Songs of Pain and Hope

I’ve collected several hundred pages of writing at this point. They tell the story of the journey to date. I wrote approximately half starting last year. A quarter during a 5 year period when I was in Indiana, Philadelphia, Boston, and the remainder during a portion of the NYC years. I wrote the least in college, the first two years of Indiana, and the majority of Boston. I had a journal in high school but mainly during my sophomore and junior years. 

From the end of college unti last year,  wrote no more than 5 poems. That was a span of 22 years. Starting in January of last year, I wrote more than 70, with approximately 90 percent coming after last September when I was still recovering from the hospital. My friend, the 80+ year old nun, says she cries when praying with them. My grandfather figure has also been circulating then to his friends. They like them. My priest friend prayed with the one I wrote for Advent at a meditation retreat.

The best ones were written for you. 

Why am I telling you all this? 

They are my heart. 

An advisor said that no one really has sat down with me to actually figure me out. I really don’t care too much either way about challenges and accomplishments. As a poet puts it, they are both illusory in one way or other. I had varying ones in both categories. They see what they are. They shaped me and gave me many stones. 

It was lonely everywhere. Boston was a dream come true and is so beautiful but it can be hard to make friends because of the student demographic. ———was at the hospital a lot and I wouldn’t see her for days. When she was home, she was either studying or exhausted. She really wasn’t present. No regrets.  I guess. She is still part of the story. She was fate or destiny. And now she isn’t. I understand and I don’t simultaneously. 

Life is unfair but God isn’t. This life has taught me that people will do things to you. That’s a given. The real question is what will God do in response?  Over all the pages of writing, spanning most of my adult life, many of the same characters pop up – the kids, DAs, cops, Bono, Eddie Vedder. 

But I realized the person that is the most preset is God. Wow. How He was there in every season. Every stop along the byway. All over the country:  The world. From the crack houses to the castles to the streets to the oceans.

I got angry at God a lot. I think He’s ok with that. He can handle it. My kids get angry at me too – I’m mostly amused. The girl swears like me and the boy has my temper. But I think God already knows what will happen – free will notwithstanding. Nothing would have been different. We could have been in any other locations or situation and it wouldn’t have made a difference. I knew too. I could see it coming even if it’s now in hindsight.

I ask why it was hard for me to find people to stand by me. Maybe it’s because I appear difficult on the surface. But I also had to stand for many difficult positions. At the end of the day, maybe only God stood fully with me. As may very well be the case with everyone.

I spoke to a close friend and I said tha God made my journey hard. Even though I regretted saying this next, I told him that it was a gift. Disguised and hidden like many parts of my life.  

So now I still wait and depend on God, like I’ve often had to do, usually secretly. He is in charge of the timeline and charts the course. There’s this Garth Brooks song – The River with these lines giving God the role and credit as the Captain. 

Tying all this into the writing, almost everyone I’ve sent them to says I need to publish and how it has touched them. I didn’t set out to be known that way. I wrote for kids, family, friends. I wrote for you. If some way or somehow the writing gets more exposure, I don’t really want or need the credit, it will go to God. Sometimes when I finish something that I know is good, I recognize that these aren’t my words but His. 

And that’s what I send to you.

I wasn’t really into science fiction – books or shows, but I did appreciate the reimagined Battlestar Galactica series that aired about a decade ago. The series is about how human survivors looking for a new home after their Earth has been destroyed by robots they themselves created. The show is one of the most profound commentaries on being human. 

The title of the show refers to the lone military ship that has to guide and escort the remaining civilian ships to safety and hope. The ship is actually obsolete and was about to be converted into a museum when the robots launch their attack with a computer virus that cripples the human tech network. The Galactica, led by a commander about to retire, William Adana, is spared because he stubbornly refuse to upgrade his ship’s tech and as a result, the virus doesn’t affect it. 

On the surface, Adana doesn’t appear capable for the task of protecting and leading the survivors. He struggles with his emotions. He gets drunk sometimes. He gets too close to his crew, treating them like family. He is divorced and he blames himself for the death of one of his sons. He is outnumbered, outgunned, and our resourced. 

But counterintuitively, he is the perfect man for the job. He is seasoned, tough, resilient, creative. He knows how to take risks and to stand up to bullies. He loves his crew. 

He is real. 

He leads them to a new home. 

And he has a civilian leader to work with. She’s the Secretary of Education and a former teacher who is elevated to become the President after the other political leaders above her are wiped out. Adama and her butt heads and bicker at first but they learn to work together. She reminds me of you.  They fall in love. At the end of the series, she dies and he buries her on the new Earth they eventually find. He puts his wedding ring on her finger.

Adama’s most well-known saying is to “roll the hard six” – referring to double threes in a game of craps. The probability of this combination is low, less than 10 percent. 

I’ll roll that with you anytime. 

Over and over again.  You are worth it all.

I did watch this one police procedural when I was in law school. It was one of the Law and Order spin-offs- Criminal Intent. The show is unique because it focuses on the psychology of the criminal. This show significantly prepared me for my future. It allowed me to understand motives and planing behind many actions. Not just for defendants but for people in general. 

The lead characters are two NYPD detectives, Robert Goren and Alexandra Eames. Goren is a brilliant but misunderstood man. He is an autodidact and can solve the most difficult cases. His background is layered. His mother is a schizophrenic and the man who he thought was his father was absent and irresponsible. His brother is homeless. Turns out later that his real father is a renowned criminal profiler who is his mentor and is also a secret murderer. I think the writers ran out of ideas towards the end of the series. 

In any case, the last season has him seeing a Department psychiatrist to keep his job. She is good. I met several of the real ones and they are so-so. I actually had an intimate understanding of their psychology assessment process and this is one instance where I was asked to participate in at best, unethical behavior, and at worst, something illegal. I tried to stop it which worked initially but not at the end. When nefarious people want their way, they will get it. 

The scene that touched me depicts one of the sessions between the psychiatrist and Goren. She asks him whether he trusts anyone. He replies, yes, his partner Eames, because she has his back. The psychiatrist then asks Goren how long he has been partners with Eames. He says 11 to 12 years. She then rapidly asks a follow-up question – “Do you love her?” He is surprised and responds is telling – “What? But she’s my partner!” 

He does love her. He just did not realize it and cannot admit it.  He was her professional partner for such a long time, going through many experiences.  They both knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses.  In fact, early on in their relationship., she requested another partner because she couldn’t understand what he was doing but eventually withdrew the request after she realized she respected his way of thinking.

And I realized it’s you. After 30 years.

The daughter asked me about some police show she learned about. I didn’t bother to look into it all that much. All shows cannot come close to reality. I teach her the real stuff. Depending on how one counts, I breathed and lived it for either 10 or 17 years. Just for knowledge sake, the shows do not reflect the drudgery, incompetence, foolishness, and other assorted issues involved in the work. Still fun to watch but with a grain of salt. 

However, the show that is likely the most realistic is The Wire, set in Baltimore, which is crime ridden. Philadelphia, where I served as a DA, is similar. The show captures the intricate and complex nature of the drug trade and its relationship with other factors such as politics, economics, society, and even schools. Each season has a theme. The first is an introduction to the drug trade, the second how ports are involved, the third tying up the first’s arc, the fourth how kids are impacted, and the fifth on the role of media. The fourth season which is set in schools is arguably the best of them all. 

Sometimes, I ask others to guess who my favorite character in the series is. Invariably, they wil choose one of the law enforcement ones. But it isn’t. Instead, it is a character named Stringer Bell, who is the second-in-command of the major drug gang in the city. He is intelligent and driven. That’s not why I identify with him. He actually does not want to be in the drug trade, he wants to be legitimate. He fails. He’s too much of a gangster to be a businessman but too much of a businessman to be a gangster. When he supervises his underlings, he tries with mixed results to make them more professional as drug dealers. When he tries to enter the construction industry, he cannot fully grasp the nuances and politics behind it.  He doesn’t fit,  Something I can also identify with.

Ultimately, he gets gunned down by not one but two assassins who want to kill him for separate reasons. When he is cornered and facing his death, he initially tries to bargain for his life. When he realizes that is futile, he resigns himself to his fate and even commands the assassins to get on with it. 

When the police search his apartment after his death, they find his books on business management, economics, and other fields usually not associated with a major drug dealer. One officer, stunned and surprised, marvels at the hidden side of his adversary and says they had no idea who they were dealing with. 

I told you that I had a collection of special books. These were wisdom and strategy texts from different eras, cultures, and disciplines. Unlike what others may believe, I wasn’t interested in these as a defense mechanism. I genuinely loved studying them, not only for their ability to make me a better advisor and leader, but because it was pure joy to learn. 

I really don’t think anyone has entered into my world. A few have inklings of who I really am inside but the opportunity to show it all was rarely to never present. Way too many assumptions or conclusions. 

Sometimes, people tell me it’s good to be underestimated. While I understand that somewhat, it has been tiring. I’m not sure how many of those books I want to hold onto. They were for my kids in the long run. The knowledge therein has somewhat been imprinted. I was also fortunate to have the opportunity to live many of the lessons out in real life. Many had no idea who they were dealing with. 

But I will tell you.  Because you know.

There is a trilogy of movies from Hong Kong – the Infernal Affairs series. The title is a play on the possibly most feared and misunderstood component of police departments – Internal Affairs or IA. The role of IA is to serve as an internal guard or checks and balances for the department – investigating misconduct and wrongdoing by members of the service. It is important because without them, the authority and function of the department is undermined and weakened. It is such an integral role that most, if not all, commanders marked for serious posts must serve a stint with them. People dread this because it means dealing with colleagues. 

I was the equivalent of IA but not for individuals, rather the whole department. I was hidden and embedded, to the point I was, for all intents and purpose, IA for IA. This role allowed me to learn a lot but also see and pull strings from a mostly unnoticed position. It was part of what I always dreamed of – to impact and influence others, in this instance, millions of people in a quiet, understated, and subtle way, but with far-reaching consequences. 

The movies themselves are about two men who are both hidden. One is an undercover officer who is embedded in the Triads, one of the most formidable gangs in the city. The other is an officer with the HK police but secretly a member of the Triads. They battle each other in the shadows. In the movies, they share only a few scenes together. The most poignant one is when they share a moment listening to a haunting song – Forgotten Tine by Tsai Wen. It is a tender moment between two hardened men. 

At the end of the trilogy, the real officer has been killed by the false one. The false one actually wants to be legitimate but can’t outrun his past. He ends up catatonic at a sanatorium tapping out the word “Hell” on his wheelchair in Morse Code. He is trapped and lost in a hell of mostly his own making. 

Another ending scene shows an officer from Mainland China at the graves of the first officer and another one. He remarks to the girlfriend of the first that usually men are changed by events but men do not change events but that the deceased were extraordinary because they changed events. That scene spoke to me in a heavy manner. 

For so long, I thought I wanted to be seen or noticed by others. But maybe that wouldn’t have been good for me.  In a Monster Calls, the final tale is about how being seen can make you more lonely. It can be true. I ask whether I should have embraced or resisted my path more. I should have surrendered. 

But I think I want you to see me. I’ll let you in.  Let me in too.

I told you that a significant part of my skill set and jobs were to detect patterns. I have wondered where this all came from. Part of it was innate and through just living but I realized just recently that an unlikely source contributed greatly – my second job out of college at a relatively new company named Digene on Clopper Road. 

This job was slightly better than the previous one – although that company, Celera on Gude Drive, was a part of history as it helped sequence the human genome. The Digene job had regular working hours and slightly easier work. It was still repetitive and was blue collar work. The most difficult yet memorable part of the job was having to go into these warehouse freezer rooms that were at a negative 20 degrees Fahrenheit. We were supposed to have jackets to wear when inside but sometimes they couldn’t be found. It was already super cold with the jackets but without them, it was torture to be inside for more than a few moments. 

I was an ok lab technician. My bench space was neat and I put up pictures of the Peanuts characters – Linus being my favorite. I did the same lab assay or test everyday. I got to used to the timing for each step that from then on I could tell how much time has elapsed without the use of a clock or timer. 

I did this job for a year. The repetitive nature drilled into me in some form how to discern patterns a is lthough I still can’t place my finger on exactly how. Oh and they also had colder freezers at -70 degrees Fahrenheit that I used to put candy bars inside to eat later on. They were delicious frozen. 

The people in the lab were like family.  There were individuals from Vietnam, Thailand, Egypt, Ethiopia, Nigeria, the Philippines, Malaysia, as well as white and black. The potlucks were amazing. I would sometimes go outside to throw a football with my friend. One of my colleagues was almost run over by another colleague’s car who tried to hit her on purpose in the parking lot. I sat next to my friend whose mother was dying of cancer. I helped walk her through that and we are still close today. She was one of the first people to tell about my upbringing and she said she didn’t know I had so much hidden pain. She and my other football throwing colleague would have Popeye’s days where we would order a large spread and eat in the cafeteria. 

I play on the company’s softball team and learn to play the outfield from the COO. I learned that every time a fly ball is hit your way, the first step to take is backwards. It’s much easier to run forward to catch a ball than going backwards. In a game, I make a circus catch to end the game.

I think this was possibly the healthiest full time job I’ve ever had. It was like family and home. That’s why I said when I think of you, this is one of the places I think of in addition to Boston and the fair. The places I felt most at home. 

It was during this period where I studied and applied to law school. I mailed off my applications at the post office near your school. The funny thing is that this is when one of the major nudges from God occurred. I applied to about 10 schools all over the country but Indiana wasn’t one of them. It wasn’t even on my radar. What happened was one day, I receive a free application from them in the mail. I hastily fill it out and that ends up being the best school I was accepted to. It turns out that it’s the best place I could have attended. Although all law school programs are somewhat difficult and competitive, Indiana was probably less so because of the environment. 

I often say that my journey started in Indiana but that would be wholly untrue. It started when I took my first breath in a local hospital in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. All these stops mattered and gave me something I needed.

Digene gave me my sense of timing, patten recognition skills, fielding ability, and lifelong friends. A very unexpected source of light and joy.

Like you.

Another memory I have of you is you twirling, lost in thought. You didn’t think anyone was watching but it was really memorable and endearing. I used to do something similar – it was a football move, faking a handoff to a back and twirling to throw the ball. Because I am short, I often ran to the left or right to pass the ball. It allowed me to have an open passing lane. 

I miss that version of me.

I miss that version of you. 

But maybe we are every version of ourselves in the present. All our past selves and even the future. 

I found my old writing files from an intense and formative period of my life (but really, aren’t they all?). I actually didn’t write that consistently – the most during the sophomore-junior years of high school, last year, and the 6 years covering my last year of law school, the DA years, and the first 2 Boston years. 

I started to collate some of them for my kids. It was interesting to read them after more than 15-20 years. I forgot so much that happened and that I wrote down. Some of it, I am embarrassed by. It was immature, self-righteous, and stupid. 

But others, I could see the beginnings of my future self. I also also noticed a predictive or foreshadowing quality to some entries. There were several instances I would surmise something would occur in the near future, and it would happen. It wasn’t mere wishing or guessing. 

This phenomenon if you could call it that wasn’t limited to writing. I could often feel or envision what would happen in the future. In Boston, most of my peers would enter academia or policy work. But as I was sitting in one of my school’s classrooms that was setup like a conference room rather than a classic seating arrangement, I could see that one day, I would be in a position where I would be advising powerful people – which I would do years later. 

I also had a preview more than a decade in advance that I’d be in the police world. I used to wander around St. Paul in my spare time and stumbled onto the Minnesota Law Enforcement Memorial, a photo of which I sent you in April of last year. 

When I saw it for the first time, it spoke to me immediately. The memorial is a concrete interior surrounded by grass, representing the rural and urban nature of the State of Minnesota. In the middle of the concrete section, there is a row of blue lights representing the thin blue line dividing order and chaos, good and evil. 

It was, however, the black marble marker at the end of that row of blue lights and prominently placed in the middle of the entire memorial that has been imprinted in my memory and soul ever since. The Bible verse from the Book of Matthew where Jesus teaches the Beatitudes is engraved on it – “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.” I framed a photo of this and had it up at various locations. 

I also would go to the Memorial to pray and practice before one court season. It is stunning at night when the blue line lights up and the marble marker is illuminated. Sometimes, the remnants of the sun setting is evident in the background. Simply breathtaking and one of those moments where you feel that your heart would break because of the overwhelming beauty. 

When I saw you in your classroom and also standing outside your house, I felt the same way. 

It was a powerful, peaceful, profound beauty. 

I will never forget.

I once played for an indoor soccer team when I was in law school. Our team was all international students, mainly from Asia. We did not win a single game the whole season and we barely scored. I’m not a good field player but I was a good goalkeeper. 

In our first game, the opposing team is much bigger white guys. They are stronger and faster. We lose by 3 or 4 goals. But they also take 5 times the number of shots on our goal – close to 20 or so. I make save after save, including with my head and parts that have no business being hit. On one instance, I rush an incoming player and swipe the ball from his feet as he charges at me. Another time, someone gets a little too close to my area and I shove him off. It felt so good to be alive.

That was the joy I often couldn’t share with many. 

But even so, playing goalie was a lonely position. You’re the last line of defense and it’s just you between the posts. I loved it. I also played the floor and roller version and one of the best feelings is donning the mask, glove, blocker, and pads. Especially the mask. Often, professionals customize their masks and have something meaningful to them painted on it. I sometimes wondered what I would have on mine – maybe a tiger to honor my Malaysian heritage as if is our national animal. The Malaysian tiger isn’t even the biggest in the tiger family but I think it is the fiercest. 

But I didn’t like being alone all that much. I needed a lot of alone time to recharge, which is difficult with kids, especially in NYC. I don’t like crowds either but value deep conversations, one on one time. I can talk for hours on anything if I feel safe and even valued. Which wasn’t often. I could rarely tell anyone really anything. Had so many layers and nuances.

Intuitively, I just don’t think I really felt safe with many people. And strangely enough, even when married. And I had so many stories. The first few texts I sent you that you got mad about – the ones on how I played Sudoku and how I felt after the fair- that’s the first time I’ve told those to anyone. Silly maybe. And also how I don’t like sand. 

You’re really smart and I don’t think I’ve understood that fully till this year.  It was always there. 

But it’s the heart. That’s what matters. 

Yours is beautiful.