Why We Talk So Loud

Every year, around the same time, I breakdown from weariness and the overwhelming feeling of infinity.

I am not angry at Calvin, but my tone is loud and angry, uncontrollable like burning wildfires. I can't hear my self, tone deaf.

They torture me, the voices, that yell in my head.

"I don't want to fight anymore," I chant to Calvin as he cradles what is left of me. I sob as if to purge what memories, pains, joys, and writings that have yet to escape, that have been replaying over like a scratched record. There are a lot of scratches in my life.



The "I", ai, love was made up of all these collective experiences that keep running through my head, that strings me karmically to a past and to all these voices that talk so loudly.

This is the only time in which I hurt loudly, openly, physically. I keep my left hand to my left eyebrow, pinching my self back to the tangible world. It doesn't work.

And this is the first time, there was a witness--Calvin who kissed me, stroked my temples with the gentle of his fingers, scooped me in his spoon, swallowed my tears, and brought me out of my head.

The back of my head throbbed, pushing out swells from my eyes, and the frontal lobe was bursting against my skull, locked in physical limitations of bone and skin.

"Think about it: There is so much blood going through your brain right now because your thoughts are shooting electrical pulses everywhere!"

Mental explosions, visual explosions, war. "I am so tired. I don't want to fight anymore. I just want to sleep, but I can't because everything hurts," I cry, longing to forget.

I didn't mean to yell; I am not angry at Calvin. I reflect on my brother whose voice is loud and assertive, who always talked to our younger sister protectively. He says, "Bao, I'm not yelling. I am only talking. " But I hear the volume of his decibel. I did not believe that he did not have control.

Now, I understand why we talk so loud. Chinese families are known for talking like they are yelling, but it is merely spirit, overflow of collectiveness. For me, it is like a possession of the soul, this anger, a gaping wound of animosities--relocation, alientation, daily frustrations in middle class--and the torture of potential--wanting more, for knowing more, and for believing in being better.

I am in the process of developing a book, my family, my self. I have been doing this all of my life: listening, writing, imagining, crying, breaking down, and rebuilding. This is the only way I know how to exist.