Sitting in that conference room, I recognized, as I usually do in most rooms, how visible parts of my identity are: Asian, mostly femme-presenting, Big Neurodivergent Queer Energy. But, to borrow a dear friend’s words, I was reminded of how much of a bubble I live in. I’m blessed that the majority of my community and circle of friends are queer or very closely queer-adjacent, gorgeously trans or very aware of the spectrum, and able to hold two or more ideas (that usually conflict, even!) as true at the same time. There’s intuition and flexibility there, in intimately knowing what it means to interrogate and navigate fluidity on a constant basis. (Okay, and also lots and LOTS of agonizing over everything, but isn’t that what being gay’s all about? lol)

All that to say - I’ve been really lax about pronouns (all of my online profiles have said some variation of “Any Pronouns (they/he/she)” for a while, including at work). My bubble made it easy to not need to. And it’s never been the most important part of who I am! Or at least, that’s what I’ve always told myself. I love nuance. I love context. But sometimes, you need to name a thing, even if that comes with the burden of taking on someone else’s insecurities and willful ignorance. (Spoiler alert: you do not need to take that on. Don’t take that on!!!)

Being she/her’d hasn’t ever really been the thing that frustrates me - it’s the idea that female pronouns are the default because that’s what people assume I am. Now, there’s layers to everything. (Remember that whole “able to hold two or more ideas as true at the same time” thing?) For example, I know a lot of people who learned English as a second or third or even fourth language, and they get pronouns wrong all the time on accident. Trans friends are the same. We’re all just people, and people make mistakes! The important thing is how you, and others, move through those mistakes. Here’s the best, most useful, most succinct guidance on what to do if you mess up someone’s pronouns, or are deathly afraid of doing so. It’s super short - seriously, read it.

I can hear you wanting to ask: Kristi, why are you so fucking chill about this?

Well, I would argue that writing a whole blog post to point people to who I haven’t told yet is the opposite of chill. And also, I’m medicated.

… Just kidding. That’s a part of it, sure, but the bigger picture is that I’ve done a lot of work on myself and have a great support system, and I’m probably the most emotionally-regulated I’ve ever been in my life! (If you didn’t know, PMS makes my ADHD worse even on stimulants, along with all the usual issues hormonal dips and peaks bring. Which is like… why. Why does it have to be like this!!!!! Anyway, shoutout to the ring, I never want to go back to oral birth control ever again.)

So, to (re?)introduce myself: hi! I’m Kristi, or K, I’m some flavour of non-binary/genderfluid-y, and I’m currently exclusively using they/them pronouns because it brings me the most gender euphoria. I like to daydream, and am easily identified by my very loud cackle.

Most of this has been drafted and sitting around for about two weeks, but I’ve had some very transformative conversations during that time and I’m ready to set this one free!

Thanks for reading, y’all 💜

Does it have a shape?

A box, maybe, or a suitcase. Something made to carry around with you. Or it could be like a lake; a hazily-bordered body. Doesn’t easily show its depth. At the whims of whatever’s thrown into it.

To me, at least in this moment, it looks like something more mundane. The way it’s woven itself so closely to the fabric of the everyday, so I don’t notice until it’s poking at me: a snapped thread, skipped stitches.

That’s how I feel right now, remembering Uncle Richard.

Uncle Richard was family by choice, the husband of one of my mom’s first friends after immigrating to Canada, in a group that’s stayed close for over thirty years. He was dad’s best man at my parents’ wedding, and became my godfather when I was baptized. In January, he’ll have been gone for eleven years.

Realizing that was startling. What do you mean it’s been eleven years? What even is eleven years?

(Time, of course, is another shape hard to define.)

Earlier, fresh off a call with my mom where he was mentioned, I found myself thinking about him. I remember him being a voracious reader; in the summers, he would stand waist-deep in Osoyoos Lake, e-reader in one hand, beer in the other.

Anyways, I was remembering him being someone who loved reading, thinking of him with his glasses halfway down his nose in the classic reader’s pose, tucked into the corner of the couch in their old Chilliwack home, and suddenly: I was crying. It came on fast - faster than I was expecting, certainly, since I’d just been talking about him over the phone and it was fine. But it’s because I thought, quietly, and with aimless intent, I’d really like to hear him talk about books.

(Instant tears, damn everything.)

What kind of books did he enjoy? Like, really enjoy? (And, what kind did he vehemently abhor? Listening to someone passionately shit-talk a topic of relative inconsequence can be, by far, one of the most interesting and fun things to do.) Did he like the opportunity to learn, or was it the growth in thoughtfulness that drew him?

I think of these questions, and know that what I mourn most is not having grown into my curiosity when he was still alive. I remember him, and am given memories of him by others, and see a person I would have valued deeply. A person I would have liked very much.

(Loving someone does not always equal liking them.)

(I know you know that’s true.)

I mourn the conversations we’ll never have. The perspective I’ll never know. The nuance and shadow and context that I won’t get to discover through my own lens; things that made him a whole person, and not just the figure I grew up with. I get mad when he shows up in dreams, because I know it’s not the real dimensionality I want: the flaws and insecurities and ugliness that made him real like my parents are real, like the other adults in my life became “real”.

I can’t shatter the illusion of him - the fragments of lived experience that I haven’t forgotten, pieced together in an approximation of how I thought he presented himself - only place another one on top of it.

(And yes, in some ways, we are all illusions to each other. But that’s for another time.)

There’s one memory that sticks out more than the others, time smoothing the edges and flattening it out, but the details of import remain.

I’m not really an athletic person, by any means. ADHD lends itself well to being clumsy, and not super great at depth perception - and besides that I’ve always leaned towards the daydreamer, bookish side of the spectrum. But one summer, on a hazy day in the shallows of Osoyoos Lake, I got roped into throwing a football around.

We’d learned (very briefly) how to throw one in high school gym class. Something about fingers on the laces; something about your back foot; something about your elbow. For some reason, I was really enjoying it, but as people kept drifting off to other things, it was just me and Uncle Richard left. I kept getting frustrated by not having enough power to get the ball to him, falling a foot or two out of reach each time. The self-deprecation came out, because I was nineteen (maybe?), and, y’know, had undiagnosed ADHD. (See manifested here: a complex with perfectionism; anxiety around taking up someone’s time; fear of being unwanted and unliked; using humour as a calculated defence against inevitable failure.)

But the reconstructed version of him in my mind wasn’t concerned with any of that. I can’t recall the sequence of words that built up his sentences anymore, just the feeling they left behind, but it went something like:

Look, he said, pointing when the ball landed with a small thwack against the water’s surface. Your aim is great, nine times out of ten it comes straight at me. The other guys couldn’t do that. Doesn’t matter if it stops a little short.

I don’t know how long we stayed out there, but it was a while. Enough that I knew he was indulging me, throwing a football back and forth, on a long summer afternoon that crawled into the evening.

(I’m rolling my eyes in both exasperation and fondness. The whole thing sounds exactly like a scene ripped straight out of a wholesome coming-of-age movie.)

From this, at least, I can extrapolate the following, which I’m sure would have carried into the present: that he was encouraging; that he was engaged; and that he was considerate. These are difficult things for people to be, actively, meaningfully, as someone who tries their hardest to move through the world in those ways. It’s not something I would have considered as deeply back then as I do now, besides being an act of kindness. But now I work with people, on a level where those traits and behaviour matter an incredible amount, and I feel goopy (read: emotional) about this all over again.

I appreciate so, so much, having been able to see this, in that small memory; in other small moments I carry.

If you’re feeling out the shape of your grief, know that it’s worthwhile work. For whatever you’re grieving, both for yourself and those around you. Mapping it can look different over the years, in the day-to-day, and changes in solitude and in collectives.

Sending y’all lots of love 💜

Special thanks to my mom for the pictures.

Upon hearing this for the first time as I listened through the album, I choked out some approximation of a mourning wail, and threw a very betrayed look at the bluetooth speaker it was playing from.

Everything about this speaks to the little hot-eyed demon sitting in my ribcage that’s infatuated with sweetly earnest yearning; the kind of melancholy that you sink your toes into like tide-soaked sand.

This is the wistful lover standing under the lonely streetlight, fingers twisting the stem of a single rose. This is the blood-rush flush of feeling the moment slip away, fizzy and bright and fleeting. Everything is beautiful and everything hurts.

(And the hurt is so, so lovely.)

Like a sizeable chunk of the internet who liked to roam the wilds of YouTube in the 2010s, I was a dodie stan. Through them I eventually found Orla Gartland, and now they’re in a band together, and!! They’re really excellent!!!! This song is so incredibly fun, holy shit. But the complexity of the harmonies? Like, are you kidding me?

The immediate feeling of building excitement, then getting kicked right into a celebratory sense of abandon - this is the soundtrack to your college-indie-coming-of-age-friendship-is-magic main character daydream.

One of my best friends in high school introduced me to Wicked, which is why, after Stephen Schwartz (the composer and lyricist) talked about the story behind writing “For Good”, I sang the whole thing along with them and cried my fucking eyes out while watching this at 5pm with the curtains open in broad daylight, in front of God and all the neighbouring buildings.

Nostalgia is a double-edged sword, friends! Stay vigilant! 🥲

This song fucking slaps, and what I mean by that is the bass line goes SO crazy hard, you have no idea where your face is because it’s been blown off to who even knows what far-flung corner of the Earth exists. Who cares! Wait until you get to the chorus and thank me later.

No-nonsense. Does a great job. Truly an icon for a dry-skinned babe like me.

Before I turned thirty, I was one hundred percent That Guy™️ who used body lotion on my face, because I was a heathen (by many passionate accounts). To be fair, I never really had any visible pores or wrinkles, and as far as I could tell, the Curel was doing its job to keep my face moisturized. What else did I really need to do? A multi-step skincare routine? As the kids say these days, be so fucking for real.

Except, completely outside of my control, it was like I crossed some kind of unseen, magical barrier after my thirtieth birthday. My usually supple cheeks had new dry patches. I had crow’s feet instead of toes. Panic set in, borne from the distant echo of my mom’s imaginary “told you so”, all the way from the suburbs.

What followed was, I’m sure, a much more mundane version of a movie research montage. I can’t really remember a lot of the details, but it likely involved reviews and tutorials from beauty vloggers, and the occasional random blog post. After that it was just trial and error until I settled on something that didn’t take too much time, wasn’t too complicated, and felt good.

But that’s the thing I’ve come to appreciate most, and didn’t foresee happening: the process of applying skincare feels good - and not just in a surface-level way. (The jokes write themselves, folks! And they have layers.)

Whenever I’d tried to meditate (to gain clarity, or achieve inner peace, or try not to murder an English paper for Classical and Biblical Backgrounds to Modern Literature, et cetera ad infinitum), it always ended in frustration for any number of reasons. My brain wandered. I couldn’t stop the looping background noise of whatever song caught my attention (but only the two lines that are really goddamn catchy). There was a persistent need to tense the muscles in my legs that I tried to ignore, and inevitably couldn’t. Take your pick.

Imagine my surprise when, with wonderful, serendipitous luck, I realized my skincare routine somehow slipped into occupying a similar space.

Maybe it’s the soothing repetition of it all. I know what comes next after each step; muscle memory, but also something like morning soft focus. My knuckles, familiar with the paths to encourage lymphatic fluid to drain, when gliding over cleansing balm. The correct order for essence, serum, eye cream, moisturizer. It all smells vaguely good, either in a natural way or a chemical way, depending on the ingredients and formula. Texture ranges from thick and lush to watery and refreshing. And at the end of it all, the glow is no joke, y’all. Less glazed donut, more dewy river sprite.

My head is usually satisfyingly uncluttered, though not empty. I float through the process, active participant and bystander all at once. Plus - and this is very important - I get to wear a disgustingly cute BT21 headband to keep the hair out of my face. It’s a great time.

So, maybe I can’t sit down in lotus pose and clear my mind to cultivate a peaceful state. It’s just not something my brain or my body are capable of. But, I can take care of my skin and zone out to an approximation of meditation at the same time, which, honestly?

Hell yeah.

From me and my cutie headband, I hope you’re able to find the unexpected thing that gives you space - whatever that space looks like for you.

No idea why that was the cut-off, really. I mean, it’s a nice enough number; feels very official, somehow. A milestone, more than eighteen, nineteen, or twenty-one ever did.

The image in my head was always pretty vague, too. I didn’t know much about what I wanted out of adulthood, at that age, save for what was mainstream to want: maybe a house, maybe a husband, maybe kids. No thoughts for what I would actually be doing, though. How would I support myself? What were my goals? How would I feel?

Maybe: A House

I knew I couldn’t wait to move out. The second I was making enough money, I packed up what I could and parked myself in a laneway house in South Vancouver with one of my best friends, to start what felt like the beginning of my adult life. It was cute, filled with cackles, and just a bit chaotic; we called it the Little Blue Laneway.

Here’s a truth: I was a mediocre roommate, and it made me feel bad. Like, really bad. I knew that I’d be best living on my own, but I despaired of ever being able to afford renting by myself. And being tied down to a mortgage made my throat clog up with abstract horror. It barely even crossed my mind as a possibility, anyhow.

So you can maybe understand how shocked I was to be purchasing a whole-ass apartment, just shy of six months before I turned thirty.

Every step of the way, I felt like a fraud - what do you mean someone was letting me buy this place? I’d never handled this much money in my life, and they were trusting me to know things. It was terrifying. It happened so fast.

But I suppose that’s just how time operates.

(Gross.)

Maybe: A Husband

I think I was fourteen when my mom looked at me over the comically large kitchen table, in our bright yellow dining nook, and said something to the effect of: “You know, it’s okay if you’re a lesbian.”

When I came out to her at twenty-eight, as some nebulous flavour of pan/queer, I told her she was at least partially right.

Regardless of the shape they took, I’d always been fairly certain I wasn’t going to get married, and was therefore unconcerned about a spouse. The spectacle of a wedding was and is a little too much for me, as was tying myself to another person for life.

(Being “tied” to a mortgage, “tying” myself to another person. Do I… have commitment issues?)

(Could just be the ADHD.)

But, I know a lot more about relationships now, and the strong foundations I need for one, like trust, vulnerability, patience, humour.

None of that needs a legal document and a party to be real.

Maybe: Kids

A fuzzy-clear memory I have is from somewhere in my preteen years, walking back to the family car through a parking lot, and I turn around to look at my mom to declare that I will never, ever, have kids.

The only time - the only time - that I gave it any thought was when my high school boyfriend talked about having children, and I acted like he was the sun I revolved around. Other than that, it’s been a hard no. It still is a hard no.

But for some reason, this was the hardest one for other people to shake.

(I’m blaming the patriarchy, obviously!!!!)

Anyways, I know full well that there’s a possibility I could change my mind, or circumstances shift where I’m taking on the care of a tiny human, but I’m not sure anyone who’s ever told me some variation of “well, you never know!” or “that’s what I thought, too” realized just how much of my agency they’re trying to take away. As if what I say or choose in this matter has no bearing on what I was made for, which is horrible and horrifying and makes me want to shred some curtains with my bare hands.

I’m not even going to touch the body horror stuff because, yikes, y’all. Absolutely not.

And so?

At thirty-two, I feel settled in a vague way, in that I’ve figured some things out about myself, but understand I’ll always be unsettled in some way. To me, adulthood isn’t really a concept that can be concretely defined, no matter the milestones, age, or vision we attribute to it. Maturity wobbles along loop-de-loops that pretend they’re bell curves; people using whatever they think most valuable to present their version of being a grown-up. (Can you tell I want to talk about ageism so, so badly?)

Y’know, this started out as wanting to reflect on aging, but it derailed somewhere along the way and morphed into something else that still doesn’t feel completely finished.

… There’s probably a lesson in there, somewhere.

Something able to appear out of thin air, when you’re possibly not expecting it? Something that indicates you could get stuck, maybe miserable and full of rage, even after the trauma of death? Hell no. So much no. Would really rather not, thanks.

All that being said, it feels a bit ridiculous to tell you, then, that I love ghost stories. (Why are the things we love the things that hurt us the most??? lol)

I think ghosts, or something like them, are real. But - I also think our brains can trick us into believing something’s real. It’s why I found Netflix’s Haunting of Hill House so deeply fascinating. The only mildly spoiler-y thing I’ll include that’s relevant to this, is that it tries to navigate the suspense between whether a ghostly encounter is actually supernatural, or if it’s “just” sleep paralysis. The nuance and interplay in that, as well as its commentary on mental illness, thrills and terrifies me the most - because I’ve had not one, not two, but (at least) three separate instances of “sleep paralysis” that I can remember. Vividly. And that’s just in the last ten years, never mind about what I could’ve forgotten from childhood.

The first was either shortly before or shortly after my grandpa passed away. I was still living in my parents’ house.

My bed was a squishy twin on a creaky frame, pushed up against the far wall. I’d fallen asleep facing the closet, a curled, concave shape with the blankets pushed off, caught in a place that felt like true waking, but shaded like a dream. My eyes were wide, but I can’t remember if I blinked; I only recall that I couldn’t look away from the closed closet door. Everything was quiet, because the suburbs have this special kind of noiselessness that seeps, buzzing, into every crevice. My breathing was deep, even. And then - well, it wasn’t so much a sensing as it was a bolt of knowing.

There was something just below the edge of the bed.

The agony of anticipation turned my whole body into a sharp prickle of fear. My mouth dropped open a little, breath coming faster, but I still couldn’t look away from the closet door. It didn’t stop me from seeing the fingers of a hand creep up, slow, purposeful, over the edge of the mattress in my peripheral vision.

There was nothing outwardly gruesome or horrific about the hand - in the memory it had smooth, pale skin, clean fingernails, a slender shape. It kept moving, with that same purposeful speed that implied intent, until it splayed wide in the vulnerable space in front of my belly and pressed down on the mattress.

I didn’t realize I was screaming until I already was, pushing and pushing and pushing until it felt like every muscle locked up to help sustain the noise, except - there was no noise. All I could hear was the wheeze of my breath forced out of my throat, the shape of a scream that couldn’t be heard.

I don’t remember waking up. I don’t remember falling asleep again.

The second time, I think I was going through a bout of depression.

This was in my first real apartment, with an ensuite bathroom and a second bedroom and a fireplace that didn’t work. All that space. I never got rid of the paranoia that something was hiding in there with me.

Again, I fell asleep more or less facing the closet, though the bed was bigger - a queen. I usually sleep on a diagonal, head on one side and feet on the other, because once, in elementary school, my sister’s friend told us that if you leave enough space, a ghost will slip in beside you. (That kind of stuff sticks with you.)

Between one blink and the next I was asleep-but-not. The lamp was still on, the light warm, soft, low. My right hand was open and half-curled, upturned, on the pillow beside me.

And - there was a man standing beside the bed.

Well, to be fair, it was more the impression of a torso, the shape of a person, dressed in black. It felt masculine more than anything else. But this time around, the anticipation was heavier, somehow, like something was just waiting waiting waiting to take my hand. I don’t know how to describe it besides an almost tangible weight, a held breath before you trip and take a tumble. The terror was also muted; confused, in a way.

I do vaguely remember waking up then. Same position. Lamp still on.

I think I might have been crying.

The last one happened recently. Sometime in the last six months. This one is both scarier and also more easily dismissed, because it was during a bad period of insomnia, coupled with hormones up to their usual shenanigans.

Same queen bed, except I got one of those pregnancy pillows because they’re good for your hips and back, but it meant I wasn’t sleeping on a diagonal. My brain might’ve translated that into leaving myself open and vulnerable, and filled in the blanks.

The lamp was on again, because I’d forgotten to turn it off. I fell asleep and woke up several times, and I only know that because the first time something embraced me from behind I was able to force myself awake.

But - ah.

None of them were a proper waking. It was like blinking again, or maybe having really short, temporary amnesia. I never remembered falling asleep. It was scary. And I was so tired.

But it was so real.

Up until then, nothing had physically touched me before; it was all things I had seen, or felt in an abstract way. My arms were bare, and this wasn’t something alien or unknown. It was someone’s arms. I felt skin, and the bulk of a body curled up against me. Whether they were a person (or had been, at some point) is something only they, or my imagination, will ever know.

There are other stories, other memories, that I think about, every so often: voices from basements; a seance on cassette; faces in the dark. But those are things a little harder to dismiss as simple dreaming. Things that happened when we were wide awake.

… Maybe I’ll tell them to you next time.

I don’t know that I ever actually killed anything, but over time the aversion from not wanting to kill anything became so ingrained that I just… started to believe it.

When my parents left on vacation in the summers, we were supposed to go out at dusk every day to water the roses and hydrangeas; the grass and shrubs and wild strawberries; the vibrant clusters of lily of the valley. I’d remember to do this every few days instead, but half the time it was too late, or too hot, or it wasn’t my turn, or, or, or. It took forever to make sure everything was watered, and sometimes mom would return to a house ringed in dry brown. Oops.

But when I could dredge up the will, I’d step into the soupy summer heat and slap at the hovering mosquitoes (because the bug sprays never work as well as they should), and angrily wave the arcing shower from the hose before me to wash away any spider webs. (You only make the mistake of walking into them once.) (Okay, twice.) 

In the end, it was my mom. Isn’t it always? She inherited these plants that my grandpa grew; they’re known as epiphyllum oxypetalum, or queen of the night flowers. You know - the ones from Crazy Rich Asians. Their blooms appear rarely and open only at night, then close and die before the dawn. When you don’t prune them back they get to be these huge, hulking things. My mom had hers for a while on tall stands outside near the front door, and they loomed like bodyguards over the cushioned porch swing, one on each side. 

I’m not sure where she found it, but my mom gave me a photo of one of Koong Koong’s queens when he passed, now likely long gone, blazed open and blooming at their old house in Kota Kinabalu. It’s somewhat ghostly to look at because of the flash, leaves and petals in stark relief from the shadows beyond. But something about the composition, the mood it evoked, made me really like it.

(She came over the other day and told me it was apparently not a picture of his plants, and she had no idea who the owner was, or even the house it was taken at, which. Well. All I could think was ghostghostghost that’s a ghost ahhhhhhhhhhh and then just continuous internal shrieking for… a while.)

I saw banyan trees for the first time on a trip back to the motherland, towering statues of an old world still sewn deeply into the core of the cities we visited. My parents told us spooky stories of spirits who lingered under their branches and long, hanging roots. Years later, when one of the queens was placed in my old room, I looked in during a visit and felt the same creeping sensation as I had staring into the empty spaces under those trees, a persistent pricking at the skin behind my ears. 

For a while my mom would propagate a bunch of new babies from Koong Koong’s plants, and they’d sit in the basement’s kitchen sill for months among their siblings, settled in wide-mouthed beer glasses and thrift store vases. There’s plenty of bright, indirect light, and no disturbance save for the couple next door who throw ragers on their patio, and the thrumming hum of the fridge. Dad occasionally went down to commandeer the TV, away from everyone else, but the plants made for quiet companions. 

The cut leaves eventually sprout tiny roots, which grow longer and longer until they twist and clump in a little mass. They’d get sold off on Facebook marketplace, and my mom would put them in bags at the door when she left for work and come home to ten dollars in the mailbox each time. They were also gifts, like for Sandy, who placed hers in prime real estate behind the couch in the front room window. This is how she convinced me, because I looked at Sandy’s plant, and I remembered standing outside every year in the late night chill to smell the blooms and watch the flash of her phone camera. I recalled Koong Koong’s hands checking each new leaf, stern eyebrows drawn down in a deep vee while the afternoon news droned on in the background.

And so I said yes.

I named her Agatha, after Sister Agatha Van Helsing from the 2020 BBC One series Dracula, because of course I did.

After Agatha it was like the goddamn floodgates opened, because all of the anxiety about keeping plants alive suddenly mattered very little, in the face of something new and exciting that people were excited about for me. I went from having no plants to six(ish?) in the space of a week, and I fended off other offers of plant gifts - more than I was ever expecting! (It was the beginning of the pandemic. I guess that kind of explains a lot.)

I’m very proud to say that Agatha is still around and kicking, three years later, even after several bug encounters. I honestly don’t think she’ll ever give me a bloom, which is fine; she’ll do what she feels is right for her. My mom’s seen her a couple times since then, and it’s an interesting experience, because my brain superimposes the image of her checking out Agatha’s leaves over memories of Koong Koong. They stand there, hands clasped behind their back, bent slightly to bring their faces closer to inspect things. She tuts at the scars from buggy guests, tells me to give her more water because she’s so close to the fireplace and the window.

But Agatha’s doing just fine, and as her plant dad - that’s pretty cool. I don’t have to wade into a treacherous garden, and all my children let me know when they need something; kind of hard to miss when they’re wilting and feeling sulky.

Guess my thumb was greener than we thought.

But I thought it’d be interesting to do! To think about! And so: 

On May 18^th, 1991, in another life, Christopher Jonathan Wong is born to Edward and Bernice.  He’s his grandfather’s pride and joy, the first son birthed from a generation of four sisters; chubby and sweet, charmingly spoiled.

Chris grows up smart, curious, and hyper. In elementary school, instead of being called an overachiever by the vice principal, he gets called ambitious. He pulls good grades in high school (that’s the same), struggling the entire time to project an air of competent productivity (definitely the same), and makes friends with the other Asian boys who draw anime fanart and listen to hiphop (totally, totally different).

Rather than feeling insecure about being pretty enough, slim enough, girly enough, he broods over the sparse, scraggly facial hair that peppers his chin, and sprouts haphazardly in weird spots on his neck. His wardrobe consists of snapbacks, basketball shorts, and graphic tees two sizes too big - the early 2000s were hard on everyone. He doesn’t have his first romantic relationship at sixteen and fail out of Math Honours 10 (lucky), but he gets a few make-out sessions with girls his senior year out of pity (woof), and agonizes over being a virgin (yeah… same). Tumblr hits him like a tsunami here, too, simply because I make it to the Tumblr kid pipeline in every possible universe. 

(It’s how I know I’ll always be queer.)

(Always.)

His relationship with his sister growing up takes on a few different forms. Internalized competition doesn’t fall back on beauty standards, because they can’t in this universe. She gets stung a little harder with being more “manly” than her brother, too sporty and good at it, to boot. (Societal norms can go get fucked, and I think he’d agree with me on that.) (She still forces him to love scary movies even though it always terrifies the holy bejeezus out of him, but he’s grateful for it, in the end. I always am.)

His relationship with his parents is unclear. Being Asian and AFAB coloured so much of my experience with them growing up, it’s difficult to look past it at what might’ve been for a son in this family. He definitely sticks with golf for longer than I did. (Sorry, dad.) (That one traumatic instructor was absolutely nicer to him than me, though, so that’s probably why.)

ADHD’s easier to detect this time around, with people less prone to call it “daydreaming”. It manifests in outbursts of sound at inappropriate times, the charming class clown incarnate; kind of annoying and kind of endearing in equal measure. His parents struggle with the realities of medicating someone you’re responsible for with no idea what you’re doing. (I also have no idea what happens here. Late diagnosis continues to be both a blessing and a semi-curse. Maybe he goes on medication right away. Maybe they try other stuff before going down that path, or vice versa. Regardless, there’s a power in knowing the source of the problem, and it informs him in ways it never could for me.) 

He’s pretty good at art after being a not-so-secret fanartist all those years, but hyper insecurity and the practical, practiced wisdom of his parents still drives him to panic into choosing safely for post-secondary. Instead of Senior Management Certificate: New Media Design and Web Development, he adds Associate Certificate: Digital Marketing Foundations to his resume. Eventually he meets someone, who connects him to someone else at Hootsuite. He stays at home until he’s got enough saved to put a down payment on a teeny tiny apartment in Mount Pleasant. He has a cat - no, wait! Two cats (because one of us needs to not be allergic, and I want this for him very badly).

It’s hard to imagine where it goes from there. A multitude of decisions blurs past when I think about them, and the possibilities of what I could have done in his life or mine is, predictably, overwhelming. The older I try to picture him, the harder it gets, weirdly enough; perhaps because the faraway past feels malleable, almost dream-like, in a way that the closer present doesn’t. There’s probably parts that are bad, and parts that are good - whatever that means in the moment for him. Identity, and all the parts of you that are wrapped up in it, is a strange thing.

But strange isn’t bad, just… strange. Loud and sad and mysterious and joyful. 

In writing this, I texted my mom to double-check the name she would have given me. Christopher Jonathan is correct; it would’ve been Jonathan for the uncle who didn’t live past a few days old. Even more possibilities there, a lifetime missed. Not knowing what I fully meant, then, I said to her, 

u can call me kristi jonathan u kno?