The Final Sick Hug.

Oh gosh, just about a whole year without an entry. I’m so sorry my loves. I’ve been busy setting out on that personal project of self-discovery I call Chrysalis with my little emotional bindle over my shoulder.

Long, heavy read ahead. Don’t feel pressure to read this all at once.

So, what’s been keeping me?

Allow me to start with a nonsensical paraphrasing of my most dramatic moment of 2024 and take you for a ride as I build around it.

I gave the universe one final sick hug.

Got your attention? Sweet.

Part I: Big Bang

For this entry, I need to explain three personal concepts first.

"1. Space Terrors

Have you heard of the “Irresistible force paradox”? It asks “What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?”

When I was itty bitty, I’d have awful nightmares of two unstoppable forces speeding toward each other. It was a distinct, nearly indescribable anxiety I struggled to find words for. These unstoppable forces often hurled themselves through space and sometimes they’d mold themselves into odd shapes and clusters that resembled my family’s faces. I grew out of these anxieties as I approached kindergarten and thoughts of school quickly replaced my nighttime terrors, but to this day, I always remember the feeling of what I call my “Space Terrors” from those preschool years.

Keep that in your back pocket, okay? Now, another concept.

2. Stardust

After meeting a delightfully handsome soul, I started flirting with the idea of soulmates.

I met a woman so frightfully beautiful and wonderful that I couldn’t conceive of her having such a hold on me without being a lover from some past life. I started writing poem after poem about stars and galaxies because it was the only way I could make sense of how I felt about her. I called the concept “Stardust” and it quickly snowballed into an adventure of “gravitating” toward the soulmate I’ve loved throughout time and space. Each significant soul before and after this lovely woman suddenly became Stardust with her own special name and life lessons as to what went right and wrong. Movies like Past Lives and Everything Everywhere All At Once with themes of love transcending current timelines would make me bawl my eyes out. Stardust was equal parts confessing my affections, finding my stride as a poet, journaling my love life, a current muse, and every woman I’ve ever loved.

My love life was suddenly broken up into chapters named Letter, Artist, Sunflower, Pink, Breeze, and Medusa (the original Stardust).

Yes, if you’ve caught on, it is good old hopeless romanticism.

Okay, one more concept, then we’ll get to the gossip.

3. The Sick Hug

Remember when you were little and the adults would say “Don’t come near me, you’ll get sick,” when they had the sniffles? Yeah, I NEVER listened, and I got sick every single time. Friend, family, classmate, whoever, it didn’t matter who you were. I always bit the bullet and spent time with you because the thought of someone having to be alone at their most vulnerable was too painful for me as a kid. This translated over to my adult dating life as I quickly found my love life’s pattern to be disorganized attachment styles and dramatically rare diseases. My commitment to these lonely souls who push everyone away was what I called The Sick Hug, a love language of unhealthy patience and forgiveness, and instead of coughs and sneezes, I started catching tons of heartache.

Okay, still with me? Little recap.

1. Space Terrors - Unfathomable preschool anxieties of otherworldly family-shaped proportions speeding toward each other.

2. Stardust - Galaxy themed hopeless romanticism.

3. The Sick Hug - Unhealthy love language stemming from a childlike wish for no one to be lonely.

Enough exposition. Grab your beverage of choice. Kick your feet up. Slap on “Tek It” by Cafuné. Gossip time.

Part II: Supernova

The year is carrying on. I’m doing my thing. I’m getting my coffees and writing my poems. I’m trying to fulfill my yearlong project of experiencing ways to feel beautiful and combatting my iffy self-esteem.

I ended up sweet-talked into my first ever situationship, a rite of passage for one’s late 20s where you act like a couple without putting a label on things for the whimsy of freedom at the cost of security and formality. I was swept off my feet by an egregiously charming and deeply complicated soul named Supernova (a la Stardust). We were polar opposites that shared a bunch of trauma and found safe spaces in each other’s souls. As we’d talk for hours and hours, her eyes swirled with specs of green and orange like autumn leaves on a grassy field.

Supernova had a rare illness, trusted next to nobody, and made me feel like the only boy in the world, a prime receiver of The Sick Hug.

Sooo, yeah, I was hooked. We were glued at the hip, from cooking together till five in the morning to their parents asking her why we don’t date, you name it. She’d call me her lover and partner, even her dog’s stepdad. She said all the right things at the right moments. She gifted me a vintage typewriter for my writing because she misheard my birthday. She snuck IKEA furniture into my apartment, dude.

She’d grab my hand during a sunset and say, “I’m surprised you’re not sick of me yet.”

I’d reply, “I miss you after just a couple hours.”

I was head over heels, but as with almost all situationships, it quickly came crashing down.

My international gaming group, whom I’ve spent thousands of evenings with online since fifth grade, was meeting up for the first time in England; one of us was getting married and we found it a perfect occasion to finally see each other face-to-face. I was about to spend a week and a half overseas and I found the ordeal so exciting yet dreadful. I’d been inseparable from Supernova and was about to miss her for almost two weeks, so I thought I’d cook her an extra affectionate dinner before heading off to England.

Carbonara is a special dish to me, it’s my ultimate “I love you.” The best meal I ever had was a hearty carbonara on a patio in San Francisco’s Little Italy as the warm sun shined on my face. It reminds me of a time where everything was just right, so I wanted to extend that feeling to Supernova. I wanted to be daring and thoughtful by learning how to make pasta from scratch and sharing my first attempt with her, and so I did.

Huge success. She loved it, but it was the last calm before a storm.

That night, she initiated the “here’s what we are” talk every situationship either dreads or pursues. It ended in her saying we’re not a thing in the harshest ways she could and even went as far as to deny all that we’d shared. She sat across from me, looked me in the eyes, and said “I’m just gonna say this how I have to for people who don’t understand I’m not into them. I’m not attracted to you.”

“Where did you learn what it means to reciprocate?
And how much can I be expected to tolerate?
So I started to think about the plans I made
The debt unpaid
And you just can't call a spade, a spade”

I was in such shock that I didn’t even cry. I just went numb.

Four hours later, I was on my way to England.

We wrapped up our night.
I packed my bags.
I sat in a corner of my apartment and stared at the wall for four hours.
She woke up and took me to the airport.
I clocked ten hours of listening to “I Love You So” by The Walters on the way there.
I arrived in England heartbroken.
I constantly flipped between dissociating from heartache and being present with my friends.
I watched my friend shed tears as he exchanged vows with the love of his life.
I clocked another ten hours of “I Love You So” on the way back.
I arrived home and she picked me up from the airport.

I learned the fallout of a situationship isn’t the most polished process. We went through that awkward transition of “We’re not something, we’re not nothing, one of us wants nothing but keeps giving something, one of us wants something but is starting to feel nothing, it hurts to be apart, it hurts to be together, and neither of us know what to hold on or let go of.” I’m not talking just unspoken residual feelings from afar, I’m talking getting oddly territorial about me and leaving flowers on my car in the middle of the night.

“I watch the moon
Let it run my mood
Can’t stop thinking of you
I watch you (Now I let it go)
(And I watch as things play out like)
So long, nice to know you, I'll be moving on”

I carried the weight and guilt of being her only friend but wanting to pull away, relapsed into an old eating disorder, and spiraled into a depression. As I laid in bed a month after the events trying to figure out what to do with the situation and myself, a wave of absolute terror washed over me that I hadn’t felt since I was little. It was a primal fear. It was a Space Terror. Something about how deeply unhealthy my connection to Supernova was triggered an anxiety so integral to my core that it brought me back to a time where I physically didn’t have words for what I was feeling. I was still so numb, but the Space Terror woke me up from my heartbroken stupor just enough to start chipping away at the walls I propped up.

The months that followed the talk were such a haze of trying to heal and let go. At one point, I found myself in Supernova’s backyard, her hand on my wrist as she guided my arm to point out the stars to me. She’d task me with finding Mars and Jupiter while she’d put her cigarette out on Venus and Saturn like the night sky was one big ashtray and all the planets were little remnants of a good smoke. The obvious imagery and symbolism of Stardust became too painful to stare at for long. My eyes fell from the night sky and over to her. Through the puff of smoke escaping her lips, I stared straight into her parents’ fig tree and was reminded of the famous quote from Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar:

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

And just like in the passage, I saw my life branching out before me.

I saw the futures and timelines where Supernova's actions matched her words, where we followed through and worked out, where she breaks my heart even worse than she already did, where I grow apart from her, where I crowd bookstore shelves with my writing, where I compete at an elite level of powerlifting, where I find love at a coffee shop, where I teach my oldest child how to defend the youngest, where I slow dance with my wife in our new and unfurnished home with just a bluetooth speaker and pizza boxes on the floor, where I go mad and litter my apartment with newspaper and paint buckets as I try to capture the moment it all went wrong on a canvas, where my name rolls up on the credits of a big video game's writing team, where I fly to Iceland and carry the Húsafell Stone, where I quietly retire to Germany after a long life full of adventure, where I sob and scream at the moon during a mid-life crisis night drive, and where I move on from all things that have affected me the way Supernova has.

“We started off in such a nice place
We were talking the same language
I o-open and I'm closing
You can’t stand the thought
Of a real beating heart
You'd be holding, having trouble
O-o-owning and admit that
I am hoping”

As I started to heal and the sick hug around Supernova slowly weakened, it became silently clear between us that there was a heavy conversation to be had and neither of us had the courage to initiate it. There was a huge elephant in every room we entered. The times we shared became fewer and farther between. There was so much to be said, but how do we say it?

How do I find the courage to say:

“You hurt me so badly that I wish to be alone for some time.”
”I need you to stop leaving flowers on my car in the middle of the night.”
”Only someone purposefully committed to me can call me their lover, partner, and dog’s stepdad.”

It turns out the answer is much simpler than you may think.

TEQUILA! Tequila and Adele.

Adele recently performed in Munich. Something about her shows always ending with a tearful and raspy-voiced “Someone Like You” eased me into the harsh emotional space I needed to make myself familiar with. It makes me cry on demand. I never understood Adele’s music as a kid, but after meeting Supernova, it resonated at the perfect time with themes of yearning and regret across a mature approach to romance. Adele takes three-six-nine-month-esque rules, zodiac compatibility charts, and says, “Shush. You have never been in love. Be in the moment.”

Roughly five months after the carbonara fiasco, I went to my bestie’s birthday bash at a local pub. Some random guys bought the whole table a round of tequila and disappeared into the night. I downed it on an empty stomach and was emotionally trashed. I drove home and Supernova was waiting outside my place a touch before midnight.

We caught up for a few hours before the liquid courage kicked in. She was just on her way out before I asked the dreaded question:

“Can I talk to you about something?”

And, gosh, the moxie I summoned for the next hour felt so alien, so uncomfortable, yet so necessary.

I started by saying, “This isn’t one of those dreaded conversations where your guy friend admits he likes you. It’s actually the opposite, sorta.”

Then, my whole heart and soul poured out from my mouth, and so much was said, some of them being:

“The way you left me flowers was triggering because I’m taking time to let my self-esteem recuperate after that talk we had.”
“The time we spent together paired with the words you’d say to me convinced me that you liked me back.”
“Given how clear it was that I liked you and how my trip had been fifteen years in the making, I deserved better that night.”
“I had strong feelings for you, but we’re friends now, and I won’t be feeling that way again.”

She looked so sad, but she didn’t run, taking accountability and providing reassurance with:

“You are my type. I said the most blunt thing I could that night because I don’t like dealing with my own emotions.”
”I’m sorry for cutting that night short. I should’ve provided you the space to say your peace.”
”I’m honored to have you in my life.”
“I forget you’re a delicate flower.”

We walked through every moment where we should’ve been more gentle with ourselves.
Where we should’ve clarified what we were to each other.
Where we have room to grow and water our own gardens before we welcome someone into our souls.
Where we can only grow so much and see companionship for the two-way street that it is.
Where things went right.
Where things went wrong.

An air of forgiveness and acceptance filled my quaint little apartment. I breathed so much easier.

I then said, “I never asked for you to like me back, but I also never asked to catch feelings. It just sort of happened-”

She cut me off and said something so validating that I finally stopped feeling crazy. I finally stopped doubting the capacity for any given Stardust to return my affections.

“I do like you back. You’re my rock and you restored my faith in humanity. No one’s ever given me the emotional space and patience to grow like you have, so I do like you back.”

“You
Yeah, I always know the truth
But I can't just say it to you
Yeah, I know the truth
I knew
Yeah, I always know the truth
But I can't just say it to you
Yeah, I know the truth”

We embraced each other in the longest hug we’d ever shared, pulling closer with each passing moment underneath my ceiling fan.

“I loved you for a time, and that time has passed,” I told her. I’d finally broken what felt like a curse, a pattern of dating one person after another who sought the love I brought to the table but wasn’t ready to embrace it. I held my once favorite person in my arms, someone whose eyes once glimmered with Stardust, and I told her I didn’t love her anymore.

It was The Final Sick Hug, both for her and all lovers I’ve yet to meet. It was a hug that said “I won’t burn myself to keep someone warm again.”

l let the heartache linger and finally pass before I pulled away.

“No crying,” she said, wiping my eyes with her sleeves.

We stepped outside to decompress and walk around the block. I breathed freely. She lit a cigarette.

“Hey, next time don’t take five months to tell me something like that,” she teased.

“Hey, next time don’t hurt me so bad that it takes five months to find the words for it,” I quipped.

“Fair enough,” she smiled, blowing a puff of smoke.

“I never thought we'd see it through
I never could rely on you
And few times your face came into view
Into view
I'm not into you
Into you”

The next day, I woke up and felt something so magical. I didn’t look any different. My hair was the same and so was my waist. My skin was the same as ever: somewhat parched from lifelong eczema, hanging in there with an earnest skincare routine, and slightly blotchy from the other night’s gym session. I had all the same teeth from yesterday, yet my smile in the mirror was a touch more vibrant. Everything about me looked the same from last night, but I felt so different. I felt so proud for finding the courage to speak up for myself. I felt an unprecedented acceptance of my face and body. I felt the yearlong journey of Chrysalis finally coming to an end. I felt the cocoon cracking. I felt the universe growing silent.

I felt beautiful.

Don’t get me wrong, the feeling is great, but it’s also fucking weird. Having someone else do all the yearning and pining is…new. *shivers*

It feels especially weird since Supernova was always the most popular person everywhere we went. Every person of every gender fawned over her like she was a walking fairy tale. From what she’d shared with me before, it’s looking like I was her first experience in rejection, something that was NOT on my bingo card for 2024.

My friend said to me, “It’s crazy how the tables have turned. She was your muse for so long, now you’re hers."

Part III: Stardust

The apt song for this last part is Adele’s “My Little Love” for reasons you might not expect.

A month after that eventful, soul baring talk, I received terrible news from family. My mother’s oldest, whom I no longer associate with after leaving the nest, had made poor decisions and was down on his luck again. My mother, approaching sixty, continues to work seventy-hour weeks to support him. She wakes up, works, comes home, puts dinner on, watches TV, goes to sleep, and repeats that every day. She has no days off.

The frustration and disappointment of my mom’s circumstances were familiar but in a different way this time. They weren’t familiar in the sense that I had felt them before, but in the sense that they felt similar to the swirl of emotions I’d recently had over the resolution with Supernova.

I was suddenly in multiple places at once. My timeline had sneezed.
I was learning of Supernova’s illness for the first time.
I was in a shouting match with my mother’s oldest.
I was listening to my mother screaming “I never wanted to come here!” to her ex-husband who dragged her from Vietnam to the states.
I was four years old watching my mother slumped and defeated in a chair after her oldest had screamed at her.
I was hearing the women of my family talk of all the infamous ways the men had terrorized them.
I was handing out one Sick Hug after another, waiting hand and foot for my dating pattern to get their lives together.
I was laying in bed, and I could no longer tell how old I was, but I was in the middle of a Space Terror.

Everything blurred together in one big feeling and suddenly everything made sense.

“My little love
I see your eyes widen like an ocean
When you look at me so full of my emotions
I'm findin' it hard to be here sincerely
I know you feel lost, it's my fault completely”

In my childhood household, all manner of soft and gentle had to make way for brash and destructive: compromise for authority, fulfilling for practical, peaceful for chaotic, patience for punishment, feminine for masculine. What soothing voice my mother could layer over our home was smothered under the yelling and screaming of her oldest. What reprieve we had hid in the shadows whenever my mother’s ex-husband visited.

I had no verbiage for what I knew to be an awful way for us all to exist, so my preschool mind replaced my dreams with nightmares of galaxies speeding toward each other with faces of my mother, her oldest, and her ex-husband as to say “Hey kid, don’t sleep on this. You’re in an awful situation. Be different.” When my mother would get sick, my little footsteps would run all about our apartment to grab her whatever she needed no matter how many times she warned me to stay away, and I never cared that I had the sniffles the next morning. I knew in those moments that my little sick hug was among the few things she had left in the world her ex-husband had dealt her even if she was too proud to admit it.

“I don't recognise myself in the coldness of the daylight
So I ain't surprised you can read through all of my lies
I feel so bad to be here when I'm so guilty
I'm so far gone and you're the only one who can save me”

As I entered adulthood and distanced myself from my tumultuous family, I gravitated toward chaotic souls with dramatic circumstances whom I saw the good and purity in.

The goodness they struggled to exert reflected my mother’s forgotten dreams and ambitions.

The traumas and illnesses that pushed and pulled their capacities to give and accept love reflected the disease I viewed the behavior of my mother’s ex-husband and oldest as.

I gave them endless sick hugs in hopes of nursing them back to health, back to who they were before their circumstances hurt them so. There was a part of me that felt if I could just heal what someone else had hurt, maybe my mother could recover what she had lost about herself.

Space Terrors were my reaction to femininity being shoved down. Stardust was my way of sensing it in the world. Sick Hugs were my way of trying to save it twenty years too late. The trinity of it all was my way of coping with failing to protect my mother from the hurtful masculinity of her world. The reversal of such was my way of waking up from its cycle; The Final Sick Hug to Supernova marked the end of Stardust, and with it, the Space Terrors. No more dedicating my whole heart to people whom my whimsical affections for and romanticism of are undercover bouts of guilt from the past.

Maxine suddenly became more than just a carefree energy being steadily nurtured. The personification of being unapologetically feminine as Maxine is the hopeful girl my mother had to tuck away when her ex-husband tricked her into an unfulfilling adulthood.

Maxine is the remnants of my mother’s ambition.
Maxine is the forgiveness I owe myself as a son.
Maxine is the choice to live life as an honorable man.
Maxine is the spirit of every woman who’s ever given me hope for a fulfilling future.
Maxine is the promise to hold the stars in my palms and never settle for what doesn’t breathe life into my lungs.

In a way, I found Stardust when I stopped looking for it in other people.

I pick my mother up for dinner when I can throughout these busy days. I encourage her to talk shit and be messy about whoever she wants. I spill all the tea about my love life and she eats it up. I tease her about finally letting that one coworker take her on a date after twenty years of being avoidant.

Mostly importantly, she gets to take up all the space she hasn’t been able to all these years.

So, yeah, that’s what kept me away. I was busy giving the universe one final sick hug.

“I'm holdin' on (Barely)
Mama's got a lot to learn (It's heavy)
I'm holdin' on (Catch me)
Mama's got a lot to learn (Teach me)”