It’s not the correlation you think, but I’ll go ahead and start with the punch line: the Milky Way.

In the spirit of honesty and openness of “where in the world I am”, I can admit that the last few weeks haven’t been a highlight of my year. (If you’re not into reading about emotions and long-winded explanations peppered with pop culture references now is the time to politely stop reading but still gush to me how great of a writer I am). In all honesty, I guess, this whole year has been a bit of a teetering back and forth of self-discovery, self-love, self-loathing, and learning in general.

The last few weeks overall have been a lot of what I call “mirror talks” which entail a whole other post’s worth of stories of me spending more time like Narcissus than talking to actual humans. I don’t like to think of things in a cliched way, but it isn’t off base to say that I think I lost myself somewhere a few months ago and instead of facing that, I embraced older parts of myself I thought I had defeated like a big boss years ago. I became a people pleasing robot where I put myself and desires to the side to try and fit into a role. I’m not proud of it nor am I ashamed of it-it is simply a part of me that I don’t care to invite in long enough to serve tea. I read recently a quote from Rumi (please pardon the hipster need to use Rumi) “This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as un unexpected visitor… Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. The dark though, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as ag guide from beyond”, and it resonated (of freaking course) in my life in a time where I needed it. Too often I shove aside negative emotions or straight Book of Mormon “turn it off”. I don’t lean into difficulties when they come to myself, instead I took the Terror Squad at their word and lean back. Enjoying all the references yet? This quote though, and a fair amount of therapy, taught me that the negative emotions aren’t my enemy. The sadness that pops up when thinking of a loss isn’t weakness, if I can’t be the positive bubble at work the day will go on and people survive, if anger swells up its ok to not count to ten and to shout at the 16-year-old dip shit that doesn’t know how to merge. Anger, in fact, is a newly welcome guest. For a long time, I hated being seen as the 13-year-old angry girl who was listening to too much Spill Canvas and wearing blue eyeliner. I’m not that girl anymore, but I’m allowed to be angry sometimes. Rather, I’m allowing myself to be angry sometimes. While I think my baseline is still chill, the anger that pops up shouldn’t be a Halloween trick or treater that I turn off the porch light to and hope they go away… the anger is a guest that I’ll welcome in and let it teach me what boundary of mine has been crossed. The anger is a neighbor that can come in to bring a loaf of bread, tell me some juicy bonchince (gossip), but then at the end of the visit, it is time for Anger to leave again.

I have spent too much time in my life trying to figure out who I should be based off of the books that I read that somewhere I forgot to figure out who I wanted to be. I don’t think that is a linear thing or even something that I’ll finish in a lifetime; people change and that is ok. If you can’t yet tell, dear reader, I like to take myself pretty darn seriously. If I can’t figure out how to be the perfectly chill person I often shut down and dissociate for a while and try to figure it out. If that isn’t the definition of chill, I don’t know what is! I take myself seriously and I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what I want, but I demand…maybe not perfection but something eerily close to it. If I’m not first, not only am I last, but I’ll go ahead and give up the quest in general stating that it wasn’t something I was interested in the first place. I use anxiety coping skills to try and be as open and flexible as possible so that no one can say that I didn’t try and look at something from all angles; I can never be wrong If I never say I’m right. There is a finesse to the way that I try to bob and weave my way into everything. If I read enough of all the subjects, I can be a Jack of All Trades and I don’t have to be considered a Master because in true Kallie fashion I will change my mind and change again after a particularly riveting mirror talk. And yet here I stand telling you that I do take myself seriously. I take the way that people view me seriously. I take people pleasing seriously.

All this wind up for the story… the story of the laugh that had me in tears on the way home (incidentally the first time I cried in weeks too, and it’s not even the type of crying I thought would come first). The laugh that had me hemm and haww all the way home amid chuckles and considering how to verbalize what exactly happened; in fact, I’m still not sure. All I know is that I am sitting at my parent’s kitchen counter typing away nonsense and still laughing at myself. Where in the World is Kallie? Hella lost, bro. But with a few more laughs of humility like today, and I think she will at least have a chance of not finding her path, but forging one (yeah, I used 3^rd person, deal).

I work with a Japanese woman. She is potentially the most open and hilarious person I know, and I cannot express how grateful I am that she is in my life. Not only do we get to secretly exchange Japanese phrases and feel superior to the non-Japanese speaking staff, she takes the time to tell me about her and her life openly. She is never afraid to be herself even when eyes roll, and people snap at her. She is what the Japanese call “Genki” and can be incredibly moody, mischievous, and insightful. I both dread the amount of work I must do when she comes in a few days a week and look forward to the constant company. Today, at 4:48 pm (18 min past when I was supposed to clock out, mind you) she barrels into my room to tell me about how professionalism in people my age, excluding me, is gone these days and a nurse that holds a grudge even after two years. She gave me a long-winded story about her neighbor’s water heater which broke the same week as hers and her divine hope that they charged him more than her because he has the audacity to wear boxers when he gets the mail. She bounced up and down as she explained her recent trip to Japan and gave me her Omiyage (souvenir) that I was to keep secret because she only brought sweets back for her favorite “Kallie Chan”. At some time around 5:13 my eyes started to get heavy as I sat in my coat as I was already ready to walk out the door. I’m not sure what struck me, but I offered her a Halloween candy to which she readily accepted the fun size box of Milk Duds. It was around 5:14 that she opened this box, and in a half sleep state I admitted something out loud to her that I’ve never said to anyone:

            “I hate the world milk,” I said, and she paused before popping a candy into her mouth.

In true Japanese fashion she asked “Oh, reeeeally? Why why why though?” I stopped and looked at her as if that was the dumbest question in the world. Of course, I hated the word Milk, didn’t everyone? Then again, no. Why did I hate it? I blinked.

“I couldn’t tell you,” I shrugged at her and she smiled widely at me.

“It is such a normal word.”

“It is, but I hate it. I hate saying it, I hate the way other people say it, I…hate it.” It was in the midst of the last pause It dawned on me that I don’t usually put my flag so vehemently behind anything. I don’t choose hate or love or favorites or any strong emotion. I didn’t know where it came from and I smiled, “I also hate the word supper.” Uta- san jumped up and down chewing on the sticky candy.

“Kallie Chan, why do you hate this? The last supper? It is a beautiful painting!” I nodded in agreement. “Kallie… how can you hate these normal words?” I didn’t know. I smiled and shrugged but I know them to be true. In some weird way it felt good to choose and not back down. It felt nice to plant my flag in the most obscure place and claim it. We continued to chat on our way to the car as Uta grilled me on other English words.

Butterfly, mushroom, marshmallow, squirrel (she doesn’t like that one as it is hard to say). I laughed at all of them as we swished them around in our mouths spitting them out again and deeming them worthy. We laughed as we walked together to our cars. I eventually pointed mine out and she stopped dead in her tracks and smiled.

“It is Japanese,” she said.

“Yeah, I didn’t know Subaru was Japanese until I moved there, I always thought it was French.” I swayed from side to side in the misting rain tired, amused, and ready to go home.

“Do you know,” she smiled, “do you know what it means?”

“Subaru? No, I didn’t realize it had a meaning.”

“I don’t want to say it,” her grin widened.

“Oh, come on! What is it?”

Her mischievous grin was enough to let me know something was about to change. And she shouted the punch line.

I drove home in traffic laughing at the joke. I drove home chuckling even after 10 min in stop and go at my own silliness. I drove home with a smile on my face as I realize how long it’s been since that smile was real: I take myself too seriously, it turns out.

*Note: as I was writing this and feeling profound and self-aware Uta text me to let me know she was wrong, that Subaru doesn’t in fact mean Milky Way and I could continue to love my car.