36

The time off work rattled by. I kept myself distracted, but my head felt like it lived outside an ambulance station. Sirens wailing at the sight of basic items—Omma’s wineglass, Baba’s tie slung over a chair—relentlessly piercing any moment of still. My brittle senses skittering as they tried to regulate.

Omma and I hadn’t spoken since those brief five minutes in my bedroom. We edged around each other, both harboring our own resentment for pushing one another’s limits. I suppose she wasn’t used to me being in the house because I made her jump when she was dusting my grandfather’s vase. We both watched it cut a streak through the air, hitting the kitchen tiles, its neck snapping with pathetic fragility. When the only item of my beloved grandad’s smashed before my mum’s eyes, I expected a piece of her to break with it. Instead, she beckoned me to sit on the floor with her. She fished out a shoebox of art supplies and mixed in a takeaway lid clear glue with gold paint. In silence, I held the base steady as she aligned and pressed the neck onto it. Then she got up and walked away, taking the vase with her. Now, the art of kintsugi has become a kitsch, insta-metaphor for embracing one’s setbacks or flaws. A cute afternoon activity for millennials as they talked about how it was beautiful to be broken. Korea was annexed and colonized by Japan. Identities and women were stolen. But as with all occupations, there was also an osmosis-like transmission of culture between the countries. So for us, kintsugi was reluctantly functional: the vase had to live on, albeit damaged. It appeared on our dining table a day later, a gold streak twinkling along its body, highlighting the crack. The breakage now a part of its story. She saw me staring at it, biting my lip as the tears fell anyway. She held my forearm for three long seconds, and the way she looked at me added one extra suture to the wound inside.

Certain other things helped:

1. Time in nature helped because it reminded me that there existed something far greater than me, and more powerful than Josh Parsons. Nature didn’t care about anything besides survival and regeneration. And that encouraged me to do the same.
2. I read the news incessantly. Reading about catastrophes elsewhere was a sadomasochistic exercise. A way to stop feeling sorry for myself.
3. Music helped. I compiled a playlist of songs to listen to when the panic threatened to take over. I never hit “shuffle play;” the playlist had to start with Nina Nesbitt. I’d go on long walks by the river, repeating her assurances like a mantra.
4. I walked and walked and walked. All over London. At least ten miles a day. Sometimes I thought that precious time off work could be better spent by going on holiday somewhere sunny or catching up with friends I’ve had to repeatedly cancel on for work, such that they no longer reached out to make plans. I struggled with time off because I didn’t know what to do with the militating urge to be constantly productive. I needed to feel like I was achieving something. I tried reading, but it quickly became an exercise in how fast can I rate this book on Goodreads? But walking endlessly felt like I was propelling myself forward in some way. I’d still compete with the prior day’s step count, trying to outdo myself. Adele’s ode to London, Hometown Glory, was also on my playlist (the Adele, obviously, not my Adele). I retraced Baba’s steps in the early years of the insurance business. I clasped his battered Underground map in my pocket, my evil eye to keep me safe.

The last Sunday before I returned to work, Easter Sunday, I went to the park. I spread out a blanket on the ground and had a date with myself. I’d bought strawberries, blueberries, and olives and peeled them open on my rug, lazily wafting away curious bees. I read all day, basking in the sunshine. I was only able to read nonfiction; the shape-shifting parameters of fiction were too anxiety-inducing. I struggled too much to stay rooted in my own reality that I didn’t need to be immersed in someone else’s creation.

Adele O’Hara, 5 minutes ago:

How’s life as a lady of leisure?

Jade Kaya, now:

I’d better start thinking about my Real Housewives tagline quick.

Adele O’Hara, now:

Yours would def be “life’s not easy, but I love a challenge,” followed by a minxy wink.

Jade Kaya, now:

Have you considered a career in screenwriting?

I picked up a tired bumble bee and carefully placed him on the bitten end of a strawberry, watching him regain his strength and eventually flutter away. Before dusk, a group of women my age settled about ten meters away from me. I fished out my sunglasses and put them on, watching these friends undetected. They sucked on lime and orange Calippos. One of them, a petite blonde with freckles sprayed over her nose and cheeks and a red polka-dot headband, had a thermos and she poured what looked like sangria out for the others. They chattered without pausing. I missed that. Trying to tell a story but taking so many tangents that you ended up talking about something else, not knowing how you got there. I watched this group, each person with their own problems and dramas, their own loved ones, their own hopes and disappointments.

Statistically, one of them will have been raped or sexually abused.

Each of their universes overlayed today, on a gloriously balmy April evening. They looked so carefree and breezy, the exact image Tampax would want on their next campaign.

They looked so happy. I wondered if they were pretending.