It’s that time of year again…

My goals for 2012, with final commentary:

• Give more – I really enjoyed increasing my donations of both money and clothes, and want to continue this upward trend. [I had a bit of a late start on this one, but went gangbusters in Q4, finding a bunch of new charities to add to my list, and giving more overall than last year, which was already a record year for me. Final grade: A]
• Lose some – I gained a rather unprecedented ten pounds in the last year, mostly due to my nighttime eating, so I’d like to get back to my normal weight. [Started thinking about this one in July, but managed to stick to a reasonable diet and exercise plan for five months, and ended up losing 10% of my body weight, and fitting back into all of my old clothes. Final grade: A]
• See people – I find myself becoming something of a hermit (partly to spend prodigious amounts of time reading, sleeping, and watching TV, but partly out of sheer laziness). I should spend more time with people. [This one is hard to quantify, and I should have set some kind of metric to meet, but I did see people a little bit more than before, although if I'm going to be honest, most work days end up being a loop between bed-desk-couch, and most weekends end up being a loop between bed and couch. On the other hand, maybe phone and email count towards this one? Final grade: B-]
• Doubt less – I want to be more appreciative and less cynical and regain some measure of optimism. [I've been sticking with my other blog, which has been a good way to keep looking for good things in life. Work, which admittedly dominates my life, is going better, which has improved my outlook, but I've also had a few setbacks from contemplating the deaths of two friends and wondering if any job is worth the number of Tums and Ambien I take every day. Final grade: B]

2012 Highs:

• Finally going full-time with my new group at work
• Being at Google I/O in June (the last time I felt like such a rock star was on my college choir’s South American tour in 2000)
• Going to Scotland and Iceland in August (bagpipes! circus performers! improv! hot springs! a 10-cheese cheese plate!)
• Making it to 151 books in a year

2012 Lows:

• Losing two friends: MC and JRS
• Experiencing work-induced nightmares and heartburn for the first time leading up to I/O
• Getting the stomach flu in December
• Looking back on the year and realizing that I’d only left the Bay Area for non-work purposes a grand total of three times

2012 Weird Moments:

• Making a rather tough decision at work to report something that just seemed wrong. I’m pretty sure it was the right thing to do, but it was hard.

2013 Aspirations:

• Reduce: I’m not going to read 150 books this year. I’ve done it for two years, and I’m going to go for 100 this year, in order to make room for other pastimes in my life. Also, I’m going to get rid of more physical stuff to make room for more space in my life.
• Sleep: I want to learn how to sleep like a normal person, with a normal bedtime, and no sleeping pills. I haven’t been able to do this in years.
• Learn: I’m going to figure out how to sell stock and options and whether to put some of my savings into a Roth IRA or something else. I’m going to spend more time with my mom to add more recipes to the family cookbook we started this year.
• Make: I want to make things. Maybe I’ll take art lessons or join a choir. Maybe I’ll scan all of my old photos, and organize them into photo books. I’ll get the Dr. Seuss print that Superman gave me framed, and hang it up, and maybe I’ll find other things to frame and hang, as well.
• Enjoy: Even if I can’t travel abroad as much as I used to, I’ll find ways to enjoy myself locally. More girls’ nights, more local overnight trips, more spa time. If I can’t cure my restlessness with far-flung travel, maybe I can cure it with variation from routine.

Before I do my annual State of the Troid entry, I have one last post to make for 2012.

An old friend from my law school days took his own life right before Christmas. He had struggled with depression for years, and he and life weren’t on good terms. His deep depression led to him losing his job, first in 2005, and again in 2006, and he stayed unemployed through the recession. His girlfriend of six years toughed it out with him through three years of anguish before she was unable to do it anymore. He gradually distanced himself from his friends and erased himself from the earth, and alternated between self-hatred, loneliness, despair, and anger. He spent some time in the hospital, but then figured out how to trick the doctors, and he refused to take meds or see a therapist, insisting that he either wasn’t worth the treatment, or that if he were a better person, then he wouldn’t need treatment.

He wasn’t always like that.

In law school, he was smart and silly and loyal and funny. We were already in the age of cell phones, yet I knew his phone number by heart, which means something, when your phone can remember all of your friends’ numbers for you. I could call him in the middle of the night, and if I was having a bad night (which was often the case in law school), he would grab whatever food or snacks he had handy (and since we were students, it was usually something like a carton of orange juice and a box of crackers), and he would come to my apartment and crack jokes and hang out so that I didn’t have to be alone with my sadness. When we were out with friends, having fun, he and I both derived endless glee from making terrible puns. He threw parties. He didn’t laugh at me when I made a batch of chili for our friends and forgot to add the beans. We were like kids together. His bedroom was very large for a student apartment in New York, and we would back up for a running start, hurtle across the room, and take flying, jumping leaps onto his bed. Until we broke it. He loved snowboarding and kickboxing. He was built like a fire hydrant. One time, he actually walked straight into a fire hydrant, which nailed him so hard that he fell over, clutching his crotch, laughing and crying at the same time. He loved telling funny stories about stupid things he had done, just to get a laugh. When I got out of the hospital, he didn’t judge me, but was sad that I hadn’t told him how much I had been struggling. When I told him I was moving away from campus, he asked me not to, saying that I was his best friend and that we would never see each other again, but when it was time for me to move, he helped me take apart my heavy furniture.

We drifted apart once he started dating his law school girlfriend (whom he dated for six years), although I periodically sent him emails to see how he was doing, with no response. When we finally got back in touch, he had already changed from the lighthearted, happy person I had known to a shadow of his former self, lost in a darkness he couldn’t imagine escaping. He was ashamed of himself, and of who he had become.

Could I have been a better friend to him? We had sporadic contact over the last few years, but his darkness was so deep and hopeless, and I’m not a psychiatrist, so I never knew what to say or do, or if what I said or did was helping or hurting him. The only thing I could tell was that he didn’t seem to be improving, and I was definitely crumbling with him. I sometimes felt like I was on a leaky lifeboat that could hardly support my own weight, and I didn’t think I could take on the weight another person’s anguish at the same time without having both of us go under. I feel guilty and ashamed for not having found a way to make him want to live, to try, to take his meds, to do something to fight the darkness. I of all people should know what that dark, howling, empty, lonely tunnel is like, and I should have done more. When I could, I talked to him, I sent him messages, I told him that I loved him and that many of his old friends that he had lost touch with would love to hear from him, I tried to get him medical attention, but there were many times that I couldn’t, or maybe I just wouldn’t. I felt like it wasn’t a task I could handle, but I’m not sure who I thought would handle it. In the end, was I just another person who gave up on him? There was a suicide note, and someone said that my name was in it. I want to know. I don’t want to know.

Should that have been me? Every year, I think back to January 2002, and I think of what might have been.

We were the same, he and I, except that I had health insurance. I had a best friend who happened to be visiting. I had a sister who dropped everything to come out and figure out what to do next and how to get my parents on board (mental illness is stigmatized in traditional Asian culture, and I credit my sister with teaching my parents that it is an illness to be treated, not a perversity to be ignored). I was a student, and didn’t have to hold down a steady job while I was recovering. I was a girl, and therefore allowed to appear weak. All these things, are they enough to decide who lives and who dies? I don’t know. 

RIP, JRS. You were loved and you are missed by many people who wish life had been kinder to you, and that you had been kinder to yourself. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you, or at least convince you that you were worth saving.