I dream of being on stage. A performer. The way I say, sing, dance or whatever it is…moves people. Someone described my dream as my deep desire to express myself. In whatever method possible.

But reality is not like that. I get up on stage. Anxiety seizes me. But the motivation to do it, propels me up there. Yet, it’s never quite how I want it to be. But I never want it to be anybody else. I always believe this: next time, it will be better. But I am the worst critic.

Oddly enough, I have always wondered if I could split myself into two. So that I could engineer the perfect version of me to perform on stage. Whether it’s to give a presentation, a talk, or other performance. So that my habit of slurring words disappears. My volume of my voice is loud. And my posture is straight and confident. So that I scan the audience, taking control of them, instead of whimpering wondering when I’ll get back to my seat. And how I would space out my words in my sentences, breathing. Actually breathing. And gesture at the right times.

I have mastered one-on-one conversations. Even one-to-a-few. But one-to-many? Not yet.

Yesterday, I stood in front of 15 respected people. Outside of my company, a networking event. I had volunteered right away to speak. I casually joked around beforehand. And jumped to the stage with my prepared 7.5 minute stage. I looked at people in the eye, remembering my script. Slipping several times when the words could not come to my lips. “Promoting?” I asked aloud to nobody.

“Yes, the national newspaper promoted him,” I finally said, not quite happy with my phrasing knowing that the line was not surfacing.

And instead, I smiled and continued. A dash of envy filled me as I watched the following speaker spoke with such authority on his talk. Although I had no idea what he was talking about, because it was so obscure, I wondered…could I be split into two? To steal all the components of a great speaker in one. In the other, to be pulling the strings, to orchestrate the performance.

But this is reality. And to have sensory detail of everything, isn’t that why I am here? Isn’t what it means to live?

I suppose that I should be glad that it wasn’t more than $24.

It was early, and I wasn’t ready to get out of bed. But I had promised that I would be ready at 7:45 AM. I opened my eyes at 7:20 AM and browsed through my emails—a bad habit that I had built the last few years. Then I heard the crash of the metal gate close and my front door open. Quite promptly, the stairs thumped rapidly up the stairs. A jangle of metal keys fell into a silver platter. I opened my door. “You’re here early,” I said and headed to the bathroom.

In a few minutes, I was ready to go. In a skirt, a buttondown shirt, and camisole. I pulled on my Frye black flats, which I hoped wouldn’t feel tight later on the day. In the back my mind, I cursed the stylist who sold it hard to me for over $100 when I didn’t have the logic to actually see they fit. At least I would look casual for the participants.

I got a ride to the caltrain. It was still so early and the even earlier train had just left. “Okay, I am ready to go,” I said and hopped out to saunter down the stairs.

I saw a friend at the ticket machine, still wearing her helmet and next to her bike. I tagged my card and walked over. “Youna,” I said brightly.

She blinked and said, “Oh hello!”

She, her friend, and I chatted a bit. Then a train arrived. I wanted to sit in another car, but I wasn’t ready to embarrass myself by struggling to open the doors between cars. So instead, I took an empty seat next to other people. I pulled up a presentation that I had been working on—made adjustments. Then I switched over to edit my ice cream book. So fascinating, these two brothers in Rome, their love and passion. The girl next to me motioned that she was getting off. Millbrae. Just a few more stops. I edited the words. I moved sentences back and forth. I fixed the quotes. Copy and paste. I was annoyed by all the rocking of the car, making my laptop slide back and forth all over my lap. Then I looked up, satisfied with my work.

I didn’t recognize the surroundings. A stadium? Sparse suburban area. Where were the leafy tree-lined streets? The startup world. I looked down at my phone. 9:16 am? How is that possible? I was supposed to get to my stop shortly before 9 am. Unless…

I brought up the map on my phone. I was closing in San Jose. I screamed silently, realizing my mistake of missing my stop. I stuffed my laptop in my bag and briefly thanked that the conductor didn’t come through. I anxiously plotted what I should do. Uber, of course. No point of trying to sneak onto another train back up. it would never make it in time.

So I hurried through the station. Impressed that it just looked like the train stations in Italy. But this one looked exactly like English. But my fascination was squashed by my irritation and anxiety. Mountain View, shouldn’t be that far right?

Outside the station, I looked at the app. Now irritated that I had to use uber and the estimated fee was about $25. I didn’t have a choice. I looked at the taxis and hesitated. No way. The uber driver arrived and without hesitation, I jumped into the front seat. She was amicable. Oddly for a uber driver. She wanted passengers to chat with and widen her world. She sympathized with my plight, commenting that it’s really common. Then she complained about passengers who made out in her car. “I wish that I drove a limo so I could roll up a window between me and them,” she said.

And then I arrived in Mountain View 22 minutes later. I jogged over to tag my card. Then I jogged to the office. I could feel my feet swell and the shoes feeling tighter. In a brief glance at email, I saw the total. Almost $24. I grumbled and told the Internet my plight.

The energy has been sucked out of the room
And you close your eyes
The sunlight now beams through the slits of the shades
Warming your skin, your fingers
Dust hangs in the air
Now the angry words have disappeared
Silence once hated, now welcomed
The madness in your head leaves,
Replacing with purity and contentment
The plane soars above, a low distant roar
Cars drive by, their engines turning
But here, isolated behind windows
You rest your head against the pillows
The life will arrive again
The darkness drifts away
The sun sets and now the moon rises
Light always returns.

Baked potatoes, al dente. Mixed with creamy mayo. Chopped hard boiled egg. Bits of crunchy celery and slices of red onion. Dill or pickles to add that slightly sour lingering feeling. A dash of mustard, perhaps the stone kind. Paprika to add that slightly salty, tangy taste. Then a pinch of salt and pepper. Garnish with herbal greenery like cilantro , chives, tarragon.

It’s a mystery what lies underneath all the white things. I remember a chicken salad like this once and the illness that followed.

In middle school, a girl with pale features was my best friend. For my birthday, she gave me a heart necklace that broke into two pieces. But she implied that I would keep it. I never knew whether I was supposed to give it to her or not. We only befriended each other, because we were outcasts and were high-achieving in class.

But there was one major difference.

In each of our classes, I easily absorbed the information, barely studied, and aced the tests. She, on the other hand, struggled to do well and spend our “study time” in the library reviewing her notes and practicing problem sets. I goofed off by writing long essays about nothing, quickly doing my homework, and reading books. No matter what, she and I scored the same. Not perfect, but in the high nineties.

During one test that I finished (quickly, of course), I looked over to her and her eyes were brimming with tears. Outside, gardeners were ripping up the bushes and by now, students were chattering. “I can’t focus,” she said.

The teacher listened and set up a time separate so that she could finish the test. I remember frowning at her, surprised by her lack of skills to block out noise.

Yet we ended up at the same place—the same type of admission and the same university. I always wondered at the core—who were we and why were we so different?

(Note: not my roommate)

There comes a time where the little things build up and where you think gosh darn’t! why can’t i live alone? oh right, i live in san francisco. Then in your mind, you list all the things that on its own, it’s not a big deal. But when they happen together, it’s the worst. And you count that list.

All it took was a combination of these things:

And suddenly I felt like I was back in 2003. Not my body though. My body was very well in the present, still recovering from the “flu” and feeling like early 30s. But it was my mind. The emotions specifically. I felt like I did in my early twenties—hopeful, fearful, mostly anxious, a suffocating feeling that I wasn’t doing enough, not living enough, trapped.

But maybe I am cynical. It wasn’t that bad, was it? That summer of 2003, I was hopeful. I saw a boy that was my second choice. I was starting my final year in college. I interned at a silly tech company in Santa Clara. I was applying to graduate school. I read career books. I (barely) studied for the GRE and LSAT. I was afraid of parties. And I spent all my spare time in front of a computer, typing away at instant message screens.

And the feelings of suffocation. Maybe my 2015 felt suffocated by those memories. Regret? Displeasure? Hope?

And fleas don’t live on hairless beasts!

I whirled around the Mission today. Unsuccessfully meeting a buyer, who for the fifth time suggested a time and place to meet, and needed a text message to remind her that oh, i’ll find you later. And a homeless woman who harassed me for money while I peered inside a store that used to sell chocolate and ice cream, now empty, devoid of any furniture and sweets. And the possibility of a project with a client who has a history of UN-innovation and UN-collaboration. And the troubles with managing participants with a study.

Little irritations. But then they added up as they do for any inhabitants of the first world. And I sat in the corner of a fancy chocolate cafe, rubbing my temples, my eyes glazed at my computer screen and a 33-page writing piece that didn’t fit my reading interests, but I had to critique, because that’s what I told myself that I would do as a dedicated writer. And the sun beating down on me, with the wind whipping the hair into my eyes.

My sunglasses though, made the world appeared cheery with yellow and red. I wish that it could make my emotions and mental state do the same.

Calm down, I told myself.

But my nerves flared. My power cord was missing. And my memory doesn’t betray me. The moment that I found a label maker in the office, I punched in my first and last name. Then I printed another label. I put one on my power cord and another on my chair. I was one of the first in the office to do it.

I call myself possessive. In my apartment and nearly any living situation that I share, I know what is rightfully mine. The borders of my room, my bed, my desk, my chair, my shoes, my clothes. It’s not that my sister has ever borrowed my clothes or the like. She knew (or perhaps never wanted) not to cross that boundary. But when the door was opened or left open out of my control, a screech would wail from my mouth. “Close the door!” I roared.

The door must remained closed, because I closed it. And it is always closed when I go to sleep. It must be that way, because it is.

Now, I have loosened up about doors.

Despite my inability to clean up my room, I do know where the important items lie. And that pertains to my desk.

So after a presentation, I came back to my desk in the office and found my power cord missing. After broadcasting video, my laptop’s battery was at 50%. “Has anyone seen my power cord?” I wailed, keeping the volume to a sensible note.

“No?” clueless colleagues said.

I whipped around and scoured each row of desks, breathing. I will find it. But I tried to limit my insanity. The presentation of insanity that was boiling at the surface. In this case, perhaps, it bothered me more not that it was company property, that it was personal property. My personal property that I had been reluctant to use for work purposes. But because of the extraordinary requests I made, I decided that was the price I had to pay.

But my power cord. Perhaps one of the visitors took it? Out of my desk? But how would they look to take it from the third desk from the wall in the middle row? Or was it a fellow colleague? I danced from conference room to conference room, staring at people. One smiled and waved at me, always a cheery one. Another glanced up from his serious conversation with the phone and sent a blank stare. I made a note to myself to burst into the room as he finished to check that power cord. Did it have my name on it?

Then I went from desk to desk, pulling out power cords, searching for my name. I took deep breaths, hoping my anger didn’t burst open in awkward words without fear of consequences. Then as I walked back and forth, a colleague who I had fenced with about bikes in the city, suddenly called my name in his usual singsong voice. “I took your power cord!” he said.

“Did you see how wild I was?” I said, incapable of containing my displeasure.

“No,” he said and led me to my power cord. “I took it because it was the only one lying on top of the desk. And I was going to your meeting, so I figured that you didn’t.”

I said nothing and returned to my desk. “I found it,” I said to nobody and plugged in my laptop.

The laptop loved the electrical juice.

This will get me every time.

“That is such a brilliant idea,” someone says. “I never thought about it that way before!”

I can feel my inside vibrate with pleasure and pride. I am smart! I am intelligent! All that hard work paid off! I am so special!

At the same time, I stop myself. It’s not that I don’t believe that I can be a producer of great ideas. It’s that I can feel myself suddenly magnetized toward the source. I want to be surrounded by people who respect my ideas and to bask in their compliments. I want it all! Forever and ever! I want to feel that thrill in my chest and the desire to ask aloud in blind pride, “Don’t I have the greatest ideas? I do, after all.”

But I scold myself. Because I know that an insult, a complaint, a disagreement will drive me away as easily. So what then, is it worth that a single vocal statement can sway me so easily?

It then falls into rewards and punishment. I question why a positive statement can have such effect. I question then too why a negative statement can nearly paralyze me. I then question why statements at all have an effect on me. I wonder if one day, I can hear statements and yes, have a small reaction. But the words that came out—the compliments of great brilliance or of great stupidity—have no effect on who I am and what I choose to do. They are words, after all, from someone else. And that the only words that matter come within me.