Leaderboard

To the songs that breaks us. It is almost bedtime. I am listening to one of my Vietnamese bolero songs, and suddenly, I have this urge to sing. I think of another song—one I’ve never been able to finish, that always catches in my throat, that always makes my voice waver. I try again this time. The song is called Mỗi Mùa Xuân Về Là Thêm Một Lần Dối Mẹ. It tells the story of a son who leaves his home country, lies to his mother every spring, telling her he will come back next year. He never does. And each passing year, he knows she is growing older, the house is falling apart, wonders if the cherry blossom tree will bloom again. The way the words are written, how they are arranged—they hit something deep. The lyrics sit heavy on my chest, pressing, pressing, until the tears come, when my voice cracks and I have to stop. I think of another song—Lời Cha Dạy. This one is about a father. About a mother who has passed. A father left behind, raising his son, teaching him how to be a good person, to get a respectable job, to live with integrity. The song says that when the father is gone, the son will remember everything he was taught. Will carry his lessons forward. Will live by them. I can’t get through this one either. Something about the music video, the story, the weight of it all—it’s too much. My voice falters, my throat tightens, and I know, once again, that I won’t make it to the end. And then I realize. Both of these songs—they are about family. With the divorce, with everything that happened years ago, I haven’t spoken to my father. And now my mother and I live together. So these songs—they cut deeper. They remind me of what was, of what isn’t, of what could have been. I wonder how he is. I wonder if he is happy. And I wonder—behind my mother’s laughter, behind her smiles—how much she is holding back, how much she is carrying alone. I think I should give her a hug.

My biggest WTF moment was me and a fuck bud went down to a cruisy area under an onramp to a freeway that was never completed. We fixed 3 rigs, 2 x .4 and 1 x .7 that we were going to share. We planned on climbing under the ramp to do our slams, and about an hour or two later do the shared one with pigs watching us. Except my FB ‘accidentally’ gave me the .7 and as I was slamming it I realized something was off and I blasted off. I didn’t lose consciousness, but I lost awareness for an hour and a half I guess. When I got my awareness again I was lying on a disgusting mattress covered in piss and vomit, I had a fist up my shit hole and an asshole blowing either diarrhea or piss enema into my mouth/over my face.

To Time who we never get enough of. A while back, whenever I planned things with my friends, because of the flexibility I had with work, with life, with time, I always found myself with more to spare. And the people I called, the ones I asked to hang out, I always thought they were busier than me. Their schedules packed. Their days full. So, I let them decide. I told them to give me their availability, and I would plan around them. I always put my time in second place. And it worked—because I could always adjust, shift things around, bend my schedule to fit theirs. But something has changed. Lately, I’ve noticed a shift—not just in my schedule, not just in my responsibilities, but in how I perceive my own time. Yes, I’m busier now, with full-time work, with part-time study, with student clinic on top of it all. But that’s not the point. The point is, I see my own self-worth now. I see that my time is just as valuable as theirs. Just because I manage my time well, just because I make space, doesn’t mean that their time matters more than mine. We all have 24 hours in a day. And so now, when I want to catch up with friends, I remind myself— they’re busy, yes, but so am I. And we need to meet somewhere in the middle. This small shift, this small realization, has changed the way I see myself. I matter. My time matters. These days, I like to acknowledge that we’re both busy, that we both have full lives, and I hope our schedules align in a way that suits us both. Then I give them my availability—usually for the entire month—so we can plan something. And I find that this works. Really well.