Tag: famiry

Current status:

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Normally I try to keep certain aspects of my personal life out of my writing, but I’m at a point where I feel like I can’t really speak to just anyone about the things going on in my head over the span of the last 12+ months and the journey I’ve been enduring, and writing to nobody seems like a better alternative to unloading a metric fuckton of baggage onto just anyone because frankly I don’t know anyone in their right mind who would want to hear it and nobody probably needs to hear some of the negativity that’s manifested in my thoughts.

This includes my own immediate family, my wife and my closest friends, I don’t feel I can really do much beyond vent some surface level things without encroaching into a realm of dark and frustrated thoughts without risking bringing people who don’t really need to be brought down, down.  And although I know many people who have endured their own episodes of family bullshit, there really aren’t that many that I know who are in the entirely relatable situation of dealing with immigrant parents with severe language barriers fucking shit up on top of all the other typical bullshit that dealing with aging parents entails.

I’m not trying to deliberately separate myself from everyone else, or even insinuate that I’m going through a very specific and very unique scenario, obviously there are millions of xennial children of today who are dealing with this exact scenario, it’s just that I don’t really know any whom I can commiserate with.

Real talk is that I’m moving my dad down to Georgia, so he can come live out the remainder of his life, closer to one of his kids, instead of being on an island up in Virginia, where he basically has no real friends, and the military buddies he has don’t really include him in anything anymore these days on account of his rapidly declining mobility and basically inability to transport himself to wherever they gather and fraternize.  So he’s basically been living a life of solitary confinement for the better part of the last few years, and it’s doing no favors to his general state of mental wellbeing, and his memory has started to rapidly decline and whether it’s early onset dementia or Alzheimer’s I don’t fucking know, but it’s wreaking havoc on, life, as a whole.  His, mine, my sister’s, and by proxy the ones in our individual lives, because I have family obligation to give a shit about my dad’s well-being.

However, it’s been a colossal pain in the ass, because my dad has been indecisive and has numerously changed his mind on relocating or staying, with it becoming more and more frustrating each ensuing time.  I got him to come down for Thanksgiving to try out the home I found for him, and in typical fashion, he didn’t hate it, but he also was in no rush to move.  Unfortunately, shortly after Thanksgiving, his cognitive abilities began falling off of a cliff and my sister and I were rudely awakened to the fact that he seemingly couldn’t recall that he had any grandchildren, and that I even lived in Georgia.  Our spouses were completely forgotten, and if not for the fact that he has family photos in his home, he wouldn’t know that we were both parents in our own right.

Such really chaps my ass, because we’re at the stage of where my sister and I are basically flexing our power of attorney over our dad and low-key forcing him to relocate now, as opposed to him coming on his own volition, no matter just how much sense we were trying to talk into him.  Nobody can make another person do something they’re not willing to do without things getting uncomfortable in some manner.  Had he transitioned a year ago when I first found the home, or even six, eight or ten months ago, when his wits and memory weren’t an issue, he could already have had one foot in the door and begun his twilight years cognitively competent, and not basically being moved for no other reason than his own safety and need to be close to one of this kids because we’re the only people on the planet who give a fuck about him.

It goes without saying that I’m full of resentment and frustration with my dad for not fucking listening to me, or my sister, about relocating sooner.  He can’t live alone anymore, and shouldn’t really have been over the last year and change, but neither of us could make him help himself without his willingness to be on board with changes, and now we’ve crossed the point where it’s not a choice based on logic and mutual acceptance, but one out of necessity and for the sake of safety.

After basically flexing power of attorney on him, I deliberately left two weeks on the clock, so we could have a little buffer for any last minute issues that may or may not come up, as well as to arrange travel without having to rush or pay for rush charges.  Unsurprisingly, the last two weeks have been agonizing from the standpoint that my dad’s been blowing up my phone on a daily basis, having forgotten everything we talked about the day previously, requiring me to say the same shit and explain the exact same stuff that I’d been discussing with him for multiple days at this point.  No amount of demanding he write shit down works, because he’s either lying or being lazy or both, because if he were, then he wouldn’t be needing to call me six times every fucking day.

I snapped at my dad, telling him how frustrated I was that I had to keep doing this, and he uncharacteristically grew a little defensive and clapped back a little bit, citing that if he couldn’t ask questions to his own children, then who could he ask questions to?  I explained that he’s forgetting things on a daily basis and to write things down to a degree where he wouldn’t have to ask the same questions every day, and that he needed to also consider my position of where I have to say the same crap every single day because he won’t help me help himself by writing down the important things. 

He forgets, I can’t.  No matter how much I’d love to, and then chalk everything up to being forgetful.  My angst, frustration and pain compounds daily, while he gets to forget about it, and ask the same bullshit questions that could’ve been avoided two, four, six or twelve fucking months ago had he just listened to his own goddamn kids.

And on top of it all is the motherfucking language barrier that eternally exists between us.  And I will never not resent my parents for not learning more English after 50 years in this country, or pushing me to become more proficient in Korean.  It takes a difficult situation and ramps the difficulty up tenfold, with neither of us really being able to say the things we really want to say, and actually have the other fully understand it. 

I’m sick of having to sit in front of my computer with Google Translate open, or having to say hold on, while I swipe out of the phone and into a browser so I can do the same thing.

I swear on my life that I will never put my kids in this situation that my parents put me in.  We will never have a language barrier between us, and I hope everyone out there who doesn’t have one with their parents know just how fucking lucky they are, especially those of immigrants, who ended up on the same page to have a common tongue between parents and children.

To top things off, is this rumbling of the blizzard of the century that’s supposedly about to bombard the east coast.  My dad’s official travel day to Georgia is coming up, and I’m going to go apoplectic if the weather comes into play and completely cockblocks everything.  It buys time for my dad to try to back out yet again, and frankly the waiting for moving day has been way too long as it is, and I just want it to be here, so I can get him settled and hopefully started on a better life where he’s closer to me, will be surrounded by other human beings, and perhaps get the mental stimulation that he’s sorely needed.

Of all the things I don’t need, is the weather to come into play and ruin our plans.*  But considering the general nature of bad luck, fortunate and everything else that has delayed things to this point, I feel like it’s kind of a lock to happen.

*actually came up with an adult idea and paid to moved up his arrival date as to avoid the proposed start time of the so called blizzard of the century

The point of all this rambling is that I may not talk about it a lot in my writing, or even in person, but I am going through a metric fuck ton of stuff right now.  My life is pretty overloaded with parenting, a really currently mid-feeling job that has me churning a lot, being the general hard carry of my home, and then I have all of my dad’s bullshit that I’m having to run point on because nobody else is willing or able to do so, and I’m in a pretty precarious state of being.

Once my dad is settled and hopefully on the right track of existence, I need a fucking break.**

**I put this in writing a few times a year, but it basically never actually happens

I also need everyone to respect my time.

I also need people to stop questioning everything I do.

I also need everyone to stop being so reliant on me.

I also need to not have to be the hard carry in every facet of my life.

Dad Brog (#160): overstimulated is another way to say burnt [the fuck] out

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

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George Carlin once did a routine where he talked about how society has a tendency to try to rename harsh things to sound less severe and more generally acceptable to society.  His primary example was how the term shell shock was renamed to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).  Shell shock was at some point deemed to be too shocking for sensitive people to hear, and therefore PTSD came into vernacular, and yes it probably helped at making it slightly less scary to talk about, I get this impression that PTSD itself is climbing to that stature where shell shock was, and soon we’ll probably get another, softer, replacement term to replace it but I’m straying off topic here.

Whenever I get into one of my moods where all I see is red, I’m mad at the world, I hate everything and everyone and want nothing more than to be able to stop time all around me and take a deep breath and relax in complete isolation, like that movie from 20 years ago (Cashback), the only phrase that comes into my mind is: burnt [the fuck] out.  Everything pisses me off, just about nothing is capable of bringing me back, and the only thing that comes close to helping is going to sleep and hoping it’s not still around when I wake up.

Over the last few years, I’ve been spoon-fed a whole lot of content that definitely caters to the fact that I am married with children, and I’ve noticed that in that time, a phrase I’ve seen a lot of, is overstimulated.  Most of the time it pertains to all the mommy content creators who really love to declare themselves or hypothetical stressed out other mommies as being overstimulated, but because I can relate to overstimulated mommies way more than I’d like to admit to, I get it.  However, I also recognize that most of the time, the symptoms of a mom that’s overstimulated it is, seeing red, being mad at the world, hating everything and everyone, and probably wanting nothing more than to be able to stop time all around them and take a deep breath and relax in complete isolation like that movie from 20 years ago (Cashback).

It occurred to me that what’s probably happened over the last few years is that the phrase “burnt [the fuck] out” has been used so much and so hard, and that peoples’ eyes have begun glazing over upon hearing it, is that society has basically invented a replacement term for it, in order for it to get people to listen and be curious and think about it, and that term is obviously, overstimulated.

It sounds less harsh than burnt [the fuck] out, and because there’s no optional profanity to attach to it (inherently), it’s like there’s a ceiling to how piercing it can be used with some venom behind it.  Overstimulated, is a gentler and less severe word on the auditory senses of weak people, but I think I’ve unlocked the bullshit spin behind the word, and refuse to see the phrase for something other than what it really is, a descriptor for people who are feeling burnt [the fuck] out.

But it’s good that I’ve realized the truth behind it the bullshit.  It gives my own personal vernacular a softer and less scary option to use if I feel like I’m speaking with some particularly pussy people, and surmise that telling them that I’m burnt [the fuck] out won’t scare them off entirely.

Hopefully the next time I write a dad brog, it won’t be about some overstimulated subject matter.

This shit gets ridiculous sometimes

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A few months ago, I chronicled how the week in which I was on a cruise with my family, was a week in which the whole fucking universe decided that they needed to get in touch with me, there were emergencies, there were fraud alerts, and I had no less than 69,000 emails, messages, chats and other alerts that took an inconvenient amount of time to sift through and deal with the most critical of issues.

Since I realized that the world most certainly does revolve around me, it’s been comical at just how predictably reliable it’s been that basically, when I am indisposed, unavailable, busy, or just plain not in a position to communicate, is when the whole fucking planet wants to communicate with me.

Case in point, I’m on a flight, connected to shitty WiFi.  I can receive texts and check email, but most all else is woefully unreliable, and I feel like I’m on the 2400baud modem that my old 486 was equipped with.  While on this flight, my boss DMs me despite my out of office being on, and since I’m not as smart as I think I am, I haven’t disabled notifications from Teams so I’m seeing them come through; additionally, there’s a ping for an impromptu business meeting, to which this sudden nature means something substantial, like someone critical leaving or having gotten shit-canned.  I don’t know and won’t know until I get back to the office but I am curious, but not curious enough to reach out to a colleague on a day off to find out.

A voicemail comes through, and it’s apparently my doctor’s office wanting to reschedule my annual that’s in two months, scheduled a month ago, because the American medical system is completely fucked, and I have to figure out what shitty appointment time probably three more months out I can get in on and hope the doc doesn’t schedule an out of office then too. 

And then I get a text from my sister telling me to call when I can, which is honestly these days tantamount to ask me to cure cancer as much of an aggrandizingly obnoxious ask to make of me.  But I can only imagine it pertains to my dad whom I just left after a fucking week of babysitting, so now I’m curious but can’t call because although I have shitty WiFi, making calls is still not something we do in the air.

It’s been like this fairly regularly since I realized that I control the universe.  No matter what I do, it’s when I try to take some time for myself is when everyone in my world starts trying to get in touch with me.

When I’m at my desk, available, ready, and willing to communicate?  Fucking crickets

Hit the gym during lunch?  Ping
Go out for a run on WFH Fridays?  Ding
Spending time with my kids?  Bing
Driving anywhere, any distance?  Be-doop
Running errands with an objective?  Boop-boop

And so on and so on.  It’s one of those things that sure, nobody knows what I’m doing at any given time but all the same I still feel that fucking everyone needs to give my time some more respect and just leave me the fuck alone.

One of these days if I ever get to have a single god damn day sabbatical, I think I need to hole up in a hotel room all by myself and just sleep, shotgun a show, eat whatever I want to eat, and put my phone the fuck away except for to do shit that I want to do, because the conclusion I’m coming to while I’m blathering all this shit out in that I need to just not be so god damn plugged into so much shit.

I’m drained and I need a vacation

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As I’ve often said in my life, if there were a such things as a mythical purgatory, mine would undoubtedly look like Reagan National Airport based on how much time in my life I feel that I’ve wasted here.  Even now, I am once again stuck here on account of multiple flight delays, probably because of some rain as if the stuff has never existed in the history of the universe.

And it’s not one of those old “well maybe if you actually paid full fares” accusations I used to get when I had a flight pass and could jet set on standby flights any availability I got, because that ship has long sailed and I’m on a full-ass fare and still dealing with the insufferable passage of time at DCA.

Anyway, as the title of this post so succinctly reads, I am drained and I am in need of a real break.  The week of Thanksgiving started off a little bumpy, but limped towards progress, the holiday itself was really personally fulfilling, and there were a lot of good memories.  However, my holiday started with a long-ass drive, concluded with a long-ass drive, and now I’m stuck at my personal hell just trying to get home, so I can get back to work without really having any time to have unwound or relaxed, at all.

As I’ve said in the past, I’m probably at that stage of life where a lot of people my age have to accept and understand the mortality of our parents, as well as the onset of babysitting, assisting, holding hands, arguing about independence while trying to not step on eggshells of frail personal egos and the fears of change and mortality of them themselves.

This past week was basically all of the above, trying to see if I could convince my dad to move into a home down in Georgia.  The place where I brought him allowed for us to do a trial stay for a week, and I loved the idea of doing over Thanksgiving, because I always made me feel very sad over the years of my dad being by himself on just about every holiday, and I could have him spend this year’s with me, as well as hope to see if he could accept the place as a viable landing spot to get him out of his current home which is too big, has too many stairs and way too isolated from any family members who are willing to help him. 

Although there were some good times during the week, like having my dad over for Thanksgiving and ensuring that he wouldn’t be by himself, and having him spend some time with my kids, his grandchildren, the end result is basically no real different than when we started.  Such wasn’t really unexpected, and I’m honestly not really surprised, but it’s still disappointing that all the time, care and effort I put into everything led basically nowhere, and at the end of the day I can’t make him make a decision, and it’s up to him to decide, something at all, no matter how much logic and truth my sister and I try to get into his head.

Needless to say, I am just drained.  My life in general operates at a pretty high stress threshold to begin with these days, and adding my dad and all his end of life affair footwork on top of it is perpetually overflowing me on a regular basis, and I don’t feel as if I’ve had a chance to unwind, decompress or just catch my breath in weeks.

I think I may have to use a vacation day in the coming weeks to just take a random midweek day off where I can not be the first fucking person up in the morning, get some actual sleep, and hopefully a feeling of actual physical and mental recharging.

Not feeling particularly thankful these days

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A few times, I’ve seen memes about how dads in general often suffer depression in silence, primarily on account of the fact that nobody cares about their feelings or emotions.  Family, friends, the royal everyone, either people are too wrapped up in their own lives to concern themselves about the emotional/sanity state of some other men, or there’s some credence to the umbrella statement that nobody cares about the feelings of dads.  And occasionally, there are times where I kind of feel this, and I’m just to broke ass poor to afford therapy, and I try to find it in exercise and writing.

Here’s a transcription of what I vomited to my phone because I was having a shitty morning and I felt like I wanted to write about it but didn’t want to chance it to forget the things I was thinking because I was in the car and I always think well in the car, which of course I do, because it’s a place and time in which I am completely incapable of jotting down my thoughts, because life really loves to fuck around with me when I’m generally unavailable:

It’s one of those mornings where nothing is going right. I am thankful for nothing. Forgot to eat breakfast because my kids got up early because they’re sick because every time we send them out of town they come back sick which sucks.  Work sucks, family sucks. Technology doesn’t work.  It’s frustrating.  It’s raining, I’m not feeling very thankful, family in disarray.  I don’t have time to catch up on anything.  I have to clean my house but I live with slobs and kids.  I can’t Black Friday shop.  I can’t have time to watch wrestling or Pluribus or Peacemaker or Netflix.  I never have any time for myself.  I bend over backward for everybody, nothing is ever reciprocated.  My mind is in a dark place.  Everything is frustrating.  Venting to nobody is cheaper than therapy, gym and writing is my therapy.  Memes about dads who suffer in silence and nobody cares feels very poignant and true.  (My) Dad is being weird about his possible future home, ungrateful and lecturing me about my flaws.  BP is getting worse and not sure if it’s just medication or stress and it’s affecting shit like my vision and health

So yeah, a lot to have unpacked to my phone through diction, but at least I was able to more accurately get a lot of shit off my chest and be able to look at it and analyze the things that are eating at me, and it’s not lost on me the irony of complaining about not having any time to do certain things, and then prioritizing writing about complaining about not having any time when I could be doing something more leisurely and entertaining instead, but that’s just how eternally important writing is to me over just about anything else.

But yes, to the point of the subject of this post, I’m not feeling very thankful at the very moment.  Things are very volatile, draining, and not good for my levels of stress, and I’m sure which are contributing to my escalating blood pressure issues, which is its own chicken and egg situation, where I don’t know if the increased stress is causing my BP to increase, or if the increase in my BP is what’s causing me to feel like I’m falling apart physically at times, with headaches and degrading vision.

I have to clean my house up for Thanksgiving, which seems like an extremely daunting task because everyone I live with is a slob and the house is perpetually bordering on needing to contact Discovery to reboot Hoarders: Buried Alive, or at least it seems to me, and of course there’s only one day to do it, although I could be starting it now but it’s just so daunting and I’m depressed that I can’t bring myself to do it without giving myself at least a little bit of time to brog and vent first.

At the very top of the list of stressors though is my dad being down in Georgia testing out a facility that he could very well potentially move into, which in one hand seems like the best end of life option, but on the other hand it means he’s close and accessible to me, and he’s already been weird and a pain in my ass in just the first few days of spending a ton of time with him.  Honestly, I don’t think things were as daunting in my life until this shit started ramping up, and I feel like it’s a contributing factor; the straw that broke the camel’s back as far as my BP elevating, and probably necessitating an alteration in medication.

Everything else, like work pissing me off, my kids being sick, me being exasperated with technology, etc, that’s all just background noise.  It’s the bullshit that takes an annoyed mood and turns it into bad ones, ragey ones, and the over the top frustration which lead to limit break diction rants into my phone like the one up above.

All the same though, the timing of it all, while we’re on the cusp of Thanksgiving, has me feeling not very thankful for a whole lot right now, even though there very much is, I’m just not feeling it at this very specific moment in my life.

Real talk: my head hurts

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know why I feel like I should write about this, especially since it’s coming from a place of fear and apprehension of the worst, but I guess that if things do go tits up in regards to this, there’s a part of me that I guess wants to chronicle it for the sake of chronicling all of the things in my life that might be a big deal, whether or not they’re bad or good.

But for the last few days, I’ve had a pain in my head, and not the metaphorical kind that comes from a lifestyle of being stressed all the time, compounded with varying degrees of depression and anxiety.  Like an actual dull rolling ache that pulses along the back left part of my skull.  It’s not the worst pain in the world by any stretch of the imagination, but because it kind of throbs and rolls through when it happens, it sometimes catches me off guard and causes me to really wince or if I’m in the midst of doing something, causing an interruption.

It kind of hurts to the touch, but only the first time, and subsequent rubbings of the area don’t really hurt, so I’m not entirely sure if it’s a topical thing or if it’s something going on underneath the skin.

I’m aware that this could be many different things, many of which are no real big deal at all, but me being me, my mind tends to go towards the worst possible scenarios, and given what my family has been through over the last few years as far as people having to deal with different things, I have to ask myself, and hope that it’s not my turn for something bad to happen to.

Needless to say, old single childless me would have just continued to gut it out longer and waited for it to get worse before acting on it, but the married dad me of today doesn’t want to run the risk of it being something that could’ve been prevented from getting worse if it’s something that I can get in front of.  It’s only been a few days, where I had just hoped it was maybe daylight savings-related old man body adjusting to the time change, or just the elevated level of stress in which I’ve been running on, on account of the issues I’m dealing with, with my own dad, as well as a high workload at work, on top of being an active and hands-on dad dealing with my own kids on the regular. 

Unfortunately, the occurrences of the occasional pulsing aches has not really subsided, so I reached out to my doctor for their opinion, and we’ll go from there.  What I’m hoping is that I’m just dealing with excessive stress, compounded with likely blood pressure elevation that I’ve learned runs in my family, and that I just need to chill the fuck out more often than I do, and that it’s not like some aneurism or blood clot or tumor risk I’m running and that I need immediate surgery and utilization of shitty American health care insurance to fuck my family over for the next few years.

However, the point remains that it does have me a little nervous about what it could be, and I’m eagerly awaiting response from my doctor, so I can have some piece of mind of what needs to come next.  It’s the waiting and the unknowns that truly are the killers, but in spite of it all, I do pat myself on the back for breaking old habits and mentalities and just trying to gut things out and hope they go away.  Having one’s own family definitely helps with that, and understanding that my life isn’t just my life, so much as it belongs to others whom I wish to be around for as long as I can.

I think I’m entering that stage of life

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Actually, there’s no thinking that I’m entering it, the reality is that I’ve already entered it, it’s just that there’s a part of me that has been kind of in denial about it, and the reality is that we’re like at, phase 2 or 3 of it now instead of just entering it.

I’m talking about the point in our lives where a parent(s) begin to lose their independence, and for lack of a better term, we’re entering the end game phase of life.  It’s been going on with my dad for the better part of the last two years, with an increase of health ailments and incidents, loss of balance and falls, and an increase of medications, doctor appointments as well as just general concern for well-being from my sister and I.

My dad is getting up there in age, and it’s a tough pill to swallow that with every single medical incident, he’s getting closer and closer to the exit, than rebounding back to the independent and capable hard-working dad that’s been in my life.

Naturally, this is nothing out of the ordinary for most kids who care about their parents, and I’ve bore witness already to many close confidants in my life to have gone through this stage of life themselves.  I’ve been to more funerals over the years than I care to admit, but at the same time, such seems to be one of those rites of passage that simply exists on the passage of time, and if we’re being honest here, it’s probably only going to increase as time progresses.

However, it’s different in the sense that it’s now in progress with my own parent now, seeing him gradually deteriorating from the effects of Father Time, he who is undefeated and undefeatable.  It’s not just a sense of sadness and melancholy at it being my turn, as much it’s a whole lot of increasing stress at working with my sister to make sure that he’s not being preyed upon by predatory service providers, from home repairs, realtors, to any crook  out there hoping to take advantage of vulnerable seniors.

It’s frustrating, because my sister and I are constantly skating around this line where my dad is struggling with losing his independence and facing his own mortality and making a lot of questionable decisions independently, but then there are times in which the man won’t make a decision to save his life, and is waiting on my sister or I to make them for him, before he inevitably doesn’t like it and then protests it.  It’s like dealing with my 4-year old sometimes.

In his perfect world, he’s able to tie up all loose ends, sell his home and seamlessly transition into some sort of senior/assisted living to where he can live out the remainder of his life comfortably.  Obviously, seldom is life that accommodating, so in my perfect world, my sister and I are able to get him out of his house where he’s one really bad slip trip or fall from dying discreetly, into a good senior/assisted living facility, and then we can close up shop on our own, retroactively.  It’s just that we’re dealing with his abrupt changes of mind and quick trigger when it comes to deviating from any sort of plans that have already put into motion, mostly on account of his all-too Korean tendency to listen to friends and peers above his own children.

Honestly, I’m trying to get my dad down to Georgia, to get a clean slate and live out the remainder of his life down here closer to me.  I have a place in mind that I think would be very ideal, and unlike the money-driven cesspool that Northern Virginia is, rent is not asset-based flexible (read: flexes based on how much liquidity you have), and my dad would probably be able to comfortably sustain his living conditions on his SSI and retirement income without bleeding out financially.

But the clock is definitely ticking, in that we have to move expediently to get him out of isolated living, and into a facility where he can at least get daily wellness checks to make sure that he doesn’t fall and there’s nobody remotely close to help out with.

All the same though, I feel as if I’m in end game, and I hope to make the best of the time that I do have left with my dad, and bringing him down to Georgia would be a very positive initial step.