Half marathon dreams

I am officially registered for my very first half-marathon this weekend! In the quest towards crossing off one of the items on my life-goals list, I'm slightly nervous/excited (such a fine line between those two) to take part in the Long Beach marathon. I'm from LA so the idea of jumping into my car to visit a friend a block away isn't unheard of. And walking? Is that what that raised bit of concrete along the street is for?

The longest distance I have ever run is 9 miles and I won't lie, there was some pain involved during and after... But the common wisdom seems to be if you can run 7 or 8 miles, you can run 13.2 miles. I'm not sure how that works but I will put my faith in that logic. I come from a line of marathon runners, well, I come from a mom who started running marathons in her 50s so my genes can't be all bad. I did inherit bad eyesight and a strong stubborn streak from her, so it's totally possible that I inherited long-distance running abilities too. Two friends are also embarking on this adventure as half-marathon virgins, so we will lose our innocence together. I'm aiming for two and a half hours, so wish me luck!

the only thing we have to fear is fear itself

After a long, long hiatus from writing, I've decided to take my friend's advice and write small pieces more frequently. What it comes down to is a fear of writing. I have been tackling my dissertation for the last few years and I honestly feel crippled at times by the process of writing. Although I have always envied writers and wanted to be one, the prospect of actually producing my magnum dopus has produced anxiety attacks in the form of constant and disgusting sweat that pours down my face whenever anyone mentions the word "dissertation" in my presence. Merely typing the word has already started my heart pumping. And now, my life, or rather my evenings, have been plagued by my recurrent stress dream.

In a recent conversation with a friend, the idea of stress dreams came up. It can be the exact same dream, played out over and over every few years, or can be a theme that takes different forms but you recognize it as the your stress dream. One friend talked about waves and the oceans as his theme, another about sea monsters that swim by. For me, my stress dream is this intense feeling of rage and helplessness connected to teaching. The thing is, I know exactly when it started. Beginning right after college, I started teaching a special education class in rural Louisiana with little to no formal training. While I fell in love with my students while there, I never had any control over the little buggers. In the course of two years, chairs flew, punches were thrown, kicks were delivered, I lost part of my front tooth, got my hair cut off by a student and chased one of my students carrying a knife down the hall after he threatened me with it. These were the direct results of my inability to take charge of my classroom, instill discipline and a respect for the rules. Not in a barking soldier kind of way, but in a Dead Poets, inspiring yet amazing kind of way. The point is that when I have a dream about teaching, I know I'm at a breaking point of sorts and something has to change. Sometimes the little kid-size chairs are there but adults are stuffed into them. Sometimes it is teaching college-aged students but they behave like my elementary students. They are insubordinate and I am literally shaking with rage in my dream because I'm so angry and so powerless to change the situation. My friend told me her therapist said that stress dreams come during moments of transition and that once you figure out what the symbol mean, the stress dream will disappear.

Is FDR right that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself? Maybe, but I wonder what form FDR's stress dreams took.

dumping resolutions

It is nearly the end of January and I have broken nearly every resolution I made 26 days ago, including writing more consistently for this blog. When I was little, I would solemnly write my resolutions down and have my mom sign it as a witness and then roll it up into a sacred scroll tied up with a ribbon leftover from Christmas. I love the idea of making resolutions because I always think there's the possibility of personal growth, of adopting a new behavior or eliminating a negative one and that after some self-reflection and self-criticism, you are a few steps closer to the person you want to become.

So after resolving to "be a nicer person" in my relationship, I got dumped nine days into the new year. But no worries, we have reconciled. In all fairness, it was my passive-aggressiveness that got me into trouble. All this led me to the conclusion that there are dumpers and dumpees and I was tragically stuck in the latter category.

Why is this, do you ask? Ironically, it is rooted in trying to be "nice" to another person. It has been my philosophy that because being the one who dumps requires you to hurt someone else's feelings, I'd rather provoke the situation until the person I'm with has little alternative than to break things up. Then that person feels good because he feels he called the shots, I feel good because that person got to save face and I still got out. No harm, no foul, everyone is happy, right?

In the spirit of revisiting resolutions, I've decided that I have had enough of being the dumpee. I'm going to boldly go where I have not gone before and get into the driver's seat of my relationships. So I have made the idiotic and possibly suicidal-to-my-career move to "break up" with one of my advisors.

In graduate school, the dating metaphor applies almost perfectly to relationships with some faculty members. You approach them shyly, all but pawing the ground with your shoe as you awkwardly court them. Do you like me? I think I like you. Do you think you want to go steady? Do you think you could commit to me and my puny little project in sickness and in health, 'til death or when I finish graduate school (whichever comes first) do we part?

You get them on your committee and then you are twenty-third in a long line of existing mates. Your new "partner" maintains an explicitly open relationship, no monogamy, thank you very much. They upgrade to brighter,new partners every year, accumulating men and women, young and old into their harem while your status plummets at an alarming speed. They don't answer your phone calls, your emails and you start to duck into the bushes when you see them coming to avoid any possible conversations about the progress of your dissertation even if you've achieved your highest point total ever in Tetris just last week. In light of these deteriorating circumstances, sometimes there comes a point at which relationships must end.

After a pathetically short phone conversation (I know it's a bit tacky to end a relationship over the phone I admit but trust me, I had no other choice as the possibility of actually seeing this person is like trying to see the Tooth Fairy), the three year relationship was over. I have finally become the dumper, if you will, and it feels... like an equal mix between profound relief and weirdness. While it was all very polite, very civil, and no drama, there is still a bittersweet aftertaste that comes with the end of all relationships, regardless of dumpee or dumper status.

On a brighter note, here we are only 26 days into the new year and I can emphatically cross off one of my resolutions! In fact, with this post, I am already coming close to knocking off a second one. Let the personal growth begin...

Loving the Loser Within

What makes it so hard to lose? We are told that quitters never win, winners never lose, and that hard work has its own rewards. Whether it is relationships, our jobs, our friendships, even graduate school, we are supposed to take disappointments in stride, jump over the hurdles and make it across the finish line. Get that damn carrot, no pain, no gain. But sometimes it seems we never take the time to wonder who drew that line and whether it is worth crossing. But not crossing it means being relegated to loserdom and as Beck croons, "I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me."

Reading the headlines and following the situations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel and the potentially volatile landscape of political relations with Iran and North Korea over nuclear capabilities, I think, who are the losers? Nearly three years later after beginning our war on Afghanistan and Iraq, we are no closer to stability in the region and in fact, we are forcing soldiers back onto the field even after they have completed their tours of duty. Even with this brief respite in violence in Lebanon, the Israeli government appears still committed to stamp out Hezbollah and Hamas and that winning would entail the extermination of these so-called terrorist organizations. Our leadership seems more concerned with “winning” especially after September 11th, than the lists of the dead and injured. Stamping out the terrorists, winning the battle against terror, we must win, win, win at all costs. If we let fear run our lives, then we have let the terrorists win. So quit your whining, hand over your toothpaste and other liquid items, and get on that plane with your bad breath, chapped lips and unquenchable thirst. Because if you don't, you are a loser and are letting THEM win.

I understand this need to be a winner at all costs, as silly and stupid as it seems, because you get caught up in the moment. When I was about 14, I went to a summer tennis camp where for a week, you ran around the green courts, chasing after little yellow balls and willingly allowed yourself to be targeted by this mad little tennis instructor who was inevitably blonde, skinny and way too perky not to be on some form of recreational drug or anti-depressant. For 6 hours a day, for seven straight days, I called this “fun” even as my skin peeled away from my body in angry red sunburns. In the afternoons, teams would play against each other and all I remember was that I wanted to win.

It was match point, potentially the last point of the game and my opponent had me trapped. She lured me into the net where she knew I was as helpless as George W. Bush in a spelling bee. The lob soared above my head as I simply watched. I scrambled back for it with no hope to get it, barring a spectacular lunge like a young Boris Becker. I watched it bounce well inside the baseline and then I lied. I called it out. The girl, her name was Summer, I never forgot it, asked whether I was sure. I said I was, even though the director of the camp and even Summer’s dad was sitting on the court. We kept playing out the set and I eventually won. Like a true winner, Summer walked to the net and shook my hand, saying, nice game. Though I was technically the winner, she and I both knew that I was not. Now nearly 15 years later, while Summer would probably not even remember the silly little game, but the memory of that still stings inside of me.

I think that there are times in which losing may be the only reasonable option to take and there is no shame in admitting that you are wrong. Yes, slap on the label that says, Hello, my name is Loser. Whether you are a powerful country like the U.S. or Israel engaged in misguided warfare, or a piddly little tennis camper, it takes more strength to own up to your mistakes and take responsibility for bad decisions than to keep pushing through the pain. It may be that once you cross the finish line, there will be no one there to cheer.

there's no "I" in co-dependent

Every night, it is a ménage a trois. There are the sprawling limbs, jockeying for space, overlapping of warm bodies, and the occasional biting and scratching. The problem with this potentially kinky situation is that it is about one person’s battle for limited space against two cats. Any cat owner would tell you that Manifest Destiny and the colonizing of the West is over… in today’s market, the hottest piece of real estate is the few square inches of bed space.

Cats are strange animals. They barely blink an eye at your arrival home. They don’t bring you the paper, they don’t greet you with a smile and a butt that wags ecstatically at the sound of your voice. Unfairly, cats are labeled as cold, calculating creatures and I have had many people tell me that my relationship to these little cats borders on the unhealthy. Frank dislike of my cats thinly disguised as “allergies” prevent them for coming to my home, sly references to them as evil spawn or the more honest attitude, in the words of my lovely but brutally blunt mother at the prospect of harboring my two cats during my year-long research leave, “I don’t give a fuck-shit about your cats”.

Co-dependency… it can be positive, no? For anyone who has friends who have disappeared into relationships, marriages, short-term or long-term flings, you recognize the signs. The comfort of being needed and needing someone, the inside jokes you share, you can finish each other’s sentences, spend hours in the company of this being who makes you feel just a little bit less lonely. My cats, Gabe and Riley, are this for me. While friends move away, relationships form and break away, and family members are usually best seen from a distance, Gabe and Riley are the Jack and Chrissy to my Janet.

Dependence can border on the unhealthy, you can lose yourself in these relationships too. Couples become the equivalent of TomKat or Brangelina, the conjoined twins who have little identity alone, the sum is greater than its parts. These relationships become excuses to avoid closeness in other areas of your life. I’m sorry, I’d stay over but I have to feed the cats in the morning. They miss me, they barf in my bed without me. And yes, they do, trust me.

In Korea, co-dependency reaches a new level in that there is little use of “my” or “I” when referencing relationships. It is “our” family, “our” father, “our” mother, “our” home, even “our” nation and “our” people. During my time there, I found that despite growing up in a somewhat traditional Korean household, the American “I” in me could not understand the Korean “we” around me. Co-dependency strands stretched from male to male so that people’s relationships to one another were referenced on men. For women, the “I” becomes I am this boy’s mother, this man’s wife, this man’s daughter. For single adult women, the “I” is problematic because relationships are grounded on the Y chromosome. For lack of dependents, have I defined my “I’ to my cats?

At what point does mutually dependent become co-dependent? Is there a point where you lose yourself in the “we” of co-dependency? Is it too much to sacrifice a full night’s sleep so that you can share your bed with your cats? I tell myself that this is OK. I need to feel the weight of their bodies on the bed before I can fall asleep. The surround sound of purring envelopes me as they knead my belly, my head, my arms as they lull themselves to sleep. I feel safe and needed in my furry cocoon, reminded of their presence by the irritatingly gentle flick of a tail in my eye.

On being kind

My friend calls me a hater, but I disagree. I’m a lover, I love to hate on things that annoy me.

The other day, I checked my mail and found out I received a rejection notice for a fellowship that I didn’t even apply for. I got the kind “thanks, but no thanks” form letter, the type that makes you suspect that whoever wrote that template is a sniveling little prick with no soul who has received a good deal of similar letters in his or her past and now works part time at Disneyland wearing a Goofy costume handing out balloons while cursing through the plastic smiling mask.

My “wall of shame” from rejected funding opportunities is large, and like my belly, constantly expanding. I do just fine in the rejection department without outside help, thank you very much. Now it seems that rejection is coming unsolicited, attracted by the dank smell of unfundability, and it doesn’t feel good.

Also this past week, my friend’s three-year old daughter, B., has decided in a split second, that she is potty-trained. After months of wheedling, trial and error on the part of parents who fear that they will be changing B’s diaper until she is in her mid-40s, my friends breathed a sigh of relief. Because it is forbidden now to utter the word, “diaper” since those clearly are for babies and not sophisticated ladies, B. occasionally wears what we now refer to as “night time underwear” (also known as diapers). Child psychologists would say this is a developmental milestone as the child is now able to recognize her needs and respond to them with newly discovered levels of awareness and control. In other words, she doesn’t shit in her pants.

All of us are so proud, clapping our eyes, making our eyes light up like fireworks. What a big girl! That’s so great!!! (triple exclamation points, of course). B. smiles, puffs out her chest and revels in praise, sometimes even bringing out her portable porcelain throne when the mood strikes to demonstrate her mad skillz.

When interacting with a young child, we think it’s only natural to praise every small detail of their lives, small achievements, however miniscule it is. Your outfit is so pretty, you’re using a spoon and getting roughly 2% of your food into your mouth, you are being quiet for five whole consecutive nanoseconds. But this type of behavior is not nauseating, but genuine, for both the giver and the receiver. B. graces us with a toothy smile filled with little pointy teeth and we feel bathed in sweetness. Real sugar, not nutrasweet tinged with bitter aftertaste. We do this with babies we don’t even know, for chrissakes, I do this with dogs and cats to an embarrassing degree.

All this made me wonder, at what point do we stop being kind? How do we learn to deny our abilities to give and accept genuine praise?

At the same time, we seem unable to recognize that we, even as adults, albeit adults with the mentality and maturity levels of three-year olds, need this constant affirmation and praise – we need to give as well as receive this. Instead, we learn to drip our words with sarcasm masked as humor, carefully sharpening the barbs and lovingly dipping the ends in poison before burying these weapons in our victims. Even form rejection letters with their copied signatures can hurt.

I started to think about the number of times this week, even today, that I genuinely praised someone without a hint of sarcasm or the inside little mean me inside that actually mimes sticking my finger down my throat when the words leave my mouth. Basically, I came up with nothing.

And then I thought about the number of times that day I tried to insult, hurt or even just used sarcastic, caustic comments and it was like a goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooogle search.

I certainly am not advocating spreading the good word by sowing happy thoughts like naive Pollyannas who can only see the positive through their red-tinted glasses. In fact, those people annoy me... a lot, with their Volvo station wagons with “Visualize whirled peas” and “namaste” bumperstickers. But I do realize that while kind words are, at times, few and far between, if we genuinely expressed praise more often ourselves to the people around us, strangers and dear friends, we would be in a saner, happier space, at least momentarily.

So I say, from the bottom of my heart, you are a wonderful person, with great insights, a soul worthy of Ghandi and if you ever annoy me just a leeetle bit, I will pull a Zidane and headbutt you onto your bony little ass.