thoughts from my journal

I often feel like I’m forgetting everything important in my life. Over the past few years, I started to write a lot: everything from little poems or phrases to lists of updates. This past year, I’ve written at most ten or fifteen entries. Below, I’ve compiled some of my favorite entries (with minor edits, of course) from when I felt like I had a working brain, in the hopes that it will inspire someone (hopefully myself) to begin or to continue journaling. 

I: CHEN CHEN

WHEN I GROW UP I WANT TO BE A LIST OF FURTHER POSSIBILITIES

To think of myself, care-less, care-full, before I step.

To be kind, and loving, and present through brain fog, for friends.

To never question where I skip, the lines on my face, my arms:

To pity where I am now.

WHEN I LOOK BACK I WILL BE A PLANT, OVERGROWN.

Like green buds on thorny bushes in the dead of winter,

Like the bird on the window ten minutes before the bell goes.

To hold people accountable (and myself) for the claws in my ribcage.

To yell, and shout, and explain. To not feel guilty.

To hold myself together, ready for the wait. To not feel f*cking guilty.

To say what I mean, black bar removed.

To tell them how hard I worked. To not feel ashamed.

WHEN I GROW UP I want to stop shapeshifting,

Stop moving myself to cup another sun.

WHEN I GROW UP I want to pride myself in me—

The stereotype (the math), the difference, is me.

To know when I’ve stretched too thin -- that muscle breaks, trust breaks, droplets split.

Two tears racing down a window.

To stop waiting. 

To know if precedent means thisisit.

To get more than I expected. To be more than I expected.

WHEN I GROW UP I want to hear right now and feel only

Vines, bandaged around my fingertips, my face.

Heartbeat in my neck, honey on my lips, daffodils in my hair.

II: White picket fences: Immigrants and Us

I feel tired. The kind of tired when you know why, but it’s still there. My shoulders slump from the weight of The Dream that my grandparents fall asleep to. The Dream that my parents once chased after, dropping everything to hold it, never quite holding it, just tasting it. The Dream that I see the golden blonde retrievers playing in, unaware that it’s my Dream too.

I thought it was a checklist. Grades. Scores. Colleges. Sports, music, clubs! Job. My pencil scratches on the sheet. Check. Check, check. I settle myself into a cell, convincing myself that it’s worth it for the white picket fence. 

When I close my eyes, America is still beautiful. The pretty pretty bricks and green lawns and Trader Joe’s and white picket fences with sprinklers running. It’s not a lie, really. I want it, I see it. I feel it: waking up to sunlight streaming in. Sitting at the breakfast table, reading the newspaper, coffee in hand, dog at my feet. I’m convinced that the more I act, the closer I get. But I know it’s a double world.

I can act how they want. (I do.) But I also act how We want, and this makes Them treat Us (me) differently. Always the hyphenated identity.

I see a picket fence and it’s gorgeous, but when I try to cross, the scabs on my knees reopen. The white picket fence is stained by blood, scarlet on white. It glows for a second. Don’t worry, They’ll pay someone to paint over it! You realize how many layers of paint there are now. How much it leeches Us to keep Their picket fence white.

I’m in my cage, grateful for the little barbed-wire fence They’ve gifted me. And I want to try to assimilate, as if maybe by sheer will of wish, the wire will become wood. Why does it feel like to do so would require me to cut myself open, to replace all that’s inside with white leaden paint? 

III: what my normal entries look like

May 7, 2018, 11:30 PM: Yuh. tomorrow will be a good day.

by JOCELYN HSIEH