Episode 105: I don't want to waste breath

Warning: Hard read. Violence. Bad thoughts.

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I didn't foresee running out of the house today. On the most peaceful, unsuspecting Sunday. But maybe I should have known. That's how things are here. I knew this when I came back. Sundays are when the worst things happen. But hey, I'll be back shortly, in a week or two. Things cool off. Back when things cooled off, and I didn't have a car, it was harder then.

This time, I can run whenever I want. And I know exactly where to this time.

All I know is I do my best. I always do my best. I will tell it like it is. I'll leave the worst details out. This blog was never intended to be a sad brain dump, and never will be. 

So for all purposes, I will stick to the facts best I can. Heck, I've even got cute Korean music in the background.

Dad likes to be driven out to Asiantown on Sunday mornings for the weekly South Vietnamese veterans flag-raising ceremony. He meets old friends. His name is mentioned on the microphone. He grins bigger. He sits with a cigarette and a makeshift walking cane, when I pushed him to use my rainbow umbrella as a cane for now. He always forgets his cane, and by extension, I do too. :(

For the full 2 hours, I find shade to sit in. I call a friend or two. I start processing a couple post cards. I buy tasty Viet snacks to bring home. I help the others set up the flags. I chat with people on the edges of the events. A friend of my dad's recognizes me, and implores me to take 2 of his homegrown squashes, out of his plastic bag. Another man knows I'm Loc's daughter.

Loc, the same guy who has several police reports under his name for starting fights in the past few years. 

In a dream 3 months ago, my grandmother directly communicated with my mother, "He is a car without brakes." And like a wisp, she left. I can imagine she feels like a warm person. I hope my grandmother is a warm person, because most of her children suck. Egotistical. Comparative. Bad gossips. Old randown shows. Anyways. T__T

The same words, "a car without brakes", I would repeat to myself so I don't react in any way. I could just keep things at teeth level. Not a facial expression. Just teeth grinding together inside. I must have done this enough times that 2 dentists recommended a night guard. I remind myself these very words whenever he shows me the first signs of resentment. Whenever he stirs my stomach with cruel words. About anyone I know. About myself. That's where it lightly starts, before he claims I must hate him for not taking him to the highly popular dimsum place after the 2-hour flag raising ceremony, and when he does this while I'm driving us at 65 mph on 59-S, he self-escalates.

A fist to the window. A struggle with the door to jump out. Or three words, "Drop me off."

It's funny because, once, I so desperately wanted to be torn open by the highway. I forget why now, but I was factually 15. In the passenger's seat. I wanted to rip open his truck door, roll out in one motion, and be so scraped up by the concrete, so scraped up that people can see the uneven open, meaty gashes. There wouldn't even be skin left. I wanted to look like a nightmare. Be living proof that he can't look away from, how cruel he is. Scars that prove it.

But I know deep down, he'd just scoff. And make some hearty response at my torn up body, how fucking stupid I am.

If I hadn't gone to Smith and met wonderful, sweet people. If I hadn't gone to DeBakey HS and met sweet folks there too. If I hadn't been so loved in Ohio, or wherever else -- I'm sure I wouldn't be as stable as I did today.

I really was there today, waiting for my Dad patiently. Conversing. Being a part of. I never rushed him, unlike the way he used to. I never rushed him today.

When he was ready, I was ready. I bought him banh tet with the pork filling. I bought myself a banh bao. "Let's eat dim sum," he said.

"Let's." 

"That place we went to last time."

"No, that place is too crowded. I know a better place with less people. A crowd gives me a headache."

"Okay," he agreed.

So we get there in the parking lot. He gives it one glance. "I don't like this view. You're bringing me to a Chinese place. I'm not eating here."

"But it's really good. And we've been here before."

"I don't want it. You can go in but I'll stay in the car." Things were calm.

"Then we're leaving," I say in disbelief. Pulling out of the plaza and driving straight home. I had a long morning so I took a nap.

I woke up to my Mum storming my room in tears.

"He's threatening to burn the house down. I've been trying to cook but I've been shaking, Ngoc. He said he's poured a tank of gasoline in the garage. He's going to burn this house down. Did you not take him out to lunch today, Ngoc??"

What the heck.

My mother was panicking, and angry and sad and shivering. God, a ghost would make her shake that way, but he makes her shake harder. And fucking hell. All of this started from him not wanting to eat at a place that didn't fit him. I truly couldn't deal with that stupid dim sum place he wanted, with the 30 minute wait. I'd already done lots in the heat that morning. God, I was so tired. We had driven home peacefully. Nothing happened in the car. 

"What kind of daughter doesn't take her father out to eat?" he would last ask me.

"What kind of daughter spends all of her Sunday morning and noon to take her father out?" I retorted.

It really all started when he didn't get his way, on one thing. On one tiny stupid thing, related to his fucking cravings. Related to his mouth. 

Everything starts at his mouth. Or maybe his sick brain. Bad thoughts make bad actions. Good thoughts make good actions, I learned, at my last Wednesday meditation.

That's the thing with my Dad. 

You can pour every good thing into him, go out of your way all FUCKING DAY FOR HIM. 

All fucking day. You can run yourself ragged doing every good thing for him, doing nothing for yourself. Maybe he finds you resting for 5 minutes on your butt and he'd find something else you can do for him. It's never fucking enough. It's never fucking ever, ever enough. Every second of your life is his. 

And if you do one thing, or say one thing, or not do one thing, or not say one thing that he wanted, he'll cling onto that one thing like a broken clock. 2:09 PM every second of the day.

Everything he wants he gets, or it's a living hell for everyone else. The threat of losing our lives. All the time.

My mother is shaking from the threat of the gasoline tank somewhere she can't see. "Maybe he's really poured already. I got to find it." I stop her. 

She was shaking and I held her close. I patted her hair and that's all I saw, this small little lady who's tried to balance everything. Every living threat still a wound on her body, all from one man. 

"We have to leave, right now," I tell her. "He can burn this house down if he wants to. If he wants a divorce, let's."

I can't believe we're still here, afraid of losing our lives, afraid of losing our house, our cars, important personal documents in a fire. That he made, because I didn't please him with my dim sum place choice.

Fuck, it's a famous dim sum place. It just happens to not be crowded. What the actual fuck.

"A car without brakes."

A fire doesn't have brakes either.

I used to see red whenever he took things this far. I remember throwing lots of things at the ground behind him, but never at him. 

I remember being so angry at how easily he treats us, like food in the fridge that could spoil at any time. Ready to be tossed out. Our lives are there to please him.

To feed him. To take him out to wherever he wants. He never asks how we are. Truly, a second of a break is a second he could have. A meal that we made, he would leave nothing left for anyone else. It's all his. If he sees it, he's not sharing. 

You can pour every good intention to being a part of his life, but it's all absorbed, like a bank after I'm dead.

It is a meaningless life, I feel, loving a black hole like him. Any step out of line, and his tail wraps around me, biting at every slight thing he remembers I did today or years ago. 

But I can't run away from how I feel. Of course, I love him. 

But my poor mother. He is a blackhole she can't escape.

"Grandma wasn't around to teach you anything. You didn't have a father, Mom, and yet, still, you're so patient, so kind, so sweet, so true to someone who doesn't deserve it. No one raised you Mom, you raised yourself and god, you are so beautiful. You are such a gem. You are such a gem. I want to protect you. Let's please leave. Let's leave and let's go somewhere we can sleep without fear. Please. Mom."

And so we do. 

And I'm driving. I'm running away.

It's not like the time I ran away when I was 12 and I disappeared at a park. My mother drove over, crying when she found me on a swing. 

We ran away back in July again, when he threatened to kill himself in front of my sister and I with his shotgun, because I didn't have the fucking energy left to drive him out to Asiantown, when he wanted to go. He really did bring out his shotgun. We pulled out of the driveway just in time.

Yen ran away again, on her own, when he forgot to turn off the fire in our house and we must have all had carbon monoxide poisoning. Because dang, my brain and heart felt so weird then. 

There are so many wounds in my family, you know? So many wounds on my sweet, poor mother. So many wounds on Yen. Poor fucking Yen, who has panic attacks whenever there's a raised voice. She was born in the sweetest way, so giving and loving and believing and for someone to take all of that from her. 

I can never forgive you for doing that to her. 

I can never forgive you for threatening our lives, all of our life, for the slightest thing. 

I can never forgive you for hurting Mum over and over again in all the ways you can cut a woman down to a smaller part than before. You fucking did that to her.

I can never forgive you for all the gashes I have but can't see on myself, until I'm in some sweet man's arms and can't believe it when he tells me he cares about me or if his mood changes even slightly, I almost believe it's all my fault. I almost believe it. I live on a precipice, a cliff along the angry ocean all the time, with my friendships. I fear I'll lose anyone at any second if I say or do something wrong. 

I'm afraid of being the reason I lose everything in a second. But we all know that's a lie now.

I can't lose something that didn't want to be there in the first place.

So that's how I've held everything. That's how I've seen the world.

So I've ran away tonight. In my own car. I'll be back. 

I know I'll be back. Give it a week. I'll be back, taking out his trash, digging out all the wrong things he put into the recycling bin into the right trash bin. I'll be back to mow his lawn.

In a week, I could talk to him again. Pretend like he didn't just want to kill us all again. 

So that's what I'm coming back to. I do have a night guard now. That helps. 

I'm just a really little bean tonight and Monday is tomorrow and I have to go to work and pretend nothing like this happened. It's just us and everything else. Tonight, I truly feel so small you can't possibly cut me down further.

How can I let myself feel this way? When none of it is my fault? How can I, with 25 years of this exact experience, still cry over this? It's not like it hasn't happened before. It's not like it won't happen again.

It'll happen again. And I'll be fine again after. 

I'm afraid, I really am, of losing everything I have in a fire. I don't want to die in a fire either caused by a mad man.

My mom doesn't deserve it. Welp.

So we ran tonight, and when he saw my packed suitcase, he realized too late how much I meant that, "I really see you for what you are, Dad. A pit of trying to fulfill his every need, his every happiness, his every craving. You are the main character in your story and until you're happy and satiated, no one else can take care of anything else but you first. You must have everything you want or you'd threaten to burn our house down. Well then, you'll certainly live a very long life doing that, focused on filling every craving you have. Fill up that mouth. I can't believe you're your Dad's son and your Mom's son, because you have not an ounce of any kindness and thoughtfulness and selflessness that you claimed they must have had."

I didn't tell him I was leaving. I just left. I don't want to waste breath.