Part 1: Age 12 (TODO: check age at that time)

CW: suicide

I was a 7th grader, covered in Zippo lighter fluid, sitting, legs folded, on the hardwood floor of my room. My door was locked and the house was empty. I think it was a Saturday morning.

There were a few streaks along my face from tears that had mostly dried. I couldn’t feel sad for myself. I didn’t have the energy to, having not eaten for the last 40-odd hours, except for a cheeseburger and a few fries that I’d finished an hour earlier.

I had a box of matches, the ones where you strike the match against the side of the box. I struck one, watched it burn down until the heat was warm on my fingers, and then, in my cowardice, blew it out and threw it aside. I was scared. And then I felt pity for myself. Then I felt anger. I went this far and couldn’t even bring myself to end it. If I’m going to burn in hell anyway, wasn’t this the perfect way to go? I lit another match, held it closer to my face, since the lighter fluid was mostly in my hair and was still dripping down my face. I held it there for a while and couldn’t do it.

I stopped eating because the characters in the Bible repented for their sins that way. They fasted and tore their clothes and put on rags to show their earnestness and commitment to God and their genuine desire to atone for their sins. King David did it when he killed TODO: his general and took his wife TODO: spellcheck Bethsheba for several days. Jesus went up the mountain and despite being tempted by the Devil, he ate nothing and drank nothing for 40 days to prove his commitment to God. And yet, here I was, a Christian kid, with gay thoughts and was trying to repent for them and couldn’t even go two days without food when King David could go weeks? I was angry at myself for having eaten when I felt that I deserved less. I was light-headed and wallowing in disappointment at myself. I deserved hell, and I was so weak, so fucking damn weak, that I couldn’t fast even two days.

I went through the matches and each time, felt worse about myself. When the dozens of matches were done, I cried, inhaling sharp breaths of the pungent lighter fluid between sobs. I was a sinner without the resolve to atone to God and without the resolve to go to where I thought I deserved to be.

If you don’t know me now, you can take solace in knowing that I am in a much better 14 years later, having given up such literal interpretations of Christianity (and most of organized religion, in general). I mean, seriously, it’s biologically impossible to fast for so long and stay alive, which really means that the King David really exaggerated his length, if you know what I mean.

Unfortunately, this experience is not uncommon. In one of my churches, the pastor’s wife kicked out a gay kid from one of her Bible study groups, claiming that the devil had a hold on his heart and to leave before he corrupted others in the group. She said she would pray for him (#thoughtsandprayers), but that he couldn’t be in the space where he could be dangerous to the other students.

Thes experiences show why it’s dangerous to expose children to religion like this and why progress on LGBTQ+ rights was so needed, because there are so many LGBTQ+ kids who take their lives on account of their sexuality and how they’ve been taught to view it. In retrospect, I would likely not have died from burning myself with Zippo lighter fluid and at worst, would have been badly burned.

TODO: might need to recall a part here to make it happier or explain how I believe that these literal interpretations of the Bible are unhealthy or really to explain what the point of this was

There is a lesson here about how important it is to be out not just for yourself but to give visibility to other young people like you were who may believe that they cannot have happy futures ahead of them if they are gay.

Months later, we wrote poetry in my English class and in one of my poems, I alluded to this experience and drew the attention of one of my teachers. We talked about the poem and a few days later, my mother and I were called into the principal’s office and we discussed the need for counseling for me. I spent the rest of the last two years of middle school going to a counseler in the school and never once discussed being gay. I instead learned to fake happiness enough to not need counseling in high school and even got a huge paper boook of illusions as a graduation gift from my counseler.

Part 2: Age 17

It was April Fool’s day of my senior year of high school, and I’d been worn down by wrapping up high school and the fear and excitement of leaving my life with my family to go off as the first in my family to college. New York Spring had only lasted maybe two weeks in March, and we were right in the humid start of summer.

As an aside, he thought it was a “no-named school” that I was throwing my future away for, just for the opportunity to run away to California, but this is a story for another time.

Part 3: Age 20

I was 20 years old and living in Lantana, my Stanford sophomore year dorm. I’d reached my limit again trying to maximize what I did with my life. I was trying to do a double major in bioengineering and computer science and maxing out my units (the official maximum was 20, I petitioned for 22). Survivor guilt from having left my immigrant family in New York did weird things. The thought of my parents having worked from 9am until 1am for the last two decades of my life in a dingy take-out Chinese food restaurant made it so that I never felt that I could complain about working too hard. But I digress.

Needless to say, I had very few remaining mental cycles. And yet, as any closeted gay person could relate, I still spent too much energy on constructing an elaborate map of who might suspect that I was gay, whether I was accidentally dressing or acting in ways that exposed me, whether I spent too much time or got along too well with female friends, and whether there was any interpretation of the Bible that wasn’t predicting eternal damnation for people like me. God, it was exhausting.

I’d drawn into Lantana in a group of four friends and one of them, we’ll call him Dan, was an openly gay man that was in my freshman year dorm with me. I’m ashamed to say that I was careful to keep a bit of distance from him for fear of outing myself, but I admit that I’d admired him since we met during the first week of college. He had been out in high school, always seemed very well-integrated at Stanford and had so many friends, both gay and straight, and exuded so much confidence in who he was, no apologies needed. We lived across the hall from each other, and in this stressed out time, I asked him what had been on my mind for the last year: “how do you love yourself so much, knowing that you’re gay?”. I didn’t mean for this to be a coming out, but in retrospect, c’mon, Simon, really? I don’t remember the specifics of the conversation but I imagine that he confused, then asked questions to help deconstruct the past decade of internalized homophobia that I’d learned. We talked about him for the next few days, but I think it was fairly obvious that I had a serious vested interest in understanding how one loves themselves the way Dan did. I came out to him shortly after but asked him not to tell anyone else and that I wanted time to process it myself. I’m fortunate that I had Dan as a friend, and am glad that he was the first person outside of my family that I came out to.

If you’re reading this, I appreciate you, Dan.

Part 4: Age 24 (TODO: check)

I’d started to suspect that I was gay at 10 years old and since then, knew that there was a very real possibility of one day being disconnected from my family. It happened to my friend and mentor at Stanford, whose parents withdrew financial support for her in her third year of college after she came out to them in an argument during winter break of her junior year. She panicked and unexpectedly had to cram her major and minor into 3 years, work things out with the financial aid office to allow her to finish her degree, all while having to work through the emotional trauma of having disconnected from her family. I knew that I didn’t want her story to be mine, and resolved to be financially independent before telling my parents. I truly think that might be my biggest reason why I worked so hard in high school and college, but that’s a story for another time (trust that I will write about this and “the best little boy in the world syndrome” at another time).

All of this was in my mind on (TODO: insert date) the day after the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage and the day before Father’s day (or was it my father’s birthday?). I’d been working as a software engineer and living on my own for over a year already, was earning enough for rent and food and to live comfortably, and was out to most of my friends from college and had been dating an amazing man that I still love to this day. I’d waited almost 14 years to set myself up financially and emotionally, fearing for the worst.

My father helped drive me to Manhattan, where he was going to pick something up and I went to go back to my apartment. During the car ride, I’d asked him questions about whether he would be okay with what I knew to be increasingly uncomfortable situations for him.

• “How would you react if I dated someone that you and mom didn’t approve of?” (“Depends on why we don’t approve”)
• “What if I dated someone who wasn’t Chinese?” (“What ethnicity?” *Proceeds to tell me stories that he’s read about interracial couples not working out*)
• “What if I dated someone who didn’t want to have kids?” (“Why not? You’re our only son! Who will pass on the surname”)
• “What if I dated someone who biologically wasn’t able to have kids?” (“Are you already dating someone like this? How do you know? Why are you asking such strange questions? I’m okay with surrogacy but not adoption. I think you have good genes if you got into Stanford, so you need to pass them on.”)

I grew increasingly nervous as I asked these questions and my father was too. I told him that I had a secret but I couldn’t tell him. He still seemed fairly clueless until I asked him:

“What if I dated a man?”

Silence. My dad and I had already arrived in Manhattan and were parked on Mulberry Street and we didn’t speak for a while. He asked if I was already dating a man. I said I was. He said that I needed to break up immediately and that whomever I was dating was a bad influence on me. I was confused, he said. I countered that I wasn’t and that my suicide attempt that I needed to go to counseling for throughout middle school was when I was really confused, when I thought that I didn’t deserve to live because of being gay. He said that not to tell anyone, and that all that he’d worked for and accomplished in America would mean nothing compared to the shame of having a gay son. That his life would have no meaning, that my mother would get sick, and that this could be what drives the family apart and that he didn’t want that and he knew that I didn’t want it either. He said there would be no meaning to his life if he had a gay son and what would everything have been for? Why wouldn’t he just end his life?

I was still frustrated but his insinuation of suicide was worrying to me and I backed down. He asked me not to continue this lifestyle and to break up from my current relationship and try again to be in a relationship with a woman. He said that he was proud of me for all that I’d done in my life and that he knows that I could do anything if I set my mind to it, including changing my sexuality.

I gave him and my mother the better part of 2 years (in which a few relationships, a new job, several new hobbies, and many major maturity milestones came up) before bringing up my sexuality again. They still have a process to work through but at this point, they aren’t trying to change me any more. And that’s huge for them. For my parents and many Chinese immigrants, quiet acceptance and approval look very similar. And I’m happy with that.

If you’re curious, after my conversation, in my emotional distress, I voice memo’d a note to myself on my iPhone:

TODO: fill in with iPhone note

Struggling with Writing; Reconnecting with Reading

I’ve struggled with mustering the courage to write in this blog since I set it up in January 2018. I was so excited to write about the issues that I struggled with (deriving validation from accomplishments, struggling to find meaningful connections and friendships with vulnerability, imposter syndrome at Stanford and as a software engineer, intimidation and self-doubt around pursuing goals like starting a book club, starting a company, etc.) but once it came time to actually write, I froze because I was intimidated by the thought of my writing and my experiences being scrutinized by the “public eye”. Over the years, I have written in private Tumblrs, Wordpresses, and have tried to go public with my writing a few times but I inevitably have found that I tend to write less frequently and less vulnerably when I make my writing public. This defeats the original purpose of writing publicly, which is that I want to write ideas out and receive input and insights from others who share the same ideas to facilitate the evolution and maturation of my thoughts.

While I haven’t kept up with my original goal of writing in 2018, I’ve been fairly consistent and happy with my reading new books, which serves, in different ways, with introducing me to new ideas and to contribute to the evolution of my thoughts. I’ve started reading a lot more in 2018 than I have in the past few years. The last full book that I remember reading outside of school was Ender’s Game in 2014 and before that, excluding short stories and comics, the last full book I read outside of school was The Giver in 2004, so in some senses, I was stuck for a while on reading books from the 6th grade (though, really, you have to admit that The Giver and Enders Game were really enjoyable).

In the first 3 months of 2018, I’ve finished 3 books (“How to Win Friends and Influence People”, “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”, and “The Gifts of Imperfection.”). I particularly enjoyed “The Gifts of Imperfection” by Brené Brown. The subtitle of the book is “Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are: Your Guide to a Wholehearted Life”. The book addressed a lot of my mental obstacles that have stopped me from writing (perfectionism, “fitting in” by not writing until my writing had been polished, self-doubt, etc.).

I figure that a good way for me to start writing is to write about some of the interesting ideas that I’ve read about and why they’ve stuck out to me, so here’s the first post about “Resilience and Numbing”.

Resilience and Numbing

Brené Brown’s book “The Gifts of Imperfection” establishes 10 guideposts to wholehearted living and one that really resonated with me was Guidepost #3: Cultivating a Resilient Spirit: Letting Go of Numbing and Powerlessness. In this guidepost, she discusses cultivating resilience through a few concrete actions such as:

• Letting Go of Comparisons With Others
• Practicing critical awareness of when we feel shame - Shame tends to make us feel isolated, as if we were the only ones who experience our insecurities. Questions such as, “am I the only one who has a muffin top?”, “am I the only one in an unhappy relationship?”, and “am I the only one who isn’t having sex 4.3 times a week?”. Critical awareness helps us to zoom out and connect with others even when our shame makes us want to hide away from others and helps us to realize we’re not the only ones with these insecurities.
• Letting Go of Numbing - We tend to numb to take the edge off of behaviors that make us feel shame, grief, fear, despair, disappointment, sadness, vulnerability, discomfort, and pain. The most resilient people consistently tend to feel the feelings, stay mindful of numbing behaviors, and trying to lean into the discomfort of hard emotions. Taking the edge off of behaviors is very related to addictions, since it becomes an automatic, chronic, and compulsive impulse.

I tend to struggle with numbing when I feel uncomfortable. My primary sources of numbing are browsing social media and various other time-wasting apps, lots of “productive” activities (such as listening to podcasts or doing language learning apps), and occasionally TV binging. I find that when I’m uncomfortable, I don’t take the time to analyze why I might be feeling that way or try to address the core issues that might be causing my discomfort. These core issues could be a reluctance to address something that got on my calendar for the following day, a general dissatisfaction with the way I’m spending my life, a fear of not being able to do something, or a variety of other potential issues that I should address but that I instinctively want to shy away from. I do think that there is a certain level of “readiness” or even a certain amount of emotional energy that I might want before addressing these issues (which would warrant relaxing activities and getting rest) but I would want to do that intentionally and cognizantly as opposed to mindlessly using those same relaxing activities to avoid confronting issues at hand.

I remember that on an overnight meditation retreat that I went on, one very satisfying portion of the night was when I was thinking about my fear of being alone, something that I don’t often admit to myself. Thinking about it triggered physical discomfort in my chest and stomach but it was productive to think through it in that safe environment where I didn’t have distractions. There is also a long-term benefit to this, which is that since I’ve leaned into this uncomfortable truth, it’s been cognitively easier for me to think about it without feeling as uncomfortable as before and easier for me to talk to friends about it. While I don’t always get constructive responses (many of my friends will feel uncomfortable for me when I talk about uncomfortable topics), it does help me to think about it more openly and honestly, which, I hope, will lead closer to a more wholehearted way acceptance and deeper understanding of myself in all of my peculiarities and foibles.