photo by Derek Jensen

I can’t believe it’s been 10 years.  Airplanes have been flying overhead for hours now–commercial or military, I don’t know–but it feels weird. When I woke up this morning, I watched the CNN livestream of the memorial service in NYC for a bit. I imagine one day my children (or my cats, who knows) will ask me where I was on 9/11, much like how I’ve asked my parents where they were when Kennedy was shot.

I was just shy of eighteen on September 11, 2001. My parents were out of town, so I was house-sitting with my best friend Miriam. The night before,  we fell asleep together in the living room watching some stupid movie about I don’t even remember anymore.

A call on the house phone woke me up a little before 3am HST. It was my other best friend, Jen, and she was sobbing uncontrollably. I wiped the sleep from my eyes and sat up.

“Something happened! Turn on the TV!!!” She was practically yelling in my ear. “Someone bombed the World Trade Center.”

“What? It’s okay, everything’s all right,” I reassured her, searching for the TV remote in the darkness.

“What’s going on?” Miriam yawned.

“I’m not sure,” I explained. “Here, talk to Jen while I look for the remote.”

I handed the phone to her and got up to turn on the light. I found the remote wedged between the loveseat cushions and flipped on the television, thumbing through the channels in search of a news channel. I thought I was watching a movie, like a scene from Independence Day. It was unreal.

“Tell her I don’t think it’s a bomb,” I told Miriam to relay to Jen, listening to the news anchors share what little info they had. “People think it might be a plane?”  I watched as smoked billowed out of the first tower and while Miriam was still on the phone crying with Jen, a plane hit the second tower.  I knew it was a plane from the livestream on television. The plane appeared seemingly out of nowhere, passing the first tower and then disappearing behind the second tower. A few moments later, there was an explosion from the building.  The news anchors weren’t sure what caused the explosion at first, but soon the information started pouring in. I remember Miriam telling me this was the beginning of WWIII.

While Miriam and Jen consoled each other over the phone, I reached for my cell phone to call my mom and stepdad who were now stranded in San Francisco. I woke them up and my mom sounded much like I did when I first answered the phone: confused.  We stayed up after the sun came out and my dad picked us up later and took us to breakfast to calm our nerves.

My mom and stepdad were trying to fly back to Hawaii from Seattle and ended up getting stranded in San Francisco for a few days. My mom said it was a ghost town, only the cable cars were running. They were staying at a hotel in downtown and there was fear that the financial district nearby was a target, so my stepdad called a relative in the suburbs, they checked out of the hotel, grabbed the last available rental car, and headed out of the city. When they flew home, she said the pilots made sure to introduce themselves to the passengers as they boarded the plane. They reassured them everything was safe and it was okay to fly, but reminded them to speak up if they saw something weird. My mom said it was strange at the time, but now it’s common to see pilots watching the passengers shuffle in. It’s crazy how quickly things have been forced to change.

In the months after 9/11, I didn’t sleep well. I lived in Manoa Valley with my ex and her friend in this tiny studio and when the planes passed through, it made the walls shake. I’m not sure if they were commercial planes, but the sound of them roaring through put me on edge. I didn’t sleep properly until I moved out of the Valley and that was nearly six months later.

I lived in Washington, DC for three years during college. A few times I got off at the Pentagon metro stop, mainly to transfer to other lines, but once we stopped outside so I could see the 9/11 plaques near the bus station.  A big portion of the Pentagon was closed off, still under repair, and I remember feeling heavy when I left.

I just want to take a moment and remember those who lost their lives that day and give thanks to the first responders for all they did.

Where were you on 9/11?

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I make bad decisions quite often. Sometimes it’s in a seemingly harmless way, like eating that extra piece of chocolate or buying a pair of shoes I didn’t need. With age, I’ve gotten better at spreading out my bad decisions between months, sometimes years.  Looking back at my past relationships, I’ve begun to see patterns in my behavior, expectations, and shortcomings.

My first girlfriend didn’t like me very much. This might be because she wasn’t actually gay or because she just didn’t care for me, I guess I’ll never know. For these reasons, I thought being in a relationship with a girl was mainly a lot of hand holding and being cheated on by your significant other. What’s worse is that I went out with this girl not once, but three times. 16-17 was obviously not an age marked by intelligence for me.

Approximately one week shy of being a senior in high school, my best friend and I threw a hotel party at the Ilikai in Waikiki to celebrate. We pooled together our money, bought tons of cheap liquor, and filled the bathtub with bags of ice from 7-11. We invited a bunch of friends, who invited other friends, and I somehow caved and invited my ex-girlfriend. 

By this time, we had already broken up twice (because she had cheated on me) and she said she might come by if she could bring a friend. My friend insisted on telling her the wrong hotel room, but I told her that the invitation didn’t seem to be met with much enthusiasm and not to worry about it.

Around midnight, I got a text from Jamie saying she was in the lobby of the hotel.  I responded with our room number and waited for the obligatory knock at the door.  She made small talk with my other friends and I watched her from across the tiny room, as if it was a surprise that she showed up.

After flirting with the majority of the guys there, she finally made her way over.  “Hey you.”

“Hey.” I was pretty drunk.

“Can we go somewhere quiet to talk?” she asked. She grabbed the nearly full bottle of tequila and tucked it under her arm. “Come on, let’s go.” She took me by the hand and took the elevator together downstairs in near silence. She swirled the tequila around, watching the li hing muis bob and race along the inside walls of the bottle. The pool area was already closed, but there were a few tables right outside the gated area.

She plopped herself down and took another swig, then reached for my hand. We made small talk while she hogged the bottle of tequila. “I still have feelings for you,” she admitted. Her hands felt clammy and nothing about this felt romantic or sincere. “I want to go out with you, but there are a few things I need.”

“Like what?” I asked. My head was pounding from the cheap Vodka and my heart was racing with anticipation.

“I still like you. I mean, I love you, but I need to be able to be with guys still.”

It felt like my brain separated itself from its stem and was spinning wildly inside my skull. I leaned back in the pool chair to steady myself, but my hand slipped through the plastic slats of the seat. “What does that even mean?”

“I want to be with you, but I need…to be able to be with a guy sometimes,” she explained it so nonchalantly that it made me feel like I was the crazy one.

After talking for about an hour, I agreed.  We sealed it with a sloppy Tequila kiss.

Unsurprisingly, we broke up about two months later. I remember crying for days, as if I were surprised that she left me for a guy.  She was the first bad decision I ever made and she certainly wasn’t the last. My first relationship set the bar pretty low for my future relationships. The sins of my ex-girlfriends’ weighed me down and  I, in turn,  made equally selfish decisions to those who didn’t deserve it.

At 27, nearly 28, I am beginning to feel too old to be making such self-destructive decisions.  Although, I admit,  my natural attraction still pulls me towards girls like the Hot Mess, addictive and impossible to keep up with.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Come up to meet you
Tell you I’m sorry
You don’t know how lovely you are
I had to find you
Tell you I need you
Tell you I set you apart
Tell me your secrets
And ask me your questions
Oh, let’s go back to the start
Running in circles
Calling tails
Heads on a silence apart

Nobody said it was easy
It’s such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard
Oh, take me back to the start
-Coldplay

The apartment is uncomfortably quiet. It always feels this way after a fight, especially when I know I’m wrong. I was wrong about so many things, but most of all, I was wrong about it not hurting.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

‘Cause I can’t make you love me if you don’t
You can’t make your heart feel something that it won’t
Here in the dark in these final hours
I will lay down my heart
And I feel the power
But you won’t, no you won’t
-Bonnie Raitt (but listening to the Bon Iver version)

“Well, you ruined everything,”  Ashley sighed.

“You asked how I felt, so I told you,” I explained. “I’ve known you for years. We’ve been here for years. You shouldn’t be surprised.” Of course, “here” was always ill-defined and ever changing. We existed in limbo,  teetering back and forth between the potential for something great and being strangers.

Right before Ashley said I ruined everything, I told her I still loved her.  We were having a text conversation about us and I thought I was being brave and spontaneous, declaring my love while passing through Universal City Walk for dinner.

“There could have been something great between us,” she said. “But you ruined it. You always do this–rush into things.” It’s odd to think that a confession of love can be perceived as a selfish act, especially because it’s meant to represent the exact opposite.

“I’ve known you for six years. We’ve been here over and over again for the past six years. How am I rushing? This is where we start every time.”

“I feel like you don’t care about me,” she complained. “You seem disinterested when we talk. You never call me.”

“Did you not hear what I just said?”

“Well, whatever. I don’t believe you.”

I don’t remember how the conversation ended, but I know it didn’t end well.

A friend of mine once  compared Ashley to a cat because she is notoriously fickle and hard to predict. When she complained I never called, I called more often and was told to leave her alone. When I tried to give her space (and silence), she said I didn’t care about her. We are in this complicated waltz with each other, where she seems to know all the nuances of our dance and I’m trying to follow along without stepping on her feet.

A few days later, thinking I was giving her enough time to cool off, I texted her. No response. I finally had a chance to call her and I got those irritating beeps that tell you the person has disconnected their number. I don’t know why the phone company even bothers with the beeps, when everyone knows they pretty much mean “fuck you, you don’t mean enough to get my new number.”

Her name is to the wind again and while I feel a bit empty, I strangely don’t feel sad.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

The final issue of the Hawaii Women’s Journal is now out, with the lovely Maya Soetoro-Ng gracing its cover.  My first creative non-fiction piece is featured on page 45. It is definitely a labor of love, going through numerous edits and re-writes. At first, I felt it was a bit unfocused, but then when I went home to Hawaii for vacation this past January, something clicked. After going back and forth with my editor, I realized my relationship with Hawaii paralleled my previous romantic relationships. I felt simultaneously suffocated and loved–I knew it was time to let go.

Dear Hawaii: It’s Not Me, It’s You is my love (and goodbye) letter to Hawaii.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.