"She's not even cute. I don't understand," she'd said, showing me a blurry photograph off Instagram.
"It's not about looks," I had said. There was nothing I could say that would make anything better.

I always used to say, it made me feel better when the last guy I was with moved on with someone who wasn't very fortunate looking. I could say, well at least I have that. And hopefully her personality would be terrible as well. That would be even better. But really, none of it matters, none of it really makes you feel any better because at the end of the day, they're with someone else.

I don't know what it's about. I don't know why we move on in the ways that we do, or why we "upgrade" or "downgrade" for lack of better phrases. All I know is, everything kind of works out the way it's supposed to, the way it has to. And some of the outcomes will be unpleasant, and we're not going to like it. Sometimes our greatest fears are realized.

But I don't know. Whatever happens after you were with someone, none of that discounts what you had while you were together. It's just, this is how it is now.

You make a series of decisions, and sometimes, this is where the story goes.

But your story's not over. It's just a hard bump in the road, you just have to get through. Work on yourself, don't mind others, and things will get better. I know this much.

Mike: it's killer
Mike: it's draining
Mike: soul-crushing
Mike: and sometimes you look up from the computer screen
Mike: and you feel like this is it
Mike: nothing comes after this
Mike: like you will do [the job], and then you will be homeless, and then you will die
Kim Chi: not unless i die tomorrow
Mike: then you'll skip the homeless part
Mike: we understand each other, right?
Mike: this is not the end!
Mike: many interesting things will happen to you
Mike: before you die
Mike: assuming you don't die tomorrow

-"it's not going to be easy."
-"i don't need easy. i just need possible."

There's that point where you realize your parents are just people, flawed in ways you never recognized, and then there's that point where you grow up and come to admire their strength through every pain and are thankful for every sacrifice.

another try in growing up and letting go

When I came over to your house a few months back, you'd asked if I'd been there before. And I knew I had before, it was familiar, but I couldn't really recall why that would've been the case. You said, it was probably a family thing. But that didn't seem right to me. So yesterday, in part boredom and in part curiosity, I vaguely recalled writing about you, way back when, but I couldn't really place when or why that would be the case, so I pulled out my old hand-written journals and started looking. Of course, since I wasn't sure what I was looking for aside from your name, I ended up taking an unintentional trip down memory lane....from 1998 to 2003. And it's completely bizarre how I forgot so many things had happened. It's completely correct how easy it is that we forget these little details, these day to day happenings, these entire summers spent hanging out. I just forgot things I didn't think I would've forgotten, but I did. Apparently, you came around when I was 16, and you stayed around that summer, and we spent the rest of that year in sporadic conversation. Honestly, I had no recollection, no recollection. I remember her 16th birthday, and I remember sitting around after everyone had left and just talking, but I never placed you there as well. A year after, when she turned 17, I wrote, after everyone left, we'd been looking through old photos from the previous year, and I'd came upon a negative–vintage, isn't it–and it was of you, Charles, Krystine and I from the same night the year before, when we were just sitting around and talking. And I had no recollection.

This trip down memory lane is completely bizarre, not so much because I catalog every moment for fear that I will forget, but the truth is, we really do forget.


I don't write every moment of my life down like I did those years. The after years haven't held time, space or candor for that. I can't be as open and honest online with the identities of others as I used to be in the tangible.


We used to know each other. I guess we used to be friends, and neither of us mentioned it in the after years. You probably forgot, I forgot.

 __________________________________________________________

Last autumn, you asked me to hang out.  It wasn't an unusual request, we'd been friends for years after all.  Though friend would be a weird word to describe us, we were always kind of off, there was always something kind of there, that we never took care of.

And then we did, and the only thing that came was the clarity that was why it had never worked.

I wrote about you a lot.  Actually, you overshadowed the former to a degree.  You might be the reason why I failed to recall the former.  But from the moment we met, to the after years, I cataloged the things you said, the things that reminded me of you, and then the drama, the disappointments, and the confusion.  I wasn't good to you.  I wasn't good for you.  And fuck, I probably didn't make much sense, since it seems, through most of it, I was never quite sure.  And then, one day I decided we should just be friends.  So I told you that, via AIM.  And then I continued to prattle on, as if it was all okay.  And maybe these moments, are ones you no longer recall, but.

I kinda sucked.  It's been a long time.  None of it matters anymore, but hey, I'm sorry.


It's funny how, all these years pass, and you think not much happens, but then so much does, so much is fit into these minute summers, those winters, falls, homecomings and celebrations.  Nights spent driving out into the middle of nowhere and hanging out in fields, on driveways, talking about nothing – and sometimes, these moments become so vague in my memory that I'm no longer sure if they were real or something I made up or dreamed.