content note: mentions of mental health struggles, death, and forced hospitalization (brief)

I really didn't think I would make it past 21, but here I am at 28.

yes, I'm still very young and have a whole life ahead of me. but there were some years in my youth and young adulthood when I counted my life in minutes and hours because getting through each day was a battle.

there was one spring where I didn't see the sun for months because I was on strong anti-depressants and sleeping 14 hours a day and I couldn't get out of bed before 6pm. there were months when I had the same reoccurring inception-like nightmare that blurred reality and the dreamscape and I couldn't differentiate between what was present, memory, or fiction. I went through the 911's and the forced hospitalization and exhausted friends who were trying to keep me alive. I was harmed by institutions and shitty people, and I also caused harm and ruptured relationships in my own shitty attempts to survive and center my needs. I coped through these years through forms of self-harm that later required me to heal through them (when coping mechanisms to survive through trauma become another layer of trauma). that plus so much more that I don't need to put explicitly in words.

so I really really didn't think I would make it past 21, but here I am at 28. and in this realization of how I really like who I am and the relationships that I've cultivated and the life that I'm co-creating, I released a deep cry of relief and grief and gratitude in the shower. maybe it's something about celebrating a birthday on the ancestral lands for the first time in 23 years. maybe it's because I am alone, without friends or family and I'm realizing that I really know how to celebrate and romance myself. maybe it’s because I’m going through my saturn return. or rather, I guess it's probably due to the culmination of all of the things in the past 8 years that have led to this moment, and its significance landing all at once, in the shower, of course. and I want to share two of the key things that made the biggest difference.

1. I aimed for small little shifts that felt doable, rather than focusing on a "healing journey" or progress or ideals or shoulds. being at a point where I felt like I only had two options of enduring unbearable pain or ending life, I got into the practice of creating a third option. If I can't see myself aging and becoming old, but I also would rather not die tonight, how does surviving another day or week sound? If I can't get myself to get out of bed by 8am, but I am also not okay with getting up at 6pm, would 5pm feel more doable? I kept asking myself, what feels doable? and then do that. because what was doable was usually different from what I was doing at the moment, and if it's a shift, any shift, I was creating a third option outside of the ideal thing vs. the current thing. and more options meant more agency, and lord knows, I needed more pockets of agency. it's mainly this question, of "what feels doable in this moment?" that led to all of the little big shifts that I built and practiced in the past 8 years that have shaped my current practices. taking care of myself felt so unfamiliar and difficult then, and as I practiced doing the new and different things, that unfamiliar doable practice became my new familiar routine.

2. I learned to love myself by first learning to a) tolerate myself. and I learned to love myself through b) learning to love in community, and through c) practicing love as action, even when I didn't feel like it.

2a) I hate shoving the self-love narrative down peoples' throats when they hate themselves. it doesn't work because it only addresses changing the cognitive narrative when the felt-sense resonance is so far from being there. when someone says they hate themselves, I ask why. they answer. I say, yeah, that makes sense, those are some shitty behaviours so it makes sense that you'd hate yourself. (it makes sense that I hated myself when I did). and then I ask, what would hating yourself a little less look like? what would you do differently if you tolerated yourself? then we practice doing that. I practiced doing that. I couldn't go from self-hate to self-love. it didn't and doesn't feel doable. whereas self-hate to self-tolerance, self-tolerance to self-neutrality, self-neutrality to moments of self-like, more moments of self-like to general self-like, general self-like to moments of self-love..., you get the gist. those little big steps felt much more doable for me.

2b) Let's blur the self/other binary, in every sense, and in this specific context, when it comes to learning to love. I learn to love others through loving myself and I learn to love myself through loving and being loved by others. both/and. Love is a relational process. I reject the rigidity of both "you can't love others until you love yourself" and "you can love others just as deeply without cultivating a sense of self-love". The love practices were cultivated simultaneously for me, and they continue to be.

2c) The definition of love that bell hooks uses is key. Love as action. Love as an extension of oneself for the spiritual growth of oneself or another. Emphasis on loove as an extension, an act of extending. Not overextending or breaking myself. Not being idle and always convenient, but extending in the ways that feel doable. Stretching. And doing the thing, even when I don't always feel like it. when it doesn't necessarily feel "good". I don't show up for myself because I'm always excited or happy to. I show up for myself because I extend myself as an act of love, even when it feels inconvenient or I'd rather not or I'm tired. because I'm committed. because I want to live. because I have moments of agency. and commitment isn't based on temporary feelings.

“… discipline comes from being a disciple to one's self.”

— sherri taylor in "a tidel wave of care" @embodiedastrology, march 3, 2023.

at 28, I really like who I am. I am my most favourite lover (I worked really hard on it) and I have so much love in my life, through the practices of cultivating intentional, queer, non-normative relationships. I am on my ancestral lands, rooted and rooting in coreanness while experiencing the diasporic in-betweens from a different lens. I am practicing quality time with myself even more while I'm here, time zones and oceans away from my loved ones ie. I bought myself birthday flowers, sang happy birthday and blew out candles on my own (but not really alone, because voice notes). I am committed to embodied liberatory practices, to embodying the worlds that we want to co-create. I cultivate moments of joy and ease and spaciousness. I take deep belly breaths. I leverage pockets of agency. I grieve where I do not have control. I acknowledge privileges and the ways that I may be implicated in systems of harm. I know my roles in social change and I do my part in contributing to collective liberation and minimizing harm and redressing complicity. I know how to process my rage and that I am cable of grief. I allow myself to frolic and moan and groan and dance in public. I am 28 and I am content.

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