Author: gigiesteechang

…passed by this one restaurant on Queen West, La Palette. I peered into the red framed windows and the bottles of liquor and sake balanced precariously on the sill and at the bar. I saw the little chandeliers hanging. And I craved it, felt drawn to it inexplicable ways. 17, 21, and now 24, thinking, thinking for 5 years of this restaurant. Every time I walked by I was on my way somewhere else. Today, I take myself to it. I take myself to it in a beautiful airy dress, with my favourite perfume, a book on transgender theory. I take myself to it from my beautiful lofty home, which I call the tree house, because it perches at the end of a leafy street on the top floor of a hundred year old brownstone, where the sun warms the hardwood through the generous windows, where the horizon of the blue lake is always sparkling, where I sit on the fire escape and feel secure, feel held, feel loved by this beautiful life, which did not come easy, and for which I am glad. The hard things make the good moments that much more recognizable. Every moment lately, I have been giving gratitude, for how things turned out. I am 24, I am 24 and I have a peace. I have a break from the storm. The sun has broken through the clouds. And I am taking myself out, for a night on the town, for a spin. Because this love, this love is here at last.

Has the thought of a person ever felt like a physical object that you can’t quite put down? I’ve been trying to put down, let this go for so long, and yet each time I let it back in, indeed, I seek it out – approval, attention, the slightest bit of acknowledgement so that the warmth of the glow spreads. Like an addiction.

Today I was standing in the kitchen, munching on some carrots and hummus and thinking about how I want to experience a whirlwind, intense love, the kind that you know even at its height that the flame is fast burning to its end. And then I caught myself: this has to be a kind of self sabotage, a self-hatred so deep that I don’t think I deserve secure love?

But security is something that I’ve been running from, as if saying “fuck you” to it will release me from needing it, needing it so desperately that I will do anything but admit it to my sick, tired, self.

I mean! I was going to move to Ottawa, I was going to find a small studio and go to school and look for work at a cafe or a bookstore or in retail, and when the time came I was going to do a co-op for the federal government that would transition to good, steady, stable work: I made a promise to myself to stop chasing, to stop striving, to live quietly, to erase myself from the performance that I’ve carefully cultivated.

And yet. And yet, as soon as I left home I ran to a city overrun with exactly the kind of people I need to avoid: artists, the young and hungry. And I am going to California in a time that California is burning, in a time where travel should be limited, indeed, it is our civic duty, it is our duty as humans that care about other humans and this earth that we Do. Not. Travel.

In my mania, in the sudden de-stabilization of being kicked out of home, I said “fuck you” to security, any kind of security, and accepted a client in California. I’ll be there for a week, then I’ll be back in Montreal for the rest of the month, then I’ll be living in Paris, in an apartment I rented just outside the Arc de Triomphe, as if I have anything to be triumphant about other than the fact that I very likely have an undiagnosed mood disorder in which I make big big big decisions, then live with the consequences for the rest of my life. A heavy stone weighing in my heart.

I know the way the love I’m trying to let go of feels like an actual object in my body is the manifestation of a mood disorder that tends to hyperfixate and make larger than life the emotions that I go through and yet I wish I could rip it out and toss it away, but in the meanwhile what I do have are my legs, and what my legs can do is run.

So I run. I try to get my grad school stuff under control and I run. I try to organize my finances and I run. I do all of the things that marks me as a high-functioning member of society because the fear of being cold, of being in the rain, of ending up with no warm bed to sleep on is the only thing that outstrips my need to run, so the two balance each other out. I run but I find a bed to lay down to rest. Even then I don’t stop running, because sleep is its own escape.

I’m starting therapy soon. Well, I’m looking for a therapist.

This has been a long time coming. I realize that all the emotional turmoil I’ve sort of worked through on my own – I don’t NEED to do by myself. That help is okay, and on its way. That improving the self goes beyond body. That you can only do so much with the tools that you have.

That there is a broader way of being, a better way of being, a kinder way of being.

That I don’t have to stay beholden to my anger flashes. That my anger flashes can be managed, worked through, acknowledged, that I can move on, that I can think better, be better.

I want so badly to be kind, to be a better communicator, and to unpack the trauma of my past and recognize how it informs me today.

I’m incredibly excited to disentangle.

My mother never asked me to make money.

She always asked me to make meaning.

Which, I suppose, came with its own set of pressures.

There were never any suggestions to be a doctor, an engineer, or to go into finance. My early interest in saving and investing and being financially secure came from myself, my own sense of instability and curiosity.

Instead, she took me to volunteer with her: at the local community centre, at the senior home, at church. She encouraged me to seek volunteer opportunities outside of what we did together. When I graduated high school, I claimed 400 volunteer hours.

She wanted me to write. She wanted me to tell my story, which was really her story. She encouraged me to put into words our journey from China to Canada, her struggles raising me as an immigrant single mother.

One time, she sat me down at the kitchen table and gave me a notebook. Write, she said. Write for two hours. That became my weekly task: On Saturdays, write for two hours.

She spoke with reverence about social service jobs: teachers, and social workers, and public servants were held in the highest regard.

The language of doing meaningful work is as familiar as air to me. Doing things simply for money or security was shallow. Although I was happy working in banking, I never considered it seriously, it never felt enough. True glory was being a good force in the world.

This cornerstone of how I was raised feels naive. And yet somehow it has worked. Because being raised this way is to grow into a person rooted in optimism: that the world can be better, that you can make it so, and that you can make a living and survive in it, too. It is empowering. But I think I also have a slight saviour complex. Problems need to be solved, and I need to be the one to solve them. And if I can’t, I’ve failed. But who made me god?

As the decade comes to a close, I wonder about the next. In ten years, I’ll be 33 years old. It still feels young, I think. But time is rushing. I feel the swoosh of the it carrying me far away from this moment.

 

heya diary

my life is moving towards something again, i think

i have a few untied loose ends in my immediate vicinity, but the feeling of existential dread that has followed me for 2 months is dissipating, slowly, slowly

im so glad i made it here

my best friend checked herself into the hospital for mental health issues. ive been waiting to hear from her until she checks out. ill be seeing her soon, in just a few weeks

that the balance of how we feel is so unsteady scares me. i cherish the times of stability

on we go

when i was kid, there was a spark, and the fantasies that were quickly suppressed

i did not feel comfortable in this body. this female body. i moved wrong, i was wrong.

it’s really difficult to talk about this now, when almost a quarter decade has passed where i’ve been cis-presenting. i continue to be cis-passing and because of that, i don’t face the pressure and the danger that many (most) of my transgender friends face, exacerbated by the fact that they are all BIPOC.

last year, i told my best friend sonny over the phone that i have an alter-ego, Cyrus, who was cooler and more easy with himself. i spelled out the entire fantasy, this person who moves through the world with ease because he is exactly who he is supposed to be. Cyrus has never existed in this world, really. just the one in my head.

do you know what a choice is? a choice is for me to cower behind femme-ness, to cloak myself fully within the gender i was assigned at birth.

i dont feel comfortable taking up space in this discourse.

all i know is this: my pronouns cannot be she/her if i am being honest with myself.

i am afraid of coming out even to myself.

Cyrus has never seen the light of day.

He only knows of whispers in the night, to best friends on the phone.

… and it makes me question if everything must be a performance. i’ve been slacking on my personal writing, the words that pour out for myself in my private journal.  i haven’t written in my journal, i think, for maybe a month. and yet I’m posting on social media everyday, and yet this blog has been active, and yet I’ve started doing weekly vlogs on youtube, and yet and yet and yet performing for an audience, even if imagined (I have 1 view on my latest vlog and 3 subscribers on youtube) flows so naturally.

what is it about attention? why can’t i be content in myself? why, even when I’m talking TO MYSELF (because what else is personal essay writing? but navel gazing?), does it have to be public?

alas, here we are. here we are, here we are. i definitely am a quantity over quality girl.

a thank you to my readers over the years! a thank you to online space. a thank you to the homes i’ve made for myself in the CLOUD, and the clouds.

ah.

see you next time, I guess. I think I’m going to write in my journal tonight (but why did I have to announce it?)

 

 

my anxiety has been so bad lately. i feel a sense of impending doom every waking hour. i feel like there’s a presence in the room, malevolent, even when i’m alone. as i walk to work i feel my hands clenching, then loosening, then clenching. right now, i struggle to breathe. i want to cry. i think i just want release. the slow crawl of life as we keep marching on. being alive is so much effort. existence is painful. slowly, i forget how to be.

sometimes i wonder if i’ll ever stop striving. it seems that each time ive reached something id once dreamed about, hoped for, sacrificed time and energy to reach, i have another list of wants just waiting for me. each of their little arms struggling towards the light of manifestation.

im sitting in a cafe in kathmandu. there’s some weird club music pounding in my ear giving me all kinds of anxiety. what is up with that? it’s 2:30pm.

oh – just got up the courage to ask the cafe owner to change it to something a little more calm and he put “water sounds” in his youtube and now it feels like im sitting in a tranquil spa.

i guess i did something i regret last night. ive been trying to stem feelings of regret, ive been trying to learn to be kinder to myself, but it is so so so so hard. the root of this kindness is letting go of the idea of free will.

letting go of the idea of free will.

i choose to believe that everything happens because it must happen that way.

a few things …

i’m going to post this now even though it isn’t finished. maybe i’ll come back and finish that trail of thoughts.

all i know is that im feeling better now, even though im still tired. and life is exciting. how wonderful it is to have anticipation. it means that, even if you dont know that good things are coming, you can imagine that they are.

with love, oh with love, with love love love,

gg

 

 

ive read harry potter and the philosophers stone upwards of 20 times. those words are more than the story that they tell, but the comfort that they bring to my buzzing brain, my overwhelming anxiety, my life full of unfamiliar things. like comfort food, but better, because it lasts longer and doesnt leave you with guilt-ridden body-related emotions.

there are a few bloggers and friends whose words, for me, are comfort words. sameer’s inthemargins.ca are full of such comfort words. i’ve scrolled all the way to 2005, savouring each post. his body of work has helped me pass many moments of loneliness and fear.

mirusha’s words taste and feel like syrup: rich, sweet, flowing in just a tinge of her texas drawl. her medium article on making home in cars shook me the first time i read it, the reflection of truth ringing so clear. it needed to be written, it needed to be said. some of my favourite work from her can be found in her instagram captions. some, i’ve kept for myself, such as this:

she puts words to the things that my body carries.

who writes some of your comfort words? what books have you returned to, time and time again, just to experience the feeling of going home to someplace?