Making a Scene

by Constance Wu

Why had I been worried that removing her eye would make her less lovable? That’s not how real love works. If someone stops loving you when your body changes, then they just don’t understand real love.

When I considered everything he’d done for me and for the Asian American community, was I really going to give him shit? And because he was married with a kid, it never felt serious. It was just harmless fun, right?

My body was tired from the long days. My bedroom was always a mess because I didn’t have time to clean. My mind was tired from the anxieties of public exposure. My face was tired from trying to be who everyone wanted me to be. And without time for friends or therapy, my soul was drained. That’s when I started saying no.

Maybe I was crazy. How could my pain be valid when I didn’t have a scar to show for it? No one else on the show had been treated this way. I had no physical wounds to point to, no known allies who shared the same experience.

See, I thought I’d “handled” all the fear and intimidation of that first year by swallowing it, or by playing along. But repressed feelings don’t just disappear and they inevitably came out in other ways: paranoia, jealousy, isolation. The smallest slight produced a disproportionately large reaction. Uncharacteristic, illogical behavior followed. The feelingswere so large that even when I knew better, I couldn’t help myself. Like the time I got upset with my costar Randall when I was accidentally excluded from a radio interview we were supposed to do together.

Another time, when a director seemed to favor Chelsey, who played my friend and neighbor on the show, I became cold to both of them—it was my petty way of punishing them when really, I was just jealous that they were able to enjoy themselves on set.

And because I was an adult, I felt stupid and embarrassed asking questions that even my child costars seemed to know the answers to.

My feelings were overwhelming, a tsunami crashing through my body—betrayal, helplessness, like they’d lied to me. I had kept my head down and tolerated the discomfort for so long, trying to preserve everything for everybody else, and I just couldn’t do it anymore. I needed to put my feelings somewhere other than my own body, which was at capacity. I didn’t think about the lack of context, didn’t care how bad it looked.

schadenfreude

We were both in high-pressure situations without precedents—it’s only natural to stumble along the way.

So in a way, the entire experience might have been a helpful filtering mechanism rather than a setback. I’d spent so much of my public life worried about what people thought of me…. It was freeing to finally let that go.

It’s easy to romanticize stuff you don’t know jack shit about.

I wholeheartedly googled “how to build a log cabin by yourself,” then wholeheartedly abandoned it as soon as the search results sprang up.

It was called the Humanstic Buddhist Monastic Life Program.

Religion had always fascinated me—the pure abandon that real faith required, the belief in things intangible and unprovable, how it made some people really good, but also made some people really bad.

Though I remained calm on the outside, my insides were lashing out. It felt like an itch you wanted to scratch but the itch is not on your body but in the air, in your blood, in the entire world and you can’t fucking scratch it because it’s everywhere and your hands are nothing.

“it doesn’t matter what religion you practice, so long as you practice it with the utmost sincerity. And if that doesn’t work out for you, welp, then may I be reborn a cow!”

There are no shortcuts for the true things in life. You have to sit through the discomfort. Sometimes, you have to sit through it for a very, very long time.

Suddenly, an unexpected wave of shame flooded through me—why couldn’t I just leave it the fuck alone? I had culture, experience, travel, stylish boots on my feet, and interesting books in my bag, but I was mean and judgmental. I couldn’t even let someone pray without scoffing at them. Then I remembered what Bud had said about how to worship…. And here it was, right in front of me in this carpeted living room in my hometown: the utmost sincerity.

The girl who romanticized hardship has been upgraded to a woman who thinks about socioeconomic privilege, systemic and structural racism—and the ways she has benefited from and even contributed to those systems.

Today, I recognize how grossly privileged and naive it was for me to idealize hardship.

Buddhism tells us that attachment causes suffering. Buddhists meditate and practice nonattachment to cease suffering. But I was an angsty, arty young person who romanticized suffering…. I sought it out.

If attachment is suffering and I romanticized suffering—was I seeking out attachment all along? As a teenager, I thought I needed to get away from the crowd. But maybe what I truly wanted was something else entirely.

I don’t know why I was so ashamed of my loneliness. Why I ran away from the one thing I wanted so much.

He didn’t do anything blatantly incriminating, but after such a real connection, his casual withholding felt bewildering and punitive. It was ghosting before ghosting was a thing.

The second option—the one I’ve found to be most helpful—is to accept the heartbreak and use it to instruct you. It’s the more painful option, but its effects are beautifully effusive.

The first year I lived in LA, I sort of sleepwalked around in the sunny smog, constantly wondering what George was doing. Thinking of his life more than my own. In hindsight, that’s pathetic as fuck, but it’s also an honest account of my mental space. The only thing worse than doing a pathetic thing is pretending as though that’s not what you’re doing. I’d avoided, numbed, tried to outrun the pain… it was time to finally accept it and try to learn something from it.

When I finally accepted that he didn’t love me back anymore my shoulders dropped and my breathing softened. That’s okay, I told myself, I’m sad, but I’m okay. I’m still me—I can still love. And that’s when I decided to love George without reciprocation.

After some initial nerves, we kissed and it was like old times again. The love had been there all along. It felt like being young without the stupid parts of being young.

And hey, I know it’s uncool to care so much about language. But I’ve always been uncool. And I really, really cared about this language.

CONSTANCE Then, he became cold again, not communicating with me for five days. Again, nothing blatantly incriminating, but in context, those five days of silence had a bewildering, punitive feeling that was all too familiar. I tried really hard to be the cool girl who doesn’t call first, but I’ve never been cool. And I broke.

Looking back, I’m amazed at my patience with his unconscious humblebragging about his sexual value. I mean, of course I wanted him to share his life and problems with me. But the timing of this was, at best, insensitive and, at worst, suspect.

And I did. I talked about him all the time because I loved him so much and I am not embarrassed of my heart and its boldness. Well, actually, I am embarrassed all the time, but I do it anyway.

I didn’t think my heart could break any further, but there it was. He wouldn’t even make time to fly from New York to LA? After all the times I had flown to see him? I’d gone to West Virginia, Dublin, New York, and I would have kept going.

It’s been three days since his last text. Not a lot, I guess. But when you’re used to spending hours on the phone every night with someone, three days of silence feels like an awful lot. So I guess you could say, I had a lot on my mind.

That’s when I realized, this fucker doesn’t deserve all these pages. And he doesn’t deserve the girl that wrote them. Why was I doing this to myself again? Hadn’t pain instructed me years ago? Shouldn’t he finally receive some instruction? He’s getting a fucking email.

think that somewhere, even way back when I was dating Buck, I had always hoped that George was the one. It took me years to let that hope die. I know it’s pathetic. I know that a commitment-phobe dude is nothing original, and even less original is the love I will always carry for him. It’s lame and uncool. And trust me, I wish that I was writing something empowered and flossy and fierce here. But who am I kidding, all I can be is me. And I’m uncool.

Even our second breakup, pathetic as it was, kind of makes me proud. I’m proud that, despite everything, I opened my heart enough to get hurt again. I feel brave. It’s been so long, but I sometimes wonder if he suffered over it or if his pain-protection plan worked.

But if I’m feeling the need to defend myself, that means I feel attacked. And I need to ask myself if what I’m perceiving as an attack is actually an attack.

My humor and my innocent intentions are not the standard that everyone must follow. And if someone else is hurt, rather than forcing my standard upon them to discredit their accusation, maybe I should just listen. Maybe I’ll learn a standard that is different from mine. Maybe that’s a good thing. So, when Justin talked to me about it, I listened.

I could have accused him of selling me a shit car, but I didn’t because I worried it might hurt his feelings. And I didn’t want to seem like I was “difficult.”

Whereas it was once considered rude to check your phone during a meal, iPhones now have a proverbial seat at the table. They’re active participants during meals—they fact-check a heated topic of conversation, they take notes and coordinate schedules, their cameras commemorate the moment.

even in a taxi with the screen turned off, it takes a conscious effort to keep my hands and eyes from wandering to my phone. It often happens before I’ve even realized it, and I’m always disappointed in myself when it does.

unique ability to find delight in contrary opinions. It made her easy to love.

For her, that was all that mattered. We could play in the dirt, wear rags, not bathe, skip homework, eat crap—so long as we were happy, that’s what she cared about.

Later, when I tried to imagine what my mom had been thinking, I thought of my own moments of impulsiveness. The times when, overcome with emotion, I became reckless, desperate. It was almost always over a boy. I do the same thing after every heartbreak:

You don’t notice change when it’s gradual. But looking back, I can see the signs.

When my dad had to be a single father for one week during my mom’s European vacation, I felt so bad for him. But where was that sympathy for my mom when she had to be a single mother for months while Dad was on his research sabbatical? I used to judge my mom, but looking back I realize how unfair we all were to

She’d spent so much of her life giving us space to blossom. We never thought about whether she might want to blossom too.

I took a breath and listened to her. It had taken me a while, but I’d learned to be less defensive. And I knew not to ruin an apology with an excuse. After giving her space for all her feelings, I said, “I’m really sorry. I’m sorry I put you through that.” She started to calm down, and I continued, “You didn’t deserve that, and I know it must have been awful for you and that is on me, and I am sorry.”