2022 started painfully. On New Year’s Eve, I was trapped in a hotel room in Las Vegas, feverish due to covid. My heart was in pieces because I was just broken up from a 1.5-year-long relationship — the longest relationship I’ve had. There were many reasons why it had to end, one of which was my anxiety and depression.
My mental health condition took a particularly terrible turn in March / April during my study-abroad semester in London. I couldn’t sleep for 2 consecutive nights on my trip to Dublin around St. Patrick’s day, and all the festivity felt like a mockery. In so much physical and mental pain, I tried calling the Irish suicide prevention hotline only to realize they don’t have one. Finally, I dozed off in my pool of tears.
My favorite book in 2022 was Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. In shadows of Naoko and Watanabe, I saw myself — the loss of a loved one, longing, self-blame, and a non-linear path of healing… Emotions that I couldn’t describe with language in this world live out so vividly in fiction that I felt like this book was written for me.
Mental health stuff often doesn’t have linear solutions. Getting professional support meant waiting weeks and opening up to therapists who give no shit about you until you’re lucky to find someone good. Talking to friends meant unloading my baggage that might be too heavy of a burden for them to handle. For a while, I was extremely fragile. Any small trigger caused an avalanche. Once, my friend and I missed our train and had to ask if we could change our tickets. The old man at the info center tried to help us but gave confusing instructions. “You didn’t trust that I was going to resolve this for you, did you?” He glared at me as I broke into tears in the middle of a busy transit center. It was true. I didn’t trust that he was helpful. In fact, I had a hard time trusting anyone.
The breakup plus the on-and-off depressive moods were messy. Most days when I woke up, I’d make myself “wind my spring” as Wantanabe does, just enough so that I could carry through the day. I spent lots of time sleeping, reading philosophy, and staring out of my window. What’s the meaning of my existence if I couldn’t create anything impactful?
Luckily, theater offered me a clue. I performed in KCL Musical Theater group’s production of Big Fish, which is about an ordinary man, Edward, who stepped up to be the hero in his own story by changing the lives of those around him in small and memorable ways. Although he never had any significant accomplishments, he had a magnificent life surrounded by people who loved him. My favorite moment in the musical is when Edward sings about his life on his sickbed — “it all ends well, this much I know.” Influenced by the Silicon Valley tech bubble, I am often blinded by canonical success. The ambition to carve out a path that leaves the largest dent in this world felt necessary. However, perhaps, it doesn’t matter if I make history. What matters is whether I live my life honestly and authentically by being kind, helpful, and inspiring in my own best possible ways. It could mean being patient with a friend or helping a stranger find a jumper cable on Thanksgiving. I realized that whether those in my life truly treasure my existence is way more important than how many lives I touch.
When I came back to the bay from London, I started focusing on small and concrete things that are kind, helpful, or inspiring. I started writing and sharing my poems. I hosted an intentional birthday gathering where my friends each shared their favorite pieces of writing. I started writing theatre reviews for a non-profit website called Theatrius and invited friends to see shows with me in order to introduce/re-introduce young people to theatre. I started this newsletter to share my intellectual exploration during my gap semester and showed people that they become an expert in anything as long as they put their minds to it. Right now, I’m writing about 2022 with vulnerability because I believe it brings trust, care, and love.
In June, I met someone special. One deep conversation led to another, and all of a sudden we were reading our most intimate journals to each other at 4 am in the morning. Under the starry night, I was vulnerable yet safe and fully accepted. The magnetic attraction was irresistible. We’ve been together for 6 amazing months and we grew together every day: we were each other’s accountability partners, we paired for my first full-stack project, he encouraged me to go to hackathons, and we talk about books and ideas, just a few to list. A paper he told me about in bed turned into my personal research project, which then turned into a contract opportunity to author a research paper. Many people questioned this interracial, intercultural, age-gap relationship, but I had no doubt. We work incredibly well as a team — we remind each other to take on challenges while taking care of each other when we stumble and fall.
He was my biggest cheerleader when I decided to take a gap semester to explore my intellectual interests. I spent 2 weeks on design, then philosophy, and eventually fell into a fascinating ML rabbit hole in October. Since then I’ve built many projects, and now I am training language models and writing a research paper. My own ability to learn has given me more confidence than I’ve ever had. The belief that I can conquer any domain if I put my mind to it made dabbling things I dared not to do fun and exciting. All of a sudden, there’s so much to experiment with and so much to look forward to.
One challenge I took on this fall is joining a jazz & contemporary dance team on campus. I was the only person on the team who had no prior dance training, and I am probably the worst dancer from the beginning to the end lol. For most of my life, I’ve only enjoyed doing something because I had the spotlight. The comparison mindset led to and arguably still leads to many sources of unhappiness. Dance reminds me that my incremental progress alone can make me happy. I was overjoyed when I was finally able to do a double pirouette (double turn) — the blistered toes and weeks of practicing in my living room (like a dummy) all paid off. I used to think hard things are not fun. Now I am starting to wonder, how could things be fun if it’s not hard?
Although my gap semester is over, my meta-learning experiment will continue. The experiment not only helped me learn how to better learn but also made me so much more excited to learn. I want to figure out how to properly work out using weights, do both front and side splits, become a full stack wizard, and more. No matter what job I take or don’t take, there are so many experiments I can run on myself and so much life to live! Now, it’s almost impossible to understand my own mind space during the gloomy days in London.
At the dawn of 2023, I feel happy — happier than I could have imagined a year ago. It’s cliche, but dots actually connected backward in ways I couldn’t foresee. I don’t have a grand goal or a resolution for the new year, but I trust the process. Take on challenges, think deeply, be kind, and love deeper; the world will smile back at me.
Some Notes
At first, I wrote this reflection for myself without the intention of sharing it publicly. But then I thought it would be interesting to experiment with the boundaries of my vulnerability, so I went back in early January and polished my writing, and here goes the piece above. I decided to not link to anything because my projects and most of my other public writings are not vulnerable in nature. Rather, I added pictures that best captured my feelings at the moment. It’s a bit nerve-wracking to share a year's worth of laughs and tears all at once, so I procrastinated until now to publish it. Anyhow, thanks for reading :)
couples who talk about papers in bed >>
love this energy
Thanks for the openness and vulnerability