STORIES
Angela Ming Yang, Lian Sun
Angela Ming Yang, Lian Sun
Apocalypse, Again (And I Feel Fine) Brief History of Apologies
Joseph Dierkes
“Love?”
“Yes, dear?”
“Didn’t the world end yesterday?”
Martha looks at her husband with a sort of scrunched up face, trying to determine if he hasgone a bit mental, until fire and ash dawn on her that yes, the world did in fact end yesterday and Martha and Paul had died in terrifically scorching deaths. She remembers the phone ringing and answering it as the clouds outside billowed alongside silent explosions in unison, and little Sammy was on the other line because his mom had already disintegrated and his mom told him to call the McReddings in the case of emergencies—the end of the world certainly qualifying. Through the muffled speakers, she had heard the quivers of a scream until she could only listen to nothing but weak, almost indiscernible cries. She gripped her abdomen. Unfortunately, Martha found herself unable to comfort little Sammy because she herself had fallen quickly into little more than particles of dust. And then at the end of it all, their house was only remnants of cinders, and the little “McRedding Family” plaque adjacent to the vibrantly red-painted door read only “Redding” after the embers had their way. The red paint, of course, looked like it belonged fairly in place compared to the waves of flames consuming the paneling and surrounding wood until, of course, the door was also consumed in said flames. Nothing of the house stood: the inhabitants, the white fence line, the small garden of half-grown saplings in the backyard.
But all of that was impossible because Paul is standing no more than two feet in front of her, and she herself still has her two hands and two feet, unburnt and still quite pink. Still though, she is feeling a bit stuffy, and the air outside seems too still to have been set ablaze by the heat-death of the world.
“Yes, dear, I think it did end yesterday.”
“But we’re still here. I seem to remember dying.”
“So do I.”
“Hm.”
Paul saunters over to the shelf and picks out the oldest bottle of wine they own—the same bottle that had evaporated not even twelve hours prior, alongside all the blood in their bodies. He pours himself a generous glass, raises a bush of an eyebrow to his wife, then unceremoniously pours half a glass for her as well.
***
“Gabe?”
“Yes, boss?”
“Didn’t I end the world yesterday?”
“Uh, yeah, yes you did. But the rest of us thought it was just another one of your decisions that you’d change your mind on the next day, so we, uh—”
“Sorry, didn’t catch that. You what?”
“We reset it.”
“You reset it?
“Yeah, you know, we reset it… just a little bit.” Gabe fidgets with his hands and stares down at his sandals. “Reverted it to the cloud back-up from twenty-four hours prior to the, uh, world-ending cataclysmic event.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know, we keep back-ups of everything for, uh, posterity.”
“No, no, I understand the concept of a back-up, I’m not stupid. What’s an hour?”
***
The two formerly ashes of cadavers sit across from each other, their wine a little low of a level in one of the glasses, considering the time of day. Considering the topic at hand, however, the purple-pale stains imprinted on the glass might actually be perfectly appropriate. A curious morbidity: two people, husband and wife, trying to pin down precisely the excruciating particulars of their untimely deaths.
“It happened at eight o’clock, right?”
“I think so, dear. Sammy called because his mom wasn’t home yet. So, it must have been before nine.”
“You were about to go to bed, and I was reading the news. And then—” Paul stammers, unable to vocalize the thoughts trampling through his mind.
Martha sees the pause in her husband’s face, and puts her hand over his. “And then we were burned alive.”
He matches her gaze. “And then we were burned alive. But, since we’re still here… It must’ve just been a dream. Must’ve been.”
“If it was a dream, then why do we both remember it?”
“We’ve shared the bed for how many years now? Maybe it was inevitable that we would eventually share the same dreams, sweetie.”
“But it felt so real.”
A moment of silence occurs. And then another. Paul finishes his glass. He pours another. He sputters out in fearful breath, “What did you feel? Was it painful for you? Dying?”
Martha looks at her husband, straight into his quiet, unshaking eyes. It was a brave question. Though his face is now more wrinkled and weathered, it looks the same as it did some decade ago, remembering it cutting through the weariness of tired eyes and a sore abdomen waking up in the hospital cot. His eyes told her everything she needed to know about what happened. Her eyes were tired with tears then. Her eyes are tired still, but with the smallest of smiles she tells him, “No dear, not a bit. It was like walking out of the movie theater during the daytime. No pain at all, just a bit blinding.”
“Good… good.” He stares at his glass: crystalline structures reflect one another. She has never seen him with happier tears. She takes her first sip from her glass. The phone rings. Martha gets up to answer it, “Hello?”
Paul looks at his wife. She looks as good as the day I met her, he thinks. What a day. They met years and years ago—ages and epochs and generations ago in the social experiment that is a liberal arts education. He studied economics. She studied history. On the day they met the world was not as close to ending. But he studied economics, not meteorology, so there was really no way of him knowing. There was really no way for the students studying meteorology of knowing either, since humans are notoriously terrible at predicting the weather. The guy on channel five could hardly tell if it was going to be overcast, let alone rain down hellfire. But the day they met might as well have been the end of Paul McRedding’s world. Martha was someone special, he could tell despite the haze of alcohol and the crowd of animals let loose from their classroom cages. He approached her, armed with the confidence of a man who had just barely passed his ECON 201 exam, and the rest, as they say, is history. She was always good at that; she passed her exam with flying colors.
The world ended yesterday, and Paul is still alive. This is what his in-laws would have called a miracle. The world ended yesterday, and Paul is drinking. While it seemed to be appropriate at the time, Paul is not satisfied. The world ended yesterday. Paul should be doing something. Maybe it’s time to finally retire and take Martha on a vacation, he decides. They deserve it. Maybe to the Grand Canyon. Maybe to Disney World. Martha would like Disney World.
“It was the church: they’re short a volunteer for the service today,” She glances at the emptied glass, “are you going to be okay here by yourself?”
“I’ll be okay, sweetie.” He gives her a big smile. Martha believes him.
Martha McRedding loves volunteering for her local church. Specifically, she loves the afternoon Sunday service, because afterwards they have a luncheon and a couple people need to supervise the KidzZone. The poorly named KidzZone was the brainchild of the pastor two pastors ago, by the long-late Father Martin. Father Martin disliked when the children during the Sunday luncheon ran around and chewed their food too loudly. By some font of inspiration, he decided to cordon off an area of the lawn where the children could somehow spill hot dogs away from his presence. He hired a painter who happened to also be illiterate to make him a sign, and “KidzZone” with two differently capitalized Zs became a staple in the community. The fact is, that there were two Zs was not the mistake an illiterate man would make; rather, it was the solution to salvaging whatever hieroglyphics adorned the original design. Martha likes the sign, though, and the kids, too.
Sammy is here, running around with a small dollop of mustard dripping from the side of his mouth. He’s talking to Ruthie, the daughter of the family that just moved in the neighborhood over from the McReddings. She is either unaware of or ignoring the mustard. Martha tries not to eavesdrop, but cannot help but listen to their conversation:
“My name is Sammy.”
“Hi Sammy, my name is Ruthie.”
“Um, do you like Transformers?”
“What’s that?”
“Oh, it’s when there’s these cars on TV, and um, they drive around, and, and, Optimus Prime fights Megatron, but he’s a truck not a car, but most of them are cars, but then they turn into robots and they fight each other and my favorite is Starscream because he’s not a car he’s a jet so he’s the best.”
“Oh okay! My family doesn’t have a TV because Daddy says it will make me seasick because of all the waves.”
“I’ve never been seasick before.”
“Do you wanna try it? We can pretend to be on a boat. Are there any boat transformers?”
Martha thinks the conversation is adorable; in the opinion of an ever-present universe, it is in reality, pretty stupid.
***
“So, it’s just a way to measure time?”
“Yes, it’s sort of a global standard.”
“And an hour is sixty minutes, and a minute is sixty seconds. I get that. But tell me again what a second is.”
“Well, I, uh, know it’s something to do with atoms. You’re going to have to ask someone else for more information about that.”
“Right, is Mikey in today?” Gabe shakes his head. “Well, sorry to get off-topic. Back to my question of why the hell did you think you could reset the world ending?”
“Oh, boss, we don’t really use that word around here anymore, the old boss didn’t like profanity in the workplace.” Gabe looks up briefly to see daggers, “But, uh, I guess since you’re the boss now, it’s okay.”
“You’re damn right it’s okay. And another thing that’s okay is me ending the world. That is an executive decision, which I, as the executive, am going to decide to execute. Not you, Gabe. Not Mikey either, if he ever decides to come into work. And I am going to do just that, right now. Final decision. No resets.”
***
Sammy and Ruthie are holding on to the sides of Martha’s dress, tugging to get her attention. Ordinarily, she would be indulging in their unending energy. But there’s some new faces here today, Martha thinks. Besides Ruthie, there is a taller, androgynous-looking fellow with curly blond hair. He’s kind of keeping to himself, eating his angel cake in small forkfuls, somehow being ignored by all the children despite being a volunteer chaperone like Martha, who was almost always surrounding herself with tyke-chatter. She decides to go introduce herself, with Sammy and Ruthie trailing along behind her.
“Well hi there,” She raises her to shake his, “I don’t think I’ve seen you around here.”
“Oh, yes, I’m just visiting and this looked like a good place of worship.”
“Well I hope you’re enjoying your time here. Do you like kids, Mr…?”
“Call me... Daniel. And yes, I enjoy the company of children. How about yourself, Martha?”
“Oh, I just love them. I spend every Sunday here with little Sammy.” Martha kneels a little bit to wipe away some of the mustard off Sammy’s face with a napkin.
“Do you have any children?”
Martha stops fussing with Sammy’s face for a second. She continues to look away from the blond man and fixes Sammy’s collar. “No, unfortunately I have no children, Mr. Daniel.”
“I’m quite sorry to hear that.”
Martha turns to look back up at the curly-haired man to respond but is struck silent as she could only look at the clouds past his head. There were not supposed to be any clouds today, the weatherman said it was supposed to be sunny all weekend. But the sky is falling. The clouds are ignited, and fire is falling. Sammy looks up and starts crying. He and Ruthie hug Martha’s leg for a semblance of safety. Marth clutches her abdomen. Blinding light. Snare drum. Curtains. Everyone dies.
"Love?"
"Yes, dear?"
"Didn't the world end yesterday?"
Martha looks at her husband. He continues, “And, uh, the day before yesterday?”
She doesn’t know what to say, other than to look him in the eyes and whisper so that only he could hear it, “Yes dear, I think it’s ended twice now.”
***
“Why the hell did you reset the world again? I thought it was pretty clear that I’m not changing my mind about this.”
Gabe coughs, “Uh, sorry sir. It was an accident.”
“You accidentally reset the world? A process that requires two senior members of this department to simultaneously insert their keycards, type in a randomly generated password into the world’s databank, answer a two-factor authorization push to their company-issued smart devices, and then drag the back-up into the master profile?”
Gabe, in a stunning sheep impression, bleats out, “Well when you put it like that…”
“If I could fire you, Gabe, you bet your ass you’d be floating down the river just like that.”
“I understand, sir.”
“I’m ending the world again,” He snaps his fingers, “Boom. It’s done.”
On the desk, a small lightbulb flashes, and a bird chirp sounding tone chimes. He snaps his fingers again. The bird chirp goes off. Another snap. Another chirp. Snap. Chirp. Snap. Chirp. Snap. Chirp. Snap. Chirp. Snap. Chirp. Snap snap snap snap snap snap snap snap snap snap snap snap snap snap. An equal number of chirps follow. Even more snaps. Even more chirps.
“Did you set up a macro to reset the world every time I end it?”
“Well, uh, no, boss. If we’re being honest, I just asked Ralph if it was possible, and, then he set up the macro.”
“I fucking hate you, Gabe.”
***
Martha and Paul are still in bed. Their eyes share every memory they’ve had together, and every “I love you” uttered in the universe. According to their count, the world has ended approximately one hundred and twenty-three times now. Each time it’s the same, fire and blinding light. All at different times though. A few times they thought they would make it to midnight. Once, the world ended immediately after Paul asked if the world ended: quite the quick answer. By the twentieth or so time, they stopped asking the question: they both already know the answer. They say humans can get used to anything.
Another thing they learn is that it’s not the next day that ends, technically only one day ends. It’s been Sunday for quite a while now. Sometimes Martha makes it to the church luncheon again. Sammy and Ruthie are always there. She tries to save them each time, grabbing them immediately before the service starts in her station wagon, barreling down the road. They never make it past the Best Western. Lately though, she can’t stand to see any more dying children. Not so many times, not with the pain of their faces as the sky detonates. She stays in bed with her husband. Paul doesn’t drink a drop anymore; he prefers to spend the time holding onto Martha. They have great sex now. They had great sex before, but they have it now, too. A burden’s been lifted. Sometimes all they can do is enjoy each other’s company before the end of the world. Maybe that’s all anyone can do.
But on the one hundred and fifty-first end of the world, something absolutely peculiar happens. Something that shakes the hearts and minds of the McReddings even more so than the first end of the world, or the second. There’s a kicker.
***
“Do you know why I decided to end the world, Gabe? Don’t answer because I’m going to tell you anyway. The world was a great idea by your old boss, but guess what? It’s old. It’s outdated. It’s broken. It’s not worth continuing to keep it on the server anymore. We got all we needed from it; you must understand that. Humans are infinitesimal luddites that got their time with the sun. We learned a lot from them, exhibit A being what they would do to each other given the chance. We gave them everything they needed and still they decide to lie, and cheat, and steal, and kill. Project grade: unsatisfactory. We need to try something new; we need to try a different approach. There’s nothing left. Do you understand me?”
Gabe looks down at his sandals, and he hears something so pleasing that he could not help but giggle. A bass drum.
“What the hell are you giggling about, Gabe?”
“I was just thinking about what you said, and I disagree. I think there’s one or two things there worth keeping… How’s the saying go, boss? And on the seventh day, God reset?”
“What?”
“Mike and Ralph are with me, boss. We quit. We’re taking the world with us. Good luck with the company.”
***
On the two hundred and seventy-second end of the world, Lydia H. McRedding was born in the house with the bright red door to Paul and Martha McRedding. The birthing process was not easy, but humans have been having children for years. For Martha, however, this was the first in a long line of nots. She almost didn’t make it, but three strangers knocked on the door as her contractions intensified. One of them was the curly-haired man from what seems like forever ago. She did not recognize the other two, but she felt safe. They were all wearing white lab coats and sandals. Their presence was calmness in calamity; they helped deliver the baby. And once the cord was cut, they each bowed their heads and went their way before Paul or Martha could utter a single thank-you. Martha’s parents would have called it a miracle—they would have been right this time. That night, Lydia slept in a bed peacefully in the doting arms of the newly made McRedding family. She could hear a pleasant sound, a chiming of bells, eking softly out into the once-empty void. The world stopped ending, and Monday morning came.
THE END
Joseph Dierkes
“Love?”
“Yes, dear?”
“Didn’t the world end yesterday?”
Martha looks at her husband with a sort of scrunched up face, trying to determine if he hasgone a bit mental, until fire and ash dawn on her that yes, the world did in fact end yesterday and Martha and Paul had died in terrifically scorching deaths. She remembers the phone ringing and answering it as the clouds outside billowed alongside silent explosions in unison, and little Sammy was on the other line because his mom had already disintegrated and his mom told him to call the McReddings in the case of emergencies—the end of the world certainly qualifying. Through the muffled speakers, she had heard the quivers of a scream until she could only listen to nothing but weak, almost indiscernible cries. She gripped her abdomen. Unfortunately, Martha found herself unable to comfort little Sammy because she herself had fallen quickly into little more than particles of dust. And then at the end of it all, their house was only remnants of cinders, and the little “McRedding Family” plaque adjacent to the vibrantly red-painted door read only “Redding” after the embers had their way. The red paint, of course, looked like it belonged fairly in place compared to the waves of flames consuming the paneling and surrounding wood until, of course, the door was also consumed in said flames. Nothing of the house stood: the inhabitants, the white fence line, the small garden of half-grown saplings in the backyard.
But all of that was impossible because Paul is standing no more than two feet in front of her, and she herself still has her two hands and two feet, unburnt and still quite pink. Still though, she is feeling a bit stuffy, and the air outside seems too still to have been set ablaze by the heat-death of the world.
“Yes, dear, I think it did end yesterday.”
“But we’re still here. I seem to remember dying.”
“So do I.”
“Hm.”
Paul saunters over to the shelf and picks out the oldest bottle of wine they own—the same bottle that had evaporated not even twelve hours prior, alongside all the blood in their bodies. He pours himself a generous glass, raises a bush of an eyebrow to his wife, then unceremoniously pours half a glass for her as well.
***
“Gabe?”
“Yes, boss?”
“Didn’t I end the world yesterday?”
“Uh, yeah, yes you did. But the rest of us thought it was just another one of your decisions that you’d change your mind on the next day, so we, uh—”
“Sorry, didn’t catch that. You what?”
“We reset it.”
“You reset it?
“Yeah, you know, we reset it… just a little bit.” Gabe fidgets with his hands and stares down at his sandals. “Reverted it to the cloud back-up from twenty-four hours prior to the, uh, world-ending cataclysmic event.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know, we keep back-ups of everything for, uh, posterity.”
“No, no, I understand the concept of a back-up, I’m not stupid. What’s an hour?”
***
The two formerly ashes of cadavers sit across from each other, their wine a little low of a level in one of the glasses, considering the time of day. Considering the topic at hand, however, the purple-pale stains imprinted on the glass might actually be perfectly appropriate. A curious morbidity: two people, husband and wife, trying to pin down precisely the excruciating particulars of their untimely deaths.
“It happened at eight o’clock, right?”
“I think so, dear. Sammy called because his mom wasn’t home yet. So, it must have been before nine.”
“You were about to go to bed, and I was reading the news. And then—” Paul stammers, unable to vocalize the thoughts trampling through his mind.
Martha sees the pause in her husband’s face, and puts her hand over his. “And then we were burned alive.”
He matches her gaze. “And then we were burned alive. But, since we’re still here… It must’ve just been a dream. Must’ve been.”
“If it was a dream, then why do we both remember it?”
“We’ve shared the bed for how many years now? Maybe it was inevitable that we would eventually share the same dreams, sweetie.”
“But it felt so real.”
A moment of silence occurs. And then another. Paul finishes his glass. He pours another. He sputters out in fearful breath, “What did you feel? Was it painful for you? Dying?”
Martha looks at her husband, straight into his quiet, unshaking eyes. It was a brave question. Though his face is now more wrinkled and weathered, it looks the same as it did some decade ago, remembering it cutting through the weariness of tired eyes and a sore abdomen waking up in the hospital cot. His eyes told her everything she needed to know about what happened. Her eyes were tired with tears then. Her eyes are tired still, but with the smallest of smiles she tells him, “No dear, not a bit. It was like walking out of the movie theater during the daytime. No pain at all, just a bit blinding.”
“Good… good.” He stares at his glass: crystalline structures reflect one another. She has never seen him with happier tears. She takes her first sip from her glass. The phone rings. Martha gets up to answer it, “Hello?”
Paul looks at his wife. She looks as good as the day I met her, he thinks. What a day. They met years and years ago—ages and epochs and generations ago in the social experiment that is a liberal arts education. He studied economics. She studied history. On the day they met the world was not as close to ending. But he studied economics, not meteorology, so there was really no way of him knowing. There was really no way for the students studying meteorology of knowing either, since humans are notoriously terrible at predicting the weather. The guy on channel five could hardly tell if it was going to be overcast, let alone rain down hellfire. But the day they met might as well have been the end of Paul McRedding’s world. Martha was someone special, he could tell despite the haze of alcohol and the crowd of animals let loose from their classroom cages. He approached her, armed with the confidence of a man who had just barely passed his ECON 201 exam, and the rest, as they say, is history. She was always good at that; she passed her exam with flying colors.
The world ended yesterday, and Paul is still alive. This is what his in-laws would have called a miracle. The world ended yesterday, and Paul is drinking. While it seemed to be appropriate at the time, Paul is not satisfied. The world ended yesterday. Paul should be doing something. Maybe it’s time to finally retire and take Martha on a vacation, he decides. They deserve it. Maybe to the Grand Canyon. Maybe to Disney World. Martha would like Disney World.
“It was the church: they’re short a volunteer for the service today,” She glances at the emptied glass, “are you going to be okay here by yourself?”
“I’ll be okay, sweetie.” He gives her a big smile. Martha believes him.
Martha McRedding loves volunteering for her local church. Specifically, she loves the afternoon Sunday service, because afterwards they have a luncheon and a couple people need to supervise the KidzZone. The poorly named KidzZone was the brainchild of the pastor two pastors ago, by the long-late Father Martin. Father Martin disliked when the children during the Sunday luncheon ran around and chewed their food too loudly. By some font of inspiration, he decided to cordon off an area of the lawn where the children could somehow spill hot dogs away from his presence. He hired a painter who happened to also be illiterate to make him a sign, and “KidzZone” with two differently capitalized Zs became a staple in the community. The fact is, that there were two Zs was not the mistake an illiterate man would make; rather, it was the solution to salvaging whatever hieroglyphics adorned the original design. Martha likes the sign, though, and the kids, too.
Sammy is here, running around with a small dollop of mustard dripping from the side of his mouth. He’s talking to Ruthie, the daughter of the family that just moved in the neighborhood over from the McReddings. She is either unaware of or ignoring the mustard. Martha tries not to eavesdrop, but cannot help but listen to their conversation:
“My name is Sammy.”
“Hi Sammy, my name is Ruthie.”
“Um, do you like Transformers?”
“What’s that?”
“Oh, it’s when there’s these cars on TV, and um, they drive around, and, and, Optimus Prime fights Megatron, but he’s a truck not a car, but most of them are cars, but then they turn into robots and they fight each other and my favorite is Starscream because he’s not a car he’s a jet so he’s the best.”
“Oh okay! My family doesn’t have a TV because Daddy says it will make me seasick because of all the waves.”
“I’ve never been seasick before.”
“Do you wanna try it? We can pretend to be on a boat. Are there any boat transformers?”
Martha thinks the conversation is adorable; in the opinion of an ever-present universe, it is in reality, pretty stupid.
***
“So, it’s just a way to measure time?”
“Yes, it’s sort of a global standard.”
“And an hour is sixty minutes, and a minute is sixty seconds. I get that. But tell me again what a second is.”
“Well, I, uh, know it’s something to do with atoms. You’re going to have to ask someone else for more information about that.”
“Right, is Mikey in today?” Gabe shakes his head. “Well, sorry to get off-topic. Back to my question of why the hell did you think you could reset the world ending?”
“Oh, boss, we don’t really use that word around here anymore, the old boss didn’t like profanity in the workplace.” Gabe looks up briefly to see daggers, “But, uh, I guess since you’re the boss now, it’s okay.”
“You’re damn right it’s okay. And another thing that’s okay is me ending the world. That is an executive decision, which I, as the executive, am going to decide to execute. Not you, Gabe. Not Mikey either, if he ever decides to come into work. And I am going to do just that, right now. Final decision. No resets.”
***
Sammy and Ruthie are holding on to the sides of Martha’s dress, tugging to get her attention. Ordinarily, she would be indulging in their unending energy. But there’s some new faces here today, Martha thinks. Besides Ruthie, there is a taller, androgynous-looking fellow with curly blond hair. He’s kind of keeping to himself, eating his angel cake in small forkfuls, somehow being ignored by all the children despite being a volunteer chaperone like Martha, who was almost always surrounding herself with tyke-chatter. She decides to go introduce herself, with Sammy and Ruthie trailing along behind her.
“Well hi there,” She raises her to shake his, “I don’t think I’ve seen you around here.”
“Oh, yes, I’m just visiting and this looked like a good place of worship.”
“Well I hope you’re enjoying your time here. Do you like kids, Mr…?”
“Call me... Daniel. And yes, I enjoy the company of children. How about yourself, Martha?”
“Oh, I just love them. I spend every Sunday here with little Sammy.” Martha kneels a little bit to wipe away some of the mustard off Sammy’s face with a napkin.
“Do you have any children?”
Martha stops fussing with Sammy’s face for a second. She continues to look away from the blond man and fixes Sammy’s collar. “No, unfortunately I have no children, Mr. Daniel.”
“I’m quite sorry to hear that.”
Martha turns to look back up at the curly-haired man to respond but is struck silent as she could only look at the clouds past his head. There were not supposed to be any clouds today, the weatherman said it was supposed to be sunny all weekend. But the sky is falling. The clouds are ignited, and fire is falling. Sammy looks up and starts crying. He and Ruthie hug Martha’s leg for a semblance of safety. Marth clutches her abdomen. Blinding light. Snare drum. Curtains. Everyone dies.
"Love?"
"Yes, dear?"
"Didn't the world end yesterday?"
Martha looks at her husband. He continues, “And, uh, the day before yesterday?”
She doesn’t know what to say, other than to look him in the eyes and whisper so that only he could hear it, “Yes dear, I think it’s ended twice now.”
***
“Why the hell did you reset the world again? I thought it was pretty clear that I’m not changing my mind about this.”
Gabe coughs, “Uh, sorry sir. It was an accident.”
“You accidentally reset the world? A process that requires two senior members of this department to simultaneously insert their keycards, type in a randomly generated password into the world’s databank, answer a two-factor authorization push to their company-issued smart devices, and then drag the back-up into the master profile?”
Gabe, in a stunning sheep impression, bleats out, “Well when you put it like that…”
“If I could fire you, Gabe, you bet your ass you’d be floating down the river just like that.”
“I understand, sir.”
“I’m ending the world again,” He snaps his fingers, “Boom. It’s done.”
On the desk, a small lightbulb flashes, and a bird chirp sounding tone chimes. He snaps his fingers again. The bird chirp goes off. Another snap. Another chirp. Snap. Chirp. Snap. Chirp. Snap. Chirp. Snap. Chirp. Snap. Chirp. Snap snap snap snap snap snap snap snap snap snap snap snap snap snap. An equal number of chirps follow. Even more snaps. Even more chirps.
“Did you set up a macro to reset the world every time I end it?”
“Well, uh, no, boss. If we’re being honest, I just asked Ralph if it was possible, and, then he set up the macro.”
“I fucking hate you, Gabe.”
***
Martha and Paul are still in bed. Their eyes share every memory they’ve had together, and every “I love you” uttered in the universe. According to their count, the world has ended approximately one hundred and twenty-three times now. Each time it’s the same, fire and blinding light. All at different times though. A few times they thought they would make it to midnight. Once, the world ended immediately after Paul asked if the world ended: quite the quick answer. By the twentieth or so time, they stopped asking the question: they both already know the answer. They say humans can get used to anything.
Another thing they learn is that it’s not the next day that ends, technically only one day ends. It’s been Sunday for quite a while now. Sometimes Martha makes it to the church luncheon again. Sammy and Ruthie are always there. She tries to save them each time, grabbing them immediately before the service starts in her station wagon, barreling down the road. They never make it past the Best Western. Lately though, she can’t stand to see any more dying children. Not so many times, not with the pain of their faces as the sky detonates. She stays in bed with her husband. Paul doesn’t drink a drop anymore; he prefers to spend the time holding onto Martha. They have great sex now. They had great sex before, but they have it now, too. A burden’s been lifted. Sometimes all they can do is enjoy each other’s company before the end of the world. Maybe that’s all anyone can do.
But on the one hundred and fifty-first end of the world, something absolutely peculiar happens. Something that shakes the hearts and minds of the McReddings even more so than the first end of the world, or the second. There’s a kicker.
***
“Do you know why I decided to end the world, Gabe? Don’t answer because I’m going to tell you anyway. The world was a great idea by your old boss, but guess what? It’s old. It’s outdated. It’s broken. It’s not worth continuing to keep it on the server anymore. We got all we needed from it; you must understand that. Humans are infinitesimal luddites that got their time with the sun. We learned a lot from them, exhibit A being what they would do to each other given the chance. We gave them everything they needed and still they decide to lie, and cheat, and steal, and kill. Project grade: unsatisfactory. We need to try something new; we need to try a different approach. There’s nothing left. Do you understand me?”
Gabe looks down at his sandals, and he hears something so pleasing that he could not help but giggle. A bass drum.
“What the hell are you giggling about, Gabe?”
“I was just thinking about what you said, and I disagree. I think there’s one or two things there worth keeping… How’s the saying go, boss? And on the seventh day, God reset?”
“What?”
“Mike and Ralph are with me, boss. We quit. We’re taking the world with us. Good luck with the company.”
***
On the two hundred and seventy-second end of the world, Lydia H. McRedding was born in the house with the bright red door to Paul and Martha McRedding. The birthing process was not easy, but humans have been having children for years. For Martha, however, this was the first in a long line of nots. She almost didn’t make it, but three strangers knocked on the door as her contractions intensified. One of them was the curly-haired man from what seems like forever ago. She did not recognize the other two, but she felt safe. They were all wearing white lab coats and sandals. Their presence was calmness in calamity; they helped deliver the baby. And once the cord was cut, they each bowed their heads and went their way before Paul or Martha could utter a single thank-you. Martha’s parents would have called it a miracle—they would have been right this time. That night, Lydia slept in a bed peacefully in the doting arms of the newly made McRedding family. She could hear a pleasant sound, a chiming of bells, eking softly out into the once-empty void. The world stopped ending, and Monday morning came.
THE END
Isolation (isolation)
Lian Sun
The last time I wrote down something honest was five months ago.
In the past 144 days, I have been stewing in an ocean of lies — empty words piling into hollow phrases, twisting into pages filled with phony, saccharine emotions, oozing with the type of fictitious plasticity that characterizes distorted memories. It didn’t take long for these words to stitch together a powdery mask over my rapidly deteriorating thoughts. And despite being well aware of the rotting that was spreading inside my chest, I grew increasingly unwilling to take off that mask for fear of revealing what’s left of my putrefied flesh. I was torn between my disgust for its fraudulent nature and my appreciation for the protection it offered.
Yet it wasn’t the shame of seeking help that chained me to this disintegrating shell. It was the fear of seeing myself in a shattered mirror and feeling, with vivid intensity, the pain that accompanies my very image. I dreaded the suffocating journey of tearing open unhealed scars to expose the raw wounds that were, by now, so intricately connected with my writing. My words grew to become daggers. Sharpened by time, they cut through fragile sutures with a harrowing elegance that sends me back to relive, in painstakingly detailed colors, the moment of my death.
Perhaps it’s my fervent need to re-experience every ordeal for the sake of producing something real that should be held culpable. And perhaps, in pursuance of authenticity, I have committed a suicidal act.
I have no doubt that behind every traumatic story is a writer brave enough to tear open their own scars as the world bears witness. I am far from being one of them. I have dug a thousand graves but am too terrified to call any of them my own. I remain the coward who, despite the desperate itch, only picks around the scabs.
It follows that the isolation as a result of this pandemic offered a perfect stage for my self torment to peak. After the panic and chaos of a twenty hour flight, I settled in for fourteen days of quarantine in a dimly-lit hotel room. Apart from a fully masked medic who took my daily temperature, the narrow door to my room was never opened. All I had was a dusty twenty-first floor window that overlooked a city of lights. By nightfall, the LED signs of my adjacent buildings would flash brilliant colors into a grayscale sky. For twelve of my fourteen days, I sat and watched those lights until dawn.
Day after day, I approached dawn with bloody eyes of exhaustion. Then, as the first rays of sunlight broke through the horizon, I would drift into the hazy, purgatoric zone between the lines of sleep and wake. Walking through the systematic routines of eating and showering in a dream-like state of confusion, I returned to consciousness only after the last glimmer of dusk had made its full retreat.
As day merged with night, time seemed to have melted into an irretrievable heap. What remained was a haunting void of loneliness that served to magnify my memories until they became blended with delusions. For hours on end, I would stare into a blank screen with a blinking cursor and wait aimlessly for a spark of ignition. I believed, for one reason or another, that a switch would magically click on inside my body. I waited for the moment when my fingers would be liberated from their catatonic states, and imagined the crushing wave of rage that would accompany the spill of boiling blood.
I was a pathetic prisoner who stood behind the bars of an unlocked cell, waiting for someone to tell me I was free to leave — because I was too afraid to open that door for myself.
And so nothing resulted from those two disastrous weeks. I tortured my mind until I felt so unproductive and useless that I could not allow myself to sleep until I passed out. I guess this has been a long-standing habit of mine — sleep deprivation is always the first punishment my brain turns to. It developed in high school and during a time when I had to wake up at five each morning for training. I was well aware that I should be resting before midnight, and yet I chose to watch the clock tic until two or three every morning. It was a haunting guilt that prevented me from closing my eyes, despite the fatigue of a full day of double practice and school. I drowned in the miserable belief that I could accomplish something more in those extra two or three hours, that I could complete just one more assignment, that I could be and should be working more… But in reality, I always ended up spending the last of my shredded energy on keeping my eyelids open, and nothing productive ever resulted from those tormenting hours.
So don’t doubt me when I say: I am that coward who tries to hide until there remains nowhere to hide. The sheep in wolf skin only runs so far before being discovered.
As you can see, I have wasted 144 days only to write such a tedious piece of unorganized thoughts. And even writing this now… I have wasted 882 words before coming to my intended purpose.
Grandma passed away in the last hour of my math final.
It was the last of all my finals. After a week full of brain-frying testing, I was more than ready to throw my hands up and tell the world that I have completed my first round of college finals. I was proud, after all, for my first ten weeks at Stanford.
My flight home was booked for four days after this last exam. I looked forward, with considerable excitement, to the four stress-free days of partying I would get to enjoy with friends. It never occurred to me that, while I bathed under a sunny California sky and biked through perfectly-trimmed palm trees, my whole family would be clustered in the narrow hallways of a hospital, waiting for the inevitable end.
For all the frequent big and small visits that my grandma has made to that hospital in recent years, it never occurred to me that this one would be the last.
In announcing the news of grandma’s hospitalization three days before that last exam, my mother’s words seemed to be miles away from disaster. But maybe it was because that was day one of finals week, maybe it was because I was so caught up in studying, and maybe it was me who chose not to register the quiver in her voice. After all, I responded with such a cruel nod.
In that last video call two days before my grandma’s death, my mother handed the phone over to her. She was wearing the typical striped clothes of hospital patients and had a plastic tube running under her nose. I remember being somewhat startled by how frail she appeared, but my brain seemed to have discarded that piece of information without ever processing it. I told grandma that I just had one exam left, and she said to me, in an urgent tone: “Don’t worry about me, I’m fine, I’m fine. Do well on your exam. Don’t worry about me.”
I never said goodbye.
On the morning of my last exam, I woke up to two missed calls from my mother and a Wechat message that reads: Would you like to change your flight to tomorrow?
At first, I was bewildered by the question. I knew it would cost an unnecessary amount to change a flight by three days, yet… Then it dawned on me. Maybe something bad had happened. Maybe...could it be...something with grandma?
I returned the call but no one answered. I tried two more times throughout that morning. The fear was somewhat fading as the time of my exam neared. She would have returned the call by now if it really was some pressing issue, I thought to myself as I opened my math notes and began studying.
I was already standing outside the lecture room when mother finally called back. I had the phone held up between my ear and shoulder as I locked my bike in place. I was annoyed, frustrated, and nervous all at once. “Why did you call me at four in the morning? Why didn’t you pick up my calls? I’m literally outside my exam room right now and you finally call me.”
“Oh,” she said. “Then go and take your exam. Call me once you’re done.”
“What? No, just tell me. What did you mean by changing my flight?”
“I meant exactly what the words mean. Now go and take your exam.” She was practically yelling at me.
I felt irritated. Why was she the one yelling at me? Why is she so suddenly so agitated? I hung up and walked into my exam.
It was an easy test. I finished in less than an hour and a half. And yet I stayed for the full three hours. Out of what, I don’t, and never will know.
I sat down in Tresidder before returning the call — I was thinking of what I should buy for dinner as a treat for completing my first quarter. This time, I clearly heard the quiver in my mother’s voice.
I remember having a difficult time breathing as I biked back towards my dorm. I had my hood over my head and my arms were shaking uncontrollably.
It has always been part of that pathetic nature of mine — the inability to cry in front of others. As I went to drop off my backpack in my room, I bumped into people.
“How was your last exam?”
“Oh it was actually pretty chill! I finished like way before time was up and...omg I’m so glad to be finally free.”
Someone was playing with the gears in my brain. Someone was clogging up the tear ducts.
I had walked all the way to the far side of Lake Lagunita until I was finally able to cry. Sitting by the twisting roots of some thick tree trunk, I stared into a sky with beautiful clouds and sobbed in silence. I started playing a movie of memories inside my head.
They were so excruciatingly detailed yet hazy, so close yet untouchable all at the same time.
The months of homeschooling, the food we made together, the sewing we did...her taking me to the market to buy my first wallet, her teaching me my first Chinese characters, her bringing me a bag full of snacks when I couldn’t sleep at night...there was too much I remembered and too much I couldn’t remember.
Perhaps it’s because I promised her I will publish a book and I never did. Perhaps it’s because I’ve always prayed for her to see me go to a good university and stopped praying after that wish was fulfilled. Perhaps it’s because I should have known, as someone interested in a medical career, that when my mother told me “it’s a tear in her artery”, it was bound to become fatal.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have always been in a rush to go off to work while I was visiting her that past summer. Perhaps I should have finished all the food she prepared for me. Perhaps I should have hugged her tighter when I left.
Perhaps I should have questioned my mother with more patience and paid better attention to her clues. Perhaps I should have walked out of that exam right after I was done instead of waiting for one more hour. Perhaps I would have had a chance to say farewell.
It angered me that every person in my family knew the fatality of her situation from the first day of her hospitalization except for me. It angered me that they all thought a math exam was worth more than my goodbye, and that it was enough to deprive me of my rights to know. It angered me that I was so close to going home, and yet she couldn’t wait for me.
The funeral happened without my presence — I wouldn’t make it in time even with a flight change. And so those four days became a tortuous journey of counting seconds. I knew the rest of my family were busy preparing for the funeral and so I didn’t bother my parents with phone calls. The extreme loneliness that filled me had nowhere to be spilled.
I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone around me. I was in so much pain and yet I remained so incompetent at expressing my anguish. I detested the sort of pity I would receive in exchange. It never helped to hear people tell me “It’s okay”, because it really is not. Not in the moment of things. But then, some things are not okay and they never will be, and I will learn to live with that. I knew, of course, that my friends were more than willing to listen to me and help share the burden. But I just could not do it — not until months later.
I remember calling my sister on the day of the funeral. I was at a breaking point by then.
I sat in a corner of Flomo’s stairway and blurted out all the guilt that was consuming me. I knew my sister had an even closer relationship with grandma, and yet she sounded so calm and reassuring.
I remember bumping into a friend after that call. I had my hood on again and was frantically wiping my face clear of tears.
It really isn’t that I try to hide it when I am surrounded by friends. I genuinely am happy when I am with them. It’s returning to an empty room to be left alone that tears my world into pieces.
It was this way during high school as well. I would be laughing my head off during practice and at school, but returning to my bed at home would bring a terrifying sense of sadness. During those years, I cut through skin to calm myself because that seemed like the only way to let loose the poison in my blood. I needed the physical pain to take me away from the crushing emotional torment, and I relied on the sight of spilled blood like a sedative drug. I grew increasingly addicted to the drops of crimson flowing down my wrist and to the rusty blade hidden in my drawer.
But then I went to school with sports tape wrapped around and acted like I twisted my wrist by accident. There were people who, in entirely unintentional and joking ways, asked if I had cut myself. Those were the only moments where I would, for a split second, fall back into my despairing reality.
I later turned the blade towards my legs because I found that I had developed a need for deeper cutting. But I was not suicidal. In fact, it was only because I was afraid of cutting too deep on my wrists.
I never called it depression. I begged my mother to take me to our family doctor but never got the nerve to open up and confess my actions. The doctor was always in such a rush and...just didn’t seem like someone who would appreciate my unnecessarily long stories.
My sadness came in unpredictable waves. To leave out excessive details, it eventually calmed towards the end of junior year. I remember being extremely happy in the summer of 2018.
This phase of self-harm went through virtually the same exact process as my prior eating disorder. I was fourteen then, and on the peak of my athletic career. I don’t know exactly why I started being concerned with food, just like how I never knew why I was engulfed by sadness two years later. But all of a sudden, I stopped eating.
The purging came a while later. By then, I have already lost my period and was drifting through school in a chronically fatigued state. I would attend practice but developed extremely painful cramps that caused me to lose control of my legs. And on the most miserable days, I was binge eating.
Then there was a phase where I could not eat without purging. I would stuff cake down my throat only to find myself staring down the toilet moments later. It almost seemed like I was obsessed with making myself vomit.
These actions, of course, happened in secret. I told my coaches that I had an iron deficiency, I told my mother that I don’t feel hungry, and I told myself that I was healthy.
There used to be people who would bewilderingly ask my teammates: “What happened to her? Didn’t she used to be like...really fast?” My teammates would explain that I suffered from some type of injury. But no one could really say what sort of “injury” it was that suddenly knocked me down from all those podium tops, and neither could I.
Those questions used to hurt me quite a bit. But as time went by, I started missing them. After all, they proved that people still remembered me for my accomplishments.
I guess I never really returned to anywhere near the height I was at before. I felt like a warrior who, after winning countless battles, suddenly lost all ability and passion to fight. For the two years that followed my near 30lb weight drop, I was unable to step into competitions without being accompanied by a crushing dread.
I never quite know when exactly these phases start, and I never keep track of when they end. So when my best friend from high school texted to ask how I “walked out of it” just a few months ago, I had no idea what to say. Did I really walk out of all that? What does it even mean to “walk out”? Maybe it just happens so that in this moment I am not under the water, but who knows when something might just pull me down again. It’s a timed bomb that I carry with me.
That friend was sent to the hospital later that day for a suicide related anxiety attack. Once again, I was consumed by anger and guilt.
I was on the verge of a fever that day and just happened to be in Vaden myself for some medication. The very act of biking there had taken away all my energy. Her text hit me with a wave of exhaustion, bringing back unwanted memories during this particularly tiring time.
Despite being available, I made an excuse for being in class and told her I would call later that night. When I did get around to calling, no one picked up.
Later, I learned from another friend that she had been taken to the hospital. The fact that I was probably the last person she turned to in the peak of her despair...the fact that I, of all people, should know and understand the agony she must have felt...the fact that she may have burnt that last straw of hope in reaching out to me...and the fact that I brushed her off with an excuse haunted me to the core.
My freshman year is so far from being ideal. My grandma’s passing and my best friend’s suicide attempt were just two of the events that happened outside of my jolly Stanford bubble.
In November, my great aunt passed away due to surgical complications. She was the closest distant relative I had while growing up because our families were neighbors for twenty years.
Approaching the end of January and my nineteenth birthday, my grandpa was once again diagnosed with cancer. And it just so happens that his surgery coincided with the outbreak of COVID-19.
I felt so powerless in all these situations. Being across the globe, I could not even summon the courage to make necessary phone calls. Hearing my family members’ voices was enough to send me through a tunnel of sadness.
I have been meaning to write all these things down for a long time now, but every previous attempt has ended with a rollercoaster of emotions that had me curled up in pain. So believe me when I say: I have tears running down my face. I don’t really know the purpose of this long and depressing rant, and I don’t mean to conclude it with anything insightful or uplifting. This is, truly and most honestly, how I feel about these past months of my life.
And it was not easy. A couple of sentences here cannot come close to covering the endless amount of emotional grief and pain I have experienced. Describing what once appeared to me like a whole world as a simple “phase” of my life does not mean I have forgotten how it once felt. Writing is powerful, but it is never enough.
Call me a pessimist, whatever. Call me stubborn, dramatic, stupid, delusional… Call me what you like. But know that, while there surely are mental health battles that end with beautiful conclusions about life and love, there are also many that don’t.
It doesn’t always have to. And I don’t want to write down lies just so my story can carry some warmhearted moral message. I wouldn’t go so far as calling it false hope, but I know there are people who will read those lines and ask: but how come I never got better?
For some people, winning is the ability to surround themselves with happiness and joy. But for others, resisting the agonizing urge to pick up a blade already demands a backbreaking amount of courage and determination. One person’s starting point may be the finishing line of another, and that’s just how life turns out to be.
In a world where only successful battles are praised, there seems to be a need to remain happy, okay, sane, confident… I am writing this today to tell myself and whoever reading this, if any at all: I am not okay. But that is okay.
It is okay because I can finally tear off the mask that has been suffocating me for all this time; it is okay because I have endured the pain and clawed through my scars to write these words down; and it is okay because despite all my right and wrongs opinions, at least I will be able to look back at these words and know that it was really me — and not some counterfeit puppet version of me — who wrote them down.
Lian Sun
The last time I wrote down something honest was five months ago.
In the past 144 days, I have been stewing in an ocean of lies — empty words piling into hollow phrases, twisting into pages filled with phony, saccharine emotions, oozing with the type of fictitious plasticity that characterizes distorted memories. It didn’t take long for these words to stitch together a powdery mask over my rapidly deteriorating thoughts. And despite being well aware of the rotting that was spreading inside my chest, I grew increasingly unwilling to take off that mask for fear of revealing what’s left of my putrefied flesh. I was torn between my disgust for its fraudulent nature and my appreciation for the protection it offered.
Yet it wasn’t the shame of seeking help that chained me to this disintegrating shell. It was the fear of seeing myself in a shattered mirror and feeling, with vivid intensity, the pain that accompanies my very image. I dreaded the suffocating journey of tearing open unhealed scars to expose the raw wounds that were, by now, so intricately connected with my writing. My words grew to become daggers. Sharpened by time, they cut through fragile sutures with a harrowing elegance that sends me back to relive, in painstakingly detailed colors, the moment of my death.
Perhaps it’s my fervent need to re-experience every ordeal for the sake of producing something real that should be held culpable. And perhaps, in pursuance of authenticity, I have committed a suicidal act.
I have no doubt that behind every traumatic story is a writer brave enough to tear open their own scars as the world bears witness. I am far from being one of them. I have dug a thousand graves but am too terrified to call any of them my own. I remain the coward who, despite the desperate itch, only picks around the scabs.
It follows that the isolation as a result of this pandemic offered a perfect stage for my self torment to peak. After the panic and chaos of a twenty hour flight, I settled in for fourteen days of quarantine in a dimly-lit hotel room. Apart from a fully masked medic who took my daily temperature, the narrow door to my room was never opened. All I had was a dusty twenty-first floor window that overlooked a city of lights. By nightfall, the LED signs of my adjacent buildings would flash brilliant colors into a grayscale sky. For twelve of my fourteen days, I sat and watched those lights until dawn.
Day after day, I approached dawn with bloody eyes of exhaustion. Then, as the first rays of sunlight broke through the horizon, I would drift into the hazy, purgatoric zone between the lines of sleep and wake. Walking through the systematic routines of eating and showering in a dream-like state of confusion, I returned to consciousness only after the last glimmer of dusk had made its full retreat.
As day merged with night, time seemed to have melted into an irretrievable heap. What remained was a haunting void of loneliness that served to magnify my memories until they became blended with delusions. For hours on end, I would stare into a blank screen with a blinking cursor and wait aimlessly for a spark of ignition. I believed, for one reason or another, that a switch would magically click on inside my body. I waited for the moment when my fingers would be liberated from their catatonic states, and imagined the crushing wave of rage that would accompany the spill of boiling blood.
I was a pathetic prisoner who stood behind the bars of an unlocked cell, waiting for someone to tell me I was free to leave — because I was too afraid to open that door for myself.
And so nothing resulted from those two disastrous weeks. I tortured my mind until I felt so unproductive and useless that I could not allow myself to sleep until I passed out. I guess this has been a long-standing habit of mine — sleep deprivation is always the first punishment my brain turns to. It developed in high school and during a time when I had to wake up at five each morning for training. I was well aware that I should be resting before midnight, and yet I chose to watch the clock tic until two or three every morning. It was a haunting guilt that prevented me from closing my eyes, despite the fatigue of a full day of double practice and school. I drowned in the miserable belief that I could accomplish something more in those extra two or three hours, that I could complete just one more assignment, that I could be and should be working more… But in reality, I always ended up spending the last of my shredded energy on keeping my eyelids open, and nothing productive ever resulted from those tormenting hours.
So don’t doubt me when I say: I am that coward who tries to hide until there remains nowhere to hide. The sheep in wolf skin only runs so far before being discovered.
As you can see, I have wasted 144 days only to write such a tedious piece of unorganized thoughts. And even writing this now… I have wasted 882 words before coming to my intended purpose.
Grandma passed away in the last hour of my math final.
It was the last of all my finals. After a week full of brain-frying testing, I was more than ready to throw my hands up and tell the world that I have completed my first round of college finals. I was proud, after all, for my first ten weeks at Stanford.
My flight home was booked for four days after this last exam. I looked forward, with considerable excitement, to the four stress-free days of partying I would get to enjoy with friends. It never occurred to me that, while I bathed under a sunny California sky and biked through perfectly-trimmed palm trees, my whole family would be clustered in the narrow hallways of a hospital, waiting for the inevitable end.
For all the frequent big and small visits that my grandma has made to that hospital in recent years, it never occurred to me that this one would be the last.
In announcing the news of grandma’s hospitalization three days before that last exam, my mother’s words seemed to be miles away from disaster. But maybe it was because that was day one of finals week, maybe it was because I was so caught up in studying, and maybe it was me who chose not to register the quiver in her voice. After all, I responded with such a cruel nod.
In that last video call two days before my grandma’s death, my mother handed the phone over to her. She was wearing the typical striped clothes of hospital patients and had a plastic tube running under her nose. I remember being somewhat startled by how frail she appeared, but my brain seemed to have discarded that piece of information without ever processing it. I told grandma that I just had one exam left, and she said to me, in an urgent tone: “Don’t worry about me, I’m fine, I’m fine. Do well on your exam. Don’t worry about me.”
I never said goodbye.
On the morning of my last exam, I woke up to two missed calls from my mother and a Wechat message that reads: Would you like to change your flight to tomorrow?
At first, I was bewildered by the question. I knew it would cost an unnecessary amount to change a flight by three days, yet… Then it dawned on me. Maybe something bad had happened. Maybe...could it be...something with grandma?
I returned the call but no one answered. I tried two more times throughout that morning. The fear was somewhat fading as the time of my exam neared. She would have returned the call by now if it really was some pressing issue, I thought to myself as I opened my math notes and began studying.
I was already standing outside the lecture room when mother finally called back. I had the phone held up between my ear and shoulder as I locked my bike in place. I was annoyed, frustrated, and nervous all at once. “Why did you call me at four in the morning? Why didn’t you pick up my calls? I’m literally outside my exam room right now and you finally call me.”
“Oh,” she said. “Then go and take your exam. Call me once you’re done.”
“What? No, just tell me. What did you mean by changing my flight?”
“I meant exactly what the words mean. Now go and take your exam.” She was practically yelling at me.
I felt irritated. Why was she the one yelling at me? Why is she so suddenly so agitated? I hung up and walked into my exam.
It was an easy test. I finished in less than an hour and a half. And yet I stayed for the full three hours. Out of what, I don’t, and never will know.
I sat down in Tresidder before returning the call — I was thinking of what I should buy for dinner as a treat for completing my first quarter. This time, I clearly heard the quiver in my mother’s voice.
I remember having a difficult time breathing as I biked back towards my dorm. I had my hood over my head and my arms were shaking uncontrollably.
It has always been part of that pathetic nature of mine — the inability to cry in front of others. As I went to drop off my backpack in my room, I bumped into people.
“How was your last exam?”
“Oh it was actually pretty chill! I finished like way before time was up and...omg I’m so glad to be finally free.”
Someone was playing with the gears in my brain. Someone was clogging up the tear ducts.
I had walked all the way to the far side of Lake Lagunita until I was finally able to cry. Sitting by the twisting roots of some thick tree trunk, I stared into a sky with beautiful clouds and sobbed in silence. I started playing a movie of memories inside my head.
They were so excruciatingly detailed yet hazy, so close yet untouchable all at the same time.
The months of homeschooling, the food we made together, the sewing we did...her taking me to the market to buy my first wallet, her teaching me my first Chinese characters, her bringing me a bag full of snacks when I couldn’t sleep at night...there was too much I remembered and too much I couldn’t remember.
Perhaps it’s because I promised her I will publish a book and I never did. Perhaps it’s because I’ve always prayed for her to see me go to a good university and stopped praying after that wish was fulfilled. Perhaps it’s because I should have known, as someone interested in a medical career, that when my mother told me “it’s a tear in her artery”, it was bound to become fatal.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have always been in a rush to go off to work while I was visiting her that past summer. Perhaps I should have finished all the food she prepared for me. Perhaps I should have hugged her tighter when I left.
Perhaps I should have questioned my mother with more patience and paid better attention to her clues. Perhaps I should have walked out of that exam right after I was done instead of waiting for one more hour. Perhaps I would have had a chance to say farewell.
It angered me that every person in my family knew the fatality of her situation from the first day of her hospitalization except for me. It angered me that they all thought a math exam was worth more than my goodbye, and that it was enough to deprive me of my rights to know. It angered me that I was so close to going home, and yet she couldn’t wait for me.
The funeral happened without my presence — I wouldn’t make it in time even with a flight change. And so those four days became a tortuous journey of counting seconds. I knew the rest of my family were busy preparing for the funeral and so I didn’t bother my parents with phone calls. The extreme loneliness that filled me had nowhere to be spilled.
I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone around me. I was in so much pain and yet I remained so incompetent at expressing my anguish. I detested the sort of pity I would receive in exchange. It never helped to hear people tell me “It’s okay”, because it really is not. Not in the moment of things. But then, some things are not okay and they never will be, and I will learn to live with that. I knew, of course, that my friends were more than willing to listen to me and help share the burden. But I just could not do it — not until months later.
I remember calling my sister on the day of the funeral. I was at a breaking point by then.
I sat in a corner of Flomo’s stairway and blurted out all the guilt that was consuming me. I knew my sister had an even closer relationship with grandma, and yet she sounded so calm and reassuring.
I remember bumping into a friend after that call. I had my hood on again and was frantically wiping my face clear of tears.
It really isn’t that I try to hide it when I am surrounded by friends. I genuinely am happy when I am with them. It’s returning to an empty room to be left alone that tears my world into pieces.
It was this way during high school as well. I would be laughing my head off during practice and at school, but returning to my bed at home would bring a terrifying sense of sadness. During those years, I cut through skin to calm myself because that seemed like the only way to let loose the poison in my blood. I needed the physical pain to take me away from the crushing emotional torment, and I relied on the sight of spilled blood like a sedative drug. I grew increasingly addicted to the drops of crimson flowing down my wrist and to the rusty blade hidden in my drawer.
But then I went to school with sports tape wrapped around and acted like I twisted my wrist by accident. There were people who, in entirely unintentional and joking ways, asked if I had cut myself. Those were the only moments where I would, for a split second, fall back into my despairing reality.
I later turned the blade towards my legs because I found that I had developed a need for deeper cutting. But I was not suicidal. In fact, it was only because I was afraid of cutting too deep on my wrists.
I never called it depression. I begged my mother to take me to our family doctor but never got the nerve to open up and confess my actions. The doctor was always in such a rush and...just didn’t seem like someone who would appreciate my unnecessarily long stories.
My sadness came in unpredictable waves. To leave out excessive details, it eventually calmed towards the end of junior year. I remember being extremely happy in the summer of 2018.
This phase of self-harm went through virtually the same exact process as my prior eating disorder. I was fourteen then, and on the peak of my athletic career. I don’t know exactly why I started being concerned with food, just like how I never knew why I was engulfed by sadness two years later. But all of a sudden, I stopped eating.
The purging came a while later. By then, I have already lost my period and was drifting through school in a chronically fatigued state. I would attend practice but developed extremely painful cramps that caused me to lose control of my legs. And on the most miserable days, I was binge eating.
Then there was a phase where I could not eat without purging. I would stuff cake down my throat only to find myself staring down the toilet moments later. It almost seemed like I was obsessed with making myself vomit.
These actions, of course, happened in secret. I told my coaches that I had an iron deficiency, I told my mother that I don’t feel hungry, and I told myself that I was healthy.
There used to be people who would bewilderingly ask my teammates: “What happened to her? Didn’t she used to be like...really fast?” My teammates would explain that I suffered from some type of injury. But no one could really say what sort of “injury” it was that suddenly knocked me down from all those podium tops, and neither could I.
Those questions used to hurt me quite a bit. But as time went by, I started missing them. After all, they proved that people still remembered me for my accomplishments.
I guess I never really returned to anywhere near the height I was at before. I felt like a warrior who, after winning countless battles, suddenly lost all ability and passion to fight. For the two years that followed my near 30lb weight drop, I was unable to step into competitions without being accompanied by a crushing dread.
I never quite know when exactly these phases start, and I never keep track of when they end. So when my best friend from high school texted to ask how I “walked out of it” just a few months ago, I had no idea what to say. Did I really walk out of all that? What does it even mean to “walk out”? Maybe it just happens so that in this moment I am not under the water, but who knows when something might just pull me down again. It’s a timed bomb that I carry with me.
That friend was sent to the hospital later that day for a suicide related anxiety attack. Once again, I was consumed by anger and guilt.
I was on the verge of a fever that day and just happened to be in Vaden myself for some medication. The very act of biking there had taken away all my energy. Her text hit me with a wave of exhaustion, bringing back unwanted memories during this particularly tiring time.
Despite being available, I made an excuse for being in class and told her I would call later that night. When I did get around to calling, no one picked up.
Later, I learned from another friend that she had been taken to the hospital. The fact that I was probably the last person she turned to in the peak of her despair...the fact that I, of all people, should know and understand the agony she must have felt...the fact that she may have burnt that last straw of hope in reaching out to me...and the fact that I brushed her off with an excuse haunted me to the core.
My freshman year is so far from being ideal. My grandma’s passing and my best friend’s suicide attempt were just two of the events that happened outside of my jolly Stanford bubble.
In November, my great aunt passed away due to surgical complications. She was the closest distant relative I had while growing up because our families were neighbors for twenty years.
Approaching the end of January and my nineteenth birthday, my grandpa was once again diagnosed with cancer. And it just so happens that his surgery coincided with the outbreak of COVID-19.
I felt so powerless in all these situations. Being across the globe, I could not even summon the courage to make necessary phone calls. Hearing my family members’ voices was enough to send me through a tunnel of sadness.
I have been meaning to write all these things down for a long time now, but every previous attempt has ended with a rollercoaster of emotions that had me curled up in pain. So believe me when I say: I have tears running down my face. I don’t really know the purpose of this long and depressing rant, and I don’t mean to conclude it with anything insightful or uplifting. This is, truly and most honestly, how I feel about these past months of my life.
And it was not easy. A couple of sentences here cannot come close to covering the endless amount of emotional grief and pain I have experienced. Describing what once appeared to me like a whole world as a simple “phase” of my life does not mean I have forgotten how it once felt. Writing is powerful, but it is never enough.
Call me a pessimist, whatever. Call me stubborn, dramatic, stupid, delusional… Call me what you like. But know that, while there surely are mental health battles that end with beautiful conclusions about life and love, there are also many that don’t.
It doesn’t always have to. And I don’t want to write down lies just so my story can carry some warmhearted moral message. I wouldn’t go so far as calling it false hope, but I know there are people who will read those lines and ask: but how come I never got better?
For some people, winning is the ability to surround themselves with happiness and joy. But for others, resisting the agonizing urge to pick up a blade already demands a backbreaking amount of courage and determination. One person’s starting point may be the finishing line of another, and that’s just how life turns out to be.
In a world where only successful battles are praised, there seems to be a need to remain happy, okay, sane, confident… I am writing this today to tell myself and whoever reading this, if any at all: I am not okay. But that is okay.
It is okay because I can finally tear off the mask that has been suffocating me for all this time; it is okay because I have endured the pain and clawed through my scars to write these words down; and it is okay because despite all my right and wrongs opinions, at least I will be able to look back at these words and know that it was really me — and not some counterfeit puppet version of me — who wrote them down.