23-Love Does Not Exist

I've been pondering my idea of love lately. We use the word love all the time, but it is not something that I can see in any contained physical form. It's used on so many levels, from the meaning of life, to fondness, and for some reason has always been this all-consuming mystery to me that could somehow crack the code to the meaning of life. My idea of love can be described in the lyrics of "A Letter to Elise":

"and every time I try to pick it up
like falling sand
as fast as I pick it up
it runs away through my clutching hands". - The Cure

In the past, believing that I might eventually have the ability to define love or understand love as some kind of constant feeling has created more loss than it has helped me understand it.

How can we search for love when we have never fully known it, and quite possibly never can? Would we know love if we found it, or have we been passing it by daily without recognizing it? 


I've been running from love my whole life at the same time that I have been searching relentlessly for it. If love is the point (0,0) on an xy-plain, I've been everywhere but that point--or perhaps started at the point before I was aware, sometimes following a trail outward farther away from love, coming back closer to it--in a way I've referred to as "coming back down to me"--then moving back out in another direction--then coming back towards the center, etc. Funny now, when I think of this, I see a flower, with love at the stigma, or the center. 


I used to draw during church as a kid. I'd get a pen from my mom and draw on the bulletin, or write letters to my cousin or my grandparents in the States. I'd get frustrated when I'd misspell a word and then share my frustration with my mom by grunting with a pout on my face, showing her the scribbled out word. While my dad preached in Chinese at the front of the church, my mom would would lean over, cup her hand over her mouth and whisper in my ear, "make it into a flower". I'd try, but it frustrated me because all I could see through the flower was the mistake I made before that, and I knew the receiver of the letter would be able to tell too. I'd finish up the letter anyways and go back to the bulletin, coloring in all the enclosed shapes within the Chinese characters, much like how one would color in the o's, e's, a's. 

As a kid, I interpreted the idea of love as a kind of action. A verb. 

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails." 1 Corinthians 13:4-8

If I acted in the following way, I would be showing love. And that's what I did, I acted, and I believe I acted out of good intentions. I tried to be patient and kind. I tried to not envy or boast or be proud. I tried not to dishonor others, be self-seeking, not angry or bitter. I tried to stay away from things that I thought to be evil and only dwell in "truth". I tried to protect, trust, hope, and persevere. And I tried desperately not to fail. On the outside, for the most part, I did alright, but deep inside I was so conflicted because I also had ideas forming in my head about who I was, who others were, and what things should be like. As I was "learning to love", I was also learning how to build barriers between myself and others--myself and my life. I watched others and mimicked--like many of us do when we don't know how to do it ourselves, while the walls got higher and thicker and more petrified. 

I acted out this "love" but I hurt. I trusted but lost trust. I was kind, but was angry on the inside. Really, I was a perfect contradiction. My efforts towards ideals blocked me from the truth, like a giant bubble between me and everything I came into contact with--perhaps the giant bubble I felt I was clutching, and losing grip of while laying on the couch at my friend's house. I have not understood until today, writing this, working out this problem, that love cannot occur when our plan/idea/desire/attachment/belief separates us at all from the object with which we are coming into contact.

I was guided by The Voice. Geneen Roth describes The Voice (which we all have) in this way:

"Everyone has The Voice. It's a developmental necessity. You need to learn not to put your hands in fire, walk into incoming traffic, stick electrical wires into water. You need to learn that you probably won't be welcomed into other people's houses if you throw food on their walls or put snakes in their beds. When external authority figures such as parents, teachers or family members communicate verbal and nonverbal instructions about physical and emotional survival, we coalesce those voices into one voice--The Voice--by a process called introjection (internalizing authority figures). 

"According to developmental psychologists, The Voice is fully operative in most of us by the time we are four years olf, after which it functions as a moral compass, a deterrent to questionable behavior. Instead of being afraid of the disapproval of our parents, we become afraid of the disapproval of The Voice. Instead of being punished for daring to disagree with our mothers or fathers, we adults punish ourselves for daring to believe that our lives could be different. We become risk aversive. Frightened of change.

 "...the intention of The Voice is to stun you, not activate your intelligence or equanimity. In its early development, it was biologically adaptive: it kept you from being rejected by those you depend on. Now it is archaic, a vestigial remnant from childhood that, despite its ersatz usefulness, is now running your life and rendering you incapable of acting with true discernment and intelligence. Its main warning is: Don't cross the line. Maintain the status quo. 

The Voice is merciless, ravaging, life destroying. The Voice makes you feel so weak, so paralyzed, so incompetent that you wouldn't dare question (its) authority. Its intent is to keep you from being thrown out of whatever it perceives as the circle of love. 

"The Voice saps you of strength, cuts you off at the knees, and positions you in a world modeled on past authority figures who bark directions that are often cruel and almost always irrelevant to who you are and what you love. By co-opting your clarity and objective knowing, The Voice renders you incapable of contacting your own authority. It treats you as a child in need of a moral compass, but its due north does not include any terrain that is fresh or new. Think of the Voice as a Global Positioning System from the twilight zone. When you follow its directions, you spend your life trying to find streets that no longer exist in a city that vanished decades ago. Then you wonder why you feel so unbearably lost." - Geneen Roth, from Women Food and God

I've got a lot voices in my head. I am sensitive to others. It's not that I grew up around terrible people--on the contrary!--but I internalized so many different points of view of what people believed their version of love was. 

We all interpret love differently, give love differently, and want love differently. We make love out to be an object, an idea, an action, a feeling that comes from past experiences and ideals in the form of some physical unseen substance within the heart or brain. Love is the undefined variable that I've longed to plug into some life-long formula--if only I could define it. It's funny then, that each time I believe I have found it and defined it, and plug it into my "formula for life", the equation fails and I have to start over from scratch, because since love has been so important to me, I made my equation such that every other variable relied upon it. In thinking that love needed to be showcased somehow, I could divide everything by my idea of love and move it outside of the rest of the equation's parentheses as a kind of cornerstone. But if that form of love failed, there would be no love in any of my equation anymore, and everything previously recorded would seem wretched and stark because it lacked what I believed to be so necessary: My love did not work. I was incapable of loving, and therefore I was ashamed of my own existence. Love scared me because it always failed, much like the quote below:

"To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer. To suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy then is to suffer. But suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you're getting this down." - Woody Allen

We use love to describe so many different situations and feelings. I love my husband. I love my dog. I love my family. I love my friends. I love my job. I love my condo. I love my computer. I love Saturdays. I love you. If love is in these actions and feelings--but undefinable at the same time, what if I removed it from everything? What if my idea of love isn't "something"? What if it's nothing--a smokescreen of sorts? I my husband. I my dog. I my family. I my friends. I my job. I my condo. I my computer. I Saturdays. I you. Without the undefined love word that lies (pun intended) between me and everything that is in my life, I can actually make direct contact. In fact, I am those things. The gap has been closed. 

So love seems to be the absence of anything between me and everything.

It doesn't sound too good to say that love does not exist. I use this word all the time, to my husband, my family, my dog, my friends, things I like. It's integrated into my entire life. So it's not that it doesn't exist, it exists in the form of all the obstructions that it is not.

The limit as x (obstruction) approaches 0 (no obstruction, or love) of the function xy (y being me) + xz (someone or something else) also written as x(y+z) = love...

For an explanation of limits see: http://www.themathpage.com/acalc/limits.htm#limit-variable

After thinking about this more, we do not carry the same obstructions as one another. So there would need to be 2 limits in my equation. My "obstruction variable" would be x, I am y, another's "obstruction variable" would be z, and they would be a. Because if I tried to eliminate my obstructions, but someone else doesn't, or vice versa, we would not be able to converge into that single moment of pure love or presentness.

The limit as x approaches 0 of f(x,y) plus the limit as z approaches 0 of f(z,a) = love. If I multiply by our obstruction variables (implying that they are a within us and always will be, but somehow at the same time able to be transformed) I end up with zero, eliminating any definition of 2 separate beings and becoming just about the convergence into the minute moment of nowness (when time seems to stand still), but if I divide by our obstruction variables (implying that they are separate from us--maybe like a monkey on our back, or heavy baggage--able to be completely thrown out), the equation becomes undefined...perhaps because it's impossible. 

Is this multivariable calculus, which I haven't taken yet, or is this my own made up math? ... probably a little bit of both :)

I know it's impossible to figure out anyways, but it's fun to think about...

I looked up others takes on love that are close, but seem too defined:

"Love is the total absence of fear. Love asks no questions. Its natural state is one of extension and expansion, not comparison and measurement." - Gerald Jampolsky (American psychiatrist)

Here is me arguing with myself and then proving my opinion wrong: I can agree with Jampolsky's statement to a point, but I also think more can exist within a barrier between me and something than just fear--although if Roth's definition of The Voice is our barrier, and The Voice comes from fear, maybe it is accurate. Still, fear is not necessarily required to dislike something or someone, and disliking might be merely due to misinterpretation or ignorance. But then Buddhist philosophy says that ignorance is the root of all suffering (I am not Buddhist, but this does make sense), but does it only lead to fear? Maybe so....Also contrary to what Jampolsky says, I like the idea of asking questions, because I believe that in connection lies inquiry, and if ignorance leads to fear, the way to lessen ignorance is through inquiry. I guess that does prove his quote to be accurate according to my "formula", because if love is the absence of fear there would be no need for inquiry because there wouldn't exist fear (which contains suffering and leads to fear). Therefore, like he said, "Love asks no questions." Interesting. So then, I guess, since we are all ignorant anyway, inquiry is an essential tool toward love. On inquiry:

"The effectiveness of inquiry lies in its open-endedness, its evocation of true curiosity."..."When you practice inquiry, you see what and who you have been taking yourself to be that you have never questioned. Inquiry allows you to be in direct contact with that which is bigger than what you are writing about: the infinite unexplored worlds beyond your everyday discursive mind." - Geneen Roth

It is difficult to inquire when our mind is clouded by The Voice.

"One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love." - Sophocles 

And the way it frees me is by eliminating my previous beliefs about love. Love acts as a vacuum, not a soft pillow.

To me, the dramatic passionate all-encompassing love, the heartbeat of the ideal world, or whatever you want to call it has shrunk in size, and individual connection rises to the top of my small understanding of love--what the ancients called philia:

"Even within personal love, philosophers from the ancient Greeks on have traditionally distinguished three notions that can properly be called “love”: eros, agape, and philia...‘Eros’ originally meant love in the sense of a kind of passionate desire for an object, typically sexual passion (Liddell et al., 1940)...Badhwar (2003, p. 58) characterizes agape as “independent of the loved individual's fundamental characteristics as the particular person she is.”...Finally, ‘philia’ originally meant a kind of affectionate regard or friendly feeling towards not just one's friends but also possibly towards family members, business partners, and one's country at large (Liddell et al., 1940; Cooper, 1977)." -http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/love/ Standford Encyclopedia of Philosphy on "Love"

As simple as it sounds, "affectionate regard" in philia is probably the hardest of all. Agape love seems to say, "I love you regardless of my already pre-conceived negative notions that still exist in my head about you". I can't have affectionate regard for anyone or anything when there are hang-ups or judgments between us. Try to just affectionately regard everyone you come into contact with. This may bring about uncomfortable feelings. It's difficult! At least I know it is for me.

“Love is the absence of judgment.” - Dalai Lama XIV

"Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other." - Rainer Maria Rilke

"What else is love but understanding and rejoicing in the fact that another person lives, acts, and experiences otherwise than we do…?" - Friedrich Nietzsche

I recently found a beautiful song called "Nemesis", that reminds me of Nietzsche's quote above. It ends with these profound words:

"I am your one true love who sleeps with someone else I am your Nemesis, baby, I'm life sweet life itself" - David Gray

Love is not ours and must not be carried like a bag of sparkly gifts. It's already there between us all in its ability to vacuum away the bullshit, and we have no other choice but to see it for the pain that it can eliminate. 1 Corinthians 13 makes sense after all. It's not a personality; it occurs millions of times throughout the day; It's presentness. It's living and dying over and over again between every moment. It's everything and nothing at the same time. Uh oh, here I go defining it again.

Disclaimer: This definition of love is subject to change. :D

22-Post Reality Stress Disorder

It's been two years since writing about anything happening in present time. There were many moments where blogs nearly came out, but they were in the middle of suffering moments and were deleted at the last minute. It is much easier to look back and make sense of a difficult period in time than it is to analyze it as it's happening in the present. I hated the sound of my posts when reading them before posting, so I'd erase them and hope things would get better. I wanted my posts to seem inspirational, but instead they were turning depressing. It's hard to put down the rough stuff. It's hard to admit that everything I've been raving about isn't working for me now. Perhaps I was going for an impressive climb, expecting I'd impress myself and others into a new sense of self. My own strategy was failing, and I felt as though the problem I was trying to prove into a basic formula was one with infinite answers.

Reading back on my older posts I noticed I was growing and pushing through change and decisions and challenges at a very fast rate. I came to a lot of conclusions and epiphanies. The momentum was startling with so much energy in the things I did and said and thought. It was a great time of growth and change and inspiration. Learning how to organize my thoughts and priorities, I couldn't get enough when it came to new information. I wanted to know everything right now. Each word read, sign saw, decal noticed, conversation had, was recorded with energy and excitement and was seen as a new piece to a giant puzzle that I planned on one day finishing. As the months went on, without much exercise, and with increasing demands at work, the puzzle grew bigger; when one piece was placed down a thousand new empty spaces appeared. My perception was changing, and my idea of life and growth was fading and ripping in the wind. I started smoking again to relieve stress. I hadn't gotten my drive to run back since breaking my toe and dropping out of the 50 miler with my brother, and a limited-time tax credit that caused thousands of extra orders for replacement windows from our factory took a lot of extra energy and time from me that I wasn't ready to give. I was burning out.

Burn out is not fun. I became anxious and dazed and overwhelmed over the smallest things like doing laundry. Or taking a shower. Instead of being fascinated by new information, it frightened me. It seemed like too much; I'd get butterflies in my stomach when seeing a stranger on the street or looking at an intricate design on the side of a building. Everything seemed too much. I was exhausted and only wanted to sleep when I was at home. When awake, my mind raced, and I couldn't rid my mind of horrible visions of loved ones or myself dying. Cramming my stomach with food and then sleeping seemed like my only escape.

I found the left side of my face going numb during stressful moments at work. Having passed Calculus 1 in the winter of 2010, I continued on to Calculus 2 in the spring of 2011. When I left class, my left cheek would be numb from my mouth to my ear and the left side of my body seemed sluggish--causing me to nearly pull over on the highway a few times. I was convinced I was having a stroke. One night during class I put my pencil down and stopped taking notes and sat back in my chair. "What are you doing?" my classmate asked. We'd helped each other through math since College Algebra. "I can't do it, Moon," I said apologetically. I wasn't going to do it anymore. It wasn't worth the stress, so I withdrew from Calculus 2.

I went to the doctor and had an MRI to see if I was having a stroke, but nothing showed up. My bloodwork came back fine except that I was 10 points below normal on my Vitamin D levels. My doctor had me take a depression survey but that didn't turn into anything either. She suggested I take Vitamin D, eat healthy, exercise, and drink lots of water. She said I'd be amazed what that would do for me. So I took the Vitamin D, but did none of the other things. I didn't care enough about my body and did not believe those things would help enough. I was too tired to exercise. My husband and I loved eating together, mostly out, and we can eat a LOT and stay pretty trim (him more than me). Eating healthy felt like cutting out one of the most enjoyable parts of the day with my husband.

I purchased two books, "Fried: Why You Burn Out and How to Revive" and "The Highly Sensitive Person". From the burnout book I discovered that I'd gone through every stage of burnout except the last--physical and mental collapse--and I was heading in that direction. And from the Highly Sensitive Person book I discovered that I was one. Having talked to my boss about feeling burned out in my position, an opportunity came up for me work in another department, still in her team, but more geared towards projects and learning new procurement jobs instead of managing warehouse staff and day-to-day duties. I was grateful for the change but was still anxious and exhausted, and still experiencing numbness in my face, a foggy mind, and an overwhelming sense of a downward spiral.

I came to the conclusion that I didn't like Saint Paul. It seemed like a good reason to be unhappy--maybe it was just where we lived: the weather, the flatness, etc. I told my husband and this made him sad. He thought I liked it here. I said I did--so what was wrong with me? Why was I feeling so terrible? I had thrown around the idea of seeing a therapist in the past, and he brought it up--that maybe it might be a good time to talk to someone. So I did. I was desperate to do anything to figure out what was "wrong with me".

21-A Christmas Rhyme

Remember the glimpse of past promenades

I manned a manger of soft quilted plaids

my mother read from the Holy Book

my brothers stood by holding staffs with hooks

I cradled and cooed Mr. plastic baby J

and wondered what I'd get from my parents next day

My father took pictures, young faces so sweet

this famous scene we'd forever repeat

Each Christmas again with crock pots and cookies

we'd tell the same story as if we were rookies

and remind ourselves we are sin, we are done

except for the birth of the holy one.

The bells are chiming, it's midnight, St Paul,

the concrete is cold down the empty street hall

The homeless men were amongst a deal

when Nala came by and divulged her fears

I'm damaged and scared and I can't hide the facts

that our current exchange gives me nothing I lack

We cry broken pumpkins from under our lids

and worry what valentines we'll soon need to give

Then patty's, then easter, the fourth, and birthdays

scary movies and costumes, then santa's old sleigh

This time it'll feel like it did when we thought

that the only future was the next minute brought

Over and over the pattern returning

yet when does it ever end without yearning

A little more broke yet we're all still refusing

Tradition, why you gotta be so damn confusing?

I thought you were what we relied on for closeness

Instead you're the one who robs mostly the hostess.

20-The Delica

"C'mon, gang! Let's get a move on!" my dad often said in an excited tone as we'd all pile into the van. Our family of five (and later, six) required a larger vehicle--especially when it came to road trips. It wasn't that the three of us kids couldn't fit into a sedan, but the mission owned the vehicles, which often involved transporting larger groups of people than just our family unit, so the larger vehicle got more bang for the buck. My favorite trips were the ones down south to Kenting, where we'd pile our family and vacation-adopted friends into the van, with the middle seat turned around to face the back seat. We'd all joke around and tell stories the whole way down, often waking up to find our own drool running down our seat-mate's arm. Beach towels for pillows, and bags for armrests, the tight quarters were welcomed when there was an ocean in the near future--the back of the van packed with flippers, boogie boards, goggles, and snorkels.

Our first van that I remember was beige in color. The rides as a family were spacious enough that we didn't beat on each other too bad. The three of us kids sat in the middle row. I usually sat on the little seat that could fold up out of the way if it wasn't needed. It was harder, but I was ok with it. It was on the right side looking towards the front seats, the only side with a door. I remember my oldest brother sitting in my spot once using the door lock pin as the trigger of a machine gun and going to war on the road. In my spot, I was always the last to get in, and the first to get out.

In the summer, we'd often drive down by TYPA, which eventually became TAS, and go to Mary's Hamburger. After our jumbo cheeseburger and fries, we'd walk down the street and my mom would do some grocery shopping at Johnson's grocery. Then we'd poke around in a few more stores that sold toys and trinkets, and a store that sold everything porcelain, that I think we called the elephant man, because of the quantity of elephant figurines. One time I got so involved in looking in one store that I didn't notice that my family had moved on to the next store over. I came out of the store and couldn't find anyone. I looked up and down the street and watched for the beige van, thinking maybe they'd already gotten in and would drive by. I knew we were going to America soon and thought I had lost my opportunity to go to America with my family. I began to panic, hoping desperately to see the van drive by. I imagined it packed full of all of our luggage, minus mine, and on its way to the airport. I wondered if they'd noticed I wasn't there. I wondered who I should tell that I'd missed my opportunity to go to America with my family. Which Chinese family would take me in and take care of me until they got back? I wondered if I'd ever see them again. I wondered if I was being taught a lesson. How could they forget me? I kicked at the terrazzo sidewalk and studied the thin gold lines separating the tiles. It was hot and I didn't have any money. How would I survive? Would our relatives in America notice I wasn't with them? I went to the next store over and there was my family perusing through the store, not knowing that I had been trying to figure out my future without them. I remember hugging my mom and saying I thought I'd lost them. "We were in the next store, honey," she said.

At some point we got a red Delica--a newer one, with Delica decals along the sides and a big tire on the front bumper. The tire was zipped up inside a black pleather case. The van was beefier looking, smelled new, with the flip-back middle seats, and the one I remember the most. Every time we'd pass a firetruck, my dad would say, "Heeey! It's our cousin the firetruck!" and I felt incredibly cool, like I'd been reminded I was part of an elite group of people...the firetruck cousins. I used to wish I could hold onto the handle above the window so my arm hung with a perpendicular bend, like I'd seen one of the single men in our mission sit. He looked so cool and lanky. But my arm stretched straight up to grip it.

The seats were gray, with tiny squares of velvety material that made it easy to fall asleep on long rides, especially at night--lights racing by, reflecting in different directions off the windows. Over time, the seats began to squeak as we rode over bumps, but the squeaking was welcome and familiar, like the voice of a sibling or friend. When it rained, the windshield wiper motors whirred and whined to keep up with the amount of water they kicked off the front windshield. It seemed to rain a lot in Taiwan, especially during long trips to downtown Taipei, either to school, the doctor, or running errands with my mom or dad. Downtown Taipei was so big, and parallel parking was a perfectly chiseled talent of both my parents. The van was manual shift, and the stick came out from the side of the steering wheel. I remember watching my mom in awe as she maneuvered her way into tiny spots, by shifting hard and swinging her right arm over the backs of the front seats and cranking her neck to see out the back window, then removing her arm and shifting again, checking her tall side mirror, and then repeating those steps until we were a perfect six inches from the curb. She could get into any spot.

I took piano lessons from a woman that lived high up in the mountains, and my mom would drive me up, atleast an hour each way. This time I got to ride in the front, and usually fought our whole way up because I didn't like piano and didn't practice my songs for the week. It was a beautiful ride if I'd paid more attention.

One time, I'd just gotten an opal heart necklace from my parents and was riding alone in the backseat to pick up my brothers from sports. Riding alone in the back was bumpier and lonelier and creaking of the seats was more annoying. I'd been sucking on my necklace and bit down on the opal heart to see if it would break and it did. Opal was my birth stone and it was a very special gift and I didn't know how to tell my parents I'd just bit it, so I made up a story. There was a metal bar that ran along the back of the front seats and a carpeted ledge about knee level beneath the bar where part of the engine was. The ledge was always warm after the car had been running for awhile. When riding in the back alone, I'd often press my knees against the ledge and get hot red carpet marks on them as I leaned forward with my forearms resting on the metal bar and talk to my parents in the front seat--or listen to their conversation. I said I was leaning over and my necklace banged against the bar and broke. My parents seemed bummed, but believed my story. It wasn't until this year, I'm now 31, that my mom told me she had a opal heart necklace of mine that was chipped. I told her what really happened. How embarrassing.

This new red van had doors on both sides. We'd take long rides up Yang Ming Shan, with the back seats down and our bikes piled in. We'd blast praise songs and I'd look for the caves in the side of the mountain, always hoping to see something in them, but only seeing pitch blackness instead. We'd always drive past the old wrecked car that drove over the cliff, and smell the sulfur that wafted from yellowish-gray patches on the mountainside. We'd park our van in a giant almost-empty lot at the park, pile out with our bikes, ride around and pretend we were BMX pros, then load up the bikes, go for a hike, and get lunch in styrofoam boxes with fried pork, rice, pickled vegetables, and a tea egg. We'd feed the fish in fish ponds, collect tadpoles, and my dad would take photos of everything.

For one year, my oldest brother went to school in Taichung and lived in the dorm, so our van got one person emptier. But we got him back the following year when we moved down to all go to his school.

When we moved to Feng Yuan, we got my oldest brother back and we gained a new member of the family and a new passenger in our van. He was my middle brother's classmate and immediately took his spot as my 3rd brother. We had a basketball hoop outside over our parking spot, so my dad would park the van on the street so we could play 21 for hours on end. Soon my oldest brother and my dad got motorcycles. Sometimes my dad would give me a ride or pick me up from school on his bike, which I loved, since he'd take the rice paddie roads the whole way.

We moved to Taichung, about ten minutes from school, and continued to pack in the van. We formed a habit of punching each other in the arms and legs while sitting next to each other in the back seat. I think we all went a whole year with permanent bruises and charlie horses on our arms and thighs. We got a new van--a light blue VW, with flowery seat covers. It was more comfortable, but didn't have the flip-around middle seats or the carpeted ledge to lean against. And we were no longer cousins to the firetrucks. My oldest brother graduated, and the van became emptier again.

We moved again, a walking/biking distance from school, and the van became less noticed. It sat in the basement of our building as we didn't need it nearly as much. My two middle brothers graduated and the van grew emptier. My best friend often shared the back seat with me on family vacations until she graduated too. The back seat of the van was lonely again--necklace-biting lonely. Fortunately I didn't have to ride in it too often. By that time, my independence was screaming, and I preferred the bus or taxi to get places. Our van took its place with a family in our mission with five kids, and my parents got scooters.

19-Dog's Head Evening

We started our evening at Mary's Hamburgers, our favorite childhood family restaurant, where the jumbo cheeseburger and fries were heaven, where we'd put vinegar on our fries, and there'd always be a table in the back with a few red-faced men with 20+ Taiwan beers empty on the table, where I always got Diet Coke cuz that's what the adults got, where I saw a grown woman with a polio vaccination scar on her upper left arm and felt cool that I had one too, where they made fried rice special for my mom, where we'd go after summer days at the pool, before we headed to the video store to rent more Cosby Show, Star Wars, or Indiana Jones. The original Mary's used to be across the alley, but they moved and expanded and now had two floors. It was sad when they moved, but when the burgers and fries and fried rice tasted the same, we were all a little more willing to change with them.

We finished our burgers and headed up the street along store fronts, scooters parked on the uneven sidewalks, dogs in front of their apartments, past Taster's that always smelled so sweet and we'd get creme filled pastries and imported chocolate, and gum with comics inside the rappers. We crossed the next alley onto the red-brick sidewalk in front of the Taipei American School where we'd played numerous tournaments on their indoor courts and outdoor track and baseball fields, on the land that used to be TYPA, where I'd watched my brothers' T-ball and soccer games and taken my first ballet and gymnastics classes.

We continued past the school to an intersection with George Pai's to the right, where my mom always got her hair done and raved about the shoulder and neck massages, the blue bookstore where I fell in love with the smell of paper while my dad flipped through photography magazines and my brothers looked at comics. To the left was the quick way home past the hsien bing shop on the corner, Ponderosa, McDonald's, the novelty shops, Rose Records, and the imported clothing store that sold Gap boxers and Abercrombie sweatshirts with sign out front that read "Don't even think about parking here". Further up was Welcome, the imported food store where we could get American candy and boxed goods they didn't sell anywhere else in Taiwan.

We headed straight across the street and started up the hill towards "the circle", passing imported reject clothing stores where we did most of our clothes shopping that played the latest hits from ICRT, the english radio station, past the Fuji-film store where dad would load up on camera stuff, the shoe store that always had racey Travel Fox ads of greeced up men and women in provocative poses wearing the latest high-tops, past pizza places, and restaurants that weren't there when we were kids. Across the street used to be the Vision Street Wear store where my brothers bought black board bags with neon yellow and hot pink designs and Santa Cruz boards and bright chunky wheels.

We made it to the circle and cut across the street toward the stone steps and headed down into the Tien Mou park, hands on the giant railing painted to look like bamboo. Chunks of concrete missing from the numerous skateboard trips my brothers and their friends would take, my mom and I close behind with my rollerskates or our badminton rackets and birdies. We headed across the park, the trees still giant and filled with the same green leaves with yellow centers. We headed up some stone steps over a bridge and crossed over some rice patties and walked along cement rowhouses where an albino girl used to sit on the steps with her siblings.

We got to the end of the alley with the little store where we'd buy poky's and playgum and peas crisp, and 1 NT tubes of glue you could blow into bubbles with a straw. Up the hill was the road to Yang Ming Shan where we took countless weekend trips, our bikes and skateboards piled in the back, where I'd always make sure on the way up to see the wrecked car down the side of the cliff, check out the patches of rotten-egg-smelling sulfur, and count the number of dark caves in the side of the mountain. We'd get bien dangs in styrofoam containers with fried pork, a tea egg, and pickled vegetables, and study the tadpoles in the ponds that would amazingly turn into frogs. Calvary Baptist church was up there, where we'd go for Vacation Bible School and I'd be terrified to walk into the large room of kids I didn't know who knew all the latest hand-gestures to all the latest praise songs.

We crossed Cherry Lane past the corner where we'd carry our trash to the dump, where we found our kitten Pitter Patter when we were dumping the cardboard box our new refrigerator came in, down the alley past the house with the man with all the birds that we could see from our roof, past our German across-the-street neighbors that let us swim in their pool and play with their dogs Barbara and Bimbo. We got our house, the end of many rowhouses, with the red gate with the cement frame that I used to climb a tree to get to, where a pure white bird once landed on my finger, and the cemented property next to it where my brothers used to skate before the weeds broke through the concrete and took over again, vines growing up the walls and peeking over the dull glass sticking up along our old wall. Our red Delica van used to sit outside along the wall, which we packed full for many vacations to the beach, with snorkles, flippers, and boogie boards.We stopped and looked for awhile, the same balcony outside my parents' upstairs bedroom, the airconditioner poking out my old bedroom window, my brothers' rooms' windows, the roof we played on, the kitchen's screen door that would slam shut as my mom would go in and out of the house to do laundry.

We headed down the alley past our Isreali neighbors who had us over dinner once, past the bridge that took us to the mountain park where we'd play 500 or tag, or just run wild, where my dad took me to take pictures of me in the park because I wanted him to submit them to the modeling companies that my friends and oldest brother were always modeling cool stuff for like scooters, felix the cat, hair accessories, and skateboard gear. Past the mountain park was a long mountain hike we'd take some early, early mornings when the air was still cold on our way up, saying "dzau" to the elderly walkers, and by the time we got to the top it would be steaming hot, as my dad took pictures of butterflies and dragonflies that landed on flowers like morning glories and "ham and eggs" as my mom called them.

We walked through the tall cement buildings and took all the same shortcuts we used to take to the bus stop, past the temple that always smelled strongly of incense that I would sneak peaks into and then feel guilty, where we saw a really old man who was so hunched over and awkward that we thought he looked like he had to pee really bad and we decided if he ever did, he would flood all of Tien Mou, past the guard that stood there all day with his beyonet gun and his white helmet strapped under his chin, to the bus stop where my mom met us after school once to tell us our dog was having her puppies.

We headed past the Indian Club, past the bus stop, down the street where my dad used to take me to go check the P.O. box and then stop and sit on stools at a folding table at a little stand that sold ice-cold papaya milkshakes in clear plastic glasses with measuring lines and fruit designs on the outside.

We turned in down an alley and headed over a small cement bridge that crossed over the binjo, past my best friends' house that had heavy green drapes in the windows, where they had daschounds and we played with plastic horses named Brownie and Dixie, made forts out of the living room furniture, and called the parents "sir" and "ma'am". We made it to the edge of the neighborhood and came to the alley that took us up toward Dog's Head Mountain, another familiar family hike, the small jutting mountain peak that really looked like a dog's head with floppy ears, that you could see from my bedroom window.

The bedroom that always had pink walls and magazine pictures of Johnny Depp, Brian Austin Greene, Candice Cameron, and other hot stars at the time, along with my drawings of my favorite Garfield comic strip and the Little Mermaid, that hung over my giant metal desk that held old dusty books that smelled important, and piles of paper I refused to throw away, and a drawer full of erasers that aided in my erasing habit, where'd I'd collect the shavings until they filled up an entire container, and then throw them all away and start over, and pink office accessories my brother bought me as a "sorry " present when he accidentally dropped my oil in water turn-upside-down toy on the stairs, with the bottom left drawer that when I opened it after a year in America had a dead banana spider crumpled up and crusty between two folders. The room with the white toy box topped with all my stuffed animals, including Cookie, my favorite, named after Cookie, our dog. The room with the walls that cracked from floor to ceiling in the big earthquake, the cracks I used to shine my flashlight into and pretend I could see a miniature family in there having dinner around a miniature dining room table, the walls that I always thought were pink, but when I got to repaint them with a new pink, the final unpainted patch made me realize my room had been formerly purple. The walls with the pictures that I memorized like 'I am God's Idea' and one my grandma cross-stitched for me that read 'Dear God I thank you for your care, you've been right with me everywhere, at school, at play, you're by my side, my special friend, my loving guide, and when the sun has said goodnight, and little lights shine in the sky, you're still with me, not far above, but right in my heart, for you are love,' and the Smokey the Bear posters of Minnesota flowers and trees taped to my wardrobe doors that were a tad too big and popped open unannounced sometimes in the night. The room with the nightstand by my bed with the golden bird-topped music box that played "Memories...of the Way we Were..."

We headed up the hill until the stone stairs turned into sandy tan dirt, where I remember a man standing during the day, smiling peacefully and playing his violin for the whole mountaintop to hear. We got to the top, much smaller than I remember, and turned around and sat looking over Taipei city, lit for miles and miles, illuminating the cloudcover above. We talked as the warm summer breeze gently hit us, and I remember knowing the moment would be a forever memory, one that could never repeat itself in such perfection. He talked about coming back to live in Taiwan after college, and I probably smoked cigarettes and listened with a racing mind, anxious as always. I don't know what I talked about and it probably didn't matter. The blackness of the night and the shimmering lights; the humid wind felt so comfortable.

We got up and headed down the backside of the mountain, overlooking the wealthy neighborhoods, down hundreds of stone steps until we got to a street that took us all the way into town underneath an MRT (lightrail) line, where we found a 7-Eleven and bought guava juice. As we walked beneath the rails, he stuck the straw in the far corner of his mouth and said, "Hey Kirt, who's this?" as he imitated the way our dad drank from a straw and I laughed and said 'dad'.

From there we headed back to his apartment but I don't remember any more from that night.

Back in Minnesota, we sat out on the dock at Como Lake in Saint Paul, watched the moon's reflection shake on the water, and listened to the ducks swim nearby. The paddleboats had been tethered to the dock for the night, and knocked slightly against the weathered-wooden planks. I smoked cigarettes and lamented over missing home. And my brother sat silently and listened. Finally, he said in words, "I've spent so long trying to figure out the connection between growing up in Taiwan and living here now, like there should be some deep hidden meaning behind it all, and I'm beginning to wonder if maybe there wasn't a reason for it, or any special meaning behind it. Maybe it just happened. Maybe it just was what it was, and that's it." For some reason it helped.

18-Greece and Bulgaria

We saved up enough money to visit my oldest brother Jon, his wife Andrea, their 10 month old boy Samuel, and Jack Russel terrier Jenny, who just moved to Sofia, Bulgaria four months ago. We had the privilege of spending all of our spring break with them. It was our first trip to Europe together.

Here are some notes I put down in my iPod along the way:

Everyone clapped when the plane landed in Sofia yesterday. Jon picked us up at the airport in a car he rented for the week. Andrea had a Bulgarian meat and rice stew made in a clay pot waiting for us. Samuel was sleeping.
In the morning, Jon walked us over to HIT, the supermarket, which had 3 litre plastic bottles of beer and tons of stuff on the shelves I couldn't read. The cheese here is like saltier feta.
We played with Samuel and watched him crawl around. He likes to throw his toy under is walkie-roll-around-chair-thing, so he'd have to crawl under it to get it. Then he'd crawl out the other end. And then repeat. He also points at things, and says "thissss". He's so coordinated for such a little guy.
For dinner, we ate in the downstairs section of a traditional Bulgarian restaurant that is known for it's brick oven-baked foods. Jon tried ouzo for the first time, with a lesson on how to drink it mixed with the same amount of water and ice. Kyle tried Zagorka beer.
The architecture here is cement and tile.
There was a large glass booze-stand on the street--like your typical newspaper-looking stand.
Stray dogs run around in packs here, but we've only seen the ones flying solo.
People wear shiny black jackets and dark colored stone-washed skinny jeans.
Jenny gets to run off her leash in the field across from the apartment. Its trails and grass leading to HIT and an outlet mall double as the local dog park where huskies are standard.

On our road trip to Greece we took a 30km detour up through mountain villages through Rila. The Rila monestary is the biggest in Bulgaria. Only ten monks live there now.
I learned that Bulgarian cheese (cirene) is not to be compared to Greek feta. To shake your head is to say yes. Knodding may mean no.
You know when you are leaving a town when there is a sign with the town's name and a red slash through it.
Kuche means dog and most dogs are named American people's names. So far we have met Jessie, Maya, and Betty. Jenny fits right in.

We stopped at a suburban cinema just outside Thessaloniki and found great food at a hip, family friendly restaurant. Carbonara tastes like the yummy noodles my mom used to make. I've never had such great cappuccino. The seats were bright red and the chandeliers made of tin cans and jewels. Lime green and black and white prints on the wall, blue lighting, and scenester groove music loud and comforting. I could see me and Mary there regularly.
We saw the sea last night for a quick moment after we arrived at our Greek apartment. It was too cold to stand and enjoy it. Halkidiki, Greece is cold to the bone this year in March and our apartment is freezing. Last week it was in the 60's but this week is forecasted to be in the 40's and blowing rain. We are cutting our trip short here and debating between heading back to Sofia or going towards the warmer south of Greece.

We never found our room-to-let landlord but we did find heat in our room later on, and we are staying here the full four nights after all. We also found a cafe with a fireplace, a car ride around the peninsula, locally grown olives, and time on the sandy beach near crashing waves. This was all topped off with a tableful of seafood, cheese, bread, wine, and tsipouro local made clear like-ouzo drink.
There are no tourists here and maybe 1 shop for every 15 is open. Tourists don't come for another month--mostly Russian and British.
The US military used to come for vacation, but not since there was a base in Crete.
The word nay for no in Bulgaria means yes in Greece.
Green olives taste like our black olives and black olives like green.
There are olive tree groves everywhere, highlighted with bloomed cherry trees, and half built vacation condos all along the coast.
I'm glad we are staying the full four nights. We'll have to be creative in staying warm.

Kyle and I woke up and went for a run on the beach, with little breaks at the ends of piers, or searching for cool stones washed ashore. A lot of the beach stones look like marble.
We then went for a drive with the whole family through the stone town Afitos, looking for food but no one was open. Most places open the end of this month. We saw a openish looking place with a guy eating downstairs in the plastic-covered patio only to find he was the owner eating his lunch. He insisted we come in as he called his cook on his cell phone to come over and cook for us. We ate upstairs in a party room that hadn't been cleaned from the night before. There were napkins strewn all over the floor and half drunken wine and beer glasses on the tables. It looked like it had been a great party. Our cozy little corner must not have been part of the festivities. The owner, who had put down his own lunch mid-bite for us, set up a space heater, turned on traditional Greek music, and brought bread and salad immediately, followed with calamari, potato dip, tsaziki, and fried fish--pronounced 'bakayado'. It was a fantastic meal. The owner is from Serbia, owns tourist businesses in Greece, and travels to Bulgaria often; he spoke each language well. We walked through the town, looked in a clothing shop, the only shop open. Jenny made friends with all the dogs but let them know that she was really just there for the cats.

We spent our last full day in Greece, a cold and rainy day, is Thessaloniki. It looked so much like Taipei--narrow alleys, cars parked in every spot, tile sidewalks, store fronts topped with apartments with balconies, department stores, billboards, scooters, and lots of food smells. Had great pizza for lunch. Bought two hats and looked around in tiny shops. Hard to stay warm and dry, but really enjoyed the feeling of the city.
Back in Halkidiki, we had our last big Greek dinner at Ouzeri. Looking forward to driving through the mountains back to Bulgaria tomorrow. We will have to revisit this beach sometime when it's warm.

The day we left Greece there were nationwide protests regarding the tanked Greek economy. People's workplaces, public transit including trains and planes, and schools shut down. There were 14,000 people in downtown Thessaloniki! Good thing we rented a car instead of taking the train.
We stopped in Melnik, a famous wine town up in the mountains. It has a canal running down the center of it but the majority of the water from melting snow ran in streams down the dirt roads. We ate at a restaurant toward the top of the town. The owner invited us in and let Jenny come inside too. I had pork stew topped with cheese in a clay pot (called kavarma). We bought some gifts in little shops. I bought a blanket hanging on the wall in the shop at the entrance of the town. The owner seemed very happy to sell it and gave Jon and Kyle 2 bottles of homemade wine and one bottle of 'Melnik13' for me.

Jon drove the whole way to Greece and the whole way back. Samuel didn't like his car seat so he cried a lot in the car. We were able to keep him happy sometimes with funny sounds, his monkey toy, brown bear, and blue dog. He also loved the drawstrings on my sweatshirts and coats. And my leather wallet. He is pretty much the cutest little boy ever and I'll miss seeing him around. When we got back to Jon and Andrea's apartment we went downstairs and a few doors over and ordered Chinese food to go. Jon spoke Bulgarian, English, and Chinese all in the same small block of time. We watched part of a soccer game while we waited for our food.

Andrea went out in the morning and brought back cheese filled pastries and boza, a common drink made with whole grain wheat, yeast, and sugar. They were both good, although it's true, the boza has a bit of a pork and beans aftertaste.
We drove downtown and shopped at the bizarre. I bought another blanket. We bought clay pots as gifts for family. They bought veggies. It was raining and the ground was sloppy and slushy. Just as we got back to the car, we saw it being lifted up into the air; a tow truck was taking it away! Jon ran up and asked them what they were doing and they said we parked the wrong way on a one-way street. The police officer took Jon's papers into the truck for awhile, then came back out, charged Jon a fee, and gave the car back.
We drove to another part of downtown, parked, and ran across the trolley tracks to get dyuner, like gyros. We ate them in the car as Samuel slept and it continued to rain. Then we went through the McDonald's drive thru to fill up and take a picture of the Cyrillic McDonald's sign.
A few hours later, after hanging around at the apartment and playing with our iPods, we walked to a restaurant and had dill potato, yogurt cucumber soup, and monastic bean stew in a clay pot. Andrea picked up some delicious rice pudding with cinnamon for when we got home. It snowed hard the way back. Jon and I went to Fantastiko, the Byerly's of Sofia, looking for packing material for all our breakables, but ended up with a bunch of Corny Big cereal bars instead. We took Jenny out for one last walk, said bye to Samuel, then Andrea.
Kyle caught me before I sleepwalked the night before our departure.
Jon drove us to the airport and saw us off.
What a great trip. What a great family to spend a week with. They are getting along so well and know so much of the language for only being there four months.

I can't think too much about how much I'll miss them. This was the first trip of many to come.

17-Fear

I received 2 sessions of therapy today that were monumental. Neither occurred in an office while lying on a couch, although, I am beginning to like the sound of that scenario...paying to reach self-guided conclusions with the help of a professional. It's like what everyone who talks to God needs: a professional to filter out the bullshit before you decide what you interpret as "God's voice", only in this case, it's your own voice. Same difference. A paid professional. Someone who could sum me up in a second (or a string of sessions) and offer a few textbook approaches to a solution. It's not that I'll come up with the best solution for whatever situation I'm in...but a well-read, experienced specialist will have already seen quite a few of "me" come and go in their career, and could teach me a few things.

I woke up early this morning to go into work.
One of my alarm clocks in the morning is a talk radio station with a New York professional advice-giver telling callers how it is, setting them straight, wising them up. Her name is Dr Joy Browne. At first, when I began waking up to these strange conversations in the morning (usually one person calling in to complain about someone in their life and Dr Joy Browne ending up telling them that they are the ones with the problem--very Caesar Milan-Dog Whisperer-style), I was confused and put off, but after awhile I noticed that this woman gives outstanding advice and knows a ton. This morning a concerned mother called in about her nine year old daughter who habitually plucks her eyebrows and eyelashes until she has none left. Instantly, Dr. J.B. called the child a "high-stress/high anxiety" child and delivered advice for how to help her.

The interesting part was that the mother didn't want to talk about solutions; she wanted to convince the Dr. that no solutions worked...as if she wanted to convince the world that this child's symptoms of some problem had nothing to do with her and that this was an abnormality she didn't believe she should have to deal with. I half-expected her to say she was about to ship her kid off somewhere to the bald-faced children's school, the kind where they all remain consolidated and isolated from the rest of the world, and on Sundays they paste on their eyebrows and fake eyelashes and skype mommy and daddy to say everything's fine so that mom and dad can tell everyone else that...the kid's fine, and they're in a better place. Ick.

Dr. Joy Browne suggested therapy. Not just the first or second one they try, but keep trying until the child feels like she's making progress. She suggested the mother be up-front with the child, say what the doctors say about high-anxiety kids, and say that she can help search for the solution herself, by journaling, or talking to someone when she has the urge to self-destruct. And do it lovingly--not making the girl feel like a weirdo. (Perhaps that's why she's doing it in the first place.)

She explained that high-stress kids' reasons for doing what they do are usually not the real reasons...they are just reasons they think that mom and dad will buy because they don't want to talk about what's really going on...cuz what is really going on? Could a nine year old even articulate that? I can say for sure that I was a high anxiety kid, and at that age, when these symptoms surface, you yourself don't know what's going on. My phrase was "I wanna sit down, throw up, and blast off" whenever I felt I would pop out of my skin. It was cute at the time, and written in baby books, but it was also a cry for help from a dramatic, narcissistic child. I never knew exactly what was wrong with me, but I felt like I wanted to stop everything, purge myself of everything, and then disappear from everyone.

Dr J.B. expressed concern that if they didn't try to address the woman's daughter's issues now, the self-destructive behavior may transform into other, much worse, habits as she got older, ie: cutting, addiction, etc. And that was where I caught the connection between childhood and addicted adulthood. Once you learn as a child how to excuse a habit with little "made up" reasons why you're blue, and get people to buy it, why would you not continue? Find your release, excuse it systematically, continue the release, voila.

In an article called "High Anxiety" by Merry Sue Baum, the best help for a little high-stress kid I can think of is given: "Shampain [M.D. of high-stress kids] observes that unlike adults, kids with anxiety disorders don't want to continue with their daily routines if they're not feeling 100 percent: "They'll have physical complaints and want to stay home from school, for example. One of the things we teach them is that they can get through a day successfully, even if they are anxious."" I only learned this in the last four years...it took till my mid-twenties to understand that I can still get through a day feeling out of sorts without calling in, getting drunk or high, or making a manic decision like chopping my hair off or doing a drug I swore I'd never do. And I was the kid that always tried to get out of going to school by saying "mommy, i don't feel good".

Of course, this little girl has no idea that she might grow up to be "that girl" She's displaying symptoms of a problem she has never faced in her young life, problems that might just be genetic--the way the cards fell.

As we get older, we get more savvy, and we realize we can train others to see us as a victim. And although others deep down probably don't buy it, they'd rather perhaps pretend along with you instead of discovering what the true beast is really all about. And who is the beast, but fear itself. Most people head in the other direction when a child brings up fear because they haven't conquered their own fears.

Baum states, "Most importantly, we try to get them [high-stress kids] to understand that what they fear will most likely never really hurt them." This is key.

In an article about biocentrism called "Does Death Exist?: Life is Forever, says Theory", by Robert Lanza, M.D., "space and time aren't the hard objects we think, but rather tools our mind uses to put everything together." In the same way, emotions (including fear) may not be real at all, but just happen to be the only tools we've come up with to interpret the combination of chemicals inside our body and brain. Fear is the interpretation of a reaction on the inside, an uncomfortable physical sensing of chemical imbalance that we don't know how to explain. We end up pointing our fingers outward at objects--other beings or situations--as if they are the sources.

It's too hard to explain that I have a hard time sitting still, or that I'm always edgy even if there's nothing to be edgy about, or that I've been uneasy since I've been alive, or that I'm paranoid underneath it all...because on the outside I look pretty relaxed, quiet, and laid back. It's much easier to gossip about mean people, look for ways others screw up our lives, and dwell on the unfortunate events that occur all around us. And have another drink. And keep all those unfortunate reasons close at hand so that when we have a particularly bad day, we have something quick to blame it on. Cuz we're fine. It's everyone else that's messed up.

And still, although the imbalance is never cured, the best solution I have found (besides thinking for myself) is running. And running, and running. So far, since I broke my toe, my running spark has nearly burned out, so I've been hitting the ultrarunning books to try and get it back. I came across this jewel last night while reading "Born to Run" by Christopher McDougall. In it, a few people talk about fatigue as being a Beast. I will add [fear] after every "fatigue" and "Beast" because to me, these battles have similar qualities:


By Scott Jurek: "Instead of cringing from fatigue [fear], you embrace it. You refuse to let it go. You get to know it so well, you're not afraid of it anymore."


By Lisa Smith-Batchen: "I love the Beast [fear]," she says. "I actually look forward to the Beast [fear] showing up, because every time he does, I handle him better. I get him more under control."

By the author: "Once the Beast [fear] arrives, Lisa knows what she has to deal with and can get down to work. And isn't that the reason she's running through the desert in the first place--to put her training to work? To have a friendly tussle with the Beast [fear] and show it who's boss? You can't hate the Beast [fear] and expect to beat it; the only way to truly conquer something, as every great philosopher and geneticist will tell you, is to love it."

And that brings us to the well known quote by Franklin D. Roosevelt, "There is nothing to fear, but fear itself."

My second therapy session came from a podcast by Dan Savage--those are always good.