spring

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on april fool's day i accidentally drove a forklift into a shelf containing thousands of pounds worth of resin. oops! unluckily, i didn't get fired but it did give me horrible anxiety for like the next full week. i had to go and make a slideshow for the monthly safety teams call. i also didn't know i was presenting it until the day of. oh well, mistakes happen i suppose. my supervisor didn't make a big deal out of it, in fact, my whole team was very supportive and understanding.

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we met in green bay; it was just happenstance that i was going there to go to the arcade, and she was going there to get groceries because the little hodunk boondock town she lived in had no grocery store. we decided to go to the arcade together. i had a beer, their signature pinball pilsner, and she had a shirley temple. the pilsner tasted like vomit and the bartender accidentally made her a dirty shirley temple. we played guitar hero and i got the high score for miss pacman, which was celebrated with a hug (take that, KHHV allegation).

after leaving the arcade, we went grocery shopping. we went shopping at some place called woodman's because it was open 24/7 and it was 2:00 am. she bought stuff for tiramisu and matcha cupcakes, which she was making for a play she was directing.

maybe a week later, we met up again after her shift to eat at a diner in bonduel. bonduel is another scary hodunk boondock town that's actively haunted by ghosts and crackheads, and it being 3:00 am didn't help that haunted vibe. the diner was nasty, all the surfaces seemed to be covered in grease and my water cup had lipstick stains all over it. the food was also very greasy and not very good. i remember watching her eat and being kind of grossed out, not sure exactly what i was feeling but i just felt really uncomfortable being there. i didn't really want to meet this girl again, but i never told her that. i felt extremely guilty for not being able to tell her straight up that i wasn't interested in her anymore...

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eating pizza with some guy named dalton. don't remember much because i drank so much.

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one day, i decided to get ice cream at my favorite ice cream joint, legendairy. it's located in downtown appleton and that makes it perfect for skating down the strip. mint chocolate chip in hand, skateboard underneath me, i took in everything: the weather, people walking past, the ice cream dripping down my fingertips onto my board. as i looked down at my board i realized that my shirt had an ice cream cone graphic on it! even though this is admittedly a very small and insignificant thing, i look back on this day fondly.

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i matched with this girl, we bonded over styling long hair. she asked me about my hair, at the time, it was far past my shoulders and had tons of split ends. she recommended me a wolf cut and maybe a month later i got one. we decided to meet up after a few phone calls. i didn't realize how awkward i was until these phone calls because i could not for the life of me say anything at all about myself. it felt like everything she was telling me was the most interesting thing in the world, and anything i could ever do didn't matter, even if she was just like waiting tables or visiting her friends. did i not feel important enough to talk? i guess i just have terrible social skills and crippling anxiety. i wanted to make sure that this date wasn't going to be like the last few times; i was gonna really try hard to not dissociate, express my emotions through words and i was going to make the day feel special. i bought a rose from pick n' save and had it kept in a solution of vinegar water. cleaned every part of my car and got some air fresheners that smelled like bourbon and vanilla.

while driving in berlin, i noticed that the place was really pretty, which was weird, because it's some sub-1000 population village in wisconsin. most of the time any sub-1000 town looks like it's haunted by ghosts. or crackheads. much like the town, she was beautiful. i picked her up from her house and she complimented my music taste (thank you camp adventure by delta sleep). she showed me her favorite artists: dpr ian and hemlocke springs. we ate at some mexican restaurant; can't remember the name. i had arroz con pollo and she had a giant burrito. my chicken was really dry and chewy but it was probably the best mexican food i had in wisconsin. next, we went to menominee park, where we walked around the trail. she had said something about if the plural for goose is gooses and we had a fun conversation about the fred movies. it was nice walking around, trying to avoid the biblical amounts of river flies attempting to crawl into our mouths and the geese poop that littered the floor. at some points it seemed like the river flies blocked out the sun. we held hands and i felt like a little boy again. we then got ice cream at culver's. well actually, i got a root beer float but ice cream was the plan. she had asked me how long my internship was and i told her my contract ends in december. she made a slightly confused face and her demeanor changed. i set my hand on top of hers but it went completely unacknowledged. i tried squeezing her hand trying to get a response back, but nothing. it was definitely over LOL. i dropped her off, we hugged and she told me to take our relationship slow. maybe it isn't over?

it's over. in the end she told me that although i was very sweet, we aren't compatible. maybe it was because i told her i was leaving in december, but it probably was i had no idea how to talk to her even though we had like all of the same interests growing up. 90% of the date was me listening to her talk and that was definitely my fault; i just didn't know how to talk about what i've experienced in my life. i was just asking her questions about hers, and if she wanted to talk to a chatbot, she could just do that.

even though it didn't work out, i'm happy i got the chance to spend time with her.

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indifference

it kind of hit me after that date that i was pretty sure i had a problem, i just felt totally indifferent about everything. i think a switch got flipped when i turned 18 that made it so i didn't really care about anything and it felt like i was living in third person. i decided to swallow my five year pride and find a therapist.

at first, i was looking for therapists online but no one was returning my emails. psychology is like the worst profession you could ignore potential customers with, what if you responded to me a month later and i've already blown my head off clean off??? the search in person wasn't easy either, i must have called twenty offices and went to ten of them in person. it seemed like every office needed a pcp referral, wasn't open past noon, wasn't open on the weekend, didn't exist anymore or was all of the above. they really made it difficult for anyone with a 9 to 5 job go to therapy. i finally found a therapist after maybe three weeks of searching.

terrible, terrible experience. i told her that i don't feel connected to being korean but that it doesn't really affect me on any emotional level. it's more or less just something that i am because my parents are korean. i spent the first two sessions sitting in a chair while my therapist, who has never seen a korean person before, googled stuff like "confucius values" and "kpop". i decided i had enough when she asked me, "what do korean people eat? what did you grow up eating?", "sure, we ate a lot of fermented food but please tell me what this has to do with anything i think i have bigger problems than telling you that i ate kimchi when i was little"

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