there was a time where i felt like all my love was gone. the first time i felt truly alone in my life was when i first landed in this country, and the second time was after my last final exam when i planted my face in my chair and cried in not just sadness, but agony. departure, disappointment, and destruction had strewn its webs across my mind, emptying out my spirit into the parched california soil beneath me.
why did they need to leave? could i have done more? could i have been more? these thoughts raced through my mind as i recalled all that i lost or left behind. thoughts of my grandmother pale in the hospice last year, the jargon-filled job rejections, the last goodbye to my best friend leaving for god-knows-how-long, and the soft brown eyes of a lover who walked away flooded my being like i had released the levee of my heart that was only sealed because of incessant schoolwork. when all the equations were gone, all the circuits were solved, and all the meetings passed, the thin dermis of my heart finally gave in and it all came spilling out onto the carpet. perhaps solace can be found in the wisps of smoke from a cigarette, or the bottom of my taiwanese whiskey, but those things only made the colors of my heart in the carpet more vibrant.
it was exactly a week later that me and my friend were in taiwan, drinking alishan oolong in a tea house behind a mining cave while rain drenched the stone stairs of jiufen old street. hot water boiled in a kettle next to us, and we talked for hours while continuously steeping the tea, filtering it, and pouring it out ad nauseum. tea is bitter, not unlike heavily diluted bleach or drain cleaner, but why do we like it? why does bitterness taste so… good?
time flies, doesn’t it? one day i’m crying in my dorm, the next i’m in taiwan drinking tea, and now i’m back in la sitting on a bench listening to sublime while the sun sets. halfway through the quarter, a friend from japan that used to attend ucla visited me and my friends, and after a week of nostalgic and music-filled revelry we finally had to say goodbye again. the emotion that filled me was hard to (if not impossible) to describe. was i sad that he was leaving or happy i got to spend time with him? was i at peace with the transience, or was i angry that things could not be the way i wanted them to be?
what i felt was indescribable, not because it was unique but because english does not seem to dwell in contradictions. a happy sadness, a sad happiness, angry peace, peaceful anger. bittersweetness, perhaps sweet bitterness, like the tea me and my friend slowly sipped on in taiwan. as someone who thrives on contradictions, it took a long time for me to realize that nothing is really contradictory but rather everything is a realization of the same thing: life.
the bitterness i felt could only be tasted when i knew sweetness, and the sweetness i now feel only came after bitterness. isn’t it ironic that it takes saying goodbye to your friends to realize how much they warm your heart? or saying goodbye to a family member to cherish their presence? or watching a lover leave to realize the love you had or still have? contradictions breed the truth, and the truth is life in its fullest glory: a life that holds black and white, light and dark, sweet and bitter, happy and sad.
maybe one day the seemingly dense web of contradictions will straighten themselves out into a beautiful tapestry that narrates our life. every clashing color will blend seamlessly, and every incongruent shape will form wonderful architectures. in the midst of the realization of how much i lost, i cannot help but ponder on the possibility of it all coming back. perhaps in the afterlife i can eat my grandmother’s braised pig feet again, or one summer i can have a drink with my friends outside the korean military base, or when the right time comes me and the girl i loved will serendipitously brush shoulders, or perhaps none of these will ever happen in the near future if in any future. in the midst of all the contradictions of life, i was able to piece together all the love that i found to make up for what i felt i had lost. this is life.
if you only knew all the love that i found, it’s hard to keep my soul on the ground.