Moving

Since 1996, I've had 14 different mailing addresses, but until recently, I have never felt at home.

My family moved from Bangkok, Thailand to Brooklyn, New York when I was three, in search of a better life, but for most of my childhood, I couldn't find that better life within the walls of my own home because of my father.

When I was six, my dad would tutor me by angrily asking me why I got the wrong answers, instead of helping me find the right ones.

When I was eleven, my dad ignored me when I brought good news home from school, and when I said, "I hate this family," he came to my bedroom to physically silence me with a coat hanger until I took those words back.

When I was sixteen, I showed my dad my PSAT score of 680 but instead of congratulating me, he shouted at me through my bedroom door for six hours because I wrote that I was interested in the low-paying subject of, "psychology.”

For most of my childhood, I fantasized about hopping on a subway with nothing but a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and knocking on the door of a friend's apartment, hoping their parents would adopt me like Brangelina adopted Maddox. I never did it, but it probably explains why I find so much comfort in a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

That's why, when I applied for colleges, I chose to move from one big city to the next: Binghamton, NY, population 48,000.

For most people, leaving for college is a moment of celebration, pride, and support. When I left for college, I packed two luggages, got on a Greyhound bus, and dragged my belongings up a hill into an empty dorm room by myself.

As I spent four years away, I could not shake the feeling that I didn't belong. I felt like I was being watched, like I was doing something wrong, like I wasn't doing enough to justify my time there.

I felt safer here but I barely made any lasting friendships, because I was afraid that the people closest to me would hurt me the most.

When I graduated from college in 2015, I moved back home with my father and my sister. My bedroom walls that were once plastered with Playbills from Broadway musicals I'd seen, programs from shows and concerts I'd performed in, and poems I'd written were now blank, and I felt like who I was before I was eighteen was erased.

Being home felt like traveling back in time and very quickly, I felt like my father was always waiting for a moment to tell me I was doing something wrong.

When I decided to move out after a year, my sisters demanded that I helped pay my dad's mortgage, and I thought to myself, "why was I going to pay for the home of a man who had made sure I never felt at home?”

Even after I moved, I felt guilty for a long time. Like I didn't deserve peace and quiet. Like everything I grew up with was normal. Like none of the fear, anger, and shame I had felt was real.

Even on my own, I didn't feel at home, but people would tell me that they felt at home around me.

A roommate of mine, who moved from Massachusetts to New York knowing no one, wrote me a thank you note for making this city feel like home to her.

During my Zoom birthday party, a friend told me he felt like he belonged, even though it was just a screen with pixels of strangers.

My partner tells me I feel like home to her.

When I went to my father's home for Thanksgiving this year, I felt like I'd traveled back in time again. My father told a kid he'd been tutoring that he must not be very smart and had thrown out my sister's belongings while lying to her face and laughing about it.

After dinner, I went to see what was left of my childhood belongings and found my high school yearbook. When I read the notes my friends had signed it with, I cried.

My friends wrote how much they were going to miss me, how many fond memories they had of us together, and how far they thought I was going to go.

I didn't believe any of these words when I was eighteen because someone at home always told me how horrible I was.

I felt like I had found pieces of myself that I had lost a long time ago. I felt like I could see myself in the way that people saw me.

One quote that stood out to me the most was a note that said, “babe, your voice is going to take you so far.”

A few weeks later, I caught up with a friend I hadn't seen in 20 years who's known me since I was six. He saw that I was doing stand-up comedy and said it made sense to him because, as a kid, I was always giggling and carrying a huge grin on my face.

It's moments like these that teach me what it means to come home. I can love and forgive my father, but I won't ever feel at home with him.

I feel at home when I'm with people who make me feel seen.

I feel at home when I'm safe to be, know, and celebrate exactly the kind of person that I am.

I feel at home when I can create that space for the people around me to feel the same way.

Today, after fourteen moves, I know that I can feel at home wherever I go.

Anniversary

When my mom passed away on November 4th, 2011, I thought that grieving simply meant letting go of the past and moving forward.

Before my mom passed away, she told us that she didn’t want many people at her funeral because she didn’t want anyone to know what happened, and I thought that meant I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone.

The weekend my mom passed away, my two older sisters and I cleaned our house of all of her belongings, because it would be less painful for us to forget that she was ever there than to remember that she wasn’t.

For the next ten years of my life, I pretended as if my mom had never passed away, until every November 4th, I would have panic attacks and feel a dark emptiness inside of me, which were very different from the panic attacks and dark emptinesses I get from binge watching new seasons of Love is Blind. With the exception of my therapist who I’ve been seeing since 2018, I rarely spoke to anyone about it, even my family.

On November 5th, 2021, my oldest sister texted me and my middle sister that it’s been ten years, and that was the most my sisters had ever acknowledged her death to me. I remember sitting with these same post Love is Blind binge feelings, and I knew that something needed to change. I decided that I needed to do what most straight, cis men like myself typically don’t do: talk about my feelings.

For the next year, I joined an organization called The Dinner Party and hosted a monthly grief group, which is like an after-school club, except it’s all people in their 20s and 30s who talk about their dead parents. It has been an incredibly healing experience to find joy and solidarity in being part of that community, but I felt sad that I felt more comfortable sharing my experience with these strangers turned friends than I did with my family.

This year, my girlfriend suggested that I ask my sisters to go through photos of our mom together with my nephews to honor her. In typical responsible oldest sister fashion, she said yes, and in typical middle sister fashion, she didn’t respond for a week and then asked, “are we taking the kids on a candy hunt for Halloween?”

The week prior, I met with my grief group telling them I thought it would be this perfect Hallmark moment of grieving and thought that as the only person in my family who went to therapy, I’d be our group leader. I told them how excited and nervous I was, but that might have also been because we spent the hour beforehand in a Bushwick warehouse smashing VCRs and glass plates with metal baseball bats.

November 4th comes along, and I arrive at my oldest sister’s house, because in typical responsible oldest sister fashion, she owns a house in Brooklyn. And in middle sister fashion, my middle sister immediately bombards me with questions about a tech issue she’s having at work. No one mentions my mother.

For the next couple of hours, it seems like we’re doing anything possible to avoid talking about our mom - we take my nephews to the park, we doom scroll social media, we file our taxes - until my oldest sister finally takes out these bags of photo albums from our childhood, and show it to my nephews. I want to say it was a perfect moment with them, but my middle sister would not stop interrupting to ask me if I knew how to create an Excel spreadsheet with all of the bridal dress shops in the United States.

I was getting frustrated when I paused to think about what was happening: this would have been exactly the family scene as my mother would have loved to see it.

It was my middle sister asking me to solve a problem on a computer for her.

It was my oldest sister being responsible and doing what we asked of her without asking for credit.

It was me being my most childlike self with the children.

And what was the most perfect moment was when my nephew pointed to a photo of my mom and called her, “ah pau,” which is the Chinese word for “grandma,” despite having never met her.

This year, I had to learn that grief isn’t simply letting go and moving forward, but grief doesn’t look the same for everyone.

Grief might look like turning to someone for help but not knowing the right way to ask for it.

Grief might look like making sure your kids carry on the stories for the people who can’t be there to tell them themselves.

For me, grief looked like smashing plates and VCRs, explaining to my four year-old nephew how his mom and I are related, and being who our mom raised us to be.

Willpower

On March 20th, 2020, I broke almost a year of sobriety with a glass of whiskey, and I thought I had failed at everything I had worked up to.

In March 2019, I lost my job, I lost the company I had started, and I felt like I lost myself.

I also lost my therapist because as nice as therapists are, she wasn't going to listen to my problems for free.

In May of 2019, I was at a bar having a beer with my friends, like I did most nights of my funemployment, when I looked at my drink and asked myself, "why?”

"What did this add to my life?”

"Why did I turn to alcohol to feel happy when it's never made me feel good?”

"Why was I at this bar with people I don't like, doing something I didn't want to do, trying to be someone I'm not?”

Capitalism.

And like most nights, I stopped thinking and kept drinking.

But when I got home, I made a deal with myself: go one year without drinking to see what my life could look like sober, and after that, I could drink however much I wanted to.

Because I'm Type-A person who had put all of my energy into my career and none into my own self-care, I did what all tech CEOs do: I conducted zero research and did not think about any of the consequences.

At first, I hid my decision from everyone by sipping on seltzer any time I was out. What I couldn't hide from myself was that I was going through the worst withdrawal I had ever experienced in my life.

I had terrible headaches.

I was constantly exhausted.

And worst of all, I did not look as cool holding a La Croix at parties.

But within a few months, I started looking lighter and feeling fuller. That is, after I stopped mainlining Mexican Coca-Cola every day to deal with the withdrawal.

Once I got the hang of sobriety, I start telling people, "I don't drink." Like with most activities that require basic consent, it was very easy for me to make people visibly uncomfortable by telling them I didn't want to do something.

One friend created a story in his mind that I blacked out and hit rock bottom, which wasn't entirely wrong. I hit rock bottom when he tried to recruit me for his life-coaching cult.

Another friend once offered me a drink, and when I said, "no, thanks," he said, "bitch, what?" and raised his hand with the universal sign for, "I'm about to slap you.”

Another friend told me, "if you needed to stop drinking, then there must have been something wrong with you.”

This time was hard for me because a lot of my friends died. To be clear, they're all alive. They're just dead to me.

Because of all the, "why don't you just have one drink?"'s and the, "you won't stay sober for long"'s, I was in a dark place and doubted if I could keep the deal I made with myself.

Why was I doing this?

Was there something wrong with me?

What is White Claw?

I found light when my friend Natalie asked me, "did you drink because you needed to dim your light for other people?”

Isn't it crazy that you can find the right answers in life by being asked the right questions?

I drank because it numbed my pain, but it also numbed my joy.

I drank because I thought I was too much for people, but abundance isn't something I should keep to myself.

I drank because I thought my light was too bright to be embraced by others.

That light helped me stay the course on my sobriety until the pandemic hit New York City.

On March 21st, 2020, I realized failure wasn't straying off-course; failure would have been staying off-course.

I decided, again, that I was no longer going to drink, and I'm proud to say that I haven't had a drink since then.

The people who expected me to fail couldn't change my story.

The people who didn't respect my boundaries around alcohol were the same people who didn't respect my boundaries, period.

The people who understood, supported, and loved me when I was changing are the people I hold closest to my heart.

By staying sober, I found my people, I found my passions, and most importantly, I found myself.

Crossroads

In June 2022, I found myself putting my leg over a motorcycle for the first time despite never having had a driver's license.

I'm a native New Yorker, which means that it's totally fine for me to not have a driver's license. Like, I can tell you that you need to take the R to Atlantic Pacific and transfer to the 4 and take it 15 stops to get to Yankee Stadium from here, but I can't tell you what a clutch is.

My excuse is that in May of 2011, I got into a car accident with my dad, which turned our RAV4 upside down. For those of you who don't know this, RAV4’s aren't supposed to be upside down.

My dad and I were driving to Home Depot when he ran past a stop sign. I look at my passenger, I see a BMW, and right before it hits us, I look at my dad and say, “dad!” and he slams on the brakes. The BMW hits us. We flip over 180 degrees.

My dad and I are upside down in the car, and I am completely startled because all the glass on our windows are broken and our windshield is cracked. I unbutton my seatbelt, I get out the door, and I help my dad get out of his side. I think about what might have happened if my sister was sitting in the backseat, because she never wears her seatbelt.

The people who are seeing this accident happen check in on us and ask us if we're okay. The driver who's driving the BMW comes out of his car and says, “look what you did to my car.”

I didn't really think about it at the time because I had just gotten off the ride at Six Flags that I did not want to be on, so I sat on the sidewalk and we waited for the ambulance to get us.

We get to the hospital, and I text my friends because I'm 18 years old and I really like attention and because I am so glad that I'm alive and that everything's fine. I also text my sisters to let them know that we didn't get lost looking for a fridge and that we were okay, except for my dad having a small headache that was probably from me.

We get home, and the first thing that my sister said to me isn't, “are you two okay?” It was, “I can't believe you crashed the car. I spent $10,000 on it.” I don't listen to people who don't put their seatbelt pod in the back of the car and I went to my room and watched a Green Day music video on YouTube to cope with the day.

For the next couple of years of my life, the passenger seat of a car and I had what you might call “trust issues” in our relationship. It took me a couple of years to even feel comfortable sitting in the passenger's seat of the car.

In 2014, I get my first real job. By real job, I mean they put a MacBook Pro in front of me, I press buttons, and they pay me a paycheck every two weeks. I think a lot of you also have a real job.

I save up money to buy my first car, and learn how to drive. When I show up for my driving test, I know I'm going to fail because the proctor spent an hour and a half trying to get a guy in a pickup truck who had no insurance, no plates, and no registrations to take the test. He would never pass anyone who actually had a steering wheel in his car.

I start the test and when I hit a stop sign, I stop, wait three seconds, and drive past it. He immediately makes me pull over and he says, “you didn't watch for that car in your right lane.” He was referring to a car that had stopped for at least thirty seconds. I blame myself and think that I'm completely incapable of driving a car.

I think the only way that I can be in a car is to do the second best thing: be the best goddamn co-pilot on any trip I can be on with.

If you ever take a road trip, please bring me with you because I am the best form of inflight entertainment.

I will curate 90s pop punk playlists and sing them along with you.

I'll play Weird Al.

I will listen to your life story, and then I will tell you what podcast episode we're going to listen to.

If we go to McDonald's, I'm putting French fries in your mouth while we're driving.

I am the dream copilot.

This setup was great for a couple of years because when my friends invited me to their road trips, we would have these great adventures.

And then 2020 happened and I wasn't allowed in anything that had windows in it with anyone who I didn't already live with.

I spent a lot of time at home.

That same year, my therapist suggested I get a bike to go outside because she could clearly see that I was losing my mind. I bike everywhere in New York City.

People ask me, “isn't that super dangerous? Aren't you scared of getting hit by a car?” and I tell them, “no, it's fine; bikes are really cheap.”

In that moment, I realized I worried more about this vehicle getting hurt more than getting hurt myself, because I've been told that a vehicle is more important than my own life.

In April 2022, I took the driver’s test again and passed because I was motivated by the idea of creating these road trip memories of my own. I knew I passed because the proctor started texting while I was driving, and when he looked up, he said, “yeah, you're good. You can go.”

Two months later, I do laps on a motorcycle in a parking lot of a college in Brooklyn. I get my motorcycle license that day.

When I sat on that bike, I reminded myself that I am worth more than any material object or any shiny car, but I shouldn't let the fear of the worst thing happening stop me from going where I want to go and having some fun doing it.

Nature

In the summer of 2018, I had the perfect weekend outdoor adventure.

I grew up in New York City, so when I say I want be in nature, you can drive me two hours away into Pennsylvania and I will be ecstatic. That’s exactly what a group of five friends and I did one weekend.

On Friday night, we drove two hours to stay at our friends Sophie and Dasha’s family house in the Poconos. On Saturday morning, we rented kayaks and rowboats to row the Delaware Water Gap.

For those who don’t know, the Delaware Water Gap is a part of the Delaware river that cuts between mountain ridges of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. See, I wouldn’t want to be in either of those states for a weekend away, so we thought the water in between them would be ideal.

We rowed halfway through the water gap the first night and then camped out.

On Sunday morning, we rowed the second half of the water gap, dropped off the boats at the dock, stopped by a steakhouse on a farm on our way back to New York City, and came home rested and invigorated from our quality time spent with nature.

I’m the type of person who likes to escape into nature because here in New York City, I find myself being the most type-A personality version of myself here. In nature, I find that I can feel free, go with the flow, and connect with the Earth. That, and because my friend Toby, who was a Boy Scout and planned everything so I didn’t have to think.

I’m from New York City - if there isn’t a bodega nearby, I can’t feed myself.

In the summer of 2019, that same group of friends and I try to recreate the magic of that trip.

On Friday night, we drive from Brooklyn to Pennsylvania. I do what I always do on long road trips to compensate for the fact that I don’t drive: be the best in-drive entertainment there is.

About an hour and a half in to the two-hour drive with Sophie and Toby, my artfully curated Weird Al and 2000s pop punk playlist is interrupted by a call by Dasha. Dasha’s already at the house and asks if Sophie has keys because Dasha doesn’t have them.

We furiously search the car for the next half hour for a set of keys that Sophie doesn’t have. We arrive and they’ve already tried to get in through the garage doors and windows.

I’ve drunkenly lost my keys many times. My suggestion of picking the lock by wrapping my fist in a sweater and punching through the window are very quickly ignored.

At 2am, we begrudgingly camp out in the backyard but I cling onto my positivity and see it as starting our time with nature early.

Saturday morning, we wake up at 8am, pack up the cars with our camping gear, and pick up sandwiches at the only thing that makes drives to Pennsylvania worth it: Wawa. If you haven’t been to a Wawa, think of it like a gas station where they care that you don’t vomit from eating their food.

We drive to the boathouse to rent two rowboats to carry our camping gear and one kayak for the slackers. We’re all cranky, but when we get on the water, we remember why this was so worth it.

It’s quiet and all we can see is water and trees. Our cell phones are packed away, not that it matters since we barely have reception anyways. The sun is beaming on us without any buildings in the way, I’m the only one in this group of people that has any melanin so I’m fully satisfied with taking my shirt off and basking in all of it.

I look over at my friends’, Jon, Toby, and Laika’s boat. Laika is Toby and Sophie’s dog who is named after the first dog to make it to space, and consequently, also the first dog to die in space. I think about this fact as I see Jon using a red solo cup to scoop out water in their boat.

Jon is one of those, go-with-the-flow type people, which really means that he ignores his own needs and sense of self-preservation for the sake of making other people feel safe and comfortable. He very nonchalantly says, “there’s a leak in our boat but I think we’ll be OK.”

After a long and very unnecessary discussion, we finally stop to call the rental company to replace our boat. They say it’s going to take an hour for them to get there.

I think it’s a sign that we need to rest anyways, so we have lunch. We’re all eating apples, like true woodspeople. When I kindly offer to throw my friends’ apple cores into the trash, they throw them at me from 20 feet away and I trip over a large rock that came out of nowhere. I scrape my shin and it’s bleeding. I politely ask that no one throw fruit at me for the rest of this weekend and they oblige.

In the hour that we wait for our new boat, the sun starts to set and we see dozens of boats on the water pass us. I hope they’re not looking to set up camp.

Sadly, when we get back on the water, I was right. Every campsite we pass is too small for us or taken. We try to find the camping site from last year had the perfect tree to poop behind, but it’s occupied, quite like my bowels.

If you have not pooped outside, you have not lived. I understand why my dog does it. It’s liberating.

We find one possible campsite, but when we get there, it has fire ants everywhere. Jon is allergic but insists that we stay here. He assures us that he just develops hives and his throat closes up a bit. After another unnecessary debate, we leave and decide that we to row to the end of the water gap, drop off our boats, and camp there.

The sun sets. We have a few more hours until the end of the water gap. I look for a distraction. My boatmate, M, talks to me about the Me Too movement. I think I will be educated until she says, “I don’t see what Louis C.K. or Aziz Ansari did wrong.” I have never rowed a boat faster in my life.

With an hour left of rowing, we reconnect with Toby and Jon’s boat and hear that they capsized our boat with all of our camping gear. Our tents, sleeping bags, clothes, and food are now soaking wet.

Now, the river is pitch black. Toby and Jon decide to row faster than the rest of us - because they’re men - and at the home stretch, we lose them. We don’t see anyone or anything, and we’re tired, hungry, and freaked out.

We dock at the closest spot, spend 30 minutes finding a bar of cell phone seconds, and call Tony. When Toby finally picks up Sophie’s phone calls, and it turns out they’re only a few hundred feet away. Sophie and Toby are dating, as indicated by how condescending this phone call felt.

It’s now about 10pm at the dock. We pull in our boats and soaking wet gear and we come together to decide what to do.

We suggest camping at the dock but we can’t because all our gear is wet.

We suggest going back to the house and staying there but we can’t get in.

We suggest staying at a motel, but at that point, we might as well go home.

We call an Uber with that one measly bar of service and have the driver bring us to our cars parked a couple of miles away. We pack our gear back into the car and stop at a diner where we form a small, very niche, group therapy group to process this together.

We drive back and I am finally in my bed in Brooklyn at 2:30am in the morning and I tell myself I am never doing that again.

2020 made sure I never left my apartment.

Sales

Welch's Fruit Snacks.

When I was nine years old, I was obsessed with Welch's Fruit Snacks.

There was nothing that could bring me as much joy as Welch's Fruit Snacks.

My family moved from Thailand to Brooklyn when I was three years old. To keep me safe, I spent a lot of time at home eating Welch's Fruit Snacks while I played video games, read books, and instant messaged my friends.

The reason we were in America was because my dad was the greatest salesperson I knew. Well, also, I'm nine years old, so I don't know that many adults.

Anyone with an immigrant parent knows why my dad is the greatest salesperson: he convinced my mom to leave generations of family behind in China to move to New York City for more opportunity, knowing no one and having nothing, to live in a box. I mean, I know we're here to find more opportunity, but how do I find it if my apartment window looks at another brick wall?

Two other things you should know about my dad. One: he teaches me by dropping me into the deep end of the pool. Literally. He thought that he could teach me how to swim by holding my body above water and then dropping me. I am still learning how to swim today. Two: Chinese is his first language, English is his second language, but much like my dog, he mainly communicates with me using grunts.

One day, my fourth grade teacher tells my class that we have a spring break trip coming up and she gives me two ways to pay for it. I could pay $75 in cash, or I could sell two huge boxes of candy.

I go home and I present these two business opportunities to my father who then looks at me, says nothing, and then grunts. I know that that means I am selling two boxes of candy.

That Saturday, I start my first day at my new job as the CEO of a small candy enterprise. We get on the subway and I have one of these two cardboard briefcases of candy. My dad takes me to the Chamber Street train station, which is a stop away from Wall Street, so he's probably trying to tell me about my future career options.

It's a very crowded day and I am terrified. I don't remember reading a book on how to sell candy on a Subway platform. I don't remember playing this level in a video game. I did not get to message HR about these unsafe work conditions.

My dad decides to go sit down on a bench. He points at all the people and he says, “go.” I look at him and I say, “wait, I'm sorry. What?” He looks at me and grunts.

Fortunately for me, most people love Welch's Fruit Snacks. I open my box, I go up to my first customer, and without much conversation, they take a bag of Welch's Fruit Snacks, they hand me a dollar, and then they walk away, no questions asked. I think to myself, wow, this is actually pretty easy, and soon enough, all my Welch's Fruit Snacks are gone.

I've also since then learned to never eat anything from a subway platform without asking any questions, but that's another story.

I look into my box again and I have Hershey's chocolate bars. I try selling them, but no one's buying them. In fact, they're actually asking me a lot more inappropriate questions like, “what is this candy for?” and “who are you?” which is a question I don't know how to answer because I'm nine years old.

I realize that I can sell Hershey's chocolate bars if I give people a good enough reason to buy them. I tell them it's for a school trip, and soon enough my Hershey's chocolate bars are gone.

I open the box and I see that people saved the worst for last: Paydays. I hate Paydays. As a kid, I hated Paydays. I still hate Paydays. They're like, peanut butter you have to chew.

I go back out there and I try to sell these paydays, and then the questions get much more invasive.

“Where are you going on this trip?”

“Why do you want to go on this trip?”

“Is this for charity?”

I mean, technically isn't any money you give to a child, “charity”?

I'm stuck. I don't know how to sell bad product.

After a couple of failed marketing campaigns, I realize I have not been using my secret weapon.

I am nine years old and I am cute.

I am freaking cute.

I'm freaking cute.

I decide to go up to people and I no longer ask them if they want to buy candy. Instead, I ask them, “are you willing to make my dream of going on this trip with my best friends come true?”

They ate that up.

They ate it up.

They ate that up.

Soon I sell what should have never actually existed in the first place: the rest of my Paydays.

After I clock out and I stamp my time sheets, my dad rewards me with a chocolate bar, which I think is some sick mind trick he's playing on me. He looks at me and he says, “good,” and tells me I have to come back tomorrow to do this all over again.

On Sunday, I do what cartoon creators learned to do a hundred years ago: use cuteness to make money from adults. That day I stop feeling terrified and I start feeling a flow of candy, leaving my box and dollar bills, lining my tiny nine year old pockets.

I go back to school on Monday and I bring back two empty candy boxes, I hand my fourth grade teacher in envelope stuffed with cash, I look her in the eye and I say, “I've done my part of this deal and you need to do yours”

A couple weeks later, I go on this trip.

I don't remember this trip.

I think we went to Maryland?

I do remember how good it felt knowing how I paid for this trip.

When my dad sat on that bench, he was waiting for me to do what he knew I could do. That, and making sure I didn't get kidnapped.

Most importantly, I knew I could do it too.