“It’s always a female role,” Chris said when I described my favorite role in a game.

I can’t help it. I want to be the person who heals. The one who makes other players feel better, feel good about themselves, and give them the energy to succeed. I am less interested in being the one who “succeeds”, the one who gets the gold, the one who gets the gold. I want to be the cranks behind the scene that everyone must rely on in order to get to the end.

Several months ago in a creative writing class, a prompt asked, “What would be your ideal writing environment? What would be your worst?”

For the latter, I wrote about feeling uncomfortable—a place where my allergies were acting up, where my writing utensils were unreliable…and most importantly a distracting feeling where my anxieties, stress about the past, present, future were overwhelming the present. Usually about myself and others.

But the former, it was in a dreamlike moment of the day, usually in the early morning. Where I could hear the soft snore or breathing of a loved one knowing that they’re safe. A clear signal that they’re resting and that they’re alive. Where I can see the world waking. That feeling of control.

I want to be the healer. I know this. I played Fat Princess and I wanted to be the priest. To grant wishes, to grant positivity. To be whole once again.

So I hesitated. I was repulsed at first, because I didn’t expect it to be like that, but it is San Francisco.

I am talking about a public restroom here.

Now, I am all in support of gender neutral bathrooms to get rid of people’s expectations of gender and what not. After all, at home, all the bathrooms are gender-neutral, right? Why isn’t it the same in public?

But what surprised me wasn’t the fact that there were gender neutral restrooms at a restaurant I visited recently. Rather that the seat was up and that was almost enough for me to back up and hesitate. I noticed the lack of genders for the bathrooms and spent a few seconds looking for the gender. Realizing that in this high-end restaurant that it was all the same with eight stalls, I went in…and was shocked to find that the seat was up.

The most important thing about gender neutral bathrooms if they are established is not whether the genders treat each equally or whether there will be presence of perversion…but the most important thing to decide is what is accepted for the seat’s position?

I certainly approve that the seat is always down.

Is this art? Yeah why not. As long as it has the intention and beauty in simplicity.

This morning, I studied the notes that my colleague and I had put together. She requested, as a non-native speaker of English, that she do the more logistical tasks while I took over the description of the document. I had looked at her work earlier and besides small edits, I thought it was completely fine.

So in a few hours, I put together the descriptions, combing the notes, for keywords. Words flowed out my fingertips. Discover. Leverage. Allow. Build. Then at some point, the steam ran out and I got lunch.

After I returned and started working on another part of the document, my colleague returned and thanks me for writing so flawlessly. “What? Your writing was totally fine!” I exclaimed.

“No, but you told a story in the worlds. With simple words. Really, thanks for that. I am very impressed.”

I thanked her for the compliment and felt better about my work.

A few hours later, I received a rejection letter for program application. The disappointment filled my body. But when I was back on my bike heading to my 6 pm, the pain of the rejection faded away and I started dreaming about my writing. That perhaps, for once, my writing can be impactful. And that there’s still hope for publishing.

There’s nothing motivating to me when I imagine someone hearing my story and they do that slight twist of the head. Their eyes widen for a moment and their mouth parts slightly in surprise. The words that come out of their mouth are “You know, I never thought about it that way.”

During some moments in life when you want to live it over and over again. Maybe it’s elation or pride. Or the happiness that spills out through tears and smiles that hurt the muscles. It’s those moments when you feel that you belong, you’re important, you’re valued. Or that you feel the love that you’re spreading. The love that you feel radiated from others to you. So you want to live stay with that happiness. You want to be with that precious moment of completion.

I have those moments too. Whether it sitting with my graduate school classmates during our final project. Or my first college football game I attended with friends while a relationship blossomed via text. And the moment that I had with Chris at the foot at my bed where the world didn’t matter, but only the space between us mattered.

But I realize that moments are not meant to last forever. The friends that accompanied them have moved on. The graduate school classmates have filtered into the close friends. Chris and I grew and we hold strength in that we understand each other better, declared our boundaries and where it can be flexible. It won’t be the same.

I don’t really want to relive those moments over and over again if the future is not possible.

So today, I came across a friend’s post to a clickbait Buzzfeed video. Just like any female, I gravitate toward watching babies (and kids!) The 5-year old girl was upset that her sibling was not going to stay a baby anymore. She wanted him to stay like that, stay cute forever, smile innocent grins as she cried. I had a reaction to that. Yes, we love the baby as a baby. The precious moments and we will miss it.

But isn’t the great part of these moments is that the future contains possibility? That everyone deserves a chance to change?

In the world of Postmortal, everyone can take a pill to stop aging. So to survive in this world, everyone does. Nobody dies (unless of bodily damage of course). Diseases and cancer are eradicated by an additional drug. The pill is only allowed to be given after the age of 18. And yet some people take it illegally as a teenager—trapping their mind in a horrible state. And even worse, a mother decides her infant should take it so that he will stay young…forever. Isn’t that cruel to trap a soul that is old in an small body with an infantile mind. To be so helpless (and thus cute). To be trapped in a place where nothing ever makes sense.

I love progress. That’s why the world turns. So let’s keep moving.

For a brief second, it was silent. Our words hung in the air. Swollen. Bulging with all the swords and thorns we packed into them. It thundered and struck with bold waves. Then they fell, breaking into million of pieces.

She said, “Okay.”

And she turned and ran down the stairs.

Or was it me that said “Okay” nodding at her as she ran down the stairs?

I shouted as her body rushed down, fleeing from an unwanted scene in my home. “Let’s talk about this again. In person. I’ll make the schedule work for you. I’ll be near Union Square.”

Did I really say it that eloquently? I remember thinking of my calendar and wondering if I could make it work. Afterwards, I was surprised that I didn’t feel any pain. No stabs to the chest. No tenseness near my ears. No knot in the throat. In fact, I felt fine. A light dash of adrenaline in my system from the shoulder tense when I wanted to shake her up and down, “Aren’t you understanding me?” and then I decided that words are so much stronger.

I was unaffected. My body told me to be sympathetic for the disagreement that we had. The fury that flew through our echoing voices in my living room. A sacred space in my home where I generously offered homemade snacks.

I wanted to yell, “I am done with this. Done!”

After air and shelter, food is the next step in the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

There’s nothing that I love more than traveling for food, where ice cream quite naturally fits. The local culture shapes the food. The frequency of meals. The type of food. The portions. The pairings. The content. Their taste preferences in bitterness, sweetness, spiciness.

It represents so much of the world. Everyone eats.

Yet what happens when different locations influence other locations. What happens when the French influences the Japanese, which in turn influences that one chef in Texas?

I loved the ice cream we had today in downtown Austin. A popcorn ice cream paired with root beer gel, housemade candy bars, and caramel popcorn. And yet, did it reflect anything about the region?

There’s a small restaurant that I used to habitually visit near my landlord’s house (where I would actually drive to drop off my monthly check). There, the Japanese owners made a diverse set of dishes. Spaghetti. Sandwiches. Bacon fried rice. Noodle soup. She paired each lunch meal with a small scoop of macaroni salad and a fruit cup with the smallest cut up fruit. Was it gourmet? No. Was it fantastic? Yes, every single time. It was as if she used to dishes she liked for many people and someone said, “Hey you should open a restaurant!” But wasn’t it ok that her dishes weren’t fully Japanese? Or even American? Or what people would fusion?

Whatever I called it was comfort food that I loved.

Although I have nothing to hide. But it’s the one moment of my everyday life where my humanity of a person is stripped. I am going to be judged. If I win, I continue through to my gate. If I lose, I will be subjected to questions that I think that I will know the answer but in reality I do not. I will be pushed out.

Granted, I look like a low risk. Female. An often innocent face, especially I stupidly struggle with my bulging bags. Asian of Chinese descent. American.

But it’s because I opt out. I submit myself to a patdown—partly to protest the way TSA does things, but also that…what if it actually affects my fertility? Personally, I am not afraid of being seen nude—I mean, I have nothing to hide under there. I’ll happily trapeze through the airport nude. I have no shame. But it’s the rules and the regulations. It’s the moment when the spotlight shines on me and I have to answer what seem to be basic answers: my name, my address, my birthday. What if my mind slips? What if I accidentally include something in my bags that I am not supposed to bring—a small cup of yogurt, a bottle of water, a corkscrew? One too many bags? My things slipping beyond my grasp?

There’s no other part in my life where I suddenly am dependent on one person. A gatekeeper. “Please let me through,” my eyes say everytime to the TSA officer as he or she studies my boarding pass and id. “This time.”

With the wisdom I gained as I grow older, the one thing that I have learned is that nothing is black and white.

Last Friday, I lazily responded to a former colleague’s judgement of why a company was going downhill. “Politics,” I said. “Isn’t it politics? People just can’t agree on a decision.”

He looked at me and shook his hand, “It’s so much more complicated than that.”

Then he went into the old processes vs. new processes. The wrong fit for recently hired people. The quality of the staff. The lack of focus in the company. The priorities in the wrong place. It is complicated.

Likewise, war is complicated. Like how people are complicated. Like how a breakup is complicated. We think something is bad or good based on opinion that we may or may not have. (Everyone has an opinion of war even if they have never experienced one.) We say “drop that loser!” so easily to a betrayed one when the complexity involves a deep indescribable relationship, the kids, the house, the personalities of both parties. When in reality, it’s really about defining boundaries and setting expectations. The hardest part is to decide what to do when boundaries are crossed and expectations are mismatched. In truth, there are no right or wrong answers.

So why is it that some people think war is so simple? That if war happens, that it is absolute. That if war doesn’t happen, that it is absolute. Humans are of a nature that naturally seeks blame. It’s the most difficult thing to let blame slide, because our existence may not matter. This is why religion exists—to make sense of this complicated world. That is why we call each other names and throw insults, because it’s easier that way than to accept responsibility. That is why we find it tough to forgive.

In (good) movies and TV—the ones that tell stories of blame, I learned that the wrong thing to do is to war because of pain. Today, I learned that from the apes.