Thoughts ran through my head as I thought about the early twentysomethings I knew. How they had such deep need to express and share their lives. And how they told everyone…and I mean, everyone about how they were feeling and what they wanted to do. The instagramming. The facebooking. The texting.

I think now: that is so overwhelming. It’s too much.

Then I kicked myself.

Because that’s exactly how I was like at that age. Even though it wasn’t that long ago. I was self-absorbed, self-centered, and so so overly anxious. Was I doing this right? I kept asking myself. And I blindly tried so many things, while trying to find acceptance and and identity.

And slowly I mellowed out.

In college and graduate school, I distinctly remember spending hours upon hours on my computer. I would talk to multiple people in instant messages. Oddly enough, that behavior has barely translated to text messaging. I absolutely hate having conversations over the phone via text message. But I am stunned when people can’t engage in anything insightful through an instant message—whether it’s through the ancient AIM, gchat, and Facebook.

I remember having the emotional connection built through words that I carefully typed on screen. I remember yelling, screaming, crying over those conversations. The I don’t think that we should be friends and the Let’s not see each other again and the dramatic I see you never messages all exchanged. Those kind of things happened then when I was in my early and mid twenties. It’s probably the same, but in a completely different context—of still images, of short “edited” video, and self-possessed messages of #yolo and #winning

But most of all, I wonder why the word “detox” keeps coming up.

I don’t even remember the last words exchanged. Was it over im? Was it in person? All I could remember was that the words spilled out of me angrily and suddenly that was it.

More than ten years have passed since we last spoke.

Yesterday, I entered the room and saw her immediately. A short wave of hesitation passed across my face. Then I spotted a friend. Then another. And another. I stepped around others and entered a conversation, almost facing her, but turned to the person to her left. Her body language suggested that she didn’t know anyone. She was new to this crowd. Pity dug at my mind.

While making small talk with the friend, I told myself that I would for the first time in over ten years to talk to her. The last words we spoke must surely have been forgotten. Our emotions left in our immaturity and pettiness so common to college.

I saw her once at La Mar during happy hour when I was waiting for friends for dinner. I had arrived at the edge of happy hour. So she was in a crowd of suits and ties, carefully adorned appropriate attire. I was in my usual tech outfits—hip but not too hip, casual, and city practical. I stared at the pisco sours dotted with the drops of Angostura bitters, breaking the white foam. I don’t think that she ever noticed me gazing at her.

Back in the room, I took my time, letting conversation and free food lead me to conversation. I naturally drifted from group to group. Then when I finally lifted up my head an hour later, I scanned the room. I stepped around the tables, chairs, and standing people, glancing at the faces. Gone. Not present. My chance to break the silence of ten years and acknowledge a friendship slipped away. But really, all I wanted was to acknowledge her. For a moment.

Yes, Mail, I still use you even though everyone else has moved onto the web clients of gmail and the like…and all the fancy pants mobile email apps.

I still use you after all these years, and obviously prefer you over Outlook. That old eccentric relative.

I started using Apple products again after a hiatus of nearly 4 years in college when everyone was using Windows. It was after all where napster and kazaa and the like required Windows…at least to work well. Then when I started working as a RCC, an IT consultant to the lesser-educated residents in the dorms, I started panicking about the security of my well-maintained Windows computer. You see, those lesser-educated residents didn’t know to update their computers frequently and install antivirus. I surely didn’t want any havoc from computers turned into monsters eating anything within its reach.

So I switched to Apple. I was a hipster then. Really. I had one of the few powerbooks in the area. But within the tech world…I was like everyone else.

I loved mail. It gave me everything that I needed. Seamlessly. Straight lines. Great integration with everything across the operating system. If there’s a link that said “mailto:someonewhoishouldcall@butididn’tfeellikeit.com”, then you would automatically pop up at the right time.

Well, typically in most writing, this is where I would say goodbye. But no, that’s not it at all.

But emailing from the wrong email account! COME ON. If I am replying to an email from my think-ng.com account, don’t suddenly default to my gmail.com account.

Yeah, that’s all. For now.

I am upgrading to Mavericks soon. If your improved self is better, let’s have a good relationship, yeah?

I eat it.

I eat it all.

Even as people told me that watermelon seeds grew in stomachs, I ate it all. Seedless watermelons? Too expensive. I will swallow the black dots whole. After all, my mom bought red watermelon seeds from Chinese supermarkets and cracked them open like baseball fans. So it shouldn’t be an issue?

And any fruit with thick skin? No problem. I’ll eat it too. Now it’s not that I’ll eat melon rinds or citrus peels (the latter is tasty!) Cherries? Such a pain to spit out the pits! (Although I am quite excellent at gathering a bunch of at least 10 and discreetly spitting them out later.) Chicken feet? You see, I grew up with it. So swishing around the small bones in my mouth never scared me. Fish with tons of bones? Yeah, so one small bone might get lodged, but coughing sure gets it out! Cupcakes? Paper never hurt anybody (although I do this rarely…)

Tonight, I had candy canes. Whether they were manufactured poorly or they were aging, the plastic stuck to the candy. Stuck around the curves and at the ends. It wasn’t a simple unwrap as the plastic kept tearing into smaller pieces until my fingers became a sticky mess. Then I thought, why not and proceeded to eat the entire thing.

Now in the end, about an hour later, I am still spitting out small pieces of plastic. I sucked out as much candy as possible. But I finished it all.

All I could remember was the pieces that flew in all directions when the pickup truck hit a another car and the angry face of an Asian man coming out of a yet another car hit by the previous car. I only remember those two things in vivid detail.

I remember a SUV, but I don’t know if that was the first thing hit. I know that the pickup truck was white. I saw that the all the cars were hit. I remember feeling relief that it seemed that nobody was hurt at least…and how I narrowly missed being behind those cars. I was late to work.

I remember focusing on the pieces. I remember my surprise at how far they flew. Were we going so fast in the stop and go traffic? This evening, I drove at a “slow” 40 mph wanting to inch up to 65 mph, but there were too many cars. But that speed can really cause extensive damage. Were we going that fast?

Miles before the accident, I remember seeing a police car hidden right before an exit. I remember telling myself to slow down, pleased that I already was below the speed limit and angry at myself for relishing the speed when the traffic slowed down for no reason.

I wondered if the police car would come. The three car fender bender was in a middle lane of the four lanes right at the end of rush hour.

I remember the man. He face was contorted. He was Asian and reminded me of a younger version of my dad. I thought about whether his English was fluent or was he just sprouting words.

I wondered what the driver of the pickup truck must have felt. Was it a feeling of despair, a feeling of surprise? Was he not conscious? Was he suddenly awakened by the fear? The fear of the cost? The fear of all the legal repercussions? The fear of all the drivers ahead of him—were they safe…and then were they going to take his insurance down? Did he have insurance?

All those thoughts ran through my head, but then I was late so I gunned it for my exit in less than two miles. I was impressed that I found a parking spot in the hard to park area in downtown Palo Alto and congratulated myself on the luck.

Then I ran to work.

Let Go. What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why?

In 2010, it was a person. In 2011, it was an idea. In 2012, it was a symbol represented by a person.

In 2013, I let go of fear. And most importantly, I learned how to embrace it.

Like many, when faced in fear, I turn away in cowardice. I am a wimp by nature. I care too much about what people think of me. And when I sense that something is threatening me, I run away. I flee. I return to what I think is safe. That is, without progress.

In 2013, I read that popular book, Lean In. Despite my disagreement with some of the philosophy, I do like the question she asks, “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?”

Now, this is beyond crossing the street at a dangerous intersection and running down stairs at breakneck speed (the fear of falling will always stay with me with good reason).

I would say what I want to say. And most of all, I would need to understand why I was having the fear in order to say what I want to say.

At the end of 2012, I was troubled by a lack of invitation to a wedding (of all things! it seems so trivial now). What I kept saying to myself was that I wasn’t hurt that I was not invited. Rather, I wanted to know why I was invited to the bacheleorette party and not the wedding. And for months, that troubled me. Did she accidentally invite the wrong Jenn? Did she have very weird etiquette? Why was she dodging the question when we saw each other (frequently)? But it took me so long almost until 2013 until I realized that the fear was simply saying, “I really love you as a friend, and I am sad that I wasn’t invited.”

For the longest time, I couldn’t even admit my own fears, my own sorrow. I couldn’t even tell people when they crossed my boundaries. Instead, I wallowed in anxiety.

In 2013, with that incident in mind, I learned how to express my own emotions and state my own boundaries. Not in the way of “I am angry that you…”. Rather in simple words of “I am sad right now” or “I feel like a bad person.” And just letting that be. The relief in true expression was enormous.

I even got my roommate to remove the hardened sticky glue in the bathroom.

Moment. Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail.

In 2012, it was using the ocean as a “big toilet” while floating outside Palawan. In 2011, it was my birthday moment. In 2010, it was the success in Journey to the End to the Night.

Well, it’s quite obvious in 2013.

I always talk about the man in Istanbul. The ice cream maker who was orphaned and because of his ice cream love, he snuck onto a boat to Italy where he learned the art of gelato. Then he returned years later after becoming a maestro to bring gelato to his home neighborhood.

Yes, there’s some logic that doesn’t make sense. And that there is so much romanticism in that.

But I remember that event so distinctly that it impacted me. I watched him tell the story. Not in two to three lines as other ice cream makers would. In Turkish, he told his story over minutes, continuing and continuing in the dark night, lit by protestors waving flags and the like.

At the time, I was impressed with myself. The fact that I was able to convince a friend of a former coworker who introduced me to his Italian teacher in Bologna. I met the Italian teacher and she introduced me to her student who introduced me to her college friend in Istanbul. He helped us translate and made our difficult interview successful.

And it was all that struggle to just get this interview. And how his eyes were so proud that somebody finally listened to him. Although in all my writing Chris is regulated in the background, without him, I would have dragged my feet in depression. He came, helped me with the photos, the audio, and eating the ice cream.

At the very end as we were about to depart, the ice cream maker said, “The best memory is my first day. The second best memory is when you came here to speak with me.”

Literally.

I brought up the white towel to my face again. I blinked, and my head throbbed. My nose felt rubbed raw. Why wasn’t the antihistamine working? I drank the hot tea, pointing my nose into the steam. But in a moment, my nose dripped and a single tear formed down my eye.

Several years ago, I would wake up on Saturday and as Chris called it, I was a hot mess. For three consecutive Saturdays, my face would run dry and I refused Benedryl, unhappy with its side effects of drowsiness and disorientation. But always, I would relent, wanting to decrease my suffering and the day would be again shot.

So yesterday, I was like that. At an afternoon holiday party, during the gift exchange and parading around plates of catered Chinese food. At an evening holiday party, I crouched in the corner of the sofa, trying to be attentive and open, but my eyes blinked and I wanted to put heavily wet towel over my face and lie down.

Then as we left (partially due to my demand), my allergies ceased. I felt better in the car as we zoomed away. Done with Christmas for another year. In the car, I passionately argued with certain lucidity about mobile technology and big data. Then as I stepped outside the car, the San Francisco wind blew past me. I felt fine, breathing the air. No tickles. No stuffiness. It’s as if the suffering never happening.

So then, was I allergic to Christmas? Or to just the spirit?

It was very unlike how my grandmother, his wife, passed away. Very unlike the night that I suddenly woke up around 3 am. I knew it then. When I was around 12 or 13. The night was quiet then, and I was lying in my childhood room lit by my trust night light. Then I heard the phone ring in a distant room and a soft patter down the stairs. The garage below my room opened, and a car roared out.

I closed my eyes then, and when morning arose, my parents told me. What followed was dizzying days of relatives arriving, visiting a funeral home, and seeing adults cry and wail for the first time in front of me. My sister and I gave an odd, awkward speech. Optimistic, because we never were quite close to her. Some people called our speech very un-Christian because we talked about how our grandmother may be in another animal, another human, another life. But we sensed that no matter what, her long suffering of years from various ailments was finally at an end.

On the other hand, my grandfather fell into a downward spiral only in the last few months. In clear lucidity, he begged to move on. Perhaps frustrated that nearly everyone he knew except his children and their children were no longer alive. Yet in his last days, he told the chaplain that he wanted to live because his children wanted him to live. My family may seem simple, happy even…but deep inside, we harbor deep wounds and complexity despite all the lasting marriages and successful careers. So I wondered what he really meant. That he wanted to be a good person despite it all? To say that he lived for his children was the best thing to say? To say…most importantly, I am a good father.

As I backed my car into my narrow garage, the walls looked different. Was it higher? Was it closer? A faint headache seemed to rise at the back of my head. Blaring its presence. The walls whimpered, and I climbed the stairs. Every single dark stain shivered.

I let the water from the shower rinse everything off. Wrapping myself in the hot water, I breathed deeply. But it was seemingly different. A pit inside me felt anxious and fearful. Of possibility, of fear, of failure. My door seemed to waver. Was that a doorbell? Chiming three times? Was it my ears yearning for familiarity? Images pass through my mind. I blink, and they skitter away. A dullness settles over my eyes.

Sleep roars it gentle head. But insomnia is so much bigger. It engulfed me last night, and I hope that it is locked up tonight.