When my sisters and I were young, we would lay down on the floor and play our favorite game. The 'Talk About Your Dream Home' Game. For five minutes to two hours, we closed our eyes and tried to manifest each nook and cranny of our perfect home into existence by describing every minute detail.
"We should have a machine that pops out every favorite candy. And it would never, ever run out," Hannah would whisper, gazing dreamily at the ceiling above her.
"Remember the library Beast gave Belle for Christmas?" I'd ask with awe, sweeping the air with dramatic arms. "We would have that same room....but, like, three times larger!" Clearly we weren't thinking about inflation or what the average cost per square foot for New York rent would be by the time we reached adulthood.
And here Lois, our youngest sister, would add the final flourishing bow upon our dreams by roaring, "And then Pikachu comes out and says, 'Pika Pika PEE-KAH-CHUUUU!"
(Give her a break. She was ten. Some of you sillies are getting run over by cars trying to catch the latest and rarest on Pokemon Go.)
Anyway, we clearly had divergent ideas on what made a good home, but did you catch the pronoun?
We.
We would have the Beast/Belle dream castle. We would live in the countryside with talking mice. We would live in a cottage atop the Big Rock Candy Mountain because we would live together.
It's not like my sisters and I didn't fight. We were as catty a trio as any litter of kittens. But whenever we dreamily plunged forward to sneak a peek into our adult lives, it wasn't even up for discussion that we wouldn't be together.
I don't know if either of my sisters still play that game (they probably don't because, unlike me, they've successfully jettisoned all their childish ways and become Full Adults). But I sure do. On a weekly basis. James knows that part of his non-negotiable duties of husbandry - along with catching spiders and killing roaches - is cheerfully playing along with every session of Dream Home Game.
Only now I fantasize more about alarm-activated IVs of matcha latte and cleaning fairies instead of prancing around princess closets.
But from childhood until now, that 'we part' has stayed the same.
We would be together.
All of us.
Togetherness with closest friends and family has always been part of the Jane Choi Happiness Plan. I dreamed of being safely ensconced in eternal paradise with all my family and friends.
I think that's why it hurts more when I see things, hear things, and count too many things that are happening to people who look like me. It makes me feel like maybe the privilege of dreaming about a perfect life (or something resembling it) is only reserved for others. Like this fragile glass of a dream is getting ruthlessly hammered and increasingly fractured, only to reveal a glum, grayish, and darker reality underneath.
When I wrote that last post, it was out of exhaustion from doing a constant mental tango with Fear and Anxiety. I hated feeling alone. I hated feeling fearful. I hated double-, triple- , quadruple-checking my mace keychain to make sure the lock was disengaged as I walked across a darkened parking lot into the grocery store.
But I also wasn't sure how to talk about it. I didn't even know who would want to hear.
For decades, I've perfectly honed and sharpened the craft of internal processing. All my elementary school report cards contained scrawled praises from teachers who thought I was bright and polite. BUT - and it would always have this 'but'-
"But she's so quiet!" each and every one of my teachers would say at parent-teacher conferences. Year after year, teachers would make some comment on how infrequently I opened my mouth to even breathe in class. Their response was usually some varying mix of puzzled smiles and concern, but I never felt the need nor the desire to change. It was my self-taught way of protecting myself.
Because talking invited trouble. Talking meant discussions. Discussions didn't always help things. And sometimes it even made things worse.
So both then and now, I would keep deep troubles, big thoughts, and heavy burdens hidden. I kept them steadfastly locked up in my mind's safe, residing safely between memories of my first ever kiss and my last first kiss with James. As a child, I'd scrawl furiously into the ink-bled pages of one of many childhood journals (that is, until Umma found where I was hiding them and hung. me. out. to. DRY for some incriminating secrets I revealed by my own hand.)
I was my own outlet and self-therapist for three decades, mostly because I never dreamed anyone would want to hear the chaos of thoughts that permanently squatted, rent-free, inside my head.
So you'll understand that when I say I've been inexpressibly overwhelmed by you - old friends, new friends, friends who have said 'me too,' and friends who have pledged their fresh allyship - I really, really mean it.
Thank you. From the bottom of my heart.
I cried for a few good minutes when our wedding photographer-cum-friend donated to a tiny fundraiser I started on IG. It wasn't so much the amount, though he gave more generously than I imagined anyone ever would. Even a dollar would have sprung the tear trap. It was because he was saying, "I know it's happening. I know you're hurting. So I'm going to try to help."
I don't know if I'll ever get to that Dream Home. I've presumably reached the halfway point in life and I'm still miles away from all my favorite people. Besides, there are so many growing fractured places on this Earth that even if I could devise the perfect architecture, I don't even know if I want to build a permanent home here.
But here on this page, you have entered with smiles, hugs, and open ears.
And it makes Page and Spoon feel Dream Home adjacent.