Author: SomatiCat

The Wayfarer : Where Day Meets Night

Posted on by SomatiCat

A wayfarer came up to a village on his way to another day. The sun was shining brightly in the very middle of the sky. The field was filled with golden waves. Over rolling hills, cattle and sheep were drowsily munching on soft green pastures. Men and women with their nicely tanned skin, working in the fields tending cattle and picking berries, waved at the wayfarer. Waving back, he walked into the village. The day was bright. Smells of freshly baked bread, noise of running hens, stalks of sunflowers welcomed him.

The wayfarer had passed through many villages. Some were starving, some were sick, and some were fighting. To his tired eyes, this village was a paradise.

A man with strong hands came out to welcome him.

“I travel from the past to another day. Your village can be my today. Would you give me permission to stay for a night? Tomorrow I will be heading for another day,” the wayfarer said.

“Please allow me to have you as our guest, and tell us stories of your world of the past,” said the man of the village. They shook hands. The wayfarer saw something strange fly across the face of the welcoming man, but was not quite sure what it was.

There was something strange about the village. Everything was so bright in the mid-day sun high in the center of the sky, and everything looked flat, as if it were cut out of paper. What the wayfarer did not notice was that nobody cast a shadow here. What the man of the village noticed was the wayfarer’s dark shadow on the ground when he reached his hand out.

The man of the village said to the wayfarer, “Our king lives in a castle on the hill. His majesty loves to hear stories of other countries. He will throw a great feast for you.” Then the man took the wayfarer to the great castle on the hill.

The king himself welcomed the wayfarer. He was old but a strong man with deep tan. He used to be a fearless warrior, somebody whispered into the wayfarer’s ear. The feast started with music and dancers. Roasted ducks, eggs, bread and cheese. Wine flowed from pitchers. Noble men and ladies in the castle ate and drank. Even guards were with goblets filled with wine. The wayfarer started to tell his story of the past.

The king said, “My dear royal guest, tell the Prince, my only son, your story.   He has never seen the ocean or the mighty rivers you crossed. He has never known other countries, where other kings, queens, and princesses reside in their castles. He is now in the field riding his favorite horse. He will return soon.”

The Prince was a handsome young man. His hair and his eyes were as dark as a forest at night. And he had a shadow. His shadow was so black against the bright white-washed landscape. It was as if somebody cut out darkness itself and pasted it at his feet. When he moved, the dark shadow moved with him.

“Here comes my son. He is my joy and our hope.” The prince dismounted his horse and reached out his hand to the wayfarer. Only the prince looked real among the paper cut-out people.

The wayfarer told stories of dark night in the woods, the mighty river he crossed, great warlords’ castles, white mountains of ice, a frozen river of winter, the sun setting into the ocean, dark caves where dragons and monsters lived. The prince listened to the story with his dark eyes shining.

The feast went on and on. The jar of wine was never left empty. Plates full of food just appeared on the table one after another. Music filled the court of the old king.

“I traveled over hundreds of thousands of miles. I passed through many villages and kingdoms, and I have never seen such a wonderful feast as yours,” the wayfarer said. “Your kingdom must be blessed and filled with golden light like drips of honey on every single crop.”

For an instant people fell silent. Just the music kept on filling the void.

The prince said, “I do not know if I am blessed or not, since this is the only world I know from the beginning of my life. However, a strange feeling sometimes catches me. I miss something, something I have never known.”

The sun was bright and still in the middle of the sky. The wayfarer could not tell how long he had been drinking and eating. The sun never set, and the night never fell. Suddenly, tiredness overcame him. He fell asleep.

When the wayfarer woke up, he found himself in a blinding darkness. His clothes were wet, but he found it cool and pleasant. He heard water running nearby. His eyes started to see dark shapes of trees. It was night—blissfully dark night.

There was no moon, but he could see. The wayfarer wondered where the mysterious light came from. It was a cool blue-green light, which did not convey warmth. It was not the kind of light that came from a single source. Then he realized that some trees were glowing slightly.

This was the strangest forest he had ever seen.

“They thought you were dead,” a man’s voice came from the forest.

The wayfarer jumped and turned toward the voice. A man stood there in a long dark gray robe.

“I did not mean to scare you. I am a priest and serve the high priestess of our order. An owl told me that they sent a dead man up the river. It’s been a while since the last one.”

“Then, this is the country of the dead, isn’t it?” the wayfarer asked.

“No, you are not dead. And if you do not know where you are now, you must be a stranger.”

The wayfarer explained his journey and the strange village.

“They mistook you for dead and sent you to this side of the river to be buried.   We bury their dead as well as ours in this forest of night. They did not mean harm. We do not mean harm to you. But I must take you to our high priestess. She has never been out of the woods.”

The wayfarer was curious and decided to follow the priest.  Although the priest also seemed to glow slightly, it was not enough to light the way.  The priest noticed his companion’s awkward steps and stopped to break a small branch from a nearby tree.  He handed it to the wayfarer, and then he cupped his hands at the end of the branch.  The slight light started to concentrate.  It was a soft cool light, similar to that of fireflies, with a touch of yellow.  The light breathed in a slow steady rhythm at the end of the stick.

They walked deep into the woods.  The noise of dead leaves and breaking branches under their feet echoed in the darkness.  It was an unusual forest.  The night was as strange as the day on the other side of the river.  “It’s the silence,” the priest murmured.  Anybody who has ever spent a night in woods knows that the woods should be more alive at night.  But here they hear no cricket sing, no frog croak, or no night crawlers howl.  Even leaves of the trees did not rustle.

The trail led them into a clearing, where they found a small spring.  The water was radiating cool sapphire blue light.  The wayfarer was drawn to the spring and he kneeled down on the edge.  He put his hands into the water.  It was cool like dew that touches your feet when you step into a field early in the summer morning.  He scooped up water from the spring.  The water was glowing in his hands.  Every drop of water dripped from his hands back into the spring was glowing.  

“This spring is the sacred place for us,” the priest said.  “Our order has guarded this spring since the beginning of the time.  Please proceed into our temple.”  The wayfarer looked up and found a grotto opening.

He followed the stream of sacred water into the grotto.  The cool blue glow of the stream guided him further into.  The priest followed behind him in silence.  Footsteps echoed softly and the cool moist floor seemed to breathe at the touch of his feet.  When it breathed, it glowed.  

The wayfarer didn’t know how long he walked in the grotto night.  Sometime the path led him up and sometime down.  The underground stream disappeared and appeared again.  

Then the wayfarer stepped into a clearing in the woods.  He found himself where he started.  Besides the blue hue of the sacred spring, standing the high priestess as if the full moon just stepped down from the sky.  

“The owl told me we had a visitor from the other side,” the priestess spoke in a soft voice.  “He came from the place far away,” the priest said.  “I found him by the river.”  The priestess face lit up.  “It has been long time since the last stranger passed by.  Tell me about the place you came from.”  

The wayfarer told the stories of his long journey from the past: a night in the woods, the mighty river he crossed, great warlords’ castles, white mountains of ice, a frozen river of winter, the sun setting into the ocean, dark caves where dragons and monsters lived.  Then he told the story of the strange village of people with no shadows.  When he told about the dark eyes of the prince, the priestess’ blue eyes shined.

The night was soft and permanent.  Nothing moved in the woods.  Then the wayfarer realized the priestess was not there.  And there was no moon in the sky.  The priest came to sit next to him and started to tell the story of the Night and the Day.

“Before our priestess was born, there was a time we had both nights and days.  The villagers were farmers and we were medicine people living in the woods.  We crossed the river to go to the market in the village to exchange our fruits, nuts, mushrooms, herb and medicines for their bread and cheese.  The villagers came to the sacred spring to receive blessing.  Babies, the newly married, the sick, and the dying, every one of the villagers came here sometimes in life to receive blessings.  Some moved in the woods and became one of us.  Others moved out to the village and became one of them.  Our children played together crossing the river back and forth.  

There used to be a flock of birds here, nesting in the woods.  In the morning they flew out to the field and at night they came back to the woods to rest.  One day a king’s man shot at a bird crossing over the river.  One bird fell down to the ground and died, and then it turned into gold.  The man smelt the gold and made a golden goblet.  He poured wine in the goblet and nobody could make the goblet empty.  It just kept on filling itself with heavenly wine.  Then, another man shot another bird down.  It was smelt into a golden plate.  Fruits and berries grew on the plate.  Eventually, no more sick to come to the spring to pray.  Bird by bird, the day got longer.  No more babies to come to bathe in the spring.  Bird by bird, the night got longer.  When the last bird fell from the sky, the day took over the night, and the night the day.  In the king’s court, wine flowed endlessly in the goblet.  Night fell on our woods and never left.   Our people dissipated into the darkness of the night woods.  

Now we can’t step out of the darkness, and they can’t step into the darkness. 

Only one baby was born in the woods after the last bird failed to come home to nest.  Our priestess is the only one who emits light in the woods,” the priest said in a sad voice.

“And only one baby was born in the village after the last bird fell.  The prince is the only one who carries shadow in the day,” the wayfarer said.  “Yes, you are right,” the priest said.  “And we will be separated until the day meets the night…”

Looking at the spring glowing blue, the wayfarer fell asleep.  In his dream, he saw sky full of golden birds flying across the river to the woods.  

When he woke up, it was night.  The priest was nowhere in sight.  He was lying under a tree near the spring, with soft moist ground underneath his body.  He stood up and started to walk back into the woods, toward the riverbank.

Standing on the cool grass at night, he saw the village in the perpetual high noon across the silvery river.  He took a huge breath and dove in the river.  The water wrapped him and embraced him in its arms.  He dove further down and everything seemed to be arrested.  It was quiet as stones.  A moment he thought he saw a school of children —or were they some kind of exotic fish?— swimming further upstream.  

Then he looked upward and shot up into the glaring sun.  It was a fine day on the other side of the river.  A villager saw the wayfarer walk out of the river.  The man ran to the court to tell the king that the dead man crossed the river back.  

The wayfarer went to the court and told the story of the silent night woods and the priestess with silvery hair and sky blue eyes.  The king listened to the wayfarer and gave a big sigh.  

“Nobody but the dead can cross the river between the night and the day.   You are the first one ever who came back from the night. “  

The Prince with dark hair was listening in silence, and then said to the wayfarer, “Take me to the river where you came back to life.”

The wayfarer took the prince to the river.  On the other side of the river, the dark woods were silent.  The prince stood there staring at the woods, with his shadow dark and short on the ground.  

On the other side of the river, the priestess followed footsteps of the wayfarer to the river bank.  The wayfarer saw her standing in the dark shadow of woods, with her silvery hair flowing down to the ground.  

“There she is,” the wayfarer said to the prince.  

“Tell me what you see,” the prince said.

The wayfarer told the prince what she was like, and how she stood there across from the Prince just beyond the reach of the daylight.  

Suddenly, the prince jumped in the river and started swim across.  The river swallowed the prince and he disappeared in the water.  The current was fast and water was cold.  He swam hard and finally reached at the bank.   He came out of the river and found the wayfarer standing in the sun.   

“Tell me what you see,” the prince said.

The wayfarer told him what he saw.

The Prince and the Priestess remained there looking at each other, as if they could see each other.  

The prince jumped in the river and came out of the river in the sun.   The wayfarer told him what he saw. 

The prince jumped in the river and came out of the river again and again. His night-dark hair was wet, reflecting the sun. His dark eyes grew deeper every time he emerged.

The wayfarer noticed that every time the prince came out, his shadow grew a little longer. Each crossing lengthened it.

After one hundred eighty-two times, his shadow became so long that it reached across the river to the other side.

The priestess stepped out of the night woods and walked into his shadow. They finally saw each other for the first time.

The prince stepped into his own shadow toward the priestess. His shadow remained stretched across the river.

They walked toward each other on the bridge of shadow.

In the middle of the bridge, they met.

And there, they dissolved into each other.

They heard thousands of golden birds fly across the river.

Somewhere in the village, a shadow flickered.

Somewhere in the woods, a leaf trembled. 

© J.U. 2007

The image is AI generated.

Changing My State of Being

Posted on by SomatiCat

If you’ve ever lived with an incurable, debilitating illness, you’ve probably wished for a miracle. It’s deeply human to hope for a magical cure. I can’t count how many mornings I opened my eyes hoping the tinnitus—the telltale sign that my symptoms were still there—had somehow disappeared overnight.

I developed Ménière’s disease while I was working out of state. During one attack, I lay curled up in the fetal position in a cold motel bathtub, vomiting, gagging, and shaking, wondering whether I would be able to go to work the next morning. I was afraid to get on a plane to fly home. Then I became afraid to leave home at all.

Several possible futures for my life ended in that motel bathtub.

The highly functional, reliable powerhouse I had always been was gone. If an attack came, I could become a puddle of vomit on a random sidewalk or park path.

Ménière’s disease is considered an incurable, disabling condition. It isn’t life-threatening, but it completely changed my state of being. There were so many things I could no longer do. I fought against it and suffered, grieving the loss of the life and abilities I had taken for granted.

Then, almost magically, it disappeared in less than a year.

Ménière’s disease is notoriously unpredictable. For the next two years, I was active and functional again. I made plans for a new career and new adventures.

Then it came back with a vengeance.

The attacks became so frequent and severe that I was essentially homebound and often bedridden. But something had changed in me. This time, I didn’t mourn the life I thought I should have had. This was simply the reality of the present moment. My task wasn’t to fight reality—it was to adjust my priorities.

I accepted a different state of being.

By then, I had already learned that controlling Ménière’s disease directly was almost impossible.

I also had diabetes and was taking medication to lower my blood glucose. Intuitively, I suspected the medication might be a major trigger for my Ménière’s attacks. If I wanted to stop taking the medication, I would have to lower my blood glucose through diet and exercise instead.

I couldn’t control Ménière’s disease, but I could control my diabetes.

While I was homebound, I immersed myself in learning. I read book after book about both conditions and adopted a very strict diet. Around that time, a friend sent me Becoming Supernatural. Although I didn’t believe in spontaneous healing, much of what Joe Dispenza wrote resonated with me. I began practicing meditation, setting clear intentions, and paying attention to my inner state rather than focusing only on my symptoms.

One morning, after a moderate vertigo attack, A single word arose in my mind:

“Run.”

Normally, I would have stayed in bed all day. Since I couldn’t physically run, I interpreted it the only way I could. I got up, left my apartment, and walked to a nearby park.

When I returned home, a friend called to say they had unexpectedly arrived at Penn Station and wondered if I could meet them. It was the friend who had sent me Joe Dispenza’s book.

Had I stayed in bed, as I normally would have, I never could have seen them that day.

I don’t know where that inner message came from. I only know that I listened.

Over the following year, my blood glucose dropped into the pre-diabetic range without medication. At the same time, my Ménière’s attacks became less frequent and eventually became rare.

Was it the diet? The meditation? The change in my nervous system? The intention? The reduction in blood glucose? A combination of all of them?

I honestly don’t know.

What I do know is that my state of being changed.

I am not cured. I still have very mild Ménière’s symptoms that remind me to pay attention. I still maintain a disciplined diet and regular exercise to keep my blood glucose under control.

But today, I am functional.

That is my current state of being.

I’m sorry I was born

Posted on by SomatiCat

I used to let a friend stay in my apartment whenever I was away. She was a hoarder, and her own apartment was almost unlivable. I wanted her to have a place where she could simply exist, even if only for a week or so.

When I returned, I always found my apartment exactly as I had left it, as if nobody had ever been there. She erased every trace of her presence, just as I preferred. My apartment was my safe space, and I wasn’t comfortable having anyone else in it. It amazed me because she couldn’t even pick up the trash that had fallen on the floor in her own apartment. She must have made a tremendous effort to leave no trace of herself.

Then I noticed something.

That was exactly what I did whenever I stayed in someone else’s home. I did my best not to leave any trace of myself, as if I were an intruder.

“I’m sorry I was born” is the famous opening line of No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai. I related to that line deeply when I was a teenager.

My friend had DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder), caused by severe childhood trauma. One of her alters repeated, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

I am sorry to exist.

That was our common ground.

It wasn’t because we were inherently bad, damaged, or worthless. It was because someone had wounded our psyches so profoundly that we could no longer feel we had the right simply to exist.

My friend has since left this world from natural causes, finally free from her suffering. For her, not existing may have been the only way to feel safe.

I am staying with a friend’s family now, where I feel safe. Even so, I still catch myself trying to be invisible—quietly slipping through the kitchen without being noticed—as if something terrible might happen if I were seen.

In a loving family, that wouldn’t have happened.

The Nervous System Remembers

Posted on by SomatiCat

I always have the urge to go to the bathroom before I leave home, especially if I’ll be in a car for a long drive. It doesn’t matter that I went to the bathroom just twenty minutes ago. If I ignore the urge, I feel anxious.

My father used to ask us, his children, “Did you go to the bathroom?” just before we got into his car. If I didn’t take the cue and go “just to be safe,” he would complain, ridicule, and reprimand me if I needed to use the bathroom before his designated pit stop. I was just a kid.

I didn’t realize that my nervous system had been conditioned by my father’s strict rule.

Years later, I took a self-defense class for women. Men wearing ridiculously thick protective gear pretended to be sexual offenders and simulated attacks. The female participants then practiced kicking and striking strategically assigned target areas, just as we had been taught. We trained for several weeks.

At the end of the course, we shared our experiences. One woman said she always felt the urge to go to the bathroom after the simulated attack and defense exercises. She explained that it was exactly what she had done after she was raped. Her story made a deep impression on me.

Our nervous system doesn’t forget.

No amount of talk therapy would have eliminated my urge to go to the bathroom. The body remembers. The nervous system keeps score.

So how do I convince my nervous system that I don’t actually have to pee—that my bladder isn’t full?

Ironically, I learned the answer when I stopped taking an anti-anxiety medication cold turkey.

The medication had been prescribed on an as-needed basis. Over time, for various reasons, I began taking it every day. I didn’t realize I had developed a dependence on it. After the stressful period was over and I went on vacation, I stopped taking it. It was a very low dose, so I had no idea it could cause such severe withdrawal symptoms.

I woke up every hour from nightmares. Throughout the day, I felt a strong urge to urinate every hour, even though my bladder wasn’t full. After ruling out a urinary tract infection—I happened to be staying with a friend who was an infectious disease specialist—I discovered that urinary urgency is a common withdrawal symptom. Because benzodiazepines depress the central nervous system, withdrawal can manifest as an overactivation of the sympathetic nervous system.

If I couldn’t regulate my autonomic nervous system, I worried that I would reinforce the pattern and end up needing to use the bathroom every hour indefinitely.

So I told my nervous system that it was a phantom urge and that my bladder wasn’t going to burst. I held it for thirty minutes longer, then an hour longer. Each day I gradually extended the time before going to the bathroom. After several days, both my bladder and my sleep returned to normal.

One of my friends teaches nervous system regulation techniques for people with CPTSD. I understood the theory, but I hadn’t truly put it into practice. Now I understand how powerful those techniques can be.

I still have moments of anxiety, moments when I used to reach for a pill automatically. Now I see them as signs that my sympathetic nervous system has become unnecessarily activated. Instead, I calm myself with breathing techniques and wait for the activation to pass.

So far, it’s working.

Tinnitus

Posted on by SomatiCat

This essay is about chronic suicidal ideation as a symptom, not an expression of current intent.

I realized that suicidal ideation is like tinnitus for me.

Because of Meniere’s disease, I have tinnitus in one ear. When I was having severe attacks, every morning I woke up hoping the ringing had miraculously disappeared. Every morning, the moment I opened my eyes, it came roaring back. It was a loud, high-pitched sound that was always present. The louder it became, the more likely it was that a severe attack was coming. Even now, I feel anxious whenever I hear the high-pitched sound they use in horror movies to signal that something ominous is about to happen.

Fortunately, my Meniere’s disease went into remission, and I no longer have severe attacks. Some residual symptoms remain. I have lost most of the hearing in one ear. I lose my balance easily. And I still have a constant, low-grade tinnitus in my deaf ear.

Most of the time I am not consciously aware of it, but it is always there. Occasionally it grows louder, and I slap the side of my head with my palm, as if I could reset it. When everything around me is quiet, I hear it.

I have had suicidal ideation since I was very young. The impulse has always been with me. It is just a thought, and I have never seriously acted on it, but I hear a voice saying, “Jump. Jump. Jump.” My mind automatically imagines ways I could kill myself. Sometimes that voice becomes very loud.

After decades of therapy and simply reaching a certain age, I realized that it was never a wish to die.

I once watched a film about an actor who overdosed after a scandal destroyed his career. Did he intentionally kill himself, or was it an accident? The film suggested another possibility: perhaps he simply wanted to sleep deeply, wake up, and reboot his life.

I understood immediately.

What I really wanted was to be free from the roles assigned to me by other people—to stop being a character in someone else’s story. I wanted to begin my own life, free from relational trauma, outside the architecture of my family, free from expectations that had been imposed on me.

When I reached that realization, I proudly told my psychiatrist that my suicidal ideation had disappeared.

But it came back.

Not as loudly as before, but like tinnitus, it is always there. Sometimes it gets a little louder and I notice it. Most of the time it fades into the background and I ignore it. But it is always there.

Perhaps my nervous system developed this pattern because of the life I lived. It is simply following an old neural pathway.

Perhaps what I need now is not to fight it, but to patiently teach my nervous system that I am free.

Help is available

If you’re having thoughts of self-harm or suicide: call, text 988, or start a live chat with Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. It’s free and confidential. You’ll reach someone who is trained to listen and support you.

Just in Case

Posted on by SomatiCat

I’ve always wanted to be one of those rare people who can move at a moment’s notice with just two suitcases.

One of my friends has moved countless times—within New York City, from the East Coast to the West Coast, and even across the Pacific—in pursuit of better opportunities as an actress. Every time she moves, she sheds more of her belongings. Most of the time, she has lived in shared houses or apartments.

“I only keep one nice cup and one plate I love,” she once told me. She has a Tiffany teacup and a Wedgwood plate.

She doesn’t cook.

I have also moved many times, from one apartment to another in the city, as my relationships fell apart. Eventually, I came to live alone in increasingly smaller apartments. I have now lived by myself in the same small apartment for more than fifteen years.

I’ve done my share of shedding, but in general I’ve always had difficulty letting things go. Some things I kept because of their sentimental value, some because I thought I might need them someday, and others because I imagined I might use them for craft projects.

I am not a craft person.

While living in this apartment, I have encountered three cases of hoarding.

My father was a hoarder. Whenever I visited my parents and tried to sort through the belongings I had left behind, I was disgusted to find the room stuffed with toilet paper rolls, tissue boxes, and cheap bars of soap. Why do toilet paper rolls so often trigger scarcity anxiety? I rearranged the piles of toilet paper and other supplies just so I could make enough room to move around. My father complained.

I felt physically sick. It was like looking into his troubled mind. There was clearly something wrong with him. He kept everything and threw away nothing. Sometimes he picked up things other people had discarded and brought them home because they might be useful someday. We thought he was simply thrifty. After he retired, it became much worse.

After he was moved to a nursing home, we were finally able to clear out his belongings. My mother had no attachment to any of them. His better clothes and anything of value were donated to a charity. Without him there to protest, we got rid of the junk he had accumulated over the years. My mother was dumbfounded to discover several broken bicycles in the shed.

“Where did he get them?” she asked me.

He must have schlepped them home from neighborhood garbage dumps… just in case. He simply couldn’t resist the urge.

People might call it a depression mentality. Perhaps. He grew up in an era of scarcity, and it was a mindset shared by his generation. To a certain extent, it could even be considered a virtue. I have to admit that I inherited some of that mentality myself.

After he passed away, I helped my mother clear out the closets where he had stored his things. Deep inside, packed away in cardboard boxes, I found his psyche—clinging to mementos from every stage of his life, as if trying to hold mortality at bay.

I found his old clothes, tattered and dusty. Among them were the uniforms he had worn as a bank clerk, at least fifty years earlier. Then I came across a stack of pay slips over his entire career at the bank. I was at a loss for words.

Next I found old newspaper clippings from our hometown. One was a small article with a photograph of a group of young nurses. Slowly it dawned on me that one of them was my mother. Another clipping was about something I had written, with my photograph beside it. I didn’t even remember it. I showed my mother the article about the nurses. She didn’t even look at it before tossing it into the garbage. I threw mine away, too.

He never made an effort to know who I was. I was just another newspaper clipping to him, packed away in a dusty cardboard box with the other mementos of his life.

I still don’t know who he was.

But now I know his fear, his anxiety, and his insecurity.

About fifteen years ago, a friend of mine with Dissociative Identity Disorder asked me to help her clean out her apartment. Since she never let anyone inside, very few people knew how she was living. At the time, I was highly dissociated myself. She probably recognized a similarly traumatized psyche in me, and that may have made her feel safe enough to let me in.

Her apartment was in a state of extreme chaos. Everything that entered the space simply piled up without any sense of order. Letters, papers, and plastic bags fell onto the floor and remained there for years. New clothes, still with their tags attached, were buried beneath empty boxes alongside stained clothes. There was barely enough room to move.

It was a shock to my nervous system, but I didn’t feel it. I compartmentalized my emotions and focused on the task at hand, helping her create a little space with some semblance of normalcy.

It was like an archaeological dig. As I cleared away one layer, I uncovered things from the previous year, then the year before that. It became difficult when I began to recognize pieces of our shared past: handouts from our psychospiritual training program, essays by fellow students that she had reviewed, handmade scarves one of the artist students gave her every year. She was loved and trusted by so many of us, yet throughout those years she lived inside this chaos, building a fortress of possessions to keep the outside world at bay.

For about a year, I helped her carve out enough space for her simply to exist. Then she shut down. Before long, the apartment had returned to its original chaos. Perhaps she couldn’t tolerate even the slightest sense of normalcy.

That apartment embodied her psyche. While I was there, it felt as though multiple voices were speaking at once, without context. I stayed numb because if I had allowed myself to feel, I don’t think I could have survived the overwhelming chaos I was trying to bring into some kind of order.

When she was “allowed”—her word—to go out, she could present herself as a perfectly normal person. Brilliant and intelligent, thoughtful and kind, she was a wonderful woman. She was also a mentor to some of us.

I remember one evening when she treated two of us—both struggling with family trauma—to a Sondheim musical. She was funny, articulate, and sophisticated, dressed in a beautiful Eileen Fisher outfit, her favorite brand.

At the end of the evening, we each returned to our own worlds. I went back to my small, cluttered, but safe apartment. The other woman returned to her apartment in the East Village, where her husband was waiting. My friend returned to her own space, where chaos alone prevailed.

As more and more things accumulated in her apartment, there was less and less of the person we knew.

To me, it became clear that the apartment was her. Her confusion, her shame, her fear, her profound frustration, her madness—they all lived there.

Because of severe childhood trauma and the mental illness that followed, She had never been able to metabolize everyday life.

I saw something of myself in her. From that point on, I began consciously and deliberately letting things go.

I didn’t want to become her.

The third case was my aunt, who passed away at the age of one hundred. I was the executor of her will and had to empty her house before we could sell it. I never imagined she was a hoarder. Her home was always neat and beautifully decorated. I began by burning her photo albums simply because I couldn’t bear the thought of her personal photographs ending up in a garbage dump.

Then I realized she had been a major hoarder.

There were thousands of photographs of her. Everything was about her. It was as if she were the center of every party she attended, every trip she took, every occasion she was part of. Thousands of photographs documented the life she presented to the outside world.

Like my father, she kept everything. I found old tickets, postcards, and little souvenirs from her extensive travels tucked away in drawers. I kept feeding them into the fire.

Then I moved on to the closets. They were meticulously organized, filled with hundreds of boxes, most of them carefully labeled in her own handwriting. Inside were the leftover supplies from every craft she had ever taken up. She was extraordinarily talented and threw herself into one craft after another. For several years she would immerse herself in it, creating beautiful things, and then she would move on to the next one. The remnants of each passion were carefully packed away and preserved. Some of the boxes had remained unopened for decades.

She kept everything.

She built an armor out of her creations and achievements.

I don’t know who she was. It was as if someone had cut the figure out of a photograph. The background remained perfectly intact, but where she should have been, there was only a blank white space.

We digest food. We also digest life’s experiences—if they are fully lived, they become part of us. If they are not, they remain outside us as unfinished business. Sometimes they become objects we cannot throw away.

Now I look around my apartment and ask myself what I can let go of. I don’t need mementos of my life once I’ve metabolized it.

The One Who Stayed in the Garden

Posted on by SomatiCat

There were three girls, Nana, Kiki, and Zuzu, living together in a small house with a large backyard. Nana was the smart one. Kiki was the pretty one and Zuzu was the dumb one.

Every day Nana went to school with books and pencils and erasers and rulers neatly packed in her backpack. Nana loved to visit the computer room, where she could sit by herself and punch in numbers and formulae. Kiki also went to school, but she didn’t read books. She liked to chat and hang out with friends.

Zuzu always stayed home and played by herself in the large backyard. Zuzu couldn’t read. Zuzu couldn’t write. Zuzu couldn’t talk. She buried things in the backyard, things that had once been alive. She buried things from Mama’s kitchen: carrots, turnips, shells, chicken bones, eggs, fish bones, ox tails, potato peels, grapes, seeds of fruits. She buried things from their living room: goldfish, plants, birds, when they stopped moving. She did not bury Kiki’s socks or her ribbons. She did not bury Nana’s books or papers. So nobody minded what she buried in the backyard. No one asked why she chose the things she did.

In spring many plants broke ground in the backyard. In summer it got crazy. Next to pumpkin vines crawling on the ground, sunflowers stood high above. Papaya and avocado turned the garden into a tropical island and died away when the first autumn wind touched the frail leaves. Baby trees were everywhere. Flowers had no sense of order. You could bump into huge watermelons with cute green stripes. Grasshoppers were jumping around and ants were marching from one place to another. Mama never bought any herbs from the store. She just had to step outside into Zuzu’s garden. Things came back in other forms. And they grew and grew like kudzu in the South. The girls ate watermelons for lunch. Mama baked pumpkin pies. Grape vines crawled up a pine tree. Everything was sweet and rich and nobody cared why. Spiders and caterpillars, which Nana did not like, were everywhere. When something stopped growing, Zuzu buried it in the garden.

One day, Zuzu buried Kiki’s white rabbit fur coat. Zuzu never buried Nana’s stuffed animals. Zuzu never buried Kiki’s dolls. Mama had to tell her not to bury fur coats. But nobody knew if she understood or not.

Nana went to the upper school. Kiki ceased to go to school. All day long Nana wrote and read and calculated. All day long Kiki chatted and chatted. All day long Zuzu stayed in her garden. At night, they ate supper together with Mama.

A peach tree Zuzu had planted long ago became very big. Birds came to the tree and made a nest. Mama bird laid eggs and the eggs became small, tiny baby birds. One day Kiki found a dead baby bird on the ground. There was no storm, no rain, no wicked bird. The baby had just dropped. Zuzu buried the dead bird near the sunflowers as usual.

Grandmother got sick and Mama left to see her. The three girls stayed home by themselves. Kiki got sick and moaned and cried. Nana was worried. Zuzu didn’t say anything. In the morning Kiki had a baby, and it was dead, with blood all over its tiny body. There was no storm, no tornado. Just warm white sunlight shining through the leaves in the garden.

Nana gave the dead baby to Zuzu. She buried it next to the kitten that had died three years ago. Then they forgot about the baby. Zuzu did not forget.

Nana left home to go to college. Kiki left home to be a movie star. Zuzu stayed home with Mama.

Nana earned a lot of degrees and went to work in the big city. She had lots of money in the bank. She invested her money everywhere. She traded bonds and stocks, and bought and sold real estate. Mama did not understand what Nana was talking about, so Nana stopped talking to Mama. Nana got married to a rich man with a boring tie and had three girls. One day she killed them all with a butcher knife. They were buried somewhere. Since Nana was rich and could hire a famous lawyer, they had her sent to a hospital. After a couple of years Nana came back to Mama’s house. She did not read or write anymore. She died without saying a word to anybody. Zuzu buried her in the backyard, next to the kitten.

Kiki earned a lot of admirers and bought jewelry, fur coats, dresses, and cars. She won a trip to Europe. She made a lot of friends there. She went to parties with her jewelry and her admirers. Kiki got married three or four times and had babies, all of which were stillborn. They were buried somewhere. After her last husband left for a young girl who looked like Kiki when she was pretty in white, Kiki got sick and came back to Mama’s house with jewelry and fur coats and dresses and cars, but without health insurance. Kiki did not look pretty anymore. Kiki did not chat anymore. She lay in her room and got sicker and sicker, and one day died without saying a word. Zuzu buried Kiki in the backyard next to the baby.

Mama was very sad. She could not eat any of the things that grew in the backyard. Mama said, “I lost the smart one, then I lost the pretty one.” Zuzu turned to Mama and opened her mouth and said, “Take it easy, Mama. I survived.”

Then Mama realized that she had never had triplets, but only one daughter.

Zuzu and Mama lived together, and the garden kept growing. Mama began to recognize what had been there all along.

Author’s note

This story comes from a time when my inner world lived in fragments. The figures are not separate people, but parts of a psyche shaped by survival. Zuzu, in her own way, held what could still grow.

On Father’s Day

Posted on by SomatiCat

My mom called and told me to come home to see my father. I was in my twenties, living by myself in a big city. My father was hospitalized and scheduled for surgery.

It was surgery for suspected lung cancer, and my mom, who was a nurse, expected him to die soon.

“Don’t tell him. Just pretend you’re home for the holiday.”

At that time, in my home country, it was common not to tell patients they had cancer, especially if it might be terminal.

I didn’t feel sadness, anxiety, or any of the emotions considered appropriate in such a situation.

“OK,” I said, and I went home to see him in his hospital bed.

It turned out that the tumor was benign. He lost one-third of his left lung, but he would live.

My mom spent most of the day with him at the hospital. When I came home, she wanted a break and asked me to stay with him for a couple of hours. He didn’t need twenty-four-hour nursing care, and I was not the nurturing type. Still, I stayed with him to give my mom a break.

Every thirty minutes or so, he would ask, “Is Mom back yet?”

This guy is like a kid, I thought.

We didn’t have any emotional connection. I had never felt loved by him. Actually, I didn’t know what being loved felt like. I had never felt seen by him. I didn’t love him. I didn’t even care about him.

I was told to play a role, so I played it.

While we were alone in the hospital room, he said, probably more to himself than to me, “This time I thought I was gonna die.”

He had Type 2 diabetes and often had health scares. His father died from diabetes when he was very young. His older sister died, leaving behind a young son whom he helped raise. Then, when his wife was pregnant with a boy, he himself was diagnosed with diabetes.

He was afraid to die.

His entire life seemed devoted to avoiding the fate he believed awaited him.

That was the first time I saw him—not as a father, but as a frightened man facing his own mortality.

The second and last time I felt an emotional connection with him came much later.

He was in his eighties and had Alzheimer’s disease, along with complications from diabetes. Whenever I visited my mother, I went to see him in the nursing home every day, sometimes twice a day.

He no longer recognized me as his daughter.

I was simply a nice lady who visited him and gave him massages.

Oddly enough, that made it much easier for me to be with him.

He was just a frail old man.

One day, I sat beside him and told him about the dog I had recently lost.

Suddenly, he said, “Don’t tell that story. It makes me so sad…”

I saw him.

He loved dogs.

He had never expressed his feelings openly, but he was the only person in my family who truly took care of our dogs. When a dog died, the rest of us moved on without much sentiment, but he was the one who mourned.

OK.

At least we had something in common.

I didn’t visit him because I cared about him or because I loved him. I visited him and took care of him because it was the role I was expected to play: the good, caring daughter who flew all the way from the United States to see her father and visited him every day.

A loving daughter for a loving father.

I didn’t feel any love.

I didn’t know what love felt like.

After I returned to the United States, my mom called one day to tell me that he was dying.

It was clear that I wouldn’t make it back in time, and I didn’t care.

What was the point?

We had never had an emotional connection.

He died in the nursing home after my mother went home to rest.

I flew back for his funeral.

I didn’t feel grief.

I felt relief.

Finally, he was gone.

I was free.

I don’t feel guilty for not loving him.

If I don’t know what being loved feels like, how could I have loved him?

I still don’t feel love toward him, but I have learned compassion.

He did the best he could.

He simply didn’t have the emotional capacity to be present with me.

©2026 JU

The Frog Who Wanted to Be a Prince

Posted on by SomatiCat

Author’s note: This story is about trying to become something else and forgetting what you already are.

There was an ugly frog with a huge head, short legs, and even shorter arms in a pond. His head was so huge that even when he was a tadpole, he could not swim through the rocks with the others. They made fun of him.

His legs were so short that when he became a tadpole with legs, he could not paddle as fast as the others. They made fun of him.

His arms were shorter still, so when he became a tadpole with short legs and shorter arms, he could not crawl on the ground like the others. They made fun of him.

When he finally became an ugly frog—with a huge head, short legs, and shorter arms—others did not laugh at him so much. The pond was full of ugly frogs. Some had huge heads. Some had short legs. Some had shorter arms. So he became just another regular ugly frog.

He was heavy, and his legs were short, so when he walked and jumped, he made ridiculous noises.

Flop. Flip. Blap. Blop.

He had a friend who was smart and slender. When he jumped, he made a cute sound.

Hip hop. Hip hip.

Everybody liked the smart and slender frog. He was a good joker. Everybody laughed and loved it. He sang and danced well, and everybody wanted to dance and sing with him. When the ugly frog sang and danced, everybody just laughed at him—even though his singing was not so bad.

When the ugly frog was still an ugly tadpole, he once saw a princess sitting on the grass by the pond. She was blonde and blue-eyed, slender and snow-white. The princess was reading a book to her little sister.

The ugly tadpole listened to the story, but he didn’t understand it because he did not know human language. An old frog who could speak human language told the story for him.

It was a story of an ugly duckling who turned out to be a snow-white swan.

The ugly tadpole dreamed that he would turn out to be a majestic, snow-white king frog. It was fine. Many tadpoles in the pond dreamed the same dream, although they wanted to be regular majestic king frogs—dark green with black dots and shiny skin.

After the ugly tadpole became an ugly frog, he saw the princess again sitting on the grass with a book.

This time, he crawled up onto the ground—Flop. Flap. Blap. Blop.—then hid himself in the grass and peered into the book.

Even though he could’t read human language, he could look at the pictures.

It was a story of a frog. No—it was a story of a prince who had been turned into a frog by a wicked witch. A beautiful princess kissed the frog, the curse was broken, and Ta-ra-ra, he became a prince.

The princess and the prince lived happily ever after.

The ugly frog believed that he was a prince who had been turned into a frog. And if he could find a princess who would kiss him, he would become human again.

It was a tragedy that he had forgotten he had been an ugly tadpole since he hatched from an egg.

The ugly frog thought he had to learn human language to be a prince. He ignored the fact that if he had been a prince, he should already have known human language.

He joined the Human Language Speaking Society. Members spoke human language to each other with a funny ribit ribit accent.

“Heloribit, howribit are youribit?”
“I am finribit, thankibit.”
“I am very pleasiribit to seeeeerribit youribit.”
“Thank youribit very muchibit.”

The ugly frog studied hard—harder and harder—so he could become an ambassador to the pond in the princess’s castle.

He began to speak better human language than the others, even though he still had a heavy ribit ribit accent.

Then one day, his smart, slender friend was sent to the castle.

The ugly frog was upset. Since his friend could not speak human language at all, he did not understand why his friend was chosen instead of him.

So he studied harder. And harder.

When the smart, slender frog hip hop hipped into the castle, a wizard appeared.

The wizard liked the way the frog hopped and jumped and sang and danced, so he said:

“Your hopping and jumping and singing made me happy. I will give you a reward. Make a wish, and I will make it come true.”

Since the smart frog did not understand human language, he did not make a wish. He simply hipped and hopped and jumped on, and went to the pond in the castle.

The wizard smiled and made his wish come true.

The smart frog stayed in the pond, singing and dancing and hipping and hopping, enjoying his life there. After a while, he went home happily.

And he lived happily—hipping and hopping and dancing and singing.

Then the ugly frog left the pond and went to the castle without being appointed to anything.

When the ugly frog flip-flop blopped to the castle, he saw the wizard.

The ugly frog jumped on his short legs and said:

“Helloribit. Howribit doibit youribit doibit.”

The wizard frowned, because the frog’s accent was so heavy that he could not understand what he was saying.

Contrary to general belief, the wizard had never been mean. So he gently asked:

“What are you doing here in the castle, far from your native pond, little frog?”

The ugly frog answered:

“I arbit notttt a ffffrogit. I rrrrrribit am a prrrrince. I havvverrrribit come to seerrrribt a prinncess.”

The wizard listened patiently and realized that the frog somehow believed he was a prince turned into a frog.

The problem was that the wizard had never turned any prince into any frog—ugly or not ugly. In fact, he did not like that story at all.

However, the wizard was too kind to tell the frog the truth. He thought that perhaps some other wizard was responsible.

So he asked, “What do you want?”

The frog said, “Human!!!”

The wizard made his wish come true.

The ugly frog became an ugly human being—with a huge head, short legs, and shorter arms—naked and greenish.

And he still spoke with that funny frog accent.

He ran to a pond in the castle and looked into the water to see his reflection.

Then he jumped into the water and tried to drown himself.

No…

He failed.

Because the ugly frog would never forget how to swim.

That is what he was.

A frog.

© 1992

The Wayfarer: The Empty Chair

Posted on by SomatiCat

On life, death, and the illusion in between.

The Wayfarer walked into a grassland with no beginning and no end. Brown leaves rustled as he walked through the knee-high grasses. It was like autumn before winter, stood still for eternity. The sky was gray, with no sun in sight. He couldn’t tell the time of day.

Like scattered drops of rain striking the surface of dried mud, he saw green spots far apart in the distance. They were trees, still alive. The brown grassland was sparsely marked with droplets of green.

The Wayfarer walked toward one of the trees, and he saw a man sitting under it. He looked as old as the grassland. His skin was dry, like the leaves of the grasses, almost peeling away from him.

“Hello,” the Wayfarer said.

The man did not move. His gaze was set toward the far end of the grassland, which seemed never to end. The tree was quiet. No birds nested in it. It simply stood there, without even casting a shadow on the earth.

Leaving the old man behind, he kept walking toward another tree far ahead. No insects leaped from the grasses. Only the sound of rustling leaves could be heard as he walked through them.

Under the second tree, the Wayfarer found a younger man sitting as well.

“Hello,” he said.

The man did not even look at him. He looked like a soldier after a defeated battle. Caked mud covered his legs, and his face was stained with soot. His gaze, too, was set toward the far end of the grassland.

The trees were far apart. Whenever he saw a faint green dot in the sea of grasses, like an island in a desert, he walked toward it, unhurried and steady. One after another, he saw a person, young or old, sitting under a tree, all gazing far away from here, into the beyond, in silence and stillness. He did not know how many trees he visited. He did not know how long he had been walking.

The Wayfarer came upon another tree and stopped in his tracks. After so many occupied chairs, all frozen in time, an absence felt like thunder in the silent sky. The chair was empty. Had the person who sat there just left? he wondered. Was it the beginning or the end? Then he noticed a beautiful mandala on the ground beneath the tree, glimmering and shimmering with many colors.

He suddenly felt tired and sat in the chair, his gaze set on the faraway horizon. Then he noticed a spider lowering itself from a branch on a strand of silk. As the Wayfarer watched, it spun its web between the branches. The intricate web overlapped his view of the never-ending grassland, and he did not know whether he was staring at the end or the beginning.

A butterfly came dancing on iridescent wings. It was like a light in the bleak landscape. Then it was caught in the spider’s web. The last fluttering of its wings sent waves through the silk. Another butterfly came and was trapped, and another. The spider wrapped them in silk, and their wings were torn free and fell to the ground like cherry blossom petals, glimmering and shimmering.

The Wayfarer realized that the mandala was made of thousands of butterfly wings, lives caught in the web and fallen there. It had been repeated from the beginning of time into its never-ending present.

He looked back to where he had come from and found that his tracks, too, had formed a spider’s web.

©2026 JU