Permanent Record

by Mary H.K. Choi

(everyone’s sick in their own special way; the variety on the flavors of crazy is pretty endless, but me?):

How racism is a wave and a particle since we also get followed around in stores as if we’re going to steal something. I guess shoplifting’s an inside job?

Honestly, it scares me the way I end up living out the aftermath of decisions I don’t remember making.

Where there should have been aspiration seeds blooming or urgent hopes detonating, all I had in my head was a pulsing asterisk. To this day I have no inkling as to what I care about the most. I care about everything equally until I care about so many things I get overwhelmed and care about nothing at all. When it comes to the single thing I want to focus the entire rest of my life on, it’s a muscle I don’t know how to flex. As if I’m a lightning bug that forgot how to turn its ass on.

That city-living intimacy where you know the minutia of their routines, rituals, and clothes but absolutely nothing else.

See? This is what I hate about going over to mom’s. She’s so demanding about perfectly reasonable things that provide limitless opportunity for us to disappoint her.

I don’t know why I can’t be purely happy for him. It’s petty but I can’t squelch it. Right now I would love if I had the presence of mind to be all, Well, shit, if anyone’s going to get paid playing some goon it may as well be someone I love, but I can’t. I can’t even tell what part of my queasiness is being mad at him or being mad at me that I’m mad at him.

But I can’t help but wonder how much my people are mine. If they’d claim me in the same way I want to claim them.

In an effort to exert even a modicum of chill, I do absolutely nothing and writhe in self-loathing while being extra vigilant

“You’re not going to change your life in a day. It took two years and antianxiety medication for me to stop getting overwhelmed about even getting out of bed. Do the next right thing and don’t worry about anything else coming down the pike. You don’t have an audience. No one’s judging you. Do the work.”

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if we told each other the things we never say.

“What is modern society’s obsession with wiping out all diversity and nuance in favor of cheap, shoddy monoliths?”

“Do you enjoy doing anything for the sake of doing it? Life isn’t a destination. It’s the continual practice of things that make you wiser and happier.