Everything I Leave Behind For You

Everything I Leave Behind for You

Emily Her

new degree press

copyright © 2022 Emily Her

All rights reserved.

Everything I Leave Behind for You

ISBN

979-8-88504-081-5 Paperback

979-8-88504-710-4 Kindle Ebook

979-8-88504-189-8 Digital Ebook

Dedication-ish

3:09 a.m. Thank you all for being people whose trustworthiness I don’t need to ever question. I know I’ve seen a lot in this world. I’ve been through a lot. I know I should have been broken down and battered away until I could no longer hold anything but apathy and disdain for humanity, but, because of you, I still have hope. Because of you, I still choose to take risks and trust and open myself. I know I have been unlucky in so much of my past, but I know that the luckiest thing that has happened to me is all of you. Thank you all. I hope you also trust me the way I trust you.

Are you happy now?

"I’m happy.

You were so sad earlier.

Maybe [you’re] a little broken but definitely not beyondfixing.

3:16 a.m. Thank you all. That is all I can say. Thank you.

Contents

Part I

Introduction-ish

Author’s Note-ish

(This Is Not A) Memoir-ish

(This Is Also Not A) Book-ish

Instructions-ish

Part II

Daily Reminders

Part III

Vulnerable

Unanswered Questions

Identified Problems

Healing

Childhood

Accountability

Control

Home

Boundaries

Coping Mechanisms

Loveless

Optimization

Fear of Death

Therapy

Productivity

Friends

Acts of Kindness

Identity

Forgiveness

Permission

Hope

Part IV

A Letter

Acknowledgments

Epigraph-ish

#365. Get used to feeling happy.

Get used to things working out.

[Docile Dreams]

To hesitate is to make waste

of streetlights lit so soon.

To roll and slumber in docile dreams

of nightmares merrily unknown,

floating on fragile beds

of dainty, silly things.

Part I

Introduction-ish

Hey, how are you? How is your day?

What are you up to today?

How human are you feeling today? Did you remember to check in on yourself today?

When was the last time you talked with yourself? When did you look at yourself in the mirror and memorize everything that makes up that beautiful face?

Did you recently pause for a moment when you caught yourself smiling? What made you smile?

When was the last time you talked to someone else? When did you last check in on someone and ask how their day was? How their day really was? When did you last share a moment or a smile with another human?

What if we could be vulnerable with each other? What if, for a day, we had one less wall around our hearts? How would we interact if we were all just a little bit more transparent about our thoughts?

What are some of the hard questions you are not asking yourself? Are you avoiding these questions, or simply waiting for someone else to answer them? Are you scared of their answers? Where are the answers hidden inside of you? Why are you not answering those hard questions?

What was the last meaningful connection you made with another person? How did it begin? Do you wish you knew them earlier than you did? What is stopping you from connecting with them again?

What kind of world do you think we would have if we were all a bit more human to each other? What if we got to know each other’s stories just a little bit more? And what if we were to recognize that underneath all of those layers, we are more similar inside than we thought?

How often do you let yourself be present? When were you present in the present, not caught in the past or trying to keep up with the future? Why are you not present with yourself right now? What is stopping you?

Do you owe yourself a checkup? What is going on inside of your head and your heart? How close do you let the two of them get to each other? Why are they not closer?

How are you feeling? What are you thinking about, and what are you scared of? What are you hoping for and what are you doubting? Would today be a fulfilling last day in this world? What would you do to make it one?

How are you?

Author’s Note-ish

At eleven, I promised myself I would not live past sixteen. At sixteen, I was held in a mental hospital after my third attempted suicide. At twenty-one, I graduated from the University of Chicago.

During my freshman year of college, I was told that continuing my education jeopardized my survival given how much danger I was putting my body in. I struggled with depression, anxiety, and eating disorders since I was eleven. My struggles threatened not just my academics but also my literal heart. By refusing to drop out of school for inpatient care, I risked my life at my own hands. Unfortunately, I am only one of millions who struggle daily to simply live with myself.

But I also am one of millions who refuse to just be a statistic.

I am often asked what drives me to keep living during the darkest hours. I used to be lost for an answer and temporarily found security in saying it was all for a stable future. This wasn’t a complete lie—hope was my greatest weapon I did not know I had. However, I now know my will to live and fight is driven by the wish to help as many people as I can to never experience the depths I have experienced.

I was born and raised in Northern California. As a child, I spent most of my time in a small town within the East Bay and Silicon Valley areas. My family was lower-middle class, but I attended public schools where most students came from families better off than my own—a disparity obvious to me early on. Both of my parents are present in my life, as well as a brother two years older than me. My father made most of the income as a software engineer while my mother cared for the children, teaching at weekend Chinese schools. They both immigrated from Taiwan, so our household was heavily traditional to their native culture.

The community I grew up in was majority Asian (slightly over 80 percent the last time I checked). The environment was competitive, with our schools ranking within the top 100 in the country despite being public schools. Put bluntly, the culture was toxic: parents compared students, and children were pushed to their limits but could never be seen as good enough in their own eyes. Overwhelming emphasis was placed on academics as our sole priority. Our school was less than ten years old yet already competitive on national levels.

I felt immense pressure from my family and community to be the best. My family was unable to afford expensive after-school tutors or programs like many of my friends could, so I spent much of my time studying by myself to keep up with them. I excelled in schoolwork from a young age, but with that came a feeling that the better I performed, the more pressure and expectations were thrown on me. My middle school years were difficult. I was first diagnosed with depression and anxiety at twelve after my first suicide attempt was made, but this was already after months of self-harm habits and my first experience with sexual assault. Along with my parents fighting regularly, they did not believe I was mentally struggling because of the way they were raised in Taiwan. Life at home became worse when they accused me of faking how I felt. I closed myself off from the world even more.

In high school, my condition worsened as the culture became increasingly toxic and my family life nonexistent. At this point, I barely told my parents anything about myself, shutting my door for hours of studying and work time. I developed an unhealthy obsession with wanting to always be productive. I cried myself to sleep and was scared of returning to the house after school. Running away at night to escape into the dark evening was commonplace. Anxiety attacks struck me regularly, making me faint during school days or scream and cry endlessly in my dark room for hours. I had unhealthy relationships with boyfriends as temporary means to escape from reality as I was unstable more often than not. I lost count of the number of suicide attempts I made, blurring the lines between when self-harm was fatal enough to be considered suicidal. After one particular overdose, the police were called on me by a few friends, and I found myself transferred from ambulance to hospital to mental hospital. I was held for a few weeks before returning to school. Before my graduation, I was raped for the first time.

Despite all the inner turmoil I faced, I always kept a smile on at school. I did not allow any of my home life to be apparent when I showed up every morning to first period, even graduating from my high school as the speaker at our graduation ceremony.

I was basically living a double life.

I moved to Chicago for college, where I continued to excel in academics. While I made new friends and enjoyed my time away from California, my issues unfortunately did not leave me alone. I dedicated myself to graduating a year early, overloading my class schedule in sacrifice of my well-being. Unbeknown to me, I brought along a budding eating disorder that manifested itself as anorexia. In my first year, I was hospitalized and serious considerations were made for me to drop out of school since my health was hanging on a thread. I remember nights of cold shocks, heartbeats thumping in my ears, and an inability to control my breathing as I curled up underneath blankets in fear of whether I would wake up the next day. Throughout this time, I was in a toxic relationship that reinforced much of the pressure I tried to leave in California. My mental disorders continued to hurt me for years in Chicago as I struggled to cope with their existence. Suicide attempts, rape, and toxic behavior reappeared.

Right before graduation at twenty, I hit financial crisis. Due to family matters, my immunocompromised health, and irrational choices, the six-figure savings account I diligently built up for years was gone in a matter of months. On top of my course load, I was working five to six internships and part-time serving to save up as much as I could. It felt like all of the sacrifices I’d made were now surmounting to nothing. Years of labor, tears, and dedication were taken away from me. I never attended a single social event in high school or college once I began full-time serving—and eventually working as an assistant manager—at a local restaurant when I turned sixteen. I gave up opportunities of happiness for opportunities to work. You do not know what it feels like when all you’ve worked for your whole life is suddenly reduced to nothing until it happens to you.

I graduated at twenty-one and began to work full time. My family life was a mess of loose ends and cut ties I never resolved, and it began to catch up with me, consistently haunting me. I was diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD), borderline personality disorder (BPD), and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD). I began seeing three therapists but still struggled to be okay with my own existence.

As I am writing now, I am six months out from my graduation. I tried my hardest to stay alive for these last twenty-one years, having come close to the edge more often than I would like to keep track. After my first suicide attempt at eleven, I told myself I would not let myself live past sixteen. I did not have any real reason for why I chose sixteen. I suppose I wanted to live long enough to experience life, yet not long enough to experience a hard life. I did not want to be a part of this cruel world anymore.

Waking up every day is hard when you are scared of waking up every day. Yet, I still did.

The fact that my life has seen multiple lows does not mean I never saw a high. I shake my head when asked if I would ever live my life differently. While I would never wish my life on others, I also would not wish for it to be different. I know life will continue to barrage me with obstacles I cannot fathom yet. I cannot promise myself I will always be okay. Since I learned so much through each of my struggles, I want to promise myself I will always continue to grow. My story is not over yet, and the chapters I already crossed will be what guide me from here. The rest of this book will be the journal of those chapters.

I am not trying to tell a good story—just my story. And maybe part of it is your story too.

For the past year and a half I’ve been writing my book, Everything I Leave Behind for You. For years, I’ve asked myself how and when I could share my story. When I found myself struggling again this past year, I found my answer: the time to help others is always now.

My hope is that my writing will give readers a greater determination to recognize the human in all of us, even in those whose stories we may never know. I hope it encourages you to live life with a little bit more purpose and a little bit more compassion. No matter what we crumple under, are stumbling over, or will be beaten by, we cannot wait for the world and its challenges to pass by before we take charge of our own lives and happiness. Through my book, I collect memories from conversations, the mental hospital, and therapy in a raw and vulnerable expression of my struggles so others will make choices guided by my experiences.

I hope we can all find the will to find ourselves. We are all a little bit lost, after all.

August 6

5:50 p.m. Yesterday, you told me I have a knack for making new people feel comfortable opening up to me, and I told you I believe I have just been fortunate to have met so many amazing people in my life with colorful and fulfilling life stories. You told me it was actually something within me that makes people talk to me easily. I brought this question to my therapist today. We discussed it and he asked me how much I believe in your statement. I said roughly 15–20 percent, and he asked me why not 100 percent. I responded by saying this was the same recurring topic we had gone over many times already, that I know I doubt myself and discount many of my characteristics. A part of me may believe that because I am so open about my story, others feel comfortable to do so as well. But it’s just hard for me to credit myself for anything. It’s just . . . who I am. It’s what I’m working on. I promise. In the meantime, thank you to everyone who has been trusting me and continues to trust me. Your trust in me gives me strength in myself and my capability to help you. Thank you.

(This Is Not A) Memoir-ish

There is a garden growing in my head and I want to share these flowers with you. What is beautiful in this world is only beautiful when it can be appreciated with others.

I am less than qualified to be writing this book. I never won any awards for my subpar writing skills and never studied counseling. Nonetheless, I was told by various individuals in my life that I should write a book about my story and that I should share my story with others to motivate, inspire, and comfort. Even my therapist mentioned that my story is worth sharing with the world. It took over ten sessions for me to explain my life to him when we were first introduced. At the end of it all, he paused to comment that throughout his decades of therapy, he has never met someone who carries as much poison as I do, much less at my age.

I am no celebrity. My life has generally not been the most exciting to read about (much less for me to write about), so I will save you from that.

I began this book expecting to write my story. I planned to share a memoir of sorts, detailing experiences through struggles and healing alike. After writing a few pages, I noticed I was spending more time and words on my healing and my thoughts throughout that process. I always say I go where the wind takes me, and it seems the wind was giving me a different direction. I decided I would instead dedicate this book to walking my readers through the many forms of help, support, and conversations that contributed to my healing. I believe this will be a better use of your time too.

I am writing this book to