Journal Entry 1

Chapters

The Hospital.

When the lights turned on, I could see their tears glimmering in the light. I stood quietly in the corner of the hospital room, watching, feeling both sad and confused.

My dad is currently in the hospital and has been since last week and I only just visited him last night for an hour at 12 AM. And for the past week, my grandma had been averaging five calls a week begging me to visit him. I really wanted to, but I just had no way of transporting myself all the way to Great Neck. She would constantly tell me I was a bad person and at some point along the week, I started seeing it as a form of manipulation while building resentment towards her.

My mom hates my dad and my grandma. She would always say how she has a big mouth and is always saying random shit (as in gossip) and as for my dad, let’s just say the family lore goes deep. Essentially she was left traumatized by him through cheating when I was born, which makes sense for why she hates him. Every time I came home after visiting my dad, she would always have something bad to say about him, and they were mostly true. But I think she doesn’t believe in him ever changing as a person and always said how he doesn’t care the slightest bit about me and my brother. From the narrative my mom always tells me, he basically abandoned me as a child to have whatever fun there was out there. My mom, many times, would advise him to watch his health, yet he never did.

I always found it really hard to accept the fact that he never cared about us. He always wanted to go out and eat with us and spoil us. Yes, there were many issues with him like always being in debt and letting interest from debt build up but still, it was just hard to believe something like that could be true. That he didn’t care about us at all. That’s why when he suddenly started crying when I first visited him in the hospital, I could only feel a strong sting of guilt and gloom. There were so many sides to this story and I didn’t know which one to believe. A conflicting narrative.

Just being in that hospital room made me feel emotional. It was also late at night which definitely contributed to it, but my heart sank at the sight because I had never seen my dad cry. My mom told me once that she asked him something along the lines of, “What would happen if you died today?” and he supposedly replied with, “It wouldn’t matter because I already have everything I want.” And while I was sitting beside him, watching him lie in the hospital bed, I kept wondering whether or not he would still say the same thing at that moment.

Before going to the hospital, I didn’t think it would be anything special. After all, it was just a trip to the hospital. Yet, it still made me wonder what kind of person I am. For that first week that he was in the hospital, I was always reluctant to visit in the first place and never placed a priority on my task list to visit my dad and despite him not being the best parent when I was first introduced into this world, it hit me. That sad, dark environment while being late at night, with the vitals on display next to him. Him lying in the bed with seemingly no energy and appearing so tired. The several wires that were attached to him. I never knew just that scene… could make someone like me feel so emotional. There are still so many things I haven’t experienced in life, and this was one of them. There will come a time in my life when a trip to the hospital won’t just be a trip to the hospital. It’ll be the end of someone’s story. And if someone being sick is already this sad, then how sad will it be when that time comes?

Wedding Party?

Prior to visiting my dad in the hospital on Sunday, I went to a wedding party as mentioned. It was alright. The food was pretty valid for a wedding party. I thought it was going to be one of those big Chinese wedding parties but it was just hosted at a venue at NYIT which surprised me. There were like three options for entrees: one of them was salmon, another was steak with some potatoes, and the third one I forgot. I ordered the steak because it sounded really good. I should honestly be taking more photos of literally everything now that I’m thinking about it if I’m going to journal about it. I think I have a photo of the steak and potatoes? I’ll probably attach it below if I do. The sauce was really good but there were only 4 slices of steak and I was like bruh. The bathroom was hella nice though (I mean I guess that’s expected). There were a lot of cookies and some sort of cinnamon roll thing with a white filling and then a whole cart with a variety of cakes to choose from. This was probably one of the first times in a while that I indulged in my big backing desires since my initial cut. I actually didn’t feel that bad about myself after all that sugar for once. There were goody bags but unfortunately it was just chocolate and some lychee candy. The goody bags HAVE to be the best part of a wedding party.

Enough about the experience thought, while I was at the wedding party I was wondering if I would do a wedding party as big as those typical Chinese weddings where it’s genuinely just full of people who are there just for the food, do a really small one maybe in the backyard of my house, or maybe not even doing one. I saw a study a while ago where there’s a correlation between the money spent on a wedding and divorce rates. It has something to do with the attention-seeking part of it and it makes sense. But at the same time, it’s a pretty special moment so I think I would want to celebrate it right? As of right now I think my answer might be leaning towards a celebration at the back of my house or something. It’s small enough where I don’t need to spend a lot of money while also making it special if I budget well enough. Choosing this option would come with less of that validation which might be better for the relationship? Right? Then I can spend all the excess money on the honeymoon travelling or whatever. I don’t know why I’m thinking about this so early but it’s quite an interesting thing to think about as I attend more of these wedding parties and farm free meals.

Are You Stupid?

A while ago, I saw an Instagram reel that went pretty viral. It resurfaced on my feed when a psychologist broke it down. If you haven’t seen it, the gist of it is a pot exploding and soup leaking all over and then the wife is shaken and frozen from the explosion. The husband steps into the room and deals with the mess slowly and in such a calm demeanor. The psychologist says how it’s a good way to react and it got me thinking last night (at like 1 AM) on how I would react.

I started with how I usually talk to my little brother when he does something absurdly wrong. I remember many times of me telling him, “Are you stupid?” That’s probably the complete opposite of the video and I was like how am I going to survive a relationship if I already don’t communicate well with my little brother. I felt pretty guilty about myself, so I told myself in bed that I will stop being mean to my brother and speak more calmly before I can get into a relationship. Because that relationship is going to die fast if I explode like that so easily. Yeah, that’s just a goal from now on. Try not to explode too easily, be calmer in situations like these, and especially try to pick better vocabulary. Maybe instead of, “Are you stupid?”, I’ll start saying, “What happened?” Hopefully being aware of it is the first step toward changing the habit 🙏🙏.

Here’s the reel that I was talking about:

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The Lying Orthodontist Strikes Once Again

Yeah so about those braces…

I was supposed to get them off on June 13th and I was so excited and all that because these braces are getting annoying. So I went to that appointment, only to be told, “Nah, we can’t take them off just yet because a bracket fell off.” What do you mean a bracket fell off? All of them look perfectly attached. To top it off, an assistant was the one who fixed the bracket and then immediately dismissed me after. So she dismissed me without one of the actual orthodontists inspecting my teeth. Which is pretty concerning because are you really sure that’s fine when I’m this close to getting my braces off? This is just buildup to the next appointment which was yesterday, July 4th.

So I came into the office yesterday not expecting to get it off because the same bracket that that assistant had put back on, fell off once again. On top of that, there was also a tooth on the bottom that started rotating. Since no orthodontist actually took a look at my teeth during the previous appointment, a tooth started rotating because my teeth were “too tight”. Not only that but that same assistant was in the office yesterday and when the orthodontist actually came over this time, the assistant only told her about the broken bracket and didn’t acknowledge that one tooth that was rotating. The orthodontist was like, “Oh no, what happened?” Yeah, I wonder what happened. Maybe if they actually had an orthodontist look at my teeth last time then there wouldn’t be a tooth rotating. That was the second thing that pissed me off. The first thing was seeing that same assistant once again. I was praying that she wouldn’t be the one to fix my bracket while I was waiting for the orthodontist to come over. The third thing that pissed me off was when that assistant asked what color bands I wanted on my braces, I said the usual silver but she didn’t even give me silver. She gave me some navy blue color. This god damn assistant should be paying me for delaying my treatment.

Now I have to wait for that one tooth to straighten again before I can get the braces off. What pissed me off even more was that they wanted me to keep doing the same rubber band configuration I’d already been doing for the past two months. So this time, I decided to wait for the orthodontist to finish with her current patient so I could ask if that’s really what I should be doing. On the spot right before I was supposed to leave, she told me not to wear rubber bands this time. So basically, if I never took the time to ask, I probably would’ve fucked up my teeth even more and delayed my braces removal.

Yeah this one’s just a rant but it’s so stupid. I’ve been on these braces for almost 5 years now. GET THEM OFF ME PLEASE.

Photo(s) of the Week:

This week I went to a wedding party and visited my dad in the hospital on Sunday. Then on Monday, I went to pick up my diploma from school and went out to hangout with my friends after. I didn’t do much the rest of the week. I attached photos from across the week and added captions to each one. I might just start adding captions instead of including a paragraph caption (probably starting next week).