mahiwaga

Joanne brings up a disturbing story concerning [May Yuen]¹, a Chinese American who joined the Army, who ended up killing herself.

The model-minority angle which emphasizes the extreme difficulty of many Asian Americans with countenancing failure is definitely important, and does definitely contribute to the reasons why Asian Americans commit suicide, and in some extreme cases, murder-suicides. I am immediately reminded about the tragically synchronous string of killings that struck the Korean American community in Los Angeles a year ago. There is a disturbing current involving cultures that tolerate physical and psychological abuse intertwined with the effects of experiencing racism, even if not overt.

The fear of failure, and the cultural pressure to achieve was most apparent to me in medical school, where many of the Asian Americans I knew were exactly in this kind of bind. A good enough number of them were not actually particularly interested in practicing medicine, but the drive to achieve pushed them along this pathway, and as many survivors of medical school and residency can attest, medicine is in someways akin to the Mafia—once you get in, you pretty much stay in.

The idea of having to do a job that gives you absolutely no pleasure for at least 10-15 years in order to repay your debts makes me physically ill, but this is in fact where some people seem to find themselves. In some ways, it seems to be the American Way™—everyone seems to pretty much hate their job. (Naturally, I am reminded of a Homer Simpson quote: “Kill my boss? Dare I live out the American Dream?”)

There is a part of me that is a little scornful—if one could only be true to one’s self, and fuck other people and their expectations, then you wouldn’t have to deal with this—but I suppose not everyone is that strong-willed and/or lucky. (And who am I to talk, considering I did go down the path of medicine, the key difference being that I actually like doing what I’m doing, and it is questionable whether I would have been good enough to do anything else.)

That being said, I am incredibly skeptical of anything coming out of the military’s PR department. After all, despite what the actual soldiers in Iraq are saying, the brass continue to claim that everything is all sunshine and roses, and that day by day we’re winning the War on Terror™, this despite the fact that the number of people dying in Iraq in a month increased in March.

The incidence of male soldiers raping female soldiers is sadly underreported, although Gary Trudeau does bring it up in Doonesbury. Given the military’s PR department’s disgraceful handling of Pat Tillman’s death, I can’t help but wonder if the military is not covering something up here.

And lastly, there is the disturbing fact that May Yuen likely had exercise-induced or maybe even mild, intermittent asthma, and that it sounds like her superiors didn’t give a rat’s ass and didn’t bother referring her to see an M.D. It is a sad fact that in this day and age—mostly because some old school M.D.s continue to foment outdated knowledge—people can needlessly die from an asthma exacerbation simply because they aren’t carrying albuterol with them.

Now I have had a brief exposure to health care system that takes care of the active military as well as the health care system that takes care of the veterans, and while I have seen some things that the private sector could learn a lesson from, there are other things that made the whole Walter Reed scandal not all that surprising. If you’re a spouse or dependent, it’s actually pretty decent access—far better than some of the private sector mechanisms that I’ve seen and/or have been subjected to—but if you’re active duty, you’ve got to jump through quite a few hoops to get evaluated by an M.D. Now how messed up would that be if that’s what killed May Yuen?

ed. note 2015 Dec 15: original link now invite-only

see also: Asian American Woman Commits Suicide at Boot Camp • 2007 Mar 30 • Neela Banerjee • Hypen

None of my own inner demons have anything directly to do with Nic’s blog post about how nice guys finish last, but the opening quote reminded me of the dead-end lifestyle I’ve been leading for the last decade or so.

Now that I’ve grown delirious with sleep, the thoughts that have spun through my head today have pretty much mellowed out, and I kind of don’t care anymore.

But I can’t help think about the probability that when a woman tells me I’m too nice, it’s just code for you’re too ugly and fat for me.

Whatever. There are more things to life than mere love, companionship, and good sex that you didn’t have to pay for.

I did find myself wallowing in loneliness today. Just a smidge. I’ve been trying to limit how many hours I spend mired in self-pity these days, and the medications help a little bit, so it’s not the big massive emotional sinkhole that it used to be.

Still, I can’t help but wonder why a certain someone never returns my calls.

You know things are bad when you aren’t even in the Friend Zone™ anymore.

It does kind of get me down that the only people who call me and leave voice messages are my mother and the credit card companies who are clamoring for my soul.

No one ever e-mails me anymore, either.

I’m just friendless, freakish, and hopeless.

OK, OK, things are not as bad as I make them out to be.

As most people understand, the name of the game is “you give a little, you get a little.” Ain’t no one gonna come knocking on my door if I don’t at least make some small gesture of welcome.

To put it another way, I can put much of the blame for ending up a hermit squarely on myself.

To paraphrase a former Secretary of War, the only way to make someone trustworthy is trust them, and I’m clearly not going to make any new friends if I expect everyone to betray me eventually.

It’s hard to ignore my motto which serves me incredibly well when I’m at work: “Hope for the best, but expect the worst.”

As Chuck Palahniuk once wrote, “If you worry about disaster all the time, that’s what you’re going to get….”

Ultimately, we end up back at square one. The existential question for the day becomes this: what exactly do I have to offer to anyone? As a friend, as an acquaintance, as an employee. Just as a person in general. For the longest time, I’ve told myself, deep in my heart, that I’ve got a lot to offer, it’s just that there’s this depression and this fear of betrayal that’s always getting in my way.

No matter how sad and pathetic I would be, in the inner sanctum of my soul, I would hang on to the hope that somewhere deep inside this morass of sadness and despair, there was actually a person who was worthwhile, and who would be fun to hang around with.

Well, as time goes by, and as my bad habits harden, I’m starting to give up on this hope. Eventually, what you do becomes who you are, no matter what the philosophers say, and I’m getting to the point where I will become this awful, useless person who does nothing but mope all day, who lacks the most rudimentary of social skills, who trusts absolutely no one, and who will remain friendless for all the rest of my days.

Self-fulfilling prophecy.

The easy way out is to blame all of this on the malicious actions of people in my past.

But I know better.

The universe didn’t dick me. I dicked myself.

(In the off-chance that maybe one or two of my actual friends are reading this, none of this diatribe applies to you. I know that you’re busy, and that you’re not ignoring me, and I know that if I wasn’t such a lazy and thoughtless bastard, I could just give you a call maybe once in a while instead of whining about how no one ever calls me. But you know me, always looking at the dark side of life, and never the one to do anything about it.)