Tea in an Hourglass

It feels ridiculous to count my experience as grief. Even more so when I google grief and its symptoms to puzzle together what counts and what doesn’t as grief. I think that summer was the closest I ever felt loss. All my relatives were alive - my mother, my father, both my grandmothers, my flock of aunties and uncles. I had never experienced death in any close or profound way. 

But that summer, I cried everyday. 

I cried in the shower. 

I cried walking. I cried eating. 

I cried when I was crying. 

I cried because I couldn’t figure how to stop crying. 

I hated crying. 

I must confess. After I left and landed in Lax, I was such a mess. I thought I was nothing but less. 

My body wouldn’t eat after I landed. The nerve that my broken heart was going to take over my desire to eat home cooked Vietnamese food. Chorona battered-crispy-golden brown-filled with shrimp and carrot shredding Chả Giò and thick avocado milkshake Sinh Tố Bơ sat in front of me with no care to enjoy. How dare my broken heart. 

I craved them so much, I tried to cry them back to me. I thought crying showed how much I loved them. I cried to stay connected to the memory of them, the idea of us. I indulged in my sorrows. I watched Titanic and How to lose a guy in 10 days and Twilight nonstop. I made a schedule after I realized it wasn’t going to end in weeks. I cried in the mornings or at night, so I could function in the day.  

Sometimes I didn’t think I deserved to cry. Nobody died. My mom always told me that growing up, “Tại sao bạn khóc. không ai chết.” But when I was growing up, every time we moved, I cried. 

One day, my dad came into the room when I was finishing up crying, he told me,

“I know you’re sad but I need you to be happy. Can you be happy for Papa? When you cry, it reminds me of the first time I came to America. And I was so alone. But you have family here and you’re home. I love you and your mother.” 

He started crying and then he left the room. I cried even harder. I knew my loss was unequivocally to my parents’ loss: a loss of a nation. It was unequivocally to death. Who was I to be crying over a heartbreak. But I did. My mother yells at me through the door “Stop with your Puerto Rican crying.” (She credits them to my loud anything because I learned how to talk when we lived there) I knew my loss was not equal to my father’s loss - escaping from the government, leaving behind your only family and homeland. Or my mother’s same loss of a homeland. 

I started crying at the park. Between my mother’s judgement and my father’s sorrow, crying at home was not an option. I’d cry at Karen’s too. 

Karen’s white coach from Ikea acted as therapy sessions: me lying, crying; Karen, listening. I spent whole days on that couch just venting and crying and wondering and wanting to text them. The only breaks we took from that couch that summer was to get Boba, our go-to sweet soaked in honey tapioca pearls obsession. 

The dreams were the worst part. They felt endless - my waking hours and sleeping hours both a constant stream of thoughts about them. I hated how hard I worked to forget and get over them in my waking hours, only to dream about them every night. Like my mind was at war with my body. 

I practiced what I would say to them when I saw them in the fall. Relentless thinking about what was right or wrong to bring up, what the purpose of talking of them would even be. After a long journey of agony, I realized it would not be even worth talking to them. 

 I wrote poems. And poems. Letters. I wrote some more. I’m still writing. 

I wished they left no trace of them behind; not a present, not a memory, not a feeling. 

I unlearned all the toxic ways I was loved. I relearned to love myself. What it is like to be back in my own body. To touch myself and remember my own hands. To relearn what makes me happy with myself without them. I learned to recognize I deserve so much more. 

I thought - sometimes still do - that if I proved to them that I could live without them and glamorously live without any care about them - one day they would come back. They would apologize for emotionally cutting me off. They would tell me how much they missed me and couldn't live without me. The make-up sex would be amazing. I wanted the Ross and Rachel reunion. I wanted the Carrie and Big happy ending. I wanted to go back to our routines and inside jokes and our world we built. 

But we won’t. If they wanted to, they would have. 

My counselor recently asked me what I am still mourning about in that relationship. For a while, I mourned about how sad I was last summer and I let someone hurt me like that. I mourned their lack of presence. I am afraid if I stop mourning and let go and heal that I will lose all my chances of ever being with them. Because if I move on, it means that that’s it. I will let go of them = the idea of us. It scares me.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about myself a lot. Thinking about my future, my passions, my writing, my schoolwork, my needs. After that, I mourned that it was really, really over. I mourned a time when I didn’t love myself enough to stop others from hurting me. I mourned the end of a chapter. 

Do you still remember when we went to the pool

and you watched me dive. 

I thought you were nothing but a fool

but then you made me feel so alive 

like my heart needed to arrive

all I wanted was to slow dance and jive.

Now I know you ain’t even cool. 

And I’m so sick of seeing you around school. 

You said I made you feel free 

I felt it too, free from orders

but I couldn’t even be all of me.

You stumbled on the wrong side of the floor. 

I didn’t think about love when they said more in four. 

It was my iPhone you wanted to fix - you swore

and I didn’t even see how you wanted so much more.

And I fell for you, 

and you, me.

After a while, we just couldn’t be. 

I was upset and threw a few fits.

Instead you threw me a party, 

then left me in bits 

acting like some Playboi Carti 

just did the splits. 

You ain’t nothing but a hypocrite. 

We went through a lot, 

I felt like I could trust you a lot. 

I’m scared to be vulnerable again. 

In case someone mistreats me again. 

All I do now is move my damn pen.