Shanzhai Lu

photo: cc // pattyequalsawesome

i had one of these days today.

i need to write about it so i can look back a few months from now and say "yea, i remember that day. it was pretty messed up. glad i'm in a better space now" this is going to be that kind of blog post. for me. feel free to read along and relate ...or not.

i found out this morning that my uncle's lung cancer was back. he fought it 3 years ago and came out of the surgery and chemo treatments looking like he had aged a decade. i was glad to see him recover. he was just at my son's 5th birthday party the other day too. this is the kind of shit life throws that i hate. my thoughts are with my aunt and cousin and best wishes with my uncle that he gets through this fight again.

i already know that this time of year gets kind of funky for me. it always starts with Labor Day weekend. my mind wanders back and forth between the happiness of my son's birth and the missing auntie of his who got married during Labor Day weekend the year before and then took her own life a month after.

then there's National Suicide Prevention Week. it's this week. each year it gets easier to deal with ...and as it gets easier to deal with, i find myself making use of the strength built on top of the scar tissue and find myself wanting to do my little part to send out some awareness messages about suicide.

so i send this tweet out with a link to a good Huffington Post post on how to help save a young life from suicide. I usually get some good retweets from really great people who spread the word -- and feel good about doing my little part to raise a bit of awareness. no big deal right?

but then i get a reply from a nice woman just a minute after that tweet and she says "@christinelu I lost my 12 year old daughter... It means so much to have all this awareness... God bless xx" -- and i lost it. started fucking crying. 12 year old daughter. i can't stand it. can you imagine? i can't. but many of us are parents with young children. can you imagine losing your 12 year old daughter in this way? my already emotional train wreck of a day got really really sad when reading that.

so i went for a run. i loved it.  i put an Imogen Heap song on repeat for an hour and just ran. 6 miles today. it was good for me. some people can sit still in one place and meditate. i need to move. in the process of challenging myself to run a marathon this year, i've picked up my own version of meditiation. a lot of things that have been weighing on me lately usually get a bit of clarity or worked out following one of these runs.

the good thing is, days like this remind me that all the other stuff i've been stressing out over is really small stupid shit in the big scheme of things. the startup i'm excited about is just a startup i'm excited about. the money that i need to make to support myself and my son ...is just money that can be made when it needs to be made. and i've been doing a pretty good job at it since the divorce. and the silly summer crush i had on a guy i don't really know is just a silly crush i had on a guy who doesn't really know me. so there you go. little things in life solved from a 6 mile run.

so i get back from my run and get pulled into some extended family issues in Taiwan that i was hoping to avoid getting involved with. i realized today i had no choice. my mom needs my help. if you ever want to understand why i don't care about money, just remind me to share the story of how it destroyed my family in Taiwan over the last few decades. seriously sad.

and then there's my mom. if you think this time of year is bad on me, you only need to look at my mom. it's really sad actually. she still hasn't forgiven herself all these years. she thinks she pushed my sister to the brink of burnout at age 30. which is ridiculous. but it's hard to get through to her when she's feeling this way. every year i have to remind her that she's got 3 other kids (me included) who are alive, doing well and need her to try and find some balance and peace when all is said and done. it's really hard though. there are some things that i believe you can never fully heal from. losing a child to suicide the way my mom lost my sister is one of them.

so anyways, before you go thinking i'm a big bucket of tears. i'm fine. it's just one of those days. we all have them and we should be allowed to ride it out and let it take us where we need to go sometimes.

i had one of these days today.