Wednesday, February 7
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California Day One
I just came back from the nursing home with my mom and I still feel a little light headed and sick to my stomach.
Earlier this morning my uncle took me to what was a Vietnamese version of Hooters, skinny girls wearing nothing but silicon and perfume. The only difference was that this place had no shame in being what it was. Hooters dresses it up, acting almost as if it were a family restaurant, while this place had the sleazy dark lit, smokey atmosphere of a upper middle class strip club. It made me regret not checking out a maid cafe in Japan while I was there to see how that compared.
My mom had gone to visit my grandmother first, the reason why we flew down almost instantly after hearing the news of her health. After the cafe and eating pho, I went to the nursing home. Walking inside I felt what I feel must be similar to clausterphobia. I couldn't breath too well and my chest felt heavy. I began feeling depressed and felt out of my body, watching myself lose control of myself. When I got to the door of my grandma I felt the disorientation people feel when drugs wear off. I was standing by her door and afraid to go inside. When I did finally go inside my grandma was on her side, so frail looking I was afraid that standing beside her would cause her to pass away. She had tubes running all over her body and in her nose and my mom was by her side rubbing her hands and telling story after story. I looked at her and i saw her as she could have been when she was young, taking care of my mother just like how my mother took care of me. My mother started tearing up and suddenly it was my mother in the bed and I was telling my mother about my life, but it had this sense of hopelessness in the telling, kind of like how someone continuing to do CPR on someone already gone. I'm telling her that I have a family now and everyone is happy and so forth, but it felt like the story came too late.
I couldn't wait to get out of there and I felt guilty for feeling that way.
UPDATE:It's a few hours later and I feel even worse now. My mom is so shaken. She had that experience that I felt. I guess I knew what she was thinking and had the same thought as her. She remembered back to how her mother used to comb her hair and sew her clothes and now she's breaths away from dying. But like even at the state she was, she was so careful in telling me how she wanted to stay longer, how she didn't want to leave her mother and go back because her mother cared for her so much. She was careful because she knows that all I want to do is go home and it was almost as if she was asking my permission to stay and I felt like such a spoiled brat. Then she was talking about how she will miss me again this year for New Year's when I'm at home with the family and if she stayed here for her mother and I was like, "mom, I'll be here with you too." Anyways, I'm still holding back tears because I want to be strong for my mom, but it's so difficult because I keep putting myself in her shoes and it's painful and emotional.
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