Chapter 78

When I first started writing this autobiography, I wasn’t actually sure how much of my past I should incorporate. While the things I mentioned in this blog were things that really happened in the past, I’m just not sure it was interesting enough to consider putting on paper. I mean, they were interesting things to me at the time. However, writing about them with the benefit of hindsight seems to make them feel inconsequential in a way. 

I think that has to do with time dilation. When you’re younger, everything feels important. I mean, a month seems so significant and long when you’ve only been alive a couple of years. It’s only when you’ve been alive for a few decades do you realize that those events in the past were not all as earth-ending as you may have thought. 

But why did I still write about all those things I mentioned before then? If they’re noted to be less important and grandiose in the future, why mention them at all? Why talk about music in highschool and my relationship with my mom during that time? Why go into so much detail? The answer is simple. It gives context. 

I’ve actually already mentioned this a while back too but since that was chapters ago, I think it’s worth reiterating. 

Memory is fluid. 

You can change your experiences and memories upon new information and certain core positive memories in the past can become negative ones from new information. Our human minds just work this way. So what does that mean for my story? Well, that’s simple. Everything matters. 

Everything matters because it all gives context in some way or other. The tone that I’m using while mentioning the past tells you about the future because I am talking about the past from the future. If I write a positive memory but add in a lot of details about negative aspects I didn’t know about at the time, it’s because I found out about it in the future and it ruined those experiences. 

When you read that even positive experiences with my mom and dad are always mentioned in a negative way, it’s because sometime in the future, a schism likely happened that caused me to think about them in a worse light. If you’ve read the chapters leading up to this one, you may now understand some of the tones I used in the past. 

I mean, based on my relationship with my dad from all the information I’ve now read to you, you may now understand the tone I used in the past when talking about my dad. If we take this one step further, I speculate that one of the reasons for why I have written so very little positive familial stories is because of how negative my relationship with my parents are at the moment. 

I admit to this exclusion bias. I feel like my brain sees my parents the way they are in the present, which is not very positive, and then erases all memories that contradict that narrative. While it’s kind of scary to think, because of all the sh*t I went through with mom and dad, that some of my positive experiences are completely wiped out, I still stand by keeping my story the way it is. Author bias tells more of the story. We are human after all. 

Also, this is an autobiography-like blog. I mean… What did you expect? A biased narrative is the only one that I can really write.

What I’m trying to say is, even if I’m not entirely conscious of it. There were reasons for including the stories I did. The simple fact that I can recall them means that they were significant. If they weren’t significant, I would have forgotten about some of these stories in the past already. But I didn’t. Therefore, they mean something. 

Admitting to the bias and deciding to keep them in does one other thing. By not auditing the blog much, it allows me to relive my life with you, the audience (all 10 of you lol). I mean, this entire blog kind of started like a practice in therapy so naturally, reliving these memories is part of the journey. As I talk more and more about all of this with you, I’ll be making connections to previous events that I would’ve never thought about before as well. I think this makes it all the more exciting and meaningful. A living autobiography is just…different. 

So anyhow, this is just me trying to say all the stories I mentioned in the past were stories that, even when seemingly unimportant, were important. So where am I going with this? Well. Simple, if you just spend a few seconds looking at all the chapters on the homepage, you’ll come to see that I mention a lot about my hobbies and rarely anything about my academics. There are chapters that go into detail about my academics but they are outnumbered really easily by the chapters regarding hobbies. 

It’s not hard to see that to me, my hobbies were my safe space. 

I never grew up with a dad. I, instead, grew up with a cello. 

I don’t recall a single time I hung out with mom at a park just to experience being outside but I do recall all the times she took me to get cello lessons from CC. 

When mom and CC yelled at me too harshly and I wanted to quit classical music, I didn’t have another parent to run off to. I escaped by hanging out with breakdancers in my school. 

I never had the experience of my dad nor mom telling me they were proud of me but I had the experience of my high school music department giving me a plaque for being an outstanding student. 

All the times in the past when I needed a parent or guardian with me, it seemed like my knee-jerk reaction was to find a hobby and occupy myself with it. It was my answer to all problems with family. Then, when I got older, I started to give more roles to my hobbies beyond just abandonment issues. Feeling stressed? Go breakdance. Feeling inapt? Go practice your acapella parts. Feeling depressed? Drill those cello finger exercises. 

Before I knew it, I needed my breakdancing, my acapella and my cello playing to cope with whatever was on my mind. They were my way of touching ground and feeling like I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth. They gave me a certain and unwavering identity in a sea of doubt and insecurity. They were my means to emotional and mental stability. 

But they were a problem. Hobbies are not a live person. They don’t respond back. They can only help distract you while the problems are still there. They can’t offer advice to absolve yourself of some internal turmoil. They can only serve to distract you while you find the answers yourself. 

But what if you can’t find the answers yourself? Or worse still, what if there are no answers?

Well, in that case, it’s not great for you. 

If you were asking a person to tell you the answer to something like why your dad never loved you, when they realize that they don’t have the answer they’ll likely at least tell you that they don’t have the answer (but do come back next week and keep paying for those therapy sessions). When you ask a thing you do why your life is the way it is. There is no answer. Nor any feedback telling you to stop. In my case, what you end up getting is…an addiction. 

It’s an illogical thought. Maybe if I get better at the cello, my dad will come back. Maybe if I learn air flares and breakdance at the peak level, my breakdancing family can replace my lack of a real one. Maybe if I keep singing with my acapella group and keep my head in the game of acapella, the voices we make will drown out all the voices in my head and keep them silent. 

Talking with people would be a better choice as a means to emotionally stabilize yourself. To my past self’s credit, I did try this a bit. I went to a few optometry parties and shared a bit and even talked about some of this stuff with the girlfriend too. Unfortunately, I never developed the skills to share about my past in a casual-conversation-like style. That is to say, when I shared at the optometry parties, I ended up oversharing and made it, honestly, kind of awkward. 

With the girlfriend? Well… That ended up horribly too. In fact, when I mentioned how our longest breakup in optometry school was a few months and was so long we’d even gone on a date or two with new people? Yeah, that was right after my conversation with mom about dad and his previously unknown family. I just had trouble telling her about stuff, probably more because of my own insecurities than anything. If I really had to attribute something to that breakup, it was probably my inability to really open up about this kind of stuff. It’s ridiculous. I know. My own frustration at thinking it was because of the girlfriend not being not the right one for me, that I couldn’t talk about it. How does that even make sense? And yet it happened.

In the end, it was kind of obvious where I would eventually go back to. 

It was always going to be right back into the realm of the clubs and extracurriculars.