#Because he clearly changed the policy to let Daniel only compete in the final match

[desolateice]

Uh KK3 I hate to keep picking apart your logic but it’s called the All Valley Under 18. According to the wiki Daniel’s birthday is December 18, 1966. Which means he’s 18 the first time when he competes against Johnny, and so he’s 19 for the the tournament in KK3 because his birthday comes before the annual competition, so he shouldn’t even qualify right???? Should he even have been able to compete in the first one? I guess because it’d just been his birthday he must’ve been in the clear for that one. But still. Technically between the illegal kick in KK1 and being 19 for KK3 he shouldn’t have won either of them? What do I do with this information? I guess set it aside for a future CK fic. But Daniel...technically you shouldn’t have either trophy. 

[jade-ngoc-yeshim]

1. The M.O.

Why did I start this blog?  I have no plain and straightforward answer to offer; it’s a coalescence of several factors—some tangible; some I’ve yet to identify; and some rustling around in the pit of my stomach, for which I lack the words to will into coherence.  But I will try my best to explain:

2019—my 25th year of existence—I will always reflect on and refer to as “The Crumbling.”  It was the year when I lost myself to a number of competing forces: work, love, extraordinary circumstances, and the cyclical churn of life.  Those who’ve known me for a long time would characterize me as incredibly stable; risk-averse; always planning for the long-term; cripplingly self-aware; and always doggedly marching uphill towards a set of well-defined, high flying goals.  My tunnel vision was impressive.  My modus operandi clearly articulated.  My drive unflappable.

The inertia behind it all was guilt.  I had guilt about a lot of things:

Firstly, I had access to the full gamut of opportunities that were ripped away from my parents by war and displacement.  I had to make up for this as their only child.  Fuck selfish millennial self-realization.  I had to live for three.

Secondly, my birth-given liminality.  That I, as a second-generation immigrant/migrant/refugee (whatever legal or sociocultural label you deign to ascribe to my personhood), stand at the boundary between homeland and foreign land (cum new “home”), Vietnam and America, past and present.  It is difficult to occupy two spaces; oftentimes, I feel that I am in neither, and that the only comfortable place to inhabit is the hyphen that tenuously connects “Vietnamese” and “American.”  To straddle two identities is to be constantly uncomfortable.  It requires a lot of shifting, recalibration, and a lot of stumbling.  I was never Vietnamese enough, and so others shamed my parents for not doing a good job in raising me.  I was never American enough, and so I shamed myself into invisibility.

Third, being a Vietnamese woman.  The consequences of veering off-course extend far beyond you.  The stories uttered in hushed tones about one’s paternal second cousin twice removed from Cleveland or what have you:  She had such promise.  She had the potential to become an engineer or doctor—to elevate her family’s social status.  But she just had to succumb to the vices of the typical Vietnamese woman:  boys, hard substances, and the cold, hard draw of under-the-table cash from working in auntie’s nail salon.  And so my existence as a young, OK-looking, Vietnamese-American woman in a foreign land with many foreign ideas inherently made me a flight risk.  And so be it.  And so it is.

Turns out, guilt is a great motivator.  It led me to unbelievable achievements at a very tender age:   becoming valedictorian of my high school class; being the first of my family’s generation to go to college; graduating summa cum laude from an Ivy League institution; becoming a Rhodes Scholarship finalist in one of the most competitive districts in the U.S., winning a full scholarship for a master’s program in the United Kingdom; graduating with high marks from the world’s best refugee and migration studies course at the University of Oxford; landing my first real job working for USAID; and having the privilege of serving as a Program Officer for the Syria humanitarian crisis during some of the most tumultuous times in the war’s history.

But what is the point of great material achievement when it comes at the expense of other, more important aspects of your life?  

For most of my adult life thus far, I have foregone love, social engagements, precious time spent with family, and beloved hobbies in the ruthless pursuit of achievement.  I let go of art, music, good men, and good times.  I was constantly hunched over my laptop, producing—worrying my friends and family sick in my permanently crooked state.  And I kept going, motivated by a dangerous cocktail of excitement over how much I was gaining and the eternal damnation of imposter syndrome.  I thought that I can rest only when I become successful, with no clearly identifiable marker or metrics for success.

I get easily carried away, but I am not stupid.  I knew the bubble had to burst at some point.

I just didn’t know how violently it could.

///

“The Crumbling” was a sudden conflagration with a long kindling period.  The first match was struck at Oxford, when my lack of romantic savvy led to my falling in lust/infatuation with a narcissistic, well-networked man who offered me manufactured kindness during a very confusing time in my life.  To put things colloquially, I was “lost in the sauce.”  I was fixated on how much I didn’t belong at my graduate institution and felt so sorry for myself.  I craved validation and understanding; it was the soporific I needed for my weeks’ long insomnia, the Xanax for my constant worries, and the energy boost I needed to wake me from my malaise.  I was emotionally hemorrhaging.  And smelling blood, he barreled towards me.

He raped me when I was drunk in my own bedroom.  He weaponized the insecurities I shared with him against me.  He further emptied me of whom I was, spun a narrative of how I was a pitiful, love-drunk woman who deserved what he done to her; and made my home away from home a fundamentally unsafe place.  And the only coping mechanism I knew was to dive head-first into work—to fill my empty spaces through the only way I knew: producing.  

It was the wrong answer.  But I managed to see myself through to the end of my master’s with it, albeit with a few sacrifices:  Never attending my own graduation out of fear of seeing my rapist again.  A bitter distaste for life.  An inherent fear of men and relationships (and of my own shadow) that went long unresolved.  Strained communication with my parents.  And a further shattered sense of self-worth.

///

Things were fine for a year or so when I was caught up in a flurry of new beginnings: moving to a new city, starting a dream job in a dream organization, and making my first furtive steps into adulthood.  I was occupied with finding my identify as a young professional and invested my heart and soul into my new career.  And on a fateful afternoon in September 2018, I was tapped for my first humanitarian deployment to Adana, Turkey—a three-month commitment that doubled just a month into my stay.  

It was thrilling.  It was exhilarating.  It was empowering to be the face of U.S. humanitarian assistance in northern Syria at 24.  But as exciting as it was, it was also overwhelmingly terrifying to sit at the helm of a humanitarian juggernaut as the trajectory of American foreign policy changed overnight.  From December onward, Turkey was an amalgam of mild PTSD, living in hotels, unpacking and re-packing, armored vehicles, Jack Daniels, furtive puffs of Marlboro Milds, military men, street cats, insecurity, getting rowdy, hardened alternative trailer systems, over-caffeination, and exhaustion.  

I traveled to beautiful places.  I broke hearts, and I encountered love.  I was where the action was.  I was living out my wildest dreams.  I had purpose.  I felt alive, and maybe for the first time.  I sincerely believed that I would always look back at Turkey as my golden era.

/// Wheels down ADA-FRA-IAD.  Enter “The Crumbling” in full force. ///

What does it mean when the “golden era” of your life—the moment when you most felt alive—was wholly illusory?

When you look back several months later, scratch through the vermeil, and find nothing but the shaky foundations underpinning your drawn-out, whisky- and cardamom-scented daydream?  

When the person you fell in love with—the first after being raped, the one who earnestly listened to you recounting your survivor story—ended up emotionally using and abusing you, as well?

When, despite putting in blood, sweat, and tears into your work (quantified at approximately 10-12 hours a day, inclusive of weekends), your supervisor tells you to reconsider whether humanitarian work is right for you?

When deployment is no longer an option for you because of that, and you come face-to-face with the crushing reality that you never built a life in your home base.  (Rephrased:  When there is no escape from the void.)

When the wounds finally start to seal up, and then your grandfather passes away.  And suddenly you’re shoulder-to-shoulder at his altar with the extended family who narcissistically abused you during your youth? (Re: The past rears its ugly head again.)

The symptoms of all of this occurring within a 3-month timespan were:

Losing 20 pounds;

Vacillating between sleeping constantly and not at all;

Your loved ones remarking that the light in your eyes has completely vanished;

Hours and hours of self-help podcasts;

A lot of consolatory chocolate from coworkers who’ve noticed that something is terribly amiss with you;

Near-constant mental haze;

Ostinatos of teary-eyed apologies to your friends, whom you’re convinced you’ve burdened;

Manic consumerism;

Trying to harvest endorphins through prolonged cardio sessions;

Taking a lot of strange vitamins and supplements that didn’t do anything, other than make you dehydrated;

Frequent panic attacks; and

Desperate forays into various branches of spirituality (inclusive of a cheap [actually not cheap at all] psychic who tells you that you’re the victim of both black karma and an inter-generational love curse [!]…but at least she had an adorable cat.).

Tl;dr:  It’s depression.  Horrendous, soul-crushing depression, and constant anxiety over the other shoe dropping.  It’s coming to terms with the daunting reality that the only way out is to roll your sleeves up and start laying the foundations of your identity brick-by-brick.  It’s coming to grips with the fact that you have no sense of self outside of what you do.  What is the point of accumulating achievements when you never pause to appreciate them?  

What is the point of working tirelessly for others, when you make no time to sit with them and to enjoy all of the abundance together?  What is the point of life when it is all prospective?

Do you truly have a sense of self when you have relied on others to give you meaning your entire life?

///

As the thick haze of “The Crumbling” dissipated, I arrived at a bit of clarity:  That what had passed had not happened to me, but for me.  That the shaky foundations on which I rested my already fragile sense of self needed to collapse—that I needed to collapse—in order to build something that was truly steady and purposeful.  

All is not lost.  On the contrary, the ashes borne from the waves of trauma that I endured over these past several months are but the rich inputs for a more fortified way of being.  

I would be remiss to not document the process along the way.  A process I will affectionately refer to as “The Awakening.”