the ian-ek drama has been so exhausting emotionally. it’s been very difficult for me to move forward with a clear mind.

add to that, the drama happening at work. i feel the speed-up to be very violent toward me. i am forcing my body to work against time; treating my body like a machine. and i am so angry that emily, the nurse at work, yelled at me the way she did. like i was a little child, like i was a goddamn worker, like i was a lazy piece of shit.

i feel like if ian-ek drama had drained me 60% of the way, the work stuff has drained me through 100% of the way. i can’t be sitting around absorbing violence all around me and not do anything.

i feel spent and i am letting this emotion just take over my body.

today i had to sleep all day. i am trying to again, reproduce myself for the day when i get back to work. this feels so redundant.

i am trying to not internalize all this. what’s fucked up isnt me. i am a soldier in this world thats dropping attacks on me everyday. my deepest internal resistance is to not let this stuff get into my head. is to stand tall and not believe what i am worth through their eyes.

then this spate of queer suicides and violence, the war, the DV outside of our house. it feels really immense.

i need to know what i need to do and keep doing my tasks and keep looking forward. looking forward and not turn back.

look forward, not turn back.

i know this feeling is hard to be with. i feel sad one day, immobilized. and at my back of my mind i have the voice that keeps telling me to move forward and not give up.

i can’t blame myself. if more than ever, i need to love myself. and love is patience, love is courage to deal with reality and honesty.

i am worried i will sink into depression again. sleep is my first coping mechanism, then i let the thoughts take over. i have to deal w this tension in myself. to know i am going into the pit and to wanna get out of it

i need the spaces for me to skip the quicksand.

how do i accept that this is where i am, now, and not blame myself, or be disappointed in myself.

i need to love myself, not just now, but for a lifetime.

too raw to be hard,

too sore to charge

and too scared to dream.

there’s been a series of cop violence in seattle leaving many killed and more fearful and less willing to fight back. i could go on about the political timidity of the resistance, and lack thereof, but to boil it down, it is the institutionalization of liberal politics, identity based political dementedness and conservativeness. this monopoly feels very hard to challenge cos it works like fine clockwork. tweaking away into my life. into our lives.

a montage of thoughts that leave me skin torn, vessels exposed, bleeding, too raw to conceal

we have tried to make ends meet for way too long, says francis in her piece

i feel that.

the FBI attacks on palestine solidarity activists,

the incessant rounds of cop violence permeating

i feel that.

the ways that friendships betrayed drill into my heart

sinking me

i feel that.

the imagination of how tumultous, how emotionally draining organization building is, my life scratched open and having to insistently move forth, questions are not about me, but about a future beyond me, for a shot at winning against what keeps us down.

i feel that,

and fear that.

and today i just feel tender

and i wanna remember i can be tough in these moments

what seems big and exasperating, vulnerable and painoozing

can, in the larger scheme

be just a blister and why

stop a body pulsating

for a sore, small, sorry

blister?

it’s so much easier to want to lie back down and fall asleep to forget

i am going through a hard time these days.

i can’t bear to be around I. cos of the drama that happened between us.

he screamed at me based on his own assumptions on what i was going to say to the person he wants to date.

he didnt bother to clarify anything w me, to ask if it was true, to say xyz. he just went on his own mind and own thoughts.

i am also upset w ek. i feel like she has just been an inconsistent person all along…i think its just becoming clearer to me.

she is so attached to I. that in the end she takes his side often, seeing the world thru a lens that justify him.

i am sad that i thought we could have a friendship but i feel like i keep doing all the work.

i feel sad for her, i care for her, but i dont think i really can be friends with her for a while.

i hope she grows stronger and more consistent with herself, rather than seeing herself as a pendulum swinging and taking extreme sides at one point or the other

i need to survive this stuff and the only way to do it is through moving forward, doing what i need to do as a woman leader — dont let this drama take me away from what i need to do.

rather than have this swirl of emotions constantly tumbling in me, i think in a few words, this is what it is

- i understand why he would be upset about me wanting to talk w K. but it could have been talked out w me. I was not hurrying. Both E and I could have done that. but no, they didnt. instead they make it seem like me wanting to talk w K at all was an insult to them.

I can’t help but say that their relationship has really given us very bad organizational dynamics. I can’t lie about this. I want to talk w K about it, regardless!! I dont have the power to stop 2 people from being attracted to each other, so why that fear?!?!?

- i am upset w I for flaring up at me and triggering my memories of violent male rage that is also unpredictable. i structure my life to not have to deal w this as a survivor. but this group is not safe, and i need recognition of that. why is it that I., my political comrade in an anti-patriarchal group, has the right to make me feel this way???

- why are people afraid to talk about the GENDERED IMPACTS of their actions? why are we more comfortable talking about the RACIAL IMPACTS of our actions? i get defensiveness most often with gender but w race there is more patience, more of an understanding

- i am upset w ek for always centering I’s experiences and nobody elses. i only ask for her to think about me as a normal human being. and she doesnt cos she is so intertwined in her world w I.

- things need to change. for fucking real.

leaving MH, myself and E in the echo of sunlight beaming on one of Seattle’s steamy summer days

i miss people, i feel like i expanded myself and i am afraid that the pressures of life will constrict me back in; worried about my breathing and my lungs, but more so, about the many meanderings that lay ahead….will they go toward the ocean or will they get lost in the desert

but now, more than the future, what is hard for me to bear is the silence of the presence and its abrupt loneliness

Anyways, in our pxs of building a home, which both of us aim to do — respecting the Three Jewels:

- The Buddha, The Dharma and The Sangha

How do we stay as organizers and revolutionaries AND also be happy and have a good sense of community and family, and be good Buddhist practitioners? This is what I wanna be. I dont want organizing to become an excuse for me to be a sloppy and lazy and messy human being in other parts of my life. This is recipe for disaster AND regret!!!! This is how people feel they have been shortchanged of their life when the revolution didnt happen and I dont wanna ever be resentful like this.

But building a home , the initial steps of it that we are in right now made me realize how my sense of home was so influenced by my parents’ immigrant statuses, their participation in the informal economy — the home was not separated from economic activity. We never bought fancy furniture or thought of “decorating” the home. All that was seen kind of as…extravagant! Not just financially but it wasnt something we did cos home was where my mum taught cooking classes, it was where we rented out rooms to people, it was where we made the products to sell, it was a workspace…

I dont know what to make of that. It is a problem that people fall in love with “playing house” and have a sense that their home is isolated from the bigger world around them, that it HAS to be some kind of frozen cottage on the priarie, idealized AND fucking unreal AND stressful. My family was the other extreme, there was no distinction bw family life, home life and work.

I think I want to reject both. I want to have some boundaries but not so staunch. I want to have some flexibility and fluidity that is real but not so abrupt. I want my space

Is this a capitalist mentality? I dont know…but it surely has some touch of enlightement theory to it…the thing that individuals have their own space their own time their own everything…

but maybe its not all bad.

i was beginning to get into it on the 2nd day but it was also my last day. i really like zen. i like the teachings and the practice, as hard as it is. and i guess in the spirit of zen, what matters if i like it? i have to do it is all that matters.

back in real life now and having to adjust to all the overwhelmingness of reality. too much work to do, too many distractions, too many chores, too many feelings, too many memories…and unlike distractions in a zen room, these memories are obstacles and hindrances for much needed work.

i just can’t stop missing home. i can’t stop missing my childhood. these come back in the most powerful memories. i feel like i remember every part of my life back home. and i miss it. i miss the weather, i miss the places, i miss the history, i miss the surroundings, i miss the people.

yet i know to remember that when i return i also have a vacuum.

i know this is all me being fixed in the past. i have moved on and i do enjoy my life here.

i hope to one day be able to open up some kind of political institution back home, maybe a pan-southeast asian thing — where workers and youth from different seasian countries can come together. it could be a program, or a community spot…where we talk about direct democracy, asian politics, history, childcare, religion blah blah

i feel a connection to the politics back home and i want to be able to contribute.

JUST DO IT!!!

- be active. i wanna be one of those old people who will jump into a waterfall anytime. this sense of adventure and risk taking is a tangible way for me to remember how i feel when i push the edges at a protest, at an action — to push to the edge and know when to stop but always w a sense of risk taking and adventure

- to be gan1 cui4 — dont know how to say this in english. a way to translate it is — to be decisive and clear cut. if you wanna do something just fucking do it or plan/figure out how to do it if its that important. dont beat about the fucking bush and let inertia take over. we can take different paths. there isnt just one. and some are longer routes than others but that dont mean its a waste of time

- i am already a fucking sentimental person. i wanna be able to chill on my feelings and not let them overwhelm me!!!

- recognizing that noone is indispensible in organizing –> we are not more important than anyone else; at the same time: everyone is indispensible. we need everyone. have this balance, have this tension, and move forward

more later!!!!

it really annoyed me that he felt he could do that to me. i asked a question and he was so impatient w it cos he thought i was naturally advocating petit bourgeois politics.

when i think about why i am so anal about myself being recognized as a leader, it is because of moments of this.

i could never imagine ian rolling his eyes at Matt, or at Shemon.

what they said HAD to be worth some salt. it can’t be just bad politics

but with me, even tho i have been tried and tested as a militant, he thinks it is OK to roll his eyes at me and diminish what i say.

this is the same thing i felt w K. i felt he was a way toward me he wasnt to S or M. that he could demean and put me down in a way he wouldnt with the top notch guys.

i am not going to change who i am — i am honest and i dont hide my questions. i know more people than me think the same questions and i am not afriad to ask it, to SHOW that i am struggling. i dont need a veneer of toughness like i am more sturdy, knowledgeable in everything in the world, in my interactions. i am a growing person and i dont hide it.

the price i pay for this, is that some people dont take me seriously.

this is why i will assert myself as a leader. this is why i am fcking thick skin enough to say: I have done this and that, so dont try to downplay who i am and what i do.

s. tries to boil it down to a matter of TRUST. of do i TRUST people to acknowledge certain things. but i havent seen trust pay off. Trusting certain people didnt mean they didnt treat me disrespectfully. If i really trusted them, then i would be hella hurt.

i see what people DO. i base my judgement on that. not some mythical trust.

if i trusted the people around me from the day i was born, then i would be stuck in singapore as a bank teller or office girl.

if i trusted what some mentors in the group had said about me, i would have left the damn group already.

i dont think trust is totally junk. you need it in personal relationships and a basic sense of it in politics. but to base your political career and people’s intentions all on trust. that’s naive.