsiders, they don’t get it. They don’t understand what you have. It’s you two against the world.

During all of this, Andrea lost her mother. They were thick as thieves. It’s the kind of loss you just don’t heal from. And I couldn’t console her. I had to stay away. I had to wait until she was free from That Woman.

I didn’t mind waiting. I would wait for her. She’d get this relationship out of her system just like we both had all the other shitty partners and then we’d be back together again, good as new. Four of us, friends of Andrea’s, had united to try to do the intervention and we stayed in touch afterward. We all tried different methods repeatedly to try and help. We each played different roles. We figured, eventually she’d wake up, or we’d get through. We would get her back. We were going to get her back.

I don’t know what time Andrea laid down with The Girlfriend. I assume there were pills involved. The Girlfriend posted that the love of her life died in her arms as they slept. What time was it? Was it the same time that I became inexplicably tired very early in the evening and went to bed? It was 3 or 4am local time when I woke up to the “news.” It was still speculation at that point, the reports were coming in. I sobbed well past sunrise. Denial, anger, bargaining all at once. She isn’t dead. We can still get her back. I hate that woman. The wrong person woke up.

Around 7 I went back to sleep. I had a dream Andrea and I were in bed together. I got so excited. She was laying in the bed four-fifths naked under a thick blanket. I got on top of her and bounced and bounced. She was laughing like crazy. I was snuggling in all her chubby bits, tickling her with my nose and kissing her everywhere. I’m so glad you aren’t dead, I said. I knew it wasn’t real. She said, I did it to bring my mom back. She said, I knew if I faked my death she’d come back. Her mom was there too. We all laughed and bounced and cuddled four-fifths naked and the best friend I’ve ever had, the longest the truest, Love walking in human flesh and touching everyone she met, she was there again right beneath me. I woke up disoriented and confused. My friend is not really dead. I’m going to get her back. This isn’t real. I haven’t seen any obit or autopsy. Love can’t die, right? We’re going to get her back. I get to keep my best friend. I get to have that after all. Andrea, call me. I’m confused. Remember the article? How we're going all the way? I’m waiting. I’ll keep waiting as long as it takes.

你為什麼要離開台灣？

Content Warning: discussion of mental health, emotional health, suicide and sexual abuse

1991:

I am in fourth grade. I still believe in prayer. I still believe in magic. I read a magazine that says girls should write a list of the things they wish for in a boyfriend. I make my list. I believe it is magic. I pray.

1992.05: 

I graduate fourth grade. I have been at the school for four years. It is the longest I have stayed in one place all my life. For the rest of my life, I will never stay anywhere longer than three years. Not until I move to Taiwan.

2002.08:

I get married. I'm too young. I get married because he wants to get married. If I say no, are we not allowed to be in love anymore? I know I'm not ready, but I love him. I want to give him what he wants. We've been together two years, and we've always said we would get married someday eventually. This is what people in love do, right?

2004.08: 

I get divorced. 

2009: 

A man I've never met moves to Korea. His name is Matt. He lands in a work culture that almost forces you to become an alcoholic. He becomes an alcoholic. He is still a good man, and smart. After nine months, he leaves. I know nothing about this at this time.

2011.05: 

I finally graduate university with a bachelor's degree. It's been a rocky life, never staying in one place, and I still haven't gotten over that marriage. It feels like I've finally won something. I stayed at that university for three years, and that's the longest I've stayed anywhere. Maybe I'm a grownup now.

2011.07-08:

I go to Taiwan, to a city in the south called Pingtung. I don't have any experience with East Asian cultures. My only knowledge of them is limited to the white boys in school who never fit in, and talked about Japan and China as the perfect place for them to go, be nerdy, and find girlfriends. I hate that kind of talk, so it made me uninterested in East Asia. But my friend told me about a scholarship program to study in Taiwan, and I applied. I got the scholarship. I have no reason not to go. I've traveled ten countries by now, but they've all been in Europe or North/Central America. Why not? I fall accidentally in love with the country. I want to stay. But I'm now in a long term relationship again. It's rocky but I believe it's worth fighting for. We've been together two years, and I believe we could go the distance if we work on it. I go back to the US, and move into his house in Tucson.

2013.05:

Only one of us is working on the relationship, and it isn't my partner. On mother's day, always a difficult day for me, I am heartbroken after another failed attempt to work on things. I am wandering the streets at dark, deciding which car to throw myself in front of. The fact that I have my dog with me stops me. I go home. Home? To his house with my things inside where I no longer feel safe. I put my poetry books and my dog in the car and drive two days from Tucson to my father's house in Arkansas without calling him in advance. I wouldn't want him to worry. I pull up in his driveway at midnight and ask, "Can I stay here for a while?" For two weeks I eat soup or nothing. I lose twenty pounds in those two weeks. I lose a lot, actually. My partner is still trying to get me to kill myself from afar. It's really hard not to give in.

2013.06: 

The man I haven't met, the man called Matt, moves to a town in southern Taiwan. The town is called Pingtung. He starts working. The drinking culture there isn't nearly as bad as Korea, but it's still there. He quickly becomes a darling of the scene. He is still able to hold down his job, and his students and their parents love him. I still know nothing about him.

2013.07:

I go back to Tucson. My partner is not in the house. He is currently on deployment somewhere beautiful, like Portugal or southern Italy. How he must be suffering, I feel, as I sort through the belongings he threw into a giant mess. I try to sell them but he's still harassing me. He wants me out faster than I can possibly manage to pack up my life. I have to abandon most of it. But in the packing, I go through my journals. They go back more than thirteen years. I find a pattern in my relationships. The two four-year relationships as well as other flings of different lengths. Any time I date a man, he is inattentive to my needs, he doesn't value me. I have to hide parts of myself. He thinks my interests are silly. Most notably, not a one of them can hold their liquor. I am grateful for this opportunity to see so clearly, so objectively, cycles in my life. I feel certain that vision this clear is rare. I promise myself not to forget. I swear on my own heart that this will not happen again.

2013.08:

Talk about kicking someone while they're down, or rubbing salt in a wound. While I'm nursing my emotional health, I go on a date with someone I shouldn't have trusted. He rapes me. When I tell my ex-partner, he simply says "I hope you went to the police." It's perfect.

2013.09.06: 

It is my thirty-first birthday. My father drives me to the airport. I have two full suitcases and two big carry-ons. The woman at the ticket counter jokes, "Wow, are you moving?" Yes ma'am, I reply, I'm moving to Taiwan for two years. I'm going back to Pingtung.

2013.11:

It is Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday. I have learned that a man on an internet forum I frequent is also an American living in southern Taiwan, in my city of Pingtung. I invite him to Thanksgiving dinner. He declines. I later learn that he didn't want to meet a girl from the internet. She would probably turn out to be weird.

2014:

About a year later, I finally get this man to hang out with me. His name is Matt. He is funny. He is a truly caring friend. He remembers things I forget that I've even told him. He pays attention. I hang out with him more and more. He's positively dreamy, but it's so rare to have a friend here. It's easy to have acquaintances, but rare to find someone with whom you share a first language and cultural experience. Then once you find that, do you even get along? We get along. He's perfectly sweet. I hope he finds a good girlfriend. He deserves one.

2015.08:

I've always had community in the US. No, communities. Many different groups of friends, some overlapping, that I can interact with as often as I like. Most of my friends are cuddlers. We have slumber parties. I miss human contact. I convince Matt to become a cuddling friend. But it turns out, we've both always been interested in trying something more than just friendship with one another. Physical closeness leads to more physical closeness. Before I know it, we're being physically close pretty often. But my heart is still broken. I'm not looking for love. I know he is, and I don't want to get in the way of that for him. I don't want to change him, either, but he spontaneously stops smoking cigarettes. I tell him I love him, but I'm not in love with him. He tells me in all things, I'm the boss. He'll never push me. I believe him. I trust him.

2015.10:

I want to share my favorite magical place with this special friend of mine. I convince him to spend a weekend on a nearby mountain with me. It's an aboriginal area, and the woman who I call doesn't have any vacancies in her room. But she hears my accent on the phone and asks if I'm foreign. When I tell her I am, she offers her ancestral home for me and my "boyfriend" (her word not mine) to stay in. When we go there, it's amazing. Slate house, porch on the roof, all windows open and we sleep next to one on a slab, listening to running water and chirping frogs. The name of the mountain is WuTai, meaning fog platform. We sit on the roof porch and watch the sun set and the fog platform roll in beneath us. We sleep above the clouds. We make love on our slab next to the open window while the frogs and falling water sing to us. Damn, I think. I'm in love with this bastard. I'm done for. There's no going back.

2016.02.25:

Matt and a friend go out drinking. Matt, as he often does, has far too much. He gets blackout drunk. How did he end up on a naval base? Was their perimeter not secure and he just found a back way in? Did he actually go through the front gate and no one cared to stop him? We may never know. But he is arrested for drunk driving on the military base. He is taken to court, where he is counseled to plead guilty. The judge asks if he wants to remain in Taiwan, and he says yes, more than anything, he loves Taiwan. It's true, we both do at this point. We don't want to go back to the USA. The judge accepts his guilty plea and charges him a fine for drunk driving and espionage. The fee is equivalent to about $3,000USD. He pays.

2016:

He never pushes me. He never asks for more than I have to give at any time. He never does anything without my consent. He listens, pays attention, and remembers. I don't have to hide any parts of myself. He loves my ugliness, my brokenness, my scars. He accepts me and celebrates me as I am. I allow myself to be vulnerable with him, and I've never felt more safe.

When I am depressed, he instinctively knows exactly what to do. I've always had to hide my clinical depression from my past partners. They either didn't care or actively said they didn't like it. But this man knows what to do. He knows if I need to be left alone, he knows if I need cuddles, he knows if I need pillows and blankets and children's movies. One night, before we move in together, I send him a message. I feel silly. I've been too depressed to take a shower and I'm starting to smell bad. He comes over. He takes off his clothes but keeps his underwear on. He tells me he doesn't want this to feel sexual. He carries me to the bathroom and puts me on a stool in the shower. He washes my hair for me and scrubs my skin. Another night my anxiety is so bad I'm trapped on the couch. I cannot get to bed to go to sleep. It's getting late. Again I send him a message. Again he comes over and saves the day.

At some point, I have a talk with Matt about his drinking. I've never been so cared for, so respected in any relationship. Truly everything is perfect except this. I tell him about the journals and what I promised myself. He promises, too. He promises to cut back. He drinks only at home. No more driving anymore. He buys a certain amount, and doesn't drink more than that. But the amounts he brings home get bigger. But he keeps his word.

2017.02.12:

We go out with some friends. We ride together on his ride to get there, so he can't get too drunk to get us home. The first drink he orders is a bathtub of a margarita with two beers turned upside down in it. He says this way, he only needs to buy one drink for the night. Then he buys a second drink. I ask him to stop. He starts drinking water. But when we go to the next bar, I can see his eyes getting glassy. He orders a rum and coke. Then a second. He talks with the bartender about how much rum goes in, and it's fully three quarters of the glass. I can see the Matt I know has gone away from behind those glassy eyes. It is another man who picks up that drink and puts it to his lips. As I see him do it, I know that I am less important than a glass of rum and coke. I know he is already blackout drunk. I call a cab and take him home. On the drive he becomes less and less lucid. By the time we arrive I'm barely able to get him into our home. I get him undressed and in the shower with the water running. I bring him water. He starts to throw up. I'm dying from the heart out. I'm trying to tend to him without shattering into a million pieces. I go to the kitchen to get more water and when I come back, he's climbed out of the bathroom and into the hallway where he's thrown up a lake. I start hysterically sobbing and wailing. I lock myself in the bedroom. I sleep until it's time to go to work.

2017.02.13:

When I leave the bedroom to go to work, I find a puddle of vomit-infused water in the floor. I have to put plastic bags over my feet so I can walk through it to get to the door. I realize my relationship is over. I made a promise to myself that I intend to keep. We spend the week separated. We live in the same apartment but sleep in different rooms. I'm trying to fight for us to stay friends. He has quit drinking for good. He has started exercising. But he says it will hurt him too much to stay friends. The worst is happening and I can't stop it.

2017.02.18:

Matt brings home a cigar - one of our favorite pastimes is to sit on our 5th-floor balcony together with no electronics and share a cigar and conversation in the breeze. Over the course of this conversation, we realize we both want to continue fighting for this relationship, the best either of us have ever had. We've always been good at communication and working together. He asks me if I remember him giving up cigarettes shortly after we started dating. I do, he quit cold turkey. He tells me, the most difficult part of change for him is to commit to the decision. Once he's done that, he says, it's finished. I believe him, but I'm scared to trust him. We decide to work together to save it. He lets me set the pace. He never tries to rush things. We slowly move forward, then back into the same bedroom. We continue to have weekend adventures all over Taiwan. We spoil one another on each other's birthdays. He writes me poetry and loves everything I cook. When we talk about the future, our plans always include one another. There is no future without him. My home is where his heart is.

2017.04.27:

A Taiwanese author named Lin YiHan kills herself. She had recently published a story about a girl who is raped and abused by her teacher. People speculated that it was auto-biographical although she denied it.

2017.05.12:

A new law is passed in Taiwan requiring background checks for teachers. People hope it will keep children safe from predators, and so do Matt and I. When our bosses ask for our information to do background checks, we happily provide it. No one should have to fear abuse from their superiors, and no children should go through what the protagonist in Lin's novel did.

2018.05.12:

Matt and I board a plane together. We've taken many short trips but this will be our first long journey. We're going first to visit his family so I can meet everyone, then to mine so they can meet him. I will be able to stay longer in the USA than Matt can, and I look forward to spending time with my father.

2018.05.27:

Matt flies home. His journey is just awful. One flight is fourteen hours and the woman behind him is digging her feet into his chair, hitting an area where he has a surgical wound we've been tending for ages. Upon his exhausted arrival, he learns from his boss that his work permit has been revoked. His background check turned up the DUI. It doesn't matter that he paid his fine. It doesn't matter that he's been sober for a year and a half. The permit has been revoked. I am in denial. He believes he will have to leave Taiwan, but I beg him to fight it. He never hurt any children. His students and their parents love him. His bosses make every call possible.

2018.06.04:

I am on a road-trip around my part of the USA. It is about 9PM and I still have about 5 hours drive left before I get to my destination. I get a message from Matt that he is being deported. There is never a moment where I consider staying in Taiwan. My home is where his heart is. They aren't deporting one man, they're deporting us both, because I cannot stay without him. I pull into a roadside strip motel because I don't trust myself to keep driving. When I explain my situation at the front desk, they give me rum. I drink it and go to my room to shower and cry.

2018.06.06:

Matt checks the mail and finds a letter from the government. The letter says he must leave Taiwan. The deportation date is June 5th. Yes, you read that right. The official letter arrived on the 6th and said he had to leave the country on the 5th. He calls the office. He tells them his girlfriend will return to Taiwan on the 18th. Could he please stay until the 20th? Could he please see her for one day before he has to leave? They make him promise that he will leave the country on the 20th. When he hangs up, he sees on the bottom where he can call to appeal the decision. But everyone has been called, and at this point, we're through. We're exhausted. They win. We'll leave.

The Future:

I will go back to work in Taiwan. I will probably work until late August, early September. Early September is when I first moved to Taiwan in 2013. That means I've lived there for five years, after my original plan was for just two years. I fell in love with the land, the mountains, the beaches, the plains. I fell in love with the people, the families, the friends, the shopkeepers. I fell in love with the food, the god parades, the night markets. It's the longest I've ever stayed in one place my entire life. I wanted to keep staying.

I don't know where we go next. But we will go there together. This is the man I wrote about in my notebook in fourth grade, the last time I ever stayed somewhere more than three years. He is my spell, he is my prayer, he is where my heart is. I will follow him to any country. I will follow him to the moon.