Relief. Pure, simple, blissful relief.

That's how I felt when I nearly crawled into my house yesterday morning after a long journey home.

You ever have that experience where you really have to pee and for whatever reason, you're forced to hold it and you serious think, oh my god, is today the day i, as an adult, wet myself in public???? What? No? Yeah, um, me neither.

But if that were to ever happen, I imagine my feelings before I walked through my own front door were close to that.

And all I wanted to do was hug one of my walls like a child clinging to their mother before the first day after scary daycare.

That's why it's Friday night, and I'm happy to be sitting here at home. Doing nothing but cleaning to make my home as happy to be with me, as I am to be within it.

Taiwan.

What was it like? Great. Taiwan is great.

But I just knew I wasn't supposed to be there. In fact, it was like fingernails screeching across a chalkboard inside me at all times, this anxiety that I was in the wrong place and this was bad. This was very bad.

Even my brother was cranky, from the jetlag, from the MSG in the food...I'm not sure what. But he seemed to completely reject my being there, too. I wonder if he knew that I hadn't wanted to come, but the only reason I was there was because if I wasn't, he couldn't come either. He's been pretty independent as of late, and his mind seems to have jumped another level up in abstract, adult thought, so it doesn't surprise me that if this were the case, that he would resent my being there on this trip. I would represent just another way that my mom doesn't take him seriously as an autonomous being, even if she says she does (she doesn't). We did have one good day, the day that it was just the two of us, and he was in a great mood. And he seemed excited about when I would leave, calling up our aunt's friend to make plans to hang out (though he confided he was sad that I was going because he didn't know when he would see me again, but I reminded him that he was coming to my birthday party, which cheered him up).

The one thing I noticed that was really rubbing me the wrong way was how aggressive and noisy it was at all times. Not the city...my family.

My grandma and I have a funny relationship. She likes me a lot, I like her...in small doses. She's my mom's mom and here's the backstory. Her husband was a government official when the kids were young, an agency like the IRS. When an investigation exposed corruption, my grandfather took all of the blame to protect his boss who had a family and a reputation, and the power to protect his family while he was in jail, which he promised. So my grandfather goes to jail, and this guy does nothing, leaving my paternal great-grandmother and my grandmother to raise 5 kids on just one salary.

My mom's life was greatly influenced not only by being incredibly poor, but by the shame of having a father who was once a respected and feared member of society being in prison. It became like having a bullseye painted on your back, as they became fair game in their little town. Even her teachers would single her out for humiliation and beatings during class, but my mom said that the thing you always remember, is to never let them see you cry. You take whatever people want to give you, but you never, ever cry. This is what she taught me, even though in the privacy of my childhood bedroom, this strong woman would weep as she told these stories of vulnerability and pride against sadism.

So my grandmother had a tough life, and she's a tough woman herself. She was a beauty queen turned school teacher during an era when it was okay to take a stick to a child's hand who showed disobedience. I remember always being terrified of seeing her when I was little, not because she would hit me, but because she was critical. Oh yeah, she's a Virgo. Every meeting started with her sizing me up, and telling me what needed to be fixed. Usually it was my weight. Sometimes my hair, my clothes, my posture or my manners (she doesn't hear well so if you greet her, you keep doing it until you know for a fact she heard you). Sometimes if she felt you'd insulted her in some way, she would break out in this hysterically angry verbal attack that came out of nowhere (ie once she had said something to me and swore I had ignored her, and went off on me. I swear to this day, she never said anything to me). So I've always been a little afraid of her, and I've always been afraid of her criticisms.

So the thing I noticed in Taiwan, is that 1. She's mellowed out. But 2. She sets off these cycles of anxious energy attacks. Her way of speaking is sometimes an outright criticism or a passive aggressive comment. For example, she thinks my aunt is too fat. When I came, she noticed I'd lost weight and wanted to weigh me. When she saw my weight, she realized I was 20 lbs lighter than my aunt who just had 2 kids. She told me in front of my aunt, "You're not fat like your aunt." Later, my aunt whispered, "You're lucky. Grandma is quite satisfied with your figure." Later, she wasn't happy with some food we had bought her so she said, "Why would you buy food that tastes so bad? I guess I'll have to eat it anyway because there's nothing else."

What happens is these negative or passive aggressive comments cause this ball of anxiety in a person. I know because I felt it, but I didn't have the guts to say anything. But my mom and aunt, they do. So I'm sure they know nothing good comes out of responding, but what happens is they explode, and they get mad and yell things like, "If you don't like it, then don't eat it!" Yes, it's what all of us are thinking, but then out breaks a cat fight and everyone is yelling. My grandma feels picked on by my aunt, my mom yells at my grandma and/or my aunt to stop fighting. And my little 4-year old cousin yelling, "You're a bad guy!" at me because he wants to punch me.

I think this negativity is maybe the Chinese way. It's like Jewish moms and their guilt trips, but the Chinese are more overt, using negativity to toughen you up. When we were at a gym in Taiwan, my mom took a aerobic boxing class. Afterwards, she told me the instructor was saying things to the class like, "What are you doing? I didn't teach you to do it that way. You guys just can't do it right." Or, "If you don't get it by now, you shouldn't be in this class. I'm tired of trying with you guys." My mom was noting how she's never heard a teacher like that in the US speak to a class that way, and that they're usually really encouraging and positive. She realized that if a teacher spoke like that to a gym class in the US, she would get fired and said, "I guess Taiwanese people just talk like that, but it's not right. I guess I talked to you and Michael the same way, and it probably wasn't right." I didn't say anything, but I was thankful that she decided to go to the gym with me that morning since it allowed her to come to that realization.

So there were so many moments, through the negativity, criticism and outright fighting, that I would sit in the corner, close my eyes, and hit my fist against my forehead thinking, it's okay...it's okay. But I am happy to be home where it's quiet and I'm alone with the Julia I've nurtured over the years from the angry, critical, abusive voice into a nice, supportive, accepting presence when we're alone together.

I've been working hard to clean the house and throw out stuff I don't need. I think it's important when you begin a new chapter of life, to clear out clutter. Brian got a new bed, which makes me ecstatic because a lot of his cattiness comes from him being lonely (subconsciously self-imposed), and I like seeing that he's making room in his new, larger bed, which is symbolic and a positive step.

Lauren came over and she's stressed with her new job. She's like a spinning top who can barely see or hear you when she's anxious, so we watched her spin around our place. I quietly sent her some calming energy.

I slept for 14 hours last night (didn't sleep the night before), and dreamt of going to this other dimension where a Chinese Master in the middle of a jungle told me I had to learn martial arts in case I became the last One on earth. Then he trained me, first, with how to fight with a stick, because it represented balance. When I woke up, I realized I was whispering all of the Master's lines inside my head, like the Wizard of Oz. I woke up in time to have lunch with the guys I play basketball with. This was my first time really venturing out of the house, having unwrapped myself from its energy and my hands were shaking from too much sleep (I think my body thought I must have slipped into a coma). Everyone looked really good, really healthy. I still don't know where I'm going to work--it'll either be in LA or the Bay Area--but I'm thinking I want to either stay in LA or make it my base where I live part-time in the bay but LA is still home. Tracy joked that I wanted to stay in LA because of them. It's funny because when I weighed LA versus the Bay Area a few months back, they were one of the reasons that strongly attached me to LA, so he actually wasn't far off. I feel like at the end of the day, LA as a city may not feel exactly like home for me, but my living space and the people in my life are my home, which makes me reluctant to leave.

So tonight, I'll sit and spend time with my mormon temple, which brings me peace and inspiration. I wanted to go to the gym, but I'll probably take the night off, since I was doing 2 hours straight of cardio a morning in Taiwan just to burn off all that excess stress and energy.

Overall, I'm happy. I'm happy to be home, I'm happy to have good people in my life. I'm happy knowing that there are things out there that are tragic and unpredictable or deeply unsettling, but that to have had happiness and peace and to know what they are like, means that you can always find your way back to them, that you can always find your way home.