When I was young and it was summer, my maternal grandparents would come from Hong Kong to babysit me. It was a strange time in my life, what I consider my fetal years when I don’t remember learning anything, or having any awareness of my own consciousness.

My grandfather was a strong, intelligent, loving, gentle man, and my biggest hero. He showed me his war wounds, and taught me about states of matter. I even learned the term “civil war” from him when he used it (in English!) one time when some old black-and-white footage of Chinese battles came on the TV, but his English wasn’t great so I thought he was saying, “zero war”.

He was my favourite person in the world because he gave me the attention and stimulation I never got from my parents.

In one of those summers, I stole his cigarettes, two at a time so he wouldn’t notice, and hid them in the compartment of a red and white childrens drafting table. It was my way of getting him to stop smoking.

One time, I heard my grandparents shouting in the kitchen. They were fighting. My grandmother accused him of peeing on the toilet seat. It was the first time I heard them raise their voices at all, let alone at each other. I thought it was strange because at that age I was probably peeing all over the toilet seat, and no one ever yelled at me for it, so I didn’t understand why it was such a big deal.

My aunt and uncle were over because they wanted to spend time with them, and they came to see what the commotion was about. But they just stood there, listening, not wanting to take sides.

Eventually, my grandfather slowly bent at the knees, his entire body sagging, buried the heels of his hands in his eyes to rub out the tears, and said to my aunt and uncle with languishing pauses, “Sometimes, she makes me want to kill myself”.

And I knew he meant it.

I was too young to even be shocked, but for my grandfather to say something like that was completely out of character. He was invincible to me. I never understood it.

Until now.

Eventually, he went to live with my aunt and uncle for a while. They slowly became warmer when they saw each other a few weeks later. I don’t know if they ever talked about it.

© Jeff @ equivocality, 2010. | No comment
Post tags: childhood, growing up, memories, suicide | Categories: Thoughts

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I’ve been feeling better. I don’t know why. I can’t figure it out. I didn’t do actively do anything to fix myself.

Maybe it was Audra singing a verse on my answering machine, and promising to leave me a whole song some day. Or the fact that I was out of the house when the sun was out for the first time in as long as I can remember. Or even writing it all down and finally getting it off my chest, because explaining it forces me to rationalize things and view them objectively, instead of with a bias of depression.

It kind of scares me. I have a feeling this depression comes as easily as it goes.

Lately, the only thing I feel like doing is writing and practicing my ukulele, but I’m just glad I want to do something.

© Jeff @ equivocality, 2010. | 2 comments
Post tags: hope, music | Categories: Random

Man cannot cast off this mask; it is a projection of his own flesh and spirit. He can no longer remove from his own face this mask which has already grown like skin and flesh so he is always startled as if disbelieving this is himself, but it is in fact himself. He cannot remove this mask, and this is agony. But having manifested itself as his mask, it cannot be obliterated, because the mask is a replica of himself. It has no will of its own, or one could say it has a will but no means of expression and so prefers not to have a will. Therefore it has left man with an eternal face with which he can examine himself in amazement.

—Gao Xingjian, Soul Mountain

I turn 30 in eight months, and I still don’t know if I’m the person who smiles, or the person who hides behind the smile.

The Turning 30 Series

• 29: The Child
• 29 1/12: The Adolescent
• 29 2/12: The Lachrymologist
• 29 3/12: The Once Loved
• 29 4/12: The Mask

© Jeff @ equivocality, 2010. | No comment
Post tags: growing old, self-portrait | Categories: Misc

That fear has kept me alive. Admittedly, I’m still trying to understand these thoughts in myself.

There have been a few high profile suicides in the news lately. When making a statement about his son’s death, Walter Koenig said “If you’re one of those people and you feel you can’t handle it anymore, you know, if you can learn anything from this, it’s that there’s people out there who really care.” Then his wife added, “All the people up here, from the police to his friends, have shown love which he didn’t realize was available to him.”

Their words show a very common fundamental misunderstanding about the reasons someone has for taking their own life.

You think love can fix us? You think it matters that you care?

The very nature of suicide is that a suicidal person doesn’t believe there’s any hope. If we felt like there was somewhere to turn, someone who could help¹, that would imply there was hope. And if there was hope, they probably wouldn’t commit suicide.

We know you care, and we appreciate it when you tell us. We know how lucky we are to have the friends we do. But none of that helps. Suicide doesn’t necessarily result from a lack of external love. It can come from a lack of internal love, when we hate ourselves, or because our thoughts or problems seem too difficult to bear.

Sometimes I get advice about how to fix the issue, almost always from people who have never been suicidal. They think it’s a simple problem, and that we can just stop thinking about it and it’ll go away. Or we just need to find a hobby to distract us. Or find a passion to give us a reason to live. They don’t understand that suicidal thoughts are like a phobia — an irrational fear. You can’t easily fix irrational thoughts. They’re irrational because they don’t follow logic. Otherwise, you’d be able to cure someone’s arachnophobia simply by explaining to them, “Spiders are small and most can’t hurt you”. A person with arachnophobia knows that fact, and understands it perfectly, but put a spider next to them and they’ll be filled with uncontrollable anxiety.

Relate that back to suicidal thoughts: trying to rationalize things to a suicidal person by saying, “You have so much to live for”, is just as ineffective. Someone may have a rewarding career, a wonderful family, and good health, but none of that permeates the mind when suffering from a mental issue. The depression is irrational, and suicide isn’t the easy way out, it becomes the only way out.

From my own personal experience, the worst things you can do when handling a suicidal person are:

• worrying or getting uncomfortable — it puts pressure on us and makes us feel worse
• getting angry — it only makes us withdraw more and communicate less, and communication is one of the few outlets we have left
• telling them it would be a selfish decision — when someone is ready to kill themselves, they really don’t care and making them feel guilty is not the answer

The best things you can do for them are:

• giving them space — we need to handle things on our own terms and at our own pace, not yours, and the last thing we want is to feel like we’re inconveniencing you
• showing that you care, not just telling them — random flowers, text messages, hugs, poems (but back off if you’re told that you’re smothering)
• understanding that getting better is a long-term process, and not always permanent — we rely on your patience and understanding to get through it, and there may be regressions
• never, never, never turning down a chance to talk or hang out if they ask you — nothing makes us sink deeper in our fragile states than to feel like we aren’t important enough (we wouldn’t ask if we didn’t need to)

By no means am I suicidal right now, but yesterday I considered, and came as close to it as I’ve ever been. That was enough to scare me into the realization that I need help. Perhaps I’m fortunate enough to say that I understand how irrational these feelings are, and I know that I need to discipline, practice, effort, and systematic observation to fix myself.

1. Which is very different from someone who wants to help.

© Jeff @ equivocality, 2010. | 13 comments
Post tags: depression, suicide | Categories: Thoughts

With Defectiveness, you feel inwardly flawed and defective. You believe that you would be fundamentally unlovable to anyone who got close enough to really know you. Your defectiveness would be exposed.

As a child, you did not feel respected for who you were in your family. Instead, you were criticized for your “flaws.” You blamed yourself — you felt unworthy of love. As an adult, you are afraid of love. You find it difficult to believe that people close to you value you, so you expect rejection.

Depression is something I’ve struggled with my whole life. I have so much baggage. So many mental issues. It makes me wonder, “Who would want to be with me?” I can’t see how anyone would want to deal with it all if they truly knew what goes through my head. The thought of it makes me more depressed, which makes me feel more damaged, which makes me more depressed, and everything gets worse and worse.

I’m trying to break the cycle, but I feel incapable of loving myself. It’s so much easier to love other people. And when I can’t love myself, I can’t see how anyone else could love me either.

© Jeff @ equivocality, 2010. | 5 comments
Post tags: depression, self-evaluation | Categories: Thoughts

I’d do it in my house, and lie down in my bed in my boxers with the covers pulled over me. Probably listen to a playlist of Leonard Cohen’s albums from earliest to latest. If successful, it’d take three to five days for the police to find me, and it’d either be John or my work to call them. Maybe I’d set up some kind of trigger to call 911 after a day, so no one would have to deal with a gross decomposing body.

I have no idea if I’d leave a note. I can’t think of what I’d say.

Some people would be sad, but John would be most affected. It’d take him between one to three years to get over it. Everyone else would take less than a year.

John, Darren, Aaron, Louise, Rob and Mel, Pat and Jen, Trolley, my dad, possibly Joel, and maybe my uncle Joe would be at the funeral. Rana, Andrew and Alex, Jesse and Audra, Dan, Heather and Sergei, maybe even Frederic and Misun and my Tai Chi teacher, would be there too if they found out before the ceremony happened. My mom would be barred from attending. Any other family there would just be to make an appearance for my dad.

John would give the eulogy. I think he’d cry while delivering it, which would make me sad because I’ve never seen him cry before. Pat and maybe Aaron would want to say something too.

I’d let John decide what to do with my remains; whatever is easiest/cheapest for him to deal with. If I was cremated, I’d let him keep the ashes, but I’d allow him to give them to my dad if he chose to.

John would get almost everything in my estate; house, assets, RRSPs, life insurance policies, with the following exceptions:

• Darren would get Dolly, because he’s the one who would appreciate her most
• clothes would go to the Salvation Army
• all my computer equipment would go to Pat (aside from the Mac Mini and external drives, which would go to John for his home theatre system)
• Aaron would get my car and my Wacom tablet
• Frederic and Misun would get all my photographic prints (with the one exception below)
• Ryan would get my Canon Digital Rebel XT and 18-55mm lens and consoles
• Heather would get the rest of my photo gear
• My dad would get the painting Julie made of me
• My primary copy of the Tao Te Ching translated by Jonathan Star would go to Sam, my copy translated by Stephen Mitchell would go to the Tai Chi studio to be lent to anyone who wants to borrow it
• My copies of the Tao of Pooh, Te of Piglet, and illustrated copy of the Tao Te Ching by Martin Palmer, and Hoot would go to Bronwen
• My Mont Blanc Meisterstück Classique Rollerball, plant, and first copy of “Tomato Voice” would go to Julie
• My table tennis equipment and I Ching would go to Dan
• Jesse would get my ukulele
• My copies of Mind Over Mood and Reinventing Your Life would go to Jason
• My broadsword would go to Rob cause I bet he would think it was cool

And if my therapist ever found out, he would have wished that I continued my sessions.

© Jeff @ equivocality, 2010. | 9 comments
Post tags: suicide | Categories: Random

I have to write this because I can’t think of anything else nowadays, except for how hard it is to get out of bed in the morning.

I’ve been reading a book my therapist recommended to me a long time ago, the one that deals with lifetraps. In one of the first chapters, it goes through each lifetrap by first explaining a “core need”, which is something a child should have in order to thrive. It goes through examples on how we should have been raised, and how a healthy mind will grow from that. Then it explains how the lifetrap may develop if that core need isn’t met, by giving examples of destructive childhood environments.

And for almost every lifetrap in the book, I saw my own childhood in those examples of destructive environments, such as the one about “Self-esteem”:

Self-esteem is the feeling that we are worthwhile in our personal, social, and work lives. It comes from feeling loved and respected as a child in our family, by friends, and at school.

Ideally we would all have had childhoods that support our self-esteem. We would have felt loved and appreciated by our family, accepted by peers, and successful at school. We would have received praise and encouragement without excessive criticism or rejection.

But this may not have happened to you. Perhaps you had a parent or sibling who constantly criticized you, so that nothing you did was acceptable. You felt unlovable.

As an adult, you may feel insecure about certain aspects of your life.

When I was reading that, all I could think of was one specific incident from my childhood. I was young enough that my mom would bathe me, and she would do it in the en suite bathroom of the master bedroom. One day, she came to dry me off with a towel, and both the bathroom door and the bedroom curtains were open. I told her to close the door, because I was self-conscious about being seen naked by the neighbours across the street. I was really upset about it, and instead of walking two feet to close the door, she laughed and said, “You’re no Tom Cruise”, and left it open. From that point, I’ve had this irrepressible feeling that I’m never attractive enough for someone to even be interested in seeing me naked.

And that was just one example. My childhood was filled with so many such memories, each one branching into other lifetraps.

I’ve never wondered why I have self-esteem issues. I fucking hate how self-conscious I am, because I know the extent of that self-consciousness isn’t normal. I’ve struggled with issues like that my entire life, and I can trace everything back to my parents. It fills me with rage to know that they damaged me to the point where I feel so overwhelmed by my flaws that sometimes I’d rather be dead.

If I were ever to commit suicide — and at this point I feel like I can’t rule out the possibility of this anymore — I’d say that my parents would be 55% responsible¹, with my mom sharing more of that blame than my dad.

I hope she reads this one day. I hope my entire family reads this. I hope all my cousin’s moms read this, because they usually try to defend her. I want everyone to know that if I die by my own hand one day, I blame my mom more than anything else in the world. I want parents to know that they have a responsibility to their kids because they’re people too, that they have to treat them properly, and that I was an example of what happens when you don’t.

This is starting to sound like a suicide note, and it’s scaring me. Good thing I’ve always been a rational person, and I still recognize that suicide is an irrational decision for me at this moment. Sometimes, I watch suicide videos just to shock myself into realizing how final, irreversible, and horrible that decision is.

I’m at a lot better than where I was two years ago, before I went to therapy, but I’m still far from being fixed. I can admit that to myself now.

1. The other 45% being my own inability to deal with these things, but I attribute that to temperament, which is inborn and hence not their fault.

© Jeff @ equivocality, 2010. | 6 comments
Post tags: childhood, depression, memories, mother, parents, self-evaluation, suicide, therapy | Categories: Thoughts

I took these of Navid and Jess a little while back.

More recently, Navid called to let me know the childbirth went well, and now he has another adorable little half-Persian girl.

Rose is old enough to walk on her own now and give me kisses before she leaves.

© Jeff @ equivocality, 2010. | One comment
Post tags: photography, portrait | Categories: Misc, Random

Sure, I bared my soul. I surrendered. I gave her the songs I don’t share with just anyone. I told her how profoundly important, wonderful, and remarkable she was to me. I let her in like no one else before.

But there were parts of myself I never gave up.

It wasn’t because we hadn’t reached that level of trust. It was a way for me to protect myself. To feel as though she didn’t have all of me, so I wouldn’t be left as open and vulnerable when the end finally came.

I regret it now. Not because I think it would have changed anything¹, but because I wonder what it would have been like for someone to know me completely. To feel vulnerable and safe, all at once. Even knowing I’d be heartbroken eventually, it would have been worth it to share what I’ve always saved.

I’ve been keeping all my girlfriends at arms length to protect myself. I can’t go through life holding things back anymore, constantly worried someone’s going to hurt me. That’s always a risk, no matter how stable a relationship is.

I have to put myself out there. I have to make the first step, even if it means feeling uncomfortable, because the more you share, the more comfortable you become, the more you share, and so on.

I can only go forward now, as a wiser person, a stronger soul, a better lover.

I suppose I’m feeling nostalgic, or missing her, as is my wont when the seasons change.

1. Cause it wouldn’t have.

© Jeff @ equivocality, 2010. | 4 comments
Post tags: emotion, muse, self-evaluation, self-improvement | Categories: Thoughts

I’m free again after my training, and Dave takes me to his favourite restaurant in Nashua to meet up with Sid and his girlfriend. It’s a small, family-owned Mexican joint with bright colours and an appropriately accented waitress.

Over dinner, we compare our regional differences. I ask them what it means when someone says “A quarter of one” (12:45), because they don’t say “a quarter to one”. I ask them if they take their shoes off when they get in the house (sometimes, depending on the host), because I noticed no one did when I was in a house¹. I ask them if they have bubble tea (there’s one Vietnamese restaurant that serves it), because it’s all over Canada now. I tell them New York Fries serves poutine (What’s New York Fries?). I pull out some Canadian bills and show them the braille (Oooooooh). At one point, Sid calls me on my “eh”, contrasted from their “huh” used at the end of a sentence to emphasize a point.

Dave and I drive to downtown Manchester, the biggest city in New Hampshire, to a bar/café called Republic. Every month, Dave organizes the Collective, a group of creative people with a certain energy, and a void in their lives when it comes to someone with whom to discuss their endeavors on a practical, nonthreatening, philanthropic level.

I repeat a person’s name after being introduced to them, a trick I learned from the client specialist course I took in New Hampshire four years ago.

At one point, Ed asks us how we know each other, and Dave explains, along with a story:

When my sister and I were kids, we imagined what it would be like if we were more of us, so we needed an older sister and a younger brother to round out the sibling experience. As the oldest brother, I needed to know what having an older sister was like. And we also chose personalities to go with them. I think the older sister was a heavyset, strong girl with a determined, mothering tendency toward us. Her name was Daphne, and she was the type to play field hockey or lacrosse when she went to college had we known what that was back when we were kids. The younger brother would be a slender, artistic type that was a stylish and careful dresser; “metrosexual” was the term we’d have used, my sister commented recently, had we known the word. His name was Leland.

And when he met me yesterday, he thought, “That’s Leland!”. Now he’s wondering if he’s going to run into Daphne in the future.

After two hours of brilliant conversation and exchange of energy, we go our separate ways. These are my people, and I feel the need to start something similar in Ottawa.

I take a picture of us because I leave tomorrow, shortly after the end of the course, and won’t have a chance to see him again. I offer my house if he ever wants to get away and change up his frame of mind, and he returns the offer.

In 24 hours, I’ll be home sweet home again, but certainly wishing I had more time to talk, and relate, and feel as if there was another kindred soul in the world.

1. Not even in my hotel room, which I found very strange.

© Jeff @ equivocality, 2010. | No comment
Post tags: food, inspiration, interesting people, travel | Categories: Daily Life, Misc