The Secret Garden of fooling ourselves

I guess at some point in our lives it's going to get tough and we are going to want to give in to the easy way out - leaving, walking out, quitting, whatever you want to call it. That one point in our lives where everything we worked for and everything that we were holding on to is no longer a priority. Then we tend to drift off and behave in certain ways that we would have never dreamed of doing, whether we are looking for a way out from the bottom of that wine glass or brainwashing ourselves into thinking that the mountain we are climbing now has no downhill, so there is no point in pushing on. 


When things get so hard we misbehave and become our alter ego, just someone that's totally 180 degrees from who we really are. Because we don't want to face what's in front of us, what we have to wake up to every morning and the unsatisfactory thoughts we have towards the circumstances that we are living in, it blinds us from how we truly feel. To me it's like losing weight, we try and try but there are no results being shown. Then we get disappointed and discouraged because we are not patient enough for the weight to come off. We have an image of how we imagine ourselves to look in the mirror when we are skinny but every time we look in the mirror the person staring back at us don't fit the image. 


In my opinion, leaving behind our lives to start fresh is the definition of lust. Thinking about that reset button rushes adrenaline through our veins and got us fantasizing about how our lives can be molded into perfection. However, perfection does not exist. There is a difference between cutting out what we don't want from our lives and chasing after something that we want right now but won't be needing later; like trends. 


If we followed trends we will never be able to have our own sense of style and individualism. We won't be comfortable in our own skin, we'll just have to continuously change our look to make ourselves feel like we are fitting in with society.


Instead of correcting the way we think we try to replace the parts of our lives that define who we are. Like the people who love us when times are hard with people who we think that will love us more when times are hard and thoughts of "if I stick it out through this rough time it's going to make me stronger" with thoughts of "if I leave now I won't have to deal with this anymore."


Now the big decision is how do we know if staying with our current situations is the right path to take and what if, just what if, things would have been better for us if we did leave everything behind?

The Secret Garden of losing a grandparent

The phrase "Never forget where you come from" really has a deeper meaning. When we forget where we come from we forget who we are, where our features came from and where we are most ourselves at.

Recently I flew back to my home land where I was born and raised by my grandparents until I was 7 years old, my mother and I received news that my grandmother was in the emergency room in critical condition. Until I got there it never really hit me that she was in a bad condition, the moment we got off the plane we zoomed off to the hospital. There I greeted my poor grandfather who was drowned in tears and I walked in to the room where my grandma was. Her body was covered under a thin blanket which only showed an outline of her; her stomach was extremely over sized and her body was so fragile that just by grazing her arm I felt like I was causing her enormous amount of pain. Her left hand was black and swollen, I could see the marks left over from the stabbing of needles, little drops of blood was trickling down slowly under the saran wrap like material that was holding the needle in place.

It felt different to see her that way, my grandmother was a strong person, a person who never gave in to pain and always held on for the very last fight, she was a trooper, a fighter, she was my hero.

The doctor said that she was unconscious and she showed no signs of movement but when we stood by her bedside and told her that we were here she moved her left hand and tapped mine. Just like when she tapped my mom's hand with her left foot when she told her that she was here to see her.

As I sit in my room reminiscing the memories of my time with her I have a lot of regrets, how I could have been more nice to her, spend more time with her, call her every Sundays, and involve her more in my life are all the things that I could have done. One thing I know I did correctly was telling her that I love her, every time I called her, I told her that I love her because I had a friend who always told her mom that she loved her when they hung up the phone. She wasn't a very good friend but she taught me something; tomorrow is unpredictable so express our love for the ones we secretly care for the most so that way when they leave our side they know how we felt about them.

I gained so much knowledge about myself from this experience, that being an adult is not as glamorous as it's advertised to be. Being an adult meant holding my grandfather while he shed his tears, being a shoulder to cry on for my mother, accompanying the adults as we held my grandmother's icy cold body for the last time, seeing the limp lifeless body that's supposed to be censored for the young eyes, watch helplessly as they slid my grandmother's corpse into the cremation oven, and being in front row to see her bronze skeleton row out of the chamber after the process. Being an adult meant there was no mercy for the eyes, I had to endure the raw images along with the cruel reality of death. Being an adult meant giving empty hugs and kisses to those who never cared from the start and biting my tongue when I wanted to curse them for faking their tears. For my young age at 18 I saw what most people can only see in movies, it was painful but it helped me mature.

So remembering where we came from is an important thing to remember. My hair, eyes and body structure came from my grandmother. Her silky smooth hair stood out like a sore thumb in the old pictures, the complements I get on my features are all thanks to her.

Before I left Korea I promised her that I'm not going to cry anymore, crying will just drain my energy and only bring sadness. I promised to stand tall with my chin up and keep marching forward, to live the life that was given to me by mother, and accomplish everything that I want to accomplish. I promised to make her proud and show everyone that this is who I am and that I can be even more, I am my grandmother's granddaughter and she raised me to be the best I can be. To not let my tongue spit poison but let my actions rise above those who try to bring me down.

Yes, I've learned a lot from my grandmother's passing and like I mentioned before.. time is a precious, precious thing. Time will not wait and it will not show compassion. time will ride on without accommodation. Which is why within this short period of time that we have here on Earth we must grasp the moment, live every second to our fullest and give our all at everything we do.

My grandmother's death was unavoidable, it was going to happen now or later. But I truly feel that it gave me a new perspective on life. I still have a lot more years to go and I'm going to live it well.

The Secret Garden of losing loved ones

It's 10:48pm and I will be boarding tomorrow at 12 noon to Korea to see my grandma. I never lost a loved one before, well actually someone so close to me before. So such thoughts like "Is she going to be okay?" and "I wonder how she looks like?" keeps running through my head like a NIKE commercial. Usually I like to keep these kind of things private but I decided to share this experience with those who have not yet lost someone.

The tremendous amount of fear is the very first thing that runs through my veins, mainly because I honestly don't know how it will feel. My boyfriend's grandfather passed away and I was there to comfort him and tell him that he's in a better place. Of course I couldn't fully understand what he was feeling or how to comfort him because I have never had a family member or anyone pass away.

I have lost many people, not in that kind of sense but in other ways. I've lost numerous friends to drugs, alcohol addiction and even prostitution. Growing up I saw first hand how a person sways and fall down the wrong path.

My best friend in 6th grade was a real goody two shoes, she never cursed and she NEVER littered. One time we gotten into a really big fight due to my careless littering of a gum wrapper, for god's sake it's a gum wrapper. She came from a descent Hawaiian family, they were tight and always cared for one another. They were well mannered, respectful and very understanding. Her parents always set the best examples possible for her and she followed very well. Then slowly she began to feel low and restless thinking that people hate her. She had a very small flaw, she had a tear drop size of a mole on her ear that was easily covered up by her long black hair. This never bothered me, I didn't find it gross or anything. But the other girls who I hung out with thought differently.

I socialized with girls who mainly cared about their looks rather than the grades they got on their exams, that cared more about who's dating who and what designer brand was most popular that season. So when we started to reach that point in our lives where there was rivalry between girls, they attacked the most vulnerable from the herd.

Boy, did they tear her apart, they played dirty and always got away with it. No matter how hard I tried to defend her and make the other girls see that she's no different that any of us, they ganged up on her even more. So eventually she did "bad" things to fit in. The last I heard was that she was selling herself on the corner to get cash for heroine. Her mother called me and said i was forbidden from seeing her ever again, and just like that my best friend was taken away from me.

This is just one of the stories I wanted to share about how I lost my closest friend throughout the short years of my life. And none of them compares to the thought of losing my only grandmother. i know there are many others out there who wishes that they had more time with the ones that they've lost and I my heart goes out to them. I wish I had more time to love and appreciate her, I wish I spent more time with her when I had the chance.

Lesson learned: Never underestimate the importance of time. Time is like reefs in the ocean and the innocence planted in children. It's something that goes unnoticed, it's beauty is subtle and silent. It's even more precious than the 7 wonders of the world and the generations of mankind. If used wisely, time can be used to experience every experience, achieve the unachievable, believe in the unbelievable, and live the very life that was given to us to its magnificent best.
Without it, the joy we feel, the sadness we learn to endure, the hope we forever hold in our hearts, and the love we express for others are all meaningless. I ask myself "How can we do all of this without time?"

We can't.

The Secret Garden of working over time and emergency patients

The date was October 15th 2009, the time was 4:00pm, location: acupuncture clinic.
When I took this job I never thought that I would be stuck after hours with an emergency patient, squeezing puss and tissues out of a patient's stomach for 3 hours.

Patient comes in at 4:00pm, sits down in the waiting area and leaves to the bathroom then I hear a desperate yelling coming from the bathroom. I bring in the doctor to the bathroom and when she got there, there was puss everywhere, on the floor, the door handle, the trashcan, just everywhere. He suffered from a long term disease which imitated colitis, which is a inflammation of the colon that causes diarrhea, abdominal pain, painful bowl movements, etc..
His lower stomach was hard, he looked about 6 feet and weighed less than 110 lbs, so he had a very thin frame but with a rock solid lower stomach that stuck out like a pregnant woman's belly.

No one knew what it was, his doctors has given up and concluded that he might not be able to make it. So eventually he came to our clinic looking for help, he took our herbal medicine and the inflammation started to worsen. We found out that the thing that was in his stomach was years and years of puss that has built up by the bacterias that was living in his body. The puss eventually became solid and expanded, so the herbal medicine liquefied it and the skin was no longer able to hold it; so it exploded.

We spent 4 hours tending to the patient and placing tissues under him so the puss can flow out, we didn't even squeeze it most of the time and it came out. The most painful part was when a tissue or the root of the problem; the bacteria chunks were exposed and the acupuncture doctor had to pull it out of his 6 mm diameter hole in his stomach. It was definitely disturbing, the smell lingered around the clinic until the next day, half a gallon of Clorox did the trick I must say. So we spent from 4 in the afternoon til 7 in the evening and I stayed until 8pm sanitizing and cleaning.


<--Yes, that is a picture of me taking a 2 minute break, the picture was taken by my boyfriend who waited 4 hours to take me home. Thanks babe. I took pictures of the whole mess but I wont post it because it might traumatize the readers. At the end of the day I was exhausted, I had a paper to write and when I got home after a short dinner it was already 10pm. That's when the tears came, having two jobs going to school full time and this was just the cherry on top. Anyone who is going to school and working will feel my pain. There is that point in our lives where our everyday routine becomes too much and we need a break, but what happens when the break doesn't come?

The lives we live are not picture perfect but bitching about it wont do us any good either. I learned to accept the situations as they come and if there is something that we can do about it to make it better, I should do it. But if there is no way out and we need to wait until things become smoother then we should. For a year now I've been complaining about how I am sacrificing so much for my family and nothing made me feel better until I realized it'll get better later. That doesn't mean I'm going to wait here like a fool for my "moment". No. It means if there is a way out but it's not due to be here until next year; I'll plan and set it to action when the time is due instead of forcing them to happen now.

Patience.. I'm learning it. Day by day.