1844 7th Ave., Oakland

Amina went through crunch period and I was no where in sight. How presumptuous of me to think that I could have given emotional support to her. I’ve been fading from her life and I’m now waiting for her to have some time to consider where and whether I have a place in her future life. Pathetic.

I went to Oberlin as planned, but she treated me like I didn’t belong, like she had her own life now and I had no place in it. We used to have in-jokes between us. She still has in-jokes, but I’m not part of the “in”. I cut the trip short. It was wretched. I was totally wrong about her, my perceptions were totally off. I thought she was going through hard times and I thought maybe I could help. The truth was I was the hard time and she was fading me out.

We had long conversations before I left, that led me to leave. She wanted me to leave. I don’t know what I left behind. I tried to leave something, but I don’t think it was any use. I think her decision was made soon after I got there. Check out the crap that I wrote her:

Dear Amina,
Our understanding when I left was the final understanding between us. I don’t know why I’m even writing this, I just want to leave something for you. I’m writing this as an attempt to get down the gist of what we discussed, and hope I can get enough down so that you remind yourself when you have to consider my future role in your life.

You called yourself selfish. Perhaps you are, but I don’t hold that negatively. I call it “divinely selfish”. We are all divinely selfish to be true to ourselves and our own natures. So I understand if what you’re doing is selfish. You can’t be anything to anyone unless you approach yourself like that first. The concept of being divinely selfish is from Illusions. Someday you will read that book. Not for the content, but to see where I come from.

I was afraid of your being misguided in your efforts. I see potential of being misguided because what you’re doing is very important and very intense. It will be easy to get lost. It worries me that you say that you are numb. That is a source of misguidance. If I were to advise you, I would encourage you to get your feeling back before you embark on your endeavors. For myself I won’t embark on an endeavor like yours unless I’m secure with myself and know that I have a full deck. That is how I would know that I’m sincere and not being self-destructive. Of course you don’t share the history of self-destructiveness that I have.

I worry about the possibility of being careless or going about what you have to in a careless manner. I don’t want to insult you, though, by suggesting you would be careless about something that is so important. This is a mentioning of carefulness so that you will be careful. I remember when I was going through my troubles I realized the power of words and so I reminded myself of certain words like “god”, “justice”, “compassion”, etc.. Words that I would want you to keep in mind are “emotion”, “life”, “hearts”, “justice”, “truth”.

I will step into the background for you to find and resolve what you need to, and I give you whatever encouragement I can and I have faith in your abilities. Maybe you will find the same thing that I did in my period of soul-searching, that it’s not very fun doing it alone, even if it is personally satisfying. But you have to find out for yourself. But be honest with yourself, don’t torture yourself to prove something to yourself.

I hope you will remember our conversations and find truth and strength in them. I understand your need, but I can’t get rid of the hope that you will find that you need me and accept it and let me back into your heart so that you aren’t resisting whatever influence I have on you.

We did end up making a few promises, promises that aren’t written in stone and the breaking of which will not be construed as a breach of trust. The promises we made, any promises we make, I will perceive as hope. Not as binding.

Above all, be true to yourself and always do the right thing. You can’t get away from your nature. I ultimately want you to get what you really want, what is best for you, and what is you. If it’s me, then great, I hope you will be willing to inconvenience yourself to accommodate me. If it’s not me, then good luck in whatever you do. It will be none of my business.

If you decide that we can’t be together, you will probably remember how good I was to you and it will probably make you a little sad. All I have to say about that is what I said before. There is a lot of love flowing between and around us, let us not be foolish in trying to nail it down and set it in concrete. If you take love away from this, spread it to other people. If you think of the goodness I’ve shown you, it is your place to take that goodness and show it to other people and give to them.

Find your way to be happy and satisfied with yourself and your life. I’ll always be somewhere with you in my heart in some capacity. I love you dearly. I will always be your friend, I will always love you first and most, and I will always think of you, probably every day, even if we can’t bear being with each other due to circumstances that keep us apart.

God, what a load of crap! Painful. End of story.

1844 7th Ave., Oakland

Classes ended on Thursday and I’ve been going through every case in the texts. I finished Civ. Pro. last night, it’s my first exam on Wednesday. I’m about halfway through Contracts. When I got to the last month of material for Civ. Pro. , I barely recognized the concepts and issues and I was clueless about the cases. I had no idea what the cases were about or the logic leading to the rules of law. Slow-going, reading the cases paragraph by paragraph, at times out loud.

On Friday, I tried to remove the temptation of practicing bass by taking it in for adjustment. He had it ready on Saturday. But it was worth it, the guy who worked on it was really nice and very knowledgeable. He knew that Riverheads were Japanese and asked where I got it since they aren’t available in the States. It’s a great bass, but has a lot of design flaws.

I went jogging today and it felt great. I can deal with Oakland. If I can go out in a short-sleeve shirt for a jog in December, I have no problem with the climate.

I’m thinking of staying in school next semester. It’s all been very confused and confusing, but factors have been making me lean in that direction. Also if I register before I leave to visit Amina in Oberlin, then I won’t have to be back until the day classes start, so I can be there for three full weeks instead of two and a half.

1844 7th Ave., Oakland

The key thing for Amina and me is to be honest and spontaneous. It’s funny how that means something so different now than it meant several months ago. Several months ago it was an expression of optimism, to see how we could explore and build this relationship. Now being honest and spontaneous means we have no direction, no idea where we’re going, and that we’re looking for the landmines so that we know where they are. The character and color of our relationship has completely changed. Or so it feels. I can’t approach any aspect of our relationship without ending on a negative note.

She says to wait and see how it is when we’re together and see if it works then. I’d be totally fine with that, but my reservations are in my doubts that we’ll even make it that far. So I’m not so hot on this idea. It may work. If we can’t make it work while we’re apart, how strong really is it?

She has already implemented this wait and see strategy and she has left our problems behind her without telling me. The problem with that is that the problem is me, so if she’s put the problem behind her...that explains why communications have been so lacking lately. As far as she’s concerned there are no problems aside from distance, and being together will cure all.

Volumes are spoken in that she did this unilaterally. She just decided for herself that she can’t deal with this now, that the problem is distance, and therefore put it and me out of her mind. What does that say about me? What does that say about how she considers me?

Today was a majestic Autumn day. I went out and everything felt so alive. I went out and problems didn’t exist. No problems, only solutions.

1844 7th Ave., Oakland

Life isn’t so bad. Amina and I can get over this problem. It’s no big deal. I love her and we don’t need these problems to get in the way. There is a simpler reason for the problems, there’s nothing inherently wrong about us. How can there be? We’ve been in love for almost three years. Our friendship also had problems, but it never stopped the love.

Things have gotten so ugly between us after we started going out, and it has only gotten worse. There are times the weather is beautiful and the music sounds good and the meaning of life isn’t disturbed by material concerns. Then it seems foolish for Amina and I to fight. Then it is obvious that our problems are the result of physical situations.

1844 7th Ave., Oakland

I called Amina this evening. It was about 1:30 in Ohio. I woke her up. She sounded tired. I told her I’d let her go back to sleep. She said she’d call me tomorrow. We’ve talked once in almost two weeks, and that was a lame conversation that we cut short.

I got angry, but why? I don’t want to be angry over petty things. I guess I do want to be actively wanted, I want someone coming after me, and I’m not getting that from Amina. So what? Forget Amina? She has too much of her own life to give me enough of what I need. I’m angry because I’m hurt, and I’m hurt because she’s supposed to be one thing and she is totally not. Great expectations.

I feel helpless and unwanted by her. I know it’s not true. I’m angry because I don’t have the maturity not to be. This is a weak point, a personality fault. I never developed the maturity to take love and accept it as it is given. I still want love and attention as a child demands love and attention.

Now I’m older and mature in other ways. I have more of a consciousness about my anger and I react to it with the means of someone my age. I feel anger, I feel hate, I want to break up with Amina, I want to get away, I want to drink, I want to die. Take the anger of a neglected child and put it in an adult and I am what you get.

1844 7th Ave., Oakland

Just one more week of classes and then two weeks of exams. It’s just the beginning and I’m considering it the end, but I can’t do this again, and I won’t. It sends my life into a tailspin, increasing the insecurity, deepening the losses.

How am I going to be living my life? No classes, no job. What right do I have to take that luxury? I clearly should be worried about my future and what I will do. I don’t know what I can do. I have no experience or skills.

It feels like Amina and I are breaking up. We’re distancing and it feels the same as breaking up. Our relationship took some serious blows and none of them have been worked out. She’s taking the line that the problem is distance, and everything would be fine if we were together. We were together over break and look what happened. Still, to hear her state any condition in which things could be fine is wonderful.

But as it is, it feels like we’re ignoring problems and it’s cold between us. I worry about how I’ll behave towards her the next time I see her. The way things have been going, it might be hard to be warm, to pretend nothing was wrong. I’m not really looking forward to our next meeting.

1844 7th Ave., Oakland

What happened between Amina and me is still here with me. I haven’t felt anything resolve. I don’t know what to think or what to feel. It has been hard not writing to Amina since she left, but that is because it has been impossible to write.

I haven’t been able to get past the feelings of helplessness and hopelessness in having believed in something that was not there between us. I believed we were one thing and we were nothing like that at all. My life without Amina would feel helpless and hopeless.

We are nothing special. We are just a couple. This is just a relationship. Just like millions of other couples in a relationship. I had thought that our relationship transcended time and being. I thought that we were special beyond any other love I could ever know. But no, we are not destined to be with each other, we are nothing special. There is no magic that is going to keep us together just because it is simply truth that we are supposed to be together. There is no glowing thread between us, always pulling us together, that had always pulled us together. It’s overwhelming.

It is not a pure love. We have separate needs. We are just two people giving and taking, compromising, searching for common ground, settling, relying on past love to build a future. I don’t know where I want to stand in such a relationship. Maybe I should stop saying “we”.

We had a petty little spat last night. Not even a spat. We were just being ultra-sensitive. She wasn’t even listening to me. Then I realized that I haven’t been anything that she needed me to be during the recent crisis at Oberlin that affected her significantly. She must have been so disappointed in me that I wasn’t there for her. She needed support and all I had to offer was cold analysis and a skeptical general assessment. Not very supportive. Empathy completely failed me.

I thought being in a relationship with Amina would be so wonderful. All of a sudden there are all these expectations, all of a sudden there’s something lacking and I’m deficient. All of a sudden I realize I’m failing, I’m not coming up with something I should. All of a sudden she needs something I can’t give.

Whatever happened to us being perfect for each other and belonging together? Now we’re failing each other miserably. Now I find that we weren’t together at the top of a mountain. She was down one side. She perceived me as being down another side of it. For all I realized, I was. It’s true. The perception of perfection makes our failings seem even worse. Maybe I shouldn’t be saying “we”.

That scathing letter that she wrote to me when she was here, it was totally valid. She later said she didn’t mean any of it, but I didn’t believe that. Her points were too specific and detailed to be spontaneous creations resulting from an isolated incident. They had to have been building up for a while. I marked the letter up with red pen, totally disrespecting her perspective and invalidating her opinion. Incredibly childish and proof that I don’t deserve her. Now I feel the things she had been feeling that led up to that letter. Feelings that I had totally missed. I lived in a haze, thinking everything between us was fine. They weren’t.

1844 7th Ave., Oakland

I don’t have to struggle too much to remember the feelings from less than a year ago. It’s no struggle at all realizing what has happened in the past year. Some memories are so striking and so unbefitting my life that I can’t believe it’s been real. How suddenly the floating dream of my life became a nasty reality.

Less than a year ago, I resolutely absolved any responsibility or feelings of guilt in how I might deal with law school. I will feel no guilt as I plan to withdraw and not tell them. I will feel no guilt as I sit on their money, trying to find new paths and new opportunities for myself. I will feel no guilt for doing what’s best for myself, when it is clear that I am the only one who can do what’s best for myself.

They bear the full responsibility for their own losses. The loss of their money is the result of their failure to foresee the futile results of their endeavors. Whatever intentions they had is no excuse for their short-sightedness and blatant disregard of . . . reality.

How can they have missed so much? How could they have missed what was right before their eyes? It’s so sad. They missed their children growing up. Times have changed and they are clueless, they are only interested in the one constant of making money. They who take life for granted. They don’t deserve it. They don’t deserve pity or mercy. They don’t deserve any concern or consideration.

My leaving law school will be no vindication for them. All they’ve done is try to keep me on a single narrow path and to be what they want me to be. I’ve always tried to run down my own path. That is what Japan was all about, yet they were still able to whisk me up like a child trying to run away and put me back on the path they wanted me to be on; a path in which they are interested only for themselves.

My life is a path. However I may try and however I may fail, I do have an idea of how I want to end up as a person. I know what I want to retain of my dreams and self-esteem and view of the world. Law school has nothing to do with any of that. I have to follow my heart and my dreams. Maybe I’ll never fulfill them, but if I don’t walk my own path, there is absolutely no chance and no worth to this life.

1844 7th Ave., Oakland

I can’t do it. It’s not about stress, I just don’t have the type of aptitude or mindset to get me through the requirements of law school without suppressing essential elements of my personality.

I am going to withdraw after this semester. I won’t be attending law school next semester. I think I will still be able to feel good about myself, find a way to fill the days. I will take great satisfaction in knowing this is a manifestation of hatred towards the ‘rents. They are so fucked up and out of touch. It’s unbelievable.

I dream of the day I will drop out. Then I’ll tell the ‘rents. After Amina and I are together and have some idea what we can do. Find a place for the two of us. Find my way out of this grave I’ve dug for myself.

1844 7th Ave., Oakland

I am laboring under a weighty depression, a sense of futility, and a feeling that all the supports that have sustained me to this point in the semester have abandoned me. What happened to Amina and me last week was so unexpected, so senseless, and is having such an impact that I find myself unable to sort out my confusion or alleviate my subsequent depression.

I know I’m not perfect. I know I do and say things I shouldn’t and I don’t do and say things that I should. What happened between us was both our faults. I’m sorry it happened the way it did. I wasn’t marking lines of physical, psychic, or emotional personal space between us. I didn’t mean to sound like I was talking about space. I thought the issue was trivial, that it would blow over with minimum effort to patch it up, once one of us took the initiative to initiate it.

Many things assault my memory. I see no resolution. Just big, underlying, cancer-like problems that are between us. I’ve lost my perspective on this relationship. It is this relationship that has kept me going and given me hope and kept me looking to the future. Now I find that it has been an illusion. That it has hardly been mutual puts my emotions into a free-fall. I don’t know what to believe or what to trust anymore.

I don’t love Amina any less. I feel our love is as strong as ever, but what a vain presumption to call it “our” love. All the assumptions I’ve made since Amina first visited me in August, soon after I got out here, don’t exist anymore, and it’s a question whether they should have existed at all. I thought everything was alright, I thought everything was going to be fine. Now I find that her perspective on this relationship finds problem after ingrained problem.

I’m at a total loss to understand why Amina feels the way she does about our relationship. I won’t make her explain it. I don’t know how to not make her feel the way she does. I explained to her my perspective to the best of my ability during different phases between her visits. She knew my situation and all my feelings to some degree of detail.

I don’t know how to contribute to our relationship so that it lives up to what it was in the beginning. She called it a honeymoon period. And honeymoons have to end. She feels that the shit we’ve been dealing with since then is characteristic of the real relationship between us. And I have to admit, even taking my perspective of this relationship, it doesn’t come close to being what it was in that ideal, isolated situation.

My perspective of this relationship is that we’re both trying to build towards each other in respective difficult situations. I assume that we are together and we will be together, but we have to work and hurt and thrash our hearts to get us to a comfortable plane where things can be as wonderful as they have in the past. A plane where we can be in a relationship, but have the feelings we had when we were friends.

Bad assumption. If she doesn’t make that assumption, that doesn’t give us much leeway to get out of our difficult situations. She certainly isn’t going to wait around for me to get out of mine, and I’ve let her know how deep mine is.

It seems that present situations can never live up to the past. The past always seems so much better. Not because it was, but just because it’s in the past.

It is unlikely that I can help live up to our ideal relationship anywhere in the near future. The two of us, both feeling insecure and incompetent in the real world. Both of us afraid of it, I think. Neither of us with family to fall back on. The prospects of a job pitifully dim. Law school making me feel lazy, unwilling or unable to push myself through. I can’t even see it as financial security for us.

I’ve been communicating to Amina to the best of my ability, but unfortunately that isn’t much anymore. There’s little in our respective situations that allows us to relate to each other. We live in very different worlds now, different realities, growing apart, and she not wanting to be a part of my world or reality. Me, clinging on in vain to a love that is increasingly one-sided and I’d be deluding myself to believe otherwise. And I can’t help it, but I guess I’m deluded.

Something has been lost because I don’t think we’d be drifting apart like this if we weren’t going out. If we were still in love and still friends, we’d be making a blast out of a bad situation, and we’d be sharing a lot more. Going out has closed out many things, the result of petty arguments, squabbles, disagreements. The tensions and the fights have been too much.

I don’t know what Amina wants from me anymore, and I’ve lost confidence in being able to give her what she wants. If things go on, it will be harder and harder for her to find fulfillment in this relationship to warrant staying in it. I doubt I would be able to hold us together. She just doesn’t get out of our relationship what I do, I don’t make her as happy as she does me, and she hasn’t been getting the support from me that I get from her.

I think Amina has given up. I don’t know that there is anything I can do to keep her. I see weeks ahead of stress and anxiety, and that they are not going to help me find a solution for our relationship.

I wish that last week could have been like the weekend she came in August. Until the end of the week, I thought that it was going to be. Things seemed to be going so well. Then it all fell apart. I run missed opportunities through my mind and I think of all the things I love about her. I think about what I shouldn’t have done and should have done. It’s so hard to take that one little step to do something so incredibly simple.

She has become so much to me. I don’t know how it would be without her. I don’t turn to anyone else. Everyone else in my life are just linear friends. Even Madoka who is unfathomably special is not a confidante like Amina. I don’t go to them in times of need. I go to them for friendship. If Amina thinks our conversations are superficial, my conversations with other people are just as frustrating with events being pulled arbitrarily as conversation pieces.

1844 7th Ave., Oakland

Amina is coming tomorrow! I’m so excited, things have been so discouraging these past two weeks, and Amina will make things all better. At least for a little while.

In my life, shades of things being good overlap with shades of things being awful and they somehow exist together. I view my surroundings through a filter of things being good or things being awful. Neither is dominant, but one is dominant at any one point.

I haven’t made any friends or acquaintances at school. It’s no wonder. I’m intrigued by the material, but that’s all. I’m fascinated by it and I’m curious about it, but unlike everyone else, I don’t view it as a tool or a skill that I’m developing to use in a career. I don’t worry about it, but I do feel the constant pressure of being there.

I exercise the thought of dropping out at the end of the semester, either before or after exams. I wouldn’t tell the ‘rents and I’d chill for the next half year just doing music and living off their precious money. I’d save the tuition money and send it back after I get a job. I’d wait to get a job until after Amina’s graduation so that I can go to it.

I don’t care about wasting the ‘rents’ money, it’s not a consideration anymore. I’ll drop out whenever the time is right and the thought of wasting money shouldn’t even cross my mind. But as long as I’m foreseeing dropping out after Amina graduates, I’d might as well pocket the $7000 tuition that would be going to waste.

For now, I wait for Amina. I can’t wait until she’s here again. The past two months since I saw her last have been grueling and unbearably slow. She stopped writing, and although it doesn’t play on my insecurities as it might have months ago, I wish she could find time to write.

Things will be just fine between us. I’ve finally reached a point of maturation that I think I can make this work. It was in my last year at Oberlin that I grew the most and the seeds of maturation were formed. I was immature then and I still was through this past Summer. The problems between Amina and me were what made the seeds open, and whatever I learned from senior year can start helping me work through problems with Amina now.

My memories still go back to that year. It’s still so vivid in my mind. It was the most meaningful year of my life in retrospect. It is significant that Amina wasn’t there for half of it. It was good that she wasn’t there. The memories of my room in Third World House, and Hiromi and coffee, and Luyen, cold, love, struggle, Tetris, Southern Comfort, the soles of my feet, Diem, skeletons, the language lab, communication. Oh God, the language lab.

I remember reading the Platform Sutra to Hiromi when she was sick. Sleeping in her bed when she went to Japan for break. Wearing her purple jacket. I remember how my desk was set up, how my room was set up, the broken window. And all that coffee. Hiromi sunk into me much more than I ever admitted or realized. Our times were so tender, but she just wasn’t there for me, she wasn’t what I needed. I never felt that she cared.

If I could go back and watch any point of my life, I think I’d go there, that semester. I was so wrong. I was so wrong about Hiromi and Luyen, that’s why it is so significant that Amina wasn’t there. She wasn’t part of the mess. She wasn’t a witness to my impropriety. But she was the one I loved first and most through it all. It was a tragic learning experience, and Amina had to be kept out of it.

But how could things have been different. Would I have broken up with Hiromi if it weren’t for Luyen? How far would it have gone with Hiromi? I can imagine staying with Hiromi. Eventually marrying her? Beautiful name, Hiromi.

It’s all gone now. I’m in California, where Amina and I had joked about going to when we first met. And Amina and I are now together and we are faced with realities. We are forced to face what we will do for the rest of our lives. If Amina and I can’t make it work, there’s always the monastery. Always the monastery. Another seed that was planted senior year.

Shiho and I officially broke up. Finally. During our last conversation before she went back to Japan from Chicago, she mentioned that her longtime friend and photo club chum was interested in her. I did what I hope I would have done if confronted with the same situation and Amina wasn’t in the picture. I hope I would have done the right thing. Let her go and give her the chance to pursue a relationship that is simply more feasible, acceptable, and realistic.

But if Amina wasn’t in the picture, maybe I could have paid more and enough attention to Shiho to prevent her from being swayed by anyone else. I really haven’t shown much interest in Shiho. And truth to tell, I think she has been going out with this guy for a while, possibly as long as I’ve been going out with Amina.

It all appears to have worked out too perfectly. How else would we have broken up? By letter? No. Phone from Japan is too expensive, and it wouldn’t have happened in an international phone call. It just so happened that Shiho’s grandmother wanted to visit her daughter in Chicago, Shiho’s aunt. Shiho’s mom made her go because she didn’t want the grandmother going alone, thus bringing Shiho to the States.

Furthermore, the aunt used to live in San Mateo, across the Bay. That wouldn’t have been good. I don’t know if we could have done it in person. But a phone call from somewhere in the States was the perfect set up. It allowed for time to let it happen, it allowed for direct communication, and it gave us the necessary distance. Window opened, window closed.

1844 7th Ave., Oakland

I caught cold today.

I’ve been trying to balance between surviving in law school and realizing that I may drop out after a year. I don’t want to commit myself and my time to the point of stressing, nor do I want to be lax about it and depend on dropping out.

It’s tough all over; it’s always tough. The only time things are guaranteed to be secure and comfortable in my life is when they’re in my past. Even this tumultuous past Summer seems a place of relative comfort now.

But what else would I be doing? Wouldn’t things be just as rough and miserable? Law school isn’t the worst possible situation I could be in. Maybe not for the entire three year grind, but one year should be survivable. I look around this apartment and I wonder if I will look back on it with the same feeling I look back on other places I’ve lived - as places of relative comfort. Which makes it feel like I’m in progressively worse living situations, which can’t be true.

Shiho has been in Chicago this past week visiting relatives, and we’ve talked on the phone. Our relationship has always been one of wanting. Our interactions have been windows opened and closed. I could love her like I love Amina, but I don’t. I love Shiho just because she has become an important part of my life. Not a pervasive one. I had a chance to say, “I love you” at the end of our first conversation. But I didn’t and I’m glad I didn’t. It didn’t seem right. She noticed it. But it felt like she took it as a new norm, not as an indication of something being amiss.

Amina and I are comfortably each other’s. Although religion plays a growing part of my reality and being. I don’t know if Amina is. Maybe she is, maybe she’s a component of religion, a metaphor.

I’ve started writing songs again. I have music for three songs, but I haven’t tried lyrics yet. I’ve been scared to try. Maybe they’ll come naturally like the music did. For months it was impossible to come up with any music, but then I started putting snippets down on tape, and then I was able to stretch those snippets into minutes. Lines for lyrics have started to come to me sporadically. Maybe I’ll be able to take those lines and stretch them out into lyrics.

1844 7th Ave., Oakland

Rain drops form from water vapor in clouds. That’s creation.
They fall from the clouds when they become liquid. That’s birth.
The whole journey down, spiraling and falling, plummeting and screaming, that’s living.
That’s the exciting part. When the drop is an individual and experiences everything individually and is completely distinguishable from all the other drops falling in the storm. The storm is life itself.
It hurts to hit the ground from that height. That’s death, jarring, painful and conclusive.

SPLATT!! Wherever the raindrop meets the earth, it joins with other drops, it becomes one with the collective whole again. As water, it flows down gutters or into the earth or into streams and rivers. The drop doesn’t exist anymore as it did while it was falling. The substance is there, but the form is gone. As a body of water, everything flows easily and there are no problems, no distinguishing between this drop and that drop.

Time comes eventually and inevitably that the water evaporates. It loses all form and its substance becomes too thin to discern. In this amorphous state, all memory is erased. All memory of the collective mind is lost. All memory of the previous journey is lost. All memory of the previous storm is lost.

It’s still part of the collective mind, but without form and without substance. It’s a transformation period, unknown and indescribable. It’s an important part of the journey, the cycle to go back up into the sky, be created, born, live, and die again.

The storm is life. That much is known. Living is tears, that much is also known.

1844 7th Ave., Oakland

My anger grows with my disbelief that I’m in law school. The situation has been bleak. My hatred towards the ‘rents is hampered only by religious teachings which demand forgiveness. But as long as I’m a member of the earthly world, I hate them with every ounce of hate I can conjure.

It’s been a while since they’ve called. That’s a sure indication that something is going on in their minds. It could be cowardice or lack of concern. It’s something. Whatever it is, it makes me angry because I’m in this situation here because of and for them. If they make no gesture that there is something important about it, I have no motivation to stay. Hey, I made it out to California, what I decide now is all my decision and I have a right to it.

Not only do I not think in the way required to be an attorney, but I also hate the approach legal “thinking” is required to take: you start with your conclusion and then you do the research to come up with the argument to support that conclusion. It’s not truth, it’s not justice, it’s whoever can conjure the better argument by whatever means available.

I also find it offensive that to be an effective attorney, you have to thoroughly research and be able to argue the other side as if it were truth, and then reject it, dismiss it, rebut it for a client, for someone who is paying you to win. It makes absolutely no sense to me, it’s not logical, it destroys the credibility of the legal system. Truth is arbitrary in the legal system. It’s far from absolute.

I’ve started to feel that I’m not biding my time by going to law school, looking for other opportunities, I’m wasting my time. I look at the people in law school and these are people who have committed to a career in law. It’s what they want to do with their lives and they are putting their full effort into it. Not just floating through like I am. This has nothing to do with what I want to be doing with the rest of my life.

I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I may not make it to exams, I haven’t a clue about what’s going on or what I’m supposed to be learning. I can’t make the connections that everyone else seems to be able to make. So maybe I’ll drop out right before exams and start looking for a job immediately. When Amina comes, I’ll start bartending school and hope they place me in a job come January.

1844 7th Ave., Oakland

I hate living in the city. Dust, dirt, and grime everywhere. I hate feeling lonely. I hate the material world. I hate the world around me.

The ‘rents haven’t called much; you’d think that they’d be more interested in their investment. I wonder if the guilt is catching up to them. Yea, right. They have no idea, not a clue. When they did call, they asked about school and I gave them a frigid reaction. I didn’t tell them outright that I hated it, but I was evasive and tried to convey that I was not going to speak my true feelings on the matter. They didn’t press. They avoided the topic thereafter.

They know that my going to law school is for them. They don’t care about what I want to do or how I feel about what I’m doing. They don’t know anything about me. It would blow their minds if they had an inkling of what I was really about. I can’t even guess what their reaction might be to finding anything about me.

Avoiding the problem is the pattern for them. They don’t want to know so they hide their heads in the sand. They can’t face up to the truth. They can’t even find a simple way to be honest and make it sound good, “Life is hard, anything you do is hard, stay in law school or we stop sending you money”. Even that is better than glossing everything over and insisting that law school is really what I want to do, as if they know me and what I want to do.

1844 7th Ave., Oakland

I can’t believe I survived until September! What? Two weeks? Law school sucks, it’s hard as hell and requires a mindset that I’d rather not develop. I’m utterly and completely unmotivated and depressed. It’s antithetical to the person I want to be.

I have some good days, some bad. Some days are hard, other days harder. I’m mostly lonely and I feel displaced. My class schedule is hardest on Mondays and Wednesdays. By the end of the day, I walk out of classes in a daze and I have to decompress and recover. It makes me really hate the ‘rents. How much more can I possibly hate them?

I have some days that are really bad but I don’t realize how bad they are until halfway through and look back at it. Today was one of those days. It’s hard not to have bad days when all days depress me to some extent. What topped it off today was hitting an old lady’s car with my Rodeo. My car was undamaged, but I broke one of her rear lights.

It all came rushing at me: I hate living in this world. I hate material life. There are too many people, too many bad people. Too much liability, too many people at too many other peoples’ throats. Life and society is too complicated.

This isn’t the result of hitting that old lady’s car, don’t get me wrong. She came out of her car yelling up a storm, but she was immediately placated when I apologized and told her I would be more than happy to pay for the damage. She became very civil at that point and there was no conflict to resolve. But it’s sad that her first reaction was to be antagonistic and belligerent.

But my problem is that it could have been worse. I’ve never had to deal with responsibility and real life and living. I’ve never lived in the “real” world, I’ve always had things done for me. I could afford to be stuck in a mental hospital when other people have such worse problems than I do.

Until recently I’ve never had to deal with taxes, voting, insurance, credit, bank accounts, jobs. But this accident stirred things up - damages caused to other people, responsibility and liability, having to watch your every move so that you don’t accidentally step on someone’s toes and get sued for battery. Is that what real life is about? Is that how people want to live their lives?

I didn’t have to hit that old lady. I didn’t have to be there to hit that old lady. I didn’t have to have been in my car today. I could have stopped at some other supermarket, I didn’t have to try to get around her because she was driving like . . . an old lady. It was so arbitrary.

1844 7th Ave., Oakland

I’m in Oakland, California! I look around at me and I look at my life and I never could have conceived it that I’d be here. It seems incongruous. I should feel like this is a new start, being in the Bay Area should feel fresh. It doesn’t. I’m still me, I still carry all the luggage and shit that has made my life. It’s still all here. It can change. I can weed out my roots and establish myself as West Coast. West Coast. Wow!



Today was the second day of Orientation at Golden Gate. I left early because it was getting boring and I had shit to do. Why do I have this feeling that I won’t be making any friends at law school? One of the deans gave a talk today, a real hard-nosed bitch. Somehow it fits in with the stereotype of the law field. What stereotype? Whatever.

She gave us quite a scare, she started getting me anxious about grades, exams, and workloads and I’m not supposed to care about any of this. This isn’t my culture, this isn’t what I want to do. Failing out of law school will be no loss to me. I fear that despite my attitude, my expectation might go up. I don’t want to do poorly in anything I do, even if I didn’t want to do it in the first place.

1844 7th Ave., Oakland

We never discussed what it means to really live. I guess it was all somewhere implied. The stuff of senses. The stuff of what reaches our senses. They are only symbols, signposts, indications for us to define our surroundings. What happens when you remove the meanings? To sense and not define.

324 S. Main St., Oberlin

I had to change my plans for going back to New Jersey because the ‘rents are going to Taiwan on the days that I had planned to go back. I went this past weekend and now I’m back in Oberlin until I leave for California. Apparently, grandfather died on July 12, and the ‘rents are going to the cremation which is this week. The actual funeral will be much later and they will probably go for that as well.

They called me last week and told me they were going to Taiwan on the days I was planning to go to New Jersey. They were going to let it go right then and there and not expect to see me until I visited from California, but not being one to miss an opportunity to deceive, I told them I could change my plans so that I could see them before I left for California. More importantly, I needed to get some cash.

So I went to New Jersey, collected some serious G-money, and bid them good riddance. It was actually a touching farewell, full of good intent and concern and care. Some of it may have been genuine, but then I have to ask myself if it would have been the same if I wasn’t going to law school. Doubtful.

A few weeks ago, they were trying to press me to find a place with a roommate in California because it would be cheaper. Ah, money as love; it falls through every time when money is all you care about. But actually, they didn’t press it further, and it really is my choice, so their pressing may not have been much more than suggestion. Maybe there wasn’t an undercurrent of them trying to save money. Doubtful.

The ‘rents have been concerned about a decrease in their income. It’s laughable. They are worried about not having money! Gimme a break, there is no risk of their having no money, they’re concerned about not making enough to support the opulent lifestyle to which they’ve become accustomed. If they need money, they can always sell the Rolls. Maybe they’re concerned that they will run out of money with which to show their love. Doubtful.

The ‘rents visited Tom in Rochester a while back, and on the way back to New Jersey, their Mercedes got a flat. They made a big deal about their stroke of fortune in how uninhabited the highway was, but when they got the flat, there were houses nearby. So they went to one of the houses, knocked on the door and asked for help, and paid whoever helped them $20 to change the flat.

That must have been a really nice guy who helped them, but it’s the ‘rents’ attitude that really disgusts me. It epitomizes their philosophy, their approach to the world: Flash a $20 bill and you can turn any jack-ass sitting on a couch on a Sunday into a mechanic. But nothing to do with the ‘rents, I’m grateful that there are people like the person who helped them in the world. Even to help the ‘rents.

While I was back East, I caught up with Audrey in New York where she’s taking Summer school, making up classes for this past semester that she withdrew from. After grandmother died, she went to Taiwan and decided to stay there and spend time with and take care of grandfather. She was still there in June when grandfather had a heart attack. He continued to have complications, but she had to come back to the States. He died after she left.

She had stories to tell, she was the closest person to him in his last months. It sounds like he went out quite painfully. After the heart attack, he stayed in the hospital until he died. Her descriptions of what he went through are so different from my mental picture of him. Not that I have many mental pictures of him. I never knew him very well and vice versa.

My image of him dying would have been something peaceful and private, like dying in his sleep. It seems so undignified that he suffered a painful heart attack and was fussed and flocked over by doctors. A man in his ‘90's. It seems so undignified to be moved in and out of ICU, vomiting sickly dark colored liquid as if his old age had rotted his insides. There’s a lot about him I don’t know. Maybe the indignity of the way he died suited him. I don’t know.

It came as no surprise to me when he died, dying within six months of grandmother’s death. The ‘rents on the other hand hadn’t been concerned at all about grandfather after grandmother’s death. They just noted, probably more to themselves, that he was in perfect health. Life is all about health and money and they don’t want to face anything which negates health and money. Even when he had the heart attack, they believed the Taiwanese doctors who said they expected a full recovery. When I heard he had a heart attack, I knew the end was near and I couldn’t believe the ‘rents weren’t facing it.

I don’t know where the story ends. I don’t know where it began and I don’t know most of what happened in it. Grandparents were never a part of my life, they were just biological fact, they were a living part of family history. Now they really are family history and I don’t know how I should feel about it. The only effect their deaths are having on me is the knowledge that they were there somewhere all my life, and now they are, in fact, really dead. No longer here, gone beyond.

I don’t know how the ‘rents feel, I don’t know their experience with their parents. I know more about Audrey’s relationship with them. Audrey was a part of their lives and vice versa these past 20 years. As for the ‘rents, I have no idea what their relationship was these past 24 years or more.

Death has never hit close enough to me to ever really affect me. It’s not in my nature to be strongly affected by things that are not in my control, so I wonder what my reaction would be if someone close to me died. I don’t know if this is healthy or if I’m being really cold-hearted. I don’t think I know what it means to truly love. If you can’t truly love, can you truly lose?

But my attitude also fits in with my understanding of Buddhism. I know I’m “Buddhist”, despite the myriad meanings that may have, because with every step along the way, I first identified elements of my own being first and that they are part of my nature, and only later found that they are Buddhist elements. None of it was fed to me, it was here first. I was Buddhist before I knew what it is to be Buddhist. I’d be Buddhist even if there was no such thing as Buddhism. Being “Buddhist” has absolutely no meaning or significance except to help others identify “who I am”.

I don’t think I’ll ever attend the funeral of someone close to me. I think I’ll die first anyway.

324 S. Main St., Oberlin

The Summer rolls into its heat on this lazy, post-July 4, semi-holidaic Monday. It’s relaxed, a bit sticky, and I’m not getting antsy about not practicing. So much to contemplate in a Summer in limbo; distances, time passing by, music, Amina . . . . Shiho.

I miss the heat and humidity of Japan; the feel, the atmosphere, the nuances. I remember so much of so many of the things I did there. My big mistake was to rely on family. Wretched family. In the States, I always feel on the fringes, in the margins, like I’m hiding myself. In Japan, I felt like a part of something in Japan; I don’t know why, I’m not sure how. Japan has made such an imprint in my memory.

Inspiration escapes me. Connecting it to creativity isn’t even an issue. I’m just practicing, nailing down the basics. There was an impromptu “They Might Be Asians” reunion at Commencement this year. Ken was back for friends, I was here with Amina, and Jim and Art are graduating. It was great playing live, there’s nothing like that charge of interacting with other musicians and having an audience.

I finished reading the Lotus Sutra and it was amazing. I need to read it again. The last time I was in New York, I found a companion to the edition that I have. The companion is kind of anemic, not at all comprehensive, but maybe that’s the point. If it goes into too much detail, it might lose the intuitive aspect of the experience of Buddhism or religion in general. I tried starting to read the Q’uran, but that’s a whole different ballgame. It’s a lot more difficult and inaccessible. I hope at some point I can read it when I’m more familiar with Islam.

324 S. Main St., Oberlin

I have absolutely zero enthusiasm about going to California in August. It hasn’t struck me at all that I’m going to be back in school this Fall. I don’t feel that at all. But once I get to California, I can start looking for a band and doing music steadily. I couldn’t do it in suburbia New Jersey and there certainly isn’t anything going on out here in rural Ohio.

I have to remember that law school is just a front, a safety net until I find something else. If I find nothing else, then after three years, I’ll have another degree and can still kick the fuckheads good-bye. Their continuous and consistent lying, coercion, bribing, and manipulating has been the de-humanizing and demeaning low point of my life.

324 S. Main St., Oberlin

Things have been going miserably with Amina so far. We’re living in an off-campus house, kinda far from campus actually, and it’s a grungy place and we live with a bunch of hippie white people.

Me, I’m not holding up very well. I’m still recovering from the past half year and I feel now that I’m in a transition period before heading to California and that is making me anxious. It may be my old problem with adjusting to new situations. Either way, things have been tense with Amina and we’ve been struggling to level things out.

I told Amina everything that went on this past semester, something I regret doing and shouldn’t have done, but even having told her, she doesn’t really understand the effect of what happened.

I also held it against Amina that we’re living with a bunch of hippie white people and not alone. I took that as an indication that she didn’t want this summer to be an intimate time to build our relationship because now we have to deal with all these other people. I held it against her that she gets along with white people and that being with her might mean having to deal with them more.

I know Amina hasn’t done anything wrong, I know none of this is right, I know none of this is her, I know this is my problem, but knowing what the problem is isn’t helping me find solutions to overcome the effects of the problems. We have so much fun and we enjoy being with each other, but when things get tense, the things that come out of my mouth are unbelievable.

She has done so much for me and she means so much to me, I just have so much trouble expressing my gratitude, appreciation and affection openly in this house. It comes to mind and heart, I just can’t get it out. I don’t know why I can’t break out of my undesirable impulses to take offense and to distance. I don’t know why I can’t be stronger for Amina. I feel that she doesn’t need me and she has a life of her own. I see her stressed because of me and she’d probably be having a good time here if it wasn’t for me being sour and tense.

Lately I’ve been feeling like there is an inner shell developing inside of me. I have my outer shell which everyone sees. Under that is another shell that contains my feelings and expression and it’s under lock and key. A definite separation between the shells has become more and more pronounced. Not only is the inner shell closed off and inaccessible, but it is shrinking, increasing the distance between the two shells, making me feel more distanced and isolated.

Communication has failed between us. I resort to letters I won’t send and we’ve stopped telling each other how we feel. We’ve stopped asking and requesting of each other and instead we just expect from each other. We need to talk more and be true to ourselves. I need to stop being so wrapped up in my problems. New Jersey is behind me, I’m going to California, I need to look up.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Well, I’ve got my car. $20,000 for an Isuzu Rodeo and I’ll be putting a CD changer in soonly. With these great expenses, I’ve been mellowing out and I’ve even started feeling guilty. I looked into the future and imagined the feelings of betrayal after spending so much money. Not only stabbed in the back, but having the back-stabbing planned from the start. They asked for it. It’s their fault for not having the foresight or the awareness of what they were putting me through. What goes around comes around.

I’m going to help Bob move from Providence to New Haven this weekend. We discussed the move and we planned it so that I would arrive in Providence between ten and eleven tomorrow. That means I would have to leave between seven and eight. A short while after getting off the phone, one of the fuckheads told me to go to sleep early tonight. How the fuck did he know what time I was planning to leave? I am so fucking out of here. What goes around comes around.

I hope they were listening in to the conversation. Then they caught the part where I was talking about having to buy stereo equipment for their stupid karaoke parties. I don’t give a fuck anymore if they were listening in, I’ve got my drums, I got my car, I’m getting the CD changer, I’m going to San Francisco for law school, and I’m spending the Summer in Oberlin with Amina. What are they going to do if they overhear my honest opinion of them? Fuck ‘em.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Amina and I have had two consecutive conversations that have been tense and non-communicative. I can’t help but fear the worst for our relationship. I love her so dearly with all my heart, mind and spirit. The thought of losing her after loving her for this long is unbearable.

We’re both under a lot of stress, though, and there is no way the way we treat each other can’t be affected. I pray that it is temporary and doesn’t damage what we have. But we need to learn how to deal with each other under stress. Perhaps we’ll grow into it.

I made those two phone calls and I regret it now. She’s in crunch time and doesn’t need me distracting her. Even when we can be positive and have fun, it still takes energy and distracts. I have been telling her everything that I’ve been going through and that can’t have been easy, since I’m sure she has problems of her own. Problems that she doesn’t tell me about, I’m sure.

I didn’t even want to talk to her the last time I called her. I’ve been getting confused lately; a cloudy sort of numbing I-don’t-care type of confused. I know exactly where I stand and I’m resolute in who I am and what I’m doing, but things have started getting cloudy in general; on the fringes. I’ve been craving the company of people who are on similar emotional ground as me. And that’s not Amina.

Amina has declared that she has no sympathy for people begging for sympathy. I’m not sure what that means, but I think she was directing that at me. Perhaps my constant complaining about my circumstances spurred that remark. So I’ve respected her stance and have ranted and raved about my situation with no expectation of sympathy or concern on her part. She knows how to keep her distance.

But now I feel that I’ve temporarily taken a step away from the front and the actual fight and find myself in need of people who are able to step into a closer circle around me. Not even to talk about it specifically, but at least someone within the circle and to know they are there. And that’s not Amina. But god how I love Amina, why shouldn’t it be her? Why is she still keeping her distance?

A lot of it is my fault. Whether or not she can maintain her distance, I tell her every little thing that I’m going through and she has to defend herself against whatever feelings my experience may evoke. She has to keep her guard up against any negativity I’m feeling in my life because she has nothing to do with it and wants nothing to do with it. She certainly hasn’t told me otherwise. It’s my fault that I’ve told her everything. I shouldn’t have.

But Amina also doesn’t delineate what boundaries are OK to cross and which I have to be conscious of. I’m still defining what boundaries I think exist because she isn’t doing it. I’m still defining her role in the mess of my life because she hasn’t given me any indication of what she wants her role to be. I’m still telling her my effect on her and her life because she isn’t telling me. Distances and boundaries define our relationship, how they got that way I don’t know. How to fix things, I also don’t know.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

One of the fuckheads saw an office on TV, just an office on a news story, and exclaimed, “Oh, I hope that you will have an office like that in a few years!” Perhaps anticipating a snide remark, which I was slow to formulate because I was getting over the affront of the comment, the other fuckhead interjected, “But not necessarily”. I’ve made it clear over and over again that I have no intention of going into the field of law or taking the bar. They’re response has been a uniform, “That’s OK, just get a law degree, you can do what you want after that”.

Idiots. Do they think I don’t know what’s going on? After three years they’re going to start up again about taking the bar, and the fuckhead’s comment, and the other fuckhead’s attempt to cover it up, proves it. It’s so clear to me that I don’t need to wonder about it. I’ll jump off that bridge when I get to it.

They’re already assuming I’m coming back to the East Coast after law school. California is way out of their sphere of influence. Sooner or later, I disappear from their paltry, pitiful lives. There is no way in hell they can make me come back here.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

The fuckheads have grudgingly accepted that if they want me in law school, they’d better accept my choice of which school. I’m still pressing them for the car. In fact, I mentioned the car right in the midst of them attempting to make me feel guilty about giving up an $18,000 scholarship. I smugly made clear that it wasn’t my money.

They’ve clearly betrayed their “money is love” mantra. That’s too bad after all the time and effort I spent shooting holes in the idea. It’s much simpler than I’ve made it all out to be. “Money as love” was just a means to disguise their self-interest. Who would expect me to accept money as a surrogate for emotions and interactions parents are supposed to have with their off-spring? Although it’s true that there are plenty of families which have neither.

But since this isn’t another family, I’m on the warpath to spend their money, and spend their money I will. Tomorrow I go look for a car. I’m looking at Nissan Pathfinders, the most expensive of its type. I need something that can haul music equipment around. I think I need a CD changer, too.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Almost every time I’ve really needed Amina, I wasn’t able to get in touch with her. Coincidence?

Maybe it has always been for the better, I don’t think I want to expose Amina to this side of me, especially this time. Things went a little far this time and I cut up my legs pretty bad and slugged down a whole glass of vodka. Putting gashes in my legs stopped working when it got to the point that it wasn’t doing anything except making me more angry. It wasn’t relieving anything. One cut probably could use stitches, but doesn’t need it. I don’t mind it scarring in a nasty way. I want to remember this weekend far into the future.

I wasn’t home when the mail came. When I got home, I saw the large envelope from DePaul University and I could see that the envelope had been opened and an attempt had been made to make it look like it hadn’t been opened. One of the fuckheads was in the house. At first I thought it was the fuckhead who opened it, but decided to withhold judgment until I got more facts. I didn’t care what DePaul had to say since I had already gotten into Golden Gate University and intended to go there. I peeked in the envelope, saw that I was accepted and left it.

Later in the day, the fuckhead told me to go pick up the other fuckhead from the office. When I picked him up, he mentioned something about a scholarship. I didn’t know anything about it. Apparently DePaul offered a scholarship for $18,000. That confirmed without a shadow of doubt that the bitch had opened my mail and gone through the contents.

The violation was staggering. I silently fumed. The irony is that the reason I wasn’t at the house to intercept the mail was that I was out gleefully spending their money on the electronic drumset that was my right after I told them I got into Golden Gate. Was it worth it? No fucking way.

It gets worse. A little later, the bitch comes traipsing to my room feigning exuberance that she “just heard” that I got a scholarship. Maybe she thought I had read the acceptance letter and had told the other fuckhead when I was driving him home and then he told her. I was in no mood for her bullshit and called her on it, asking what she was talking about, she already had opened it and read the letter.

Her years of practiced lying obviously paid off, she didn’t miss a beat. She instantly processed that she had just been nailed and continued to spin it, saying that she looked at it but didn’t read the details. Funny, I didn’t see anything about a scholarship, that information must have come from somewhere. Her English must be much better than I thought to be able to just look at a letter and get such detail out of it. Fuckhead.

To make matters even worse, they then try to pressure me to go to DePaul. FUCK YOU!! What the hell. It was no problem for me to hold my line, I didn’t care about anything they said, I was going to San Francisco to get the fuck far away from them as possible.

They left for some party and I just lost it. I wanted to burn. I tried to call Amina, but fortunately to no avail. So I hacked away. This law school bullshit is getting out of hand. It has only gotten this far because I’m financially dependent and don’t have the means or ability to just leave and make it on my own. I have no idea how to look for a job, I have no resume, I have no experience. Every time I told them I wanted to get a job, they forked over more money and told me to study more. Which I never did anyway. I wouldn’t put it past them that they planned it this way so that they could have more control over the options and opportunities I have.

The fuckheads. They were ecstatic that I had gotten into Golden Gate, they had considered their mission as parents accomplished. They didn’t care where I went, they didn’t care how bad of a school I went to. Suddenly put $18,000 into the picture and it’s a whole new front, another battle. They’re so full of shit. They didn’t push law school for my benefit and future, they manipulated it because it gains them satisfaction and status; so that they can tell their friends that they have two doctors and a lawyer. It’s a game of cards to them. They’re not pushing for me to go to Chicago because of the money, they don’t need it, they said that the $18,000 they’re saving would go into my bank account. They want Chicago because they want me closer within their sphere of influence. No fucking way.

A car, the drumset, spending the Summer in Oberlin, none of the money is worth it. The money doesn’t have the value that the fuckheads think they do. I don’t need any of the stuff, and in a different situation I certainly wouldn’t even ask for any of it.

Not that if the fuckheads put more emphasis and effort into family and less in money, everything would be coming up roses. Problems and conflicts are a way that families learn and grow and build a relationship. But there has to be learning and growing by both parties. There has to be an emotional investment. The fuckheads learn nothing and are complacent as they are and invest only money. I am not interested.

Even with problems and conflicts, a family that invests emotionally is functional and there is always hope for reconciliation. There is no hope in this family because there is no groundwork, there is no foundation on which to build anything. There is only resentment, hatred, and distrust. There is nothing to reconcile, it has all been about business and economics. Money.

If things were different, I would be a vastly different person. I am a direct product of their upbringing, not a passive victim of their negligence. I won’t say everything is perfect as they are since I don’t very much care for who I am and would prefer not to exist as I am, but as long as I’m here, I can accept that whatever happens to me in the future is pretty much a direct result of the upbringing they had to offer. Anything I do is explainable as a result of what they’ve sown. My future is a natural progression from the kind of upbringing they’ve given.

So I gain materially through all this. I’m making out like a bandit and making sure they come through with everything they now owe me. It makes no difference that they are unsatisfied after they intercepted the DePaul letter. That’s their own fault. The agreement was that I go to law school, not where I go. If they feel they’re losing out because they’re not getting exactly what they want, that’s their own fault for not getting this in writing.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

I told them I got into a school. And out of it, I got the drumset, a car, and going to Oberlin for the Summer. No questions asked. Not bad. They'll try to renege if possible. They won't on the drumset or car, that's only several thousands of dollars, no real loss to them. But as for going to Oberlin for the Summer I can see them trying to put pressure against it. Tough beans.

They have such gall. They pat themselves on the back. They said, “Now all the money we spent is worth it." They said that. Apparently, one of their parents commented that they were the most successful parents amongst their siblings. Their response was, "No, not until he gets into law school." They said that. Now, they consider themselves the most successful parents amongst their siblings. They say I have desire for good things now, so now I have the motivation to make money. They said that. What?!

They said more, and all through it I kept my mouth shut and my fist clenched under the table in an effort to shut out the offenses pouring out of their mouths. They rewarded my endurance and stoicism by forking out money for me to go out and buy the damn drumset. I take the money and ask myself if it's worth it. They had this cash lying around. They haven’t lost or sacrificed anything.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Well, I got into law school. I haven't told the 'rents yet, I'm going to let them stew a little longer and make sure I've prepared the situation to my advantage. I've already gotten them to (enthusiastically) promise to buy me a $2000 electronic drumset if I got into law school. I didn't have to argue a case for it. I didn't even have to tell them what it was. I actually wasn't going to even press for it, $2000 is a lot of money! If they said "$2000!!!", I would have dropped it right then and there.

Bob was down here and I didn’t tell him either. I can’t trust him. He’s pretty much caved into the ‘rent’s perspective. I never would have thought that he'd become the way he is now. I think he's really fucked up. He covers up, justifies, and apologizes for a lot more than he would admit. He's deluding himself. He now sees just as much of the 'rents' perspective as he sees mine. That would be reasonable if he were a middleman, a mediator, but he isn't. He has been just as much subjected to this upbringing as I have, he is just as much a victim. So for him to take neutral ground is indicative of something. I don't know what. A lot, though.

Contrary to my previous belief, I think he was very directly affected by our upbringing. He wasn't just a passive player that tried to keep the peace or stand aloof. I no longer believe that any psychological burden he carries is due to the indirect fallout of the conflicts between the rents, Tom, and/or me. He was always right there in the thick of it and it has made him what he is now.

I even wonder how much he really wants to be a doctor. It always seemed so perfect and easy for him. The 'rents wanted him to be a doctor and he wanted to be a doctor, and he had the academic record and intelligence to do it. Now I question whether he would have become a doctor if the 'rents hadn't pushed that from the get-go. Maybe he had it the worst. He didn't even have a chance to resist. Maybe the impulse was suppressed from the start.

It seemed like he would be the one to turn out successful and happy since he was good at anything he tried. Everything he touched he did well. But now this change in personality is so drastic that it begs for some explanation. Tracing the path back with hindsight, his background also allows for alternative paths that he may have preferred to have pursued and didn't.

He has acknowledged and accepted how the 'rents express affection through money. I'm sorry, that is just such a twisted treatment of human communication, expression, and family interaction. For Bob to endorse it just blows my mind. Instead of establishing trust, loyalty, and love, they make money, and then use that money in place of trust, loyalty, and love. Making money is so much easier, and making money is a one-sided undertaking. Forming a relationship necessitates complex compromise, understanding, and acceptance between multiple parties and their respective personalities, perspectives, and values. The 'rents just make money and they give money.

Love as money also means that there is a limit to their love. Once their bank account is theoretically exhausted, there is nothing attaching me to them. The love ran out. And besides, who gave them the right to redefine love, its meaning and its expression? If they can define that in their own terms, I can re-define what I give back. What do they want? Gratitude, filial piety, respect? Why can't I define for myself how those things are expressed?

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Problems surface and resolve with Amina, but I see cracks in the masonry. I love her so much, but I don't like how I am in this relationship, I don't feel I'm handling it very well. I'm not handling the distance very well at all. She went on a trip to D.C. for a huge Pride march and she didn't even mention that she was going. I don't know why, but I felt betrayed by that. I felt unconsidered and unimportant. I wrote a long letter to her working through my feelings and by god I hope I never send it.

I'm thinking too much. There is too much thinking going on, too much analysis and nit-picking at our differences and delineating our personalities and straining our compatibility. I run scenarios through my head. Too much looking at what she does and comparing what I would do and what everything means to me. I hold up a mirror to her and talk about what I see in the mirror. I don't communicate most of it to her, but it's bad enough that it's happening. Is there any benefit in differentiating what is her and what she did, and what is me and what I would have done?

The issues for me are closeness and participation in each other's lives. I feel distanced from her and she is maintaining her distance. The source of my feelings is an ideal of being so attached to someone, being a part of someone else, to work in synchronous harmony with someone else. But then why do I keep talking about religion and spiritual paths and monasteries and not wanting to live past 34, 40 at most? I have a history of abandoning. Who am I to think I could ever be that close to someone else? To feel 'unconsidered' in Amina's life is ludicrous.

A lot of the problem is my being here in New Jersey and doing nothing. Amina is just going on with her life, a life that I also had to go on with when I was a student. Now I'm just doing nothing and it's affecting our relationship. I think of the future and that we will have a time to work it all out, but I don't know how to handle right now. I don't know how to get to that comfortable future.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

I’ve started dabbling in martial arts again and I’ve re-discovered what a source of spiritual energy they are. I remember back at Oberlin how after sessions I would feel like I was just floating on air. They just put me in a completely different space. But that feeling must be understood in congruence with the Lotus Sutra. Even though I wasn't reading the Lotus Sutra back at Oberlin as intently as I am now, I remember the feeling and I have to bring it back to the Lotus Sutra.

So many of the things that are now so identified with Buddhism like Zen, meditation, and martial arts have become divorced from the original religious context. They can't have meaning unless they are brought back to an understanding of Buddhism as a religion, the doctrines as revelation, that which has been revealed. Not just insight, that which is within, but revelation, that from without. And the realization that it is all one and the same thing. What modern Western culture identifies as Buddhism is mostly bastardization. It's so shallow, it goes against the grain of Buddhism by needing to identify and pigeon-hole the symbols and the cultural context.

I don't know what I'm saying, there is just something so wrong about the way modern Western society views Buddhism. These are just thoughts and I wouldn't argue for them or try to convince anyone else of them. I have nothing to contribute to rectify what I criticize. I can't even communicate it. Bottom-line: what the hell do I know about anyone else's views and opinions and perceptions.

This past week has been pretty good. Only one minor fight with the 'rents. How do I convey how much I hate them, how do they instill in me such a complete disregard for my own life. They suck meaning out of life. How can they be so clueless and still have developed their manipulative technique to such a high level? Everything they do feels like tentacles winding their grip into my nerves and bones, climbing up my spine. They are like cancer, incessant and invading, and the only way to cure it is to cut them out. Or I can bombard them with radiation. Whichever works.

At the same time, I feel that they have no substance, no reality to me. They have their effect, but they themselves are insubstantial. No real significance, only a superficial impact, nothing that touches my core being. Even though it is a core being they helped shape.

I keep control over my spirit and my well-being. I have control over my body. Cutting reminds me that I do with it as I please and they can't do anything about it. Cutting gets me through the brief, intense flashes of hatred and helplessness and reaffirms my control. It is shallow empowerment, seemingly self-defeating, but it does the job.

I've told Amina about the cutting. It felt good, but it also helps that she doesn't sympathize. I've always dreaded people finding out and feeling sympathy or trying to feel the pain for themselves and not knowing what to do with it. Amina keeps her distance and doesn't have that natural reaction of sympathy. I appreciate that in her. But what does she do with the information?

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

I dug out video tapes of the series "Cosmos" hosted by Carl Sagan that Tom recorded in the early '8O's. It's fascinating going back to that stuff because I watch it now and I don't listen to the science, I listen to the religion within what Carl Sagan presents as science. I'm involved in reading the Lotus Sutra and the ideas I get from that inform how I interpret what Carl Sagan is talking about.

When I first watched "Cosmos" years ago, it was like planting seeds of ideas. Then my education and experience informed how the seeds would germinate and grow. It's a nice circle. My education and experience determined how I would understand the seeds. But without the seeds, there would be no ideas to grow. It just so happened that my education and experience had a religious resonance. If my education and experience were different, I might be interpreting the ideas borne of the seeds differently.

The ideas in "Cosmos" fit in so well with what I've learned through religious ideas. In the first episode, the series is presented as a journey on the "ship of imagination, unfettered by our concepts of time and distance". I read spiritual release in that. It's a goal. It's God. God is the ship of imagination. God is the vehicle.

Carl Sagan presents the ship coming to Earth from deep, deep space that appears to be a conceptual exercise. We approach from billions of trillions of light years away. Mind-boggling numbers. Numbers so large that we brush them off because it's easier to do that than try to conceive of them. Numbers so large that they exceed the limits of our cognition so we resign ourselves to their enormity and avoid appreciating them. That's exactly what's in the Lotus Sutra. Eons and eons of lifetimes so lengthy as to be unable to be captured in words.

There is also the idea of the cycles of universes. This actually isn't from "Cosmos", but it's a scientific idea with a parallel in religion. They say the universe began with the Big Bang, when all the matter in the universe was contained in an infinitesimally small dot in a time and space we can't even conceive of, and it "exploded" and began it's expansion in time and space as we know it. The question that plagues astronomers now is whether there is so much mass in the universe that it will stop expanding and collapse upon itself in a cosmic Big Crunch, or if it doesn't and will continue to expand forever.

The universe, by astronomers' estimation is some 16 billion years old and still expanding. It has been expanding for an enormous amount of time and will continue to expand, and when it begins to contract, it will be contracting for an enormous amount of time.

To inject my religious understanding, I conclude that there is enough mass in the universe that it will eventually stop expanding and begin to contract. It's a cycle. These huge time frames fit right in with the Lotus Sutra and the time frames it marks for existences of major Buddhas. Reigns, if I must.

I must note, though, what Carl Sagan said in reference to Ptolemy. Ptolemy "proves that intellectual brilliance and genius is no guarantee from being dead wrong" (!) Carl Sagan comes through with the one-liner.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Amina and I have been doing great as a result of my last visit to Oberlin. A lot of my anxiety and insecurity concerning our relationship that grew in March has disappeared. I've been writing to her regularly, but not forcing myself for the sake of putting something in her mailbox. I haven't been forcing myself to call her every few days because of the imagined possibility that she was expecting a call from me.

I've been paying attention to my feelings more closely and that has made me more comfortable and secure. I am putting faith in her to tell me when she wants or needs something from me. So I'm feeling more comfortable in this relationship. Even though I wasn't aware of being uncomfortable before.

I'm still waiting to hear from law schools. It occurs to me during this period of waiting that I have no idea what I'm going to do if I don't get in. I've started banking on this law school thing and I've made no alternate plans in case I don't get in. I hope I have the self-respect left to gather all I can on my back and walk out the door. I will have no more need for the 'rents.

I think back to these past six months and I feel like I've been totally stripped of integrity. I've let them have their way on everything. I've numbed all resistance as a matter of strategy. I've let them insult my principles and my very being. I've suppressed my thoughts and deadened my feelings. I've kept silent through their obsession with law school which has fueled their lies, coercion, and manipulation. So if I don't get into one, that's it. Their reign of dehumanization is over and I'm outta here.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

March was a tougher month than I had realized. The blizzard and dealing with the 'rents really took their toll. I ended up going out to Oberlin last week. Things turned out fine, great, but they started off rocky. I wonder if this isn't the greatest time for Amina and I to have started going out. My situation here is so unstable and makes my feelings uncontrollable and unpredictable. I don't think Amina really grasps or sympathizes with what it's like for me here, and it makes me anxious whenever I feel emotional distance between us.

Before I went, I tortured myself deciding whether to go or not. Amina hadn't been able to sanction it because I couldn't get in touch with her, and that was extremely frustrating and probably where I felt the emotional distance. The night before I left, I spent hours sitting and thinking about it before I fell asleep. Then I grappled with it some more after waking up. And still l couldn't reach her on the phone. She was still inaccessible.

I had been feeling that our relationship was beginning to slide and that it would be jeopardized if I didn't go see her and make a connection. But there was a big risk in going out without her sanctioning it. Finally I decided that I had to go and left without telling her I was coming. I really thought that I was going to regret it and that something awful was going to happen between us. I kept wanting to turn back and I drove for five hours straight because I if I stopped for gas or food, I probably would have headed back to New Jersey.

I arrived a total mess and then I distracted her from her work and then we had one really tough night. We talked it through and I think we managed to do some serious building, but I'm not sure why or what. I can't make the direct connection between that talk and what we built. But there is something between us now that wasn't there before, so we definitely built something.

It feels like there is a new dimension between us, something fresh, more mature, although it didn't feel like there was anything missing or anything immature about us before. I don't think there is anything before that I regret, but something needed to be addressed and accounted for. I just can't put my finger on what. It feels like we've gotten through a major crisis, but we haven't. We weren't threatened in any way, it was just that something wasn't clear.

It's wonderful what we have now (but wasn't it wonderful what we had before last week?). The tough time added something substantial and colorful to our relationship, and then we were able to have some awesome times and kick back some. I think. The second night in Bess's apartment was so comfortable and secure and rich. I don't even want to think about if I hadn't gone out.

I got in touch with Ching Ching last night. I keep forgetting how well she knows me, how well aware she is of my situations, reactions, and feelings. The unwavering support she gives me against the 'rents is so unprecedented that I don't even know how to put my appreciation into words. She knows I'm always at risk when I'm here and her concern is a moral boost.

I will always remember her as someone who really cared to find out the truth about what's going on with me. She was there when I had my troubles with Oberlin, she wasn't a participant, but she was around when it happened. We had become friends our first semester, she was so far removed from her roots in California and we just found each other friends. Then suddenly, second semester I was gone, stuck into some hospital and then suspended. So now when she gets a hint that something's wrong, she probes deep to make sure she’s in the know.

She is like kin now. Our connection runs deep, even though words are a barrier between us and the ideas we share don't always fully develop into each other's understanding. We don't automatically understand each other and we have to explain our ideas a lot and make them tangible and concrete, simplified in a way that doesn't do the thoughts justice.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

The first Spring rain is falling tonight. It isn't a pleasant warm rain. It's cold and it comes on and off, sometimes a mist, sometimes you can hear the raindrops. But most importantly, it is what makes the dark patches on the lawn grow larger and larger as the snow melts away. The snow is from last week's storm that raged across the East Coast. Anything is better than the five Ohio Winters in a row that I went through.

Warm weather is a heartbeat away. Next week is Spring Break for Oberlin, but I'm not going out to visit Amina. Ohio is a long way out and I'm flat broke and I have no idea when I'll be notified of law school and I want to get the information first. I would also like to go to a People of Color Conference at Oberlin at the end of April and then to Commencement at the end of May and I don't want the 'rents telling me I should go to Bob's Commencement, which is on the same day, because I've been going to Oberlin so often. Amina wants us to be together over the Summer, and so I'm planning on that, too. She might end up staying in Oberlin.

My letters to Shiho have been very friend to friend with subtle hints at the unrealistic nature of our relationship. She hasn't responded to my hints at doubts or uncharacteristic lack of affection, but I'm sure she isn't missing them. Hey, for all I know, she’s going through the exact thing over there with some guy I don’t know anything about.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

I haven’t been feeling the need to hold onto my anger and hate every minute of the day. I’ve been able to cool off and relax more and be more confident about my feelings and the nature of what’s going on here.

Last weekend, the largest blizzard in over a century hit the area. Lots of snow fell and then freezing rain turned much of it into ice. It meant manual labor, shoveling the driveway. I had to hack away the top layer of ice with a regular shovel before shoveling the snow and ice bit by bit since it was so heavy.

I don’t mind doing the work. I’m working my way through this. Money is the keystone of this family relationship. The sources of my conflict here are the assumptions and expectations of how a family is supposed to work. They’re all wrong, they’re just ideals. The model of a family here is a perfectly valid model of one type of functional family.

They see raising children as not much different from bringing a car to the shop. They pay the money, they expect the work to be done. If the workers have a complaint, well they can just keep it to themselves. The same applies to their family. They put in the money, they expect something in return. If we have complaints, well we can just keep them to ourselves. Their philosophy is if you pay the money, you get what you want.

I’ve assumed that family is an emotional relationship, not a business transaction. I’ve always felt the injustice has been against me. But in their mind, the injustice is against them. I’m not performing my part of the bargain – don’t complain. It causes them stress, and if they’ve paid the money, there should be no stress. What I have always thought family should be, they’ve never wanted that. They have never even considered what I had assumed was a goal.

So I don’t mind the manual labor now. I do it automatically without being told. While growing up, they were always giving orders, “Do this, do that”. It was never, “Could you please do this?”. They had the right to give orders because they paid for it, and they didn’t have to show courtesy because they also paid for not having to.

But when I automatically perform the labor, it’s an act of resentment. It beats being ordered to do it. I do it as a slap in the face. They think I’ve finally matured and I’m such a good boy, but at the same time they’re getting what they paid for.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

I drink as an expression of anger towards the ‘rents. They make me feel a certain way and I express how I feel through drinking. How does drinking constitute a feeling? How does it constitute expression? It doesn’t, but it acts like a magnifier to help me really feel it and keep in touch with the feeling. It’s a coping mechanism, like taking a wooden plank out back and smacking it against a tree or the side of the house. It blows off steam. I don’t expect anyone to understand, there are too many pre-conceptions attached to alcohol and drinking.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

How far am I going to take this charade? I finished my law school applications and sent them off. While writing my personal statement, I found myself actually convincing myself that I want to go to law school. One step back and, “what the hell am I doing?”. It is with utter contempt and disgust that I let this go on like this. All the hatreds resurface. I have to remember what I must remember and face how difficult this is, and think about California and that my life doesn’t start until I get there.

I haven’t written to Shiho since December. That in itself must tell her something about my doubts. I have to write to her now. I need to figure out what to tell her and what to withhold for the time being. I do have pangs of regret, of making things complicated, but I do think the facts are facts and that trying to make a relationship work would be futile.

And in the meanwhile, Amina and I just get closer and closer and the future with her looks so good. I want to say that everything is rosy and wonderful and all the gush that comes with love and lovers. But everything is rosy! Everything is great, and I’ve never looked so positively towards the future before. Except that I still don’t want to live to a ripe old age, I still don’t want to be condemned to that. Not yet.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

It was just last month that I was wondering what a horrible situation it would be if I found that Amina was in love with me and wanted something from me. It turns out that she is in love with me and does want something from me. And it was just last month that I decided that if it came to that, Shiho’s happiness would take precedence. And here I am with Amina and I’m elated. No matter what my intention, if Amina pushes for something, she’ll get it. I just love her too much and always have. In the sea of love, the water encompasses me and fills every part of my being, entering me, drowning me, smothering me, and I don’t struggle. I give in.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

I spent another two weeks with Amina in Oberlin and it was just wonderful and amazing. And she is in love with me and does want to marry me. She is everything to me. There are times I think about commitment and I balk, but when I see Amina’s face, her smile, all that she is to me, us together, then I’m completely sure. It’s so overwhelming, what I’ve wanted all along.

She actually drove out here with Waleed, since he was visiting people on the East Coast, before we drove back to Oberlin together. It was funny, they arrived on Saturday morning and the ‘rents were at the office. I expected the ‘rents to return shortly, so I described to them exactly what to expect. I said that when they showed up, they would acknowledge them with surprise and a big, fake smile and say “hi, how are you?” after I told them who they were. Then they would turn their attention to me and say something about lunch to prove that there is communication, and then they would disappear upstairs and they wouldn’t see any more of them. They were amused by the description, but then they were appalled when it was exactly what happened.

And Shiho? God, I hate to say it, but in the shadow of Amina, she is fading fast. When I got back from Oberlin, she had sent a tape-letter, like we used to send to each other, and it just feels like it would never work between us. Logistically, a relationship is impossible as long as her parents have major control over her life decisions and she doesn’t have the freedom to resist them. She even mentioned again how strict her parents are as if to hammer the point home.

I don’t think I’m cheating on Shiho. I don’t think our relationship is realistic. She mentioned she couldn’t get out of Tokyo for another two years, much less get out of the influence of her parents, much less spend time with me to build a relationship. Amina is not only right now, but she always has been. Shiho was something that happened in a last moment of desperation. There is no wrong being done against Shiho. Right now it may seem like it because Amina and I are happening before Shiho and I have officially called it off, but in a half year’s time, it won’t make a difference. The realities will become clear eventually.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Being here is tearing me apart. The ‘rents have been trying to be really nice now that they’ve got me to agree to take the LSAT and apply to law school. My thinking and feelings go around in circles, perhaps starting with a statement like, “I resent them”, and then the thoughts start going back and forth, each thought or feeling prompting an opposite thought or feeling.

I start with a statement like, “I resent them”. I arrive at a room. It is chaotic and confusion. I run around and look at the options; the options are doors. The options are all the ways I can react to the juxtapositions, the opposing feelings. Finally I choose a door that leads me to the appropriate thought, the good supportive argument against them. But that’s never the end, there are more thoughts, more feelings, more arguments to chase, so I have to run around more until I find the right door for the next argument. And when I’ve gone through all the doors, I’m left with the original statement, “I resent them”, present and as strong as ever.

All the arguments, all the explanations and justifications for my feelings, attitudes, and actions have been written down. I’ve already gone through them. But for some reason, I can’t keep those feelings in my head or heart. Every time I do something in opposition to them, I have to go through the whole runaround to justify what I do.

It’s draining to have to go through the full circle every time I have a feeling for or against the ‘rents, and it’s so unnecessary because the bottom line is that I can’t stand them. But every blasted time I go through the whole thing. I’m fighting a losing battle that I won’t lose because it will never end.

Ching Ching and I got reacquainted today. I had heard that she was in New York attending Columbia and I’ve been thinking of hunting her down, but she called me first and I went to visit her today. She was among the very first people I befriended at Oberlin, how odd how natural it was to find us having lunch at Tom’s Restaurant so many years later after having so many ups and downs.

It was terrific seeing her and being with her. We connect in so many ways, but it’s clear to me that our paths were meant to be different. We have so much to teach each other through our different experiences if we just connect every few years and share what we’ve been doing. But only if the connection between us stays the same.

I spoke with Luyen for several hours the other night. She got suspended from Oberlin for poor academic performance. The suspension part, sound familiar? More parallels between us.

It was so weird when she was going through her troubles last Spring because I would listen to her and I knew exactly what she was going through. I knew what she needed to hear, the answers she needed to get out of the woods, but I couldn’t tell her. I realized that four years prior, if someone had come to me with the answers I needed to get out of my torment, I would have resisted. I would have said that it wasn’t that fucking easy.

Answers are only answers if you understand why they are answers. For me, the only way out was through personal experience, walking the path was the only way to understand where it led out of the woods. So I thought Luyen had to do the same, but I thought I could help by pointing in certain directions; plant seeds so that when she encountered key experiences, words to help understand them would have already gone into her ears.

It feels like it was such a mistake to go out with her, but how else could I have gotten close enough to be any help? It may have been the only way to get her to trust me enough to open up and listen. Of course I didn’t think this through back then, it’s easy to say this in retrospect, but the truth is that it was all impulse and feelings back then. I wanted to give a relationship with Luyen a chance after Hiromi was out of the picture. Not a very good reason when things obviously weren’t going so well.

The ‘rents have been trying to be really nice lately. It makes it necessary to put in an extra effort to resent them. I have to remember that there is a price, nothing they give comes free. I told them what I want to do and they just steamrolled right over it to push their agenda. Their interference in my life plans is not something I should forget about just because of some immediate feel-good gestures on their part.