The other day Ashley told me she could never see me having a one night stand. I’m not sure how it even came up or if it was meant to be an insult or a compliment.  She’s back in my life again and we’re co-existing again in this weird limbo. We’ve been here a thousand times before, so I rarely question it. I just hold on to the moments that she’s here because I know she’ll be to the wind again soon.

“Why not?” I asked. I pressed my phone against my ear, anxious to hear her answer.

“You think too much,” she said. “You would worry too much about everything.”

“That’s not true,” I protested.

“Well, have you ever had one?”

“Of course.” Despite my adamance on the matter, my  mental catalog of one night stands came up surprisingly empty. There was a girl I met in my early twenties, but then I remembered I saw her three times afterwards because I couldn’t scoop up my clothes quick enough in the morning. I’m pretty sure she also dragged me to her little brother’s first birthday party.  “Okay well, maybe not.”

“Yeah, I knew it,” she said. “It’s not a bad thing. I’m just saying.”

After we got off the phone, my thoughts went to Autumn.  We hadn’t talked for months, but I thought about her from time to time when I discovered something new in Los Angeles. It reminded me of my first months here and the excitement of experiencing something for the first time. I remembered the way she looked in the morning: beautiful, even in my tacky hotel room. I didn’t want to get on with my life.

I thumbed through my contacts–Autumn. I texted her, and without waiting for a response, decided to take a walk and leave my phone at home.

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I had this dream last night where some bratty kid stole (and subsequently lost) my camera. I was on my way to see a movie when it happened and when I realized what he had done, I grabbed him by the back of his shirt and made him lead me around the mall to find my beloved camera. At one point, we were cornered by a group of gang members and in an effort to protect the kid, I pushed him away to get out of there and grabbed a nearby chair to defend myself. The “thugs” laughed and one of them threw his blade at my face (which I ducked, thankfully).

One of them asked if they should kill me and the other replied, “Nah, we’re in public.”

I asked, “Why are you doing this? I haven’t done anything to you.”

To which they replied, “So? why not? Do we need a reason?”

“Why would you want to hurt someone who didn’t do anything to you?” I asked. “And even if they did, why would you want to retaliate if they apologized? And what can’t be solved through talking it out?”

I woke up thinking several things. 1) Do not eat ice cream before bed, apparently it gives you weird dreams. 2) Do not read the LA news before bed, that’s probably why I dreamt of “thugs”. 3) Why can’t I have dreams about flying and eating candy plants like in Willy Wonka?  Sheesh.

At the core of my dream, I was wrestling with issues of emotional responsibility and how people treat others. Sometimes I think I worry too much about how I interact with someone, very careful not to hurt or offend them. I’m not very sure if it’s a cultural thing? Many Asian cultures focus on making the least waves in relationships or maybe this is just my personality.

I’ve dated some not-so-nice women and likewise, I know I’m not perfect. I do my best to take responsibility in my relationships and I go out of my way to protect the people I care about, even those I’m not in relationships with anymore.  It seems like such a strange concept to me. To hurt someone, just because you have the ability to do so.

After unintentionally irritating an ex, she told me,”Sometimes I want to hurt you–just because I can.”

What about all of you? Where do you think you fall on this topic?

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And I am a writer, writer of fictions.
I am the heart that you call home.
And I’ve written pages upon pages.
Trying to rid you from my bones.
-The Decemberists

My life has a revolving door of people who constantly come and go. If there’s anything that my parents’ divorce taught me, it’s how to protect my heart. It’s not that I don’t invest time and effort into my relationships (I’m quite the opposite, really), I’ve just learned to not be so devastated when people leave.  That being said, I’m still someone who ends up loving people forever.

It’s been months since Ashley and I have talked. The last time we did, we got into a huge argument. We basically have variations of the same argument, followed by months (sometimes even years) of not talking. My level-headed nature puzzles her, so she goes out of her way to upset me, almost in the same way children upset their parents to test their love.  It happens like clockwork every time.

“Why don’t you ever allow yourself to get mad at me?” she said.

I pressed my ear against the phone as hard as I could. “What are you talking about? I’m mad at you right now.”

“But you always talk yourself down from feeling anything negative,” she added. “I’m done talking to you.”

Before I could really get in a word in, before I could yell into the phone, she hung up. I called back with no response and then I knew she was gone. Disappeared into the wind again.

She’s on my mind again now, which I realize happens when my head begins to clutter. It’s funny how we think of certain people when our heads feel like a mess.

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“Never recreate from your memory. Always imagine new places.” -Inception

Okay, so I FINALLY saw Inception last night. Everyone has been talking about it non-stop since it came out, but people in LA keep buying up the most of the tickets and leaving only front row seats left every time I have tried to go.  I’m not going to spend this entry gushing over the movie, but I will say that you all should watch it.

There are so many different things to dissect from the movie. In particular, what really resonated with me was the idea of how crippling the memory of someone can be. TheEx appears a lot in my dreams, even though my days are rarely spent thinking about her. I’m not sure how she continually finds her way into them, but it’s at the point where I’m no longer surprised when she’s waiting for me there. The details are always different, but the theme is always the same, we’re still together and I’m trying to fix something, to fix us. I never do what I’m meant to and when I wake up, I always feel like I’ve let myself down. There’s a heaviness that fills my body in these dreams, as if the entire damn ocean was poured down my throat.

I know this feeling isn’t unique (to others and even to myself), but it’s sometimes so overwhelming that I forget I’ve been here before. After many break-ups, I remember feeling stuck, paralyzed by the memories of my exes.  I think there are two types of people in this world–I’m the kind that feel permanently exposed after the end of a relationship. Nothing ever really feels over, there’s always a small part of myself left vulernable. I go on loving people forever, even ridiculous people who were out of my life before I even cared about them.

TheEx falls in to the second category, the one that frustrates and confuses me. She’s put her feelings for me in a tiny shoebox that she keeps under her bed. She never thinks of it, unless her hand accidentally touches the side of the box when she reaches for something else, but even then, I am a fleeting memory, and before the weight of it occurs to her, I am gone.

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I’m writing this long overdue entry from my new apartment in LA. I’m still adjusting to my new place and getting used to the heavy footsteps of my upstairs neighbor. Back home, I rarely heard my neighbors, only the children racing down the hallway to the elevator. But here, I hear everything and I’m afraid everyone can hear me. The walls are so thin that I even hate talking on the phone at night, for fear that my neighbors will judge my conversations.

This morning I had my headphones on, listening to the same song over and over again while trying to write. I faintly heard a strange gurgling sound, but I assumed it was the neighbor’s washing machine. It wasn’t until I noticed my cat frozen in place, staring intently in the kitchen, that I slipped off my headphones and went over to investigate. I looked out the living room window first to see if I could see my elderly neighbors lugging bloated mesh bags of laundry back to their units. But then the gurgling happened again and I turned to see that it was coming from my sink.

My sink, my barely used beautiful double sink, was now filled with dirty brown water and bubbling up from the drain. I ran the garbage disposal, which sucked down the water in one sink, only to re-fill up again and gurgle loudly as if to give me the middle finger.  The maintenance guy came in the late afternoon, by which time the sinks had both drained, and left a thick residue and leftover noodles (not mine, so gross) along its walls. He explained to me that my neighbors above me probably clogged the mainline. I’m not used to that: upstairs neighbors that send their leftovers through the pipes and into my sinks. Plural.

There are two things, however, that I really love about my apartment.  First, the fact that this is a pet-friendly building. Chompers is able to run around without me shushing her, I can buy all the over-sized cat furniture I want without having to sneak it in, and I don’t have to hide her in a reusable Sam’s Club bag whenever I have to take her to the vet.  Second, and this is the most important, is the fact that this place feels so unfamiliar. The problem with my old apartment and with Hawaii in general was that it was too familiar, making it hard for me to focus. But here, it’s easier to write for a few hours without interruption.

It feels like I’ve been magically lifted out of my old life and placed somewhere new and exciting. As I watch my cat pace back and forth curiously on the kitchen counter, I realize we’re both experiencing our lives through new eyes.

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