Before the flowers, the fancy restaurant dinners, and the Instagram declarations of “my person,” let’s talk about something less aesthetic.
Self-abandonment.
People can control themselves. They choose not to. It is insulting to pretend otherwise.
When someone says, “If you hadn’t acted that way, I wouldn’t have reacted like that,” what they’re really saying is, "I am entitled to hurt you when I feel uncomfortable."
Abuse doesn’t start with a punch. It starts with control. With blame shifting. With emotional manipulation that happens in private, while a curated version of love is performed in public.
And here’s the uncomfortable truth. Some of the couples we admire are not okay behind closed doors.
You didn’t “see that side” of them? Of course you didn’t. People who know they’re wrong don’t showcase it. They protect their reputation. They protect their power. They protect the narrative.
Power and privilege normalize abuse. Especially when it comes to men who have been taught that women and girls exist to serve, soothe, validate, and absorb their emotional volatility.
Let’s be clear in 2026, it is not a male loneliness crisis. It is a male emotional laziness crisis.
Loneliness is human. Emotional laziness is a choice.
Too many men were never taught to regulate themselves, to communicate directly, to sit with discomfort, to hear “no” without experiencing it as an ego injury. And too often, women are expected to do that labor for them.
We need to be better. And we need to demand better.
Love is not control.
Love is not intimidation.
Love is not surveillance.
Love is not “prove yourself to me.”
Love absolutely includes respect for a woman’s body autonomy. Always. No negotiation.
And let me say this gently but firmly:
Being single is not a failure.
It is not a waiting room.
It is not a deficiency.
If someone is not coming in correct, not adding peace, not respecting your boundaries, not making your life more grounded instead of more chaotic, why would you hand over your time, energy, body, and peace and pH balance to that?
You don’t owe anyone access to you just because it’s Valentine’s season.
Not everyone is having a happy Valentine’s Day. Some people are surviving relationships that are slowly shrinking them. Some are rebuilding after finally leaving. Some are learning to be alone without abandoning themselves.
Love should feel safe.
Love should feel steady.
Love should feel like expansion, not erosion.
Anyone who truly loves you will not treat you like something disposable once your presence stops serving their ego.
Choose peace. Choose wholeness. Choose yourself.
Flowers are nice.
Safety is better.
Working customer service feels a little like being both the bouncer and the stripper at the club. I have to make sure people act right, don’t abuse employees, and don’t scare other customers. And when people pay, they sometimes toss crumpled bills at me like I’m part of the show. Debit cards too.
What I’ve learned is that people either really like me or are a little afraid of me. There doesn’t seem to be much middle ground. But even the ones who are afraid of me at least respect me. I guess that’s just customer service.
On a busy day I can have 400 conversations. On a slow day, a couple hundred. Most are forgettable, some are kind, a few are rough. My coworkers can remember people’s names and what they buy every day. I used to be able to do that too. Now, between law school and life, I just don’t have the mental hard drive space for all that trivial nonsense.
But I’ve realized something important. People want to feel cared for. They want to feel seen. They want to matter. With everything happening in the world, especially with an administration that reduces entire groups of people to “the worst of the worst,” it’s easy to become numb. It’s easy to flatten people into one-dimensional images. Standing behind that counter reminds me every day that I don’t know the life someone is going home to after they buy their gas, energy drinks, or cigarettes. All I know is that in that brief interaction, I have a chance to make someone feel human.
And it goes both ways.
I’ve had customers yell at me and then come back later to apologize. I never asked for it, but I appreciated it. Not just the apology, but the self-reflection that came with it. I try to do the same. I’m the first to apologize when I know I’m wrong. I’ll even apologize to a door if I bump into it. Very Asian of me.
I question myself constantly. My opinions, my assumptions, where they come from. I’ve always been deeply self-reflective and far more self-critical than most people realize. Nothing in my life was handed to me. Opportunity only matters if you’re willing to take risks and do the work.
I’m 51 years old, working at a gas station, and going to law school. That says a lot about who I am. Some days I fail badly. I disappoint myself. I disappoint others. But more often than not, I’ve given more than I’ve received.
No matter how tired or frustrated I get, when I fall, I lie there for a minute, and then I get back up. I keep trying to do better. For myself. For my community.
Some people have been part of my journey. Some have dropped off. New folks join along the way. At every point, I’m grateful for the people who showed up when they did. But gratitude doesn’t mean you have to keep everyone forever. It’s okay to outgrow people who want you to stay small, stay stuck, or stay silent.
Growth requires different company. And that’s okay too. Some people get to be part of that journey. Others don’t.
Asal was 6 months younger than me. She would have turned 51 this year, but instead she will always be 36. Friendships are strange like that. For reasons I never fully understood, she really wanted to be my friend. She saw something in me that she felt she was missing, something she needed in her life. Maybe I gave her a sense of legitimacy. Maybe I made her feel more anchored. I don’t know. I just know that the connection mattered to her, and eventually, it mattered to me too. I’ve been thinking about her with her birthday coming up, and with everything happening in the world right now.
Grief doesn’t go away with time. It just changes shape. Some days it’s sharp and heavy. Other days it’s quiet, almost manageable. Sometimes it shows up as anger, sometimes as clarity, sometimes as questions that don’t have answers. Birthdays do that. They remind you that time kept moving, even when someone you loved couldn’t.
Asal and I talked almost every day, about everything, but especially about politics. What’s funny is that in my late twenties, I wasn’t even that into politics yet. She was. She paid attention early.
She once told me that the Kanye West and Mike Myers moment during the Hurricane Katrina telethon was one of the most honest snapshots of where the country was at. Mike Myers, clearly uncomfortable, is pleading with people to care and to help. And Kanye saying plainly that Bush didn’t care about Black people. That was 2005. She understood then what a lot of people would spend the next twenty years arguing about.
To her, Katrina was never just a “failed response” by our government. It was about us ignoring the truth about climate change and poor infrastructure. It was about power. It was about who was considered disposable. She was good at spotting patterns and cutting through the official explanations when they didn’t hold up. What’s harder to talk about, and what feels more honest now, is that she was also a deeply flawed human in ways that didn’t always line up with that clarity.
She wore strength well. Too well, sometimes. She hid her brokenness behind intelligence, conviction, and a tough exterior. She wasn’t unique in that. A lot of us do it. We learn how to look competent, composed, principled, while quietly panicking that if anyone sees the scared, messy parts underneath, they’ll turn away.
She lied sometimes. A lot, actually. She crossed lines. She hurt people. She took things that weren’t hers. And in the end, she chose escape over accountability. I don’t say that with cruelty. I say it because pretending otherwise flattens her into something simpler than she was.
People like to believe humans are straightforward creatures. Good or bad. Right or wrong. Victim or villain. But we’re not. We’re complicated systems of fear, desire, trauma, love, and denial, all stacked on top of each other. We can see injustice clearly in the world and still be unable to face our own pain. We can call out power while being terrified of being truly seen.
I wonder what she’d think now. About Iran. About the U.S. About women’s bodies being controlled everywhere under different justifications. About masks getting heavier instead of lighter. I think part of her would be furious. Part of her would feel vindicated. And part of her would still be afraid.
I miss the version of her who could cut through the bullshit and name uncomfortable truths. I also mourn the parts of her that never felt safe enough to come into the light. Grief holds both at once. It lets memory shift between love, anger, tenderness, and disappointment without asking permission.
Her story reminds me that strength without vulnerability is brittle, and that hiding doesn’t make pain disappear. It just waits. And waits. And grows and grows until it becomes an unbearable burden you no longer can live with.
On Asal’s birthday, I don’t want to sanctify her or condemn her. I want to remember her as she was: brilliant, flawed, perceptive, scared, and very, very human.
And maybe let that be a reminder to the rest of us to tell the truth sooner, ask for help earlier, and stop pretending that fear makes us unworthy of being seen.
I love you. I miss you. I wish you were still here. And sometimes I’m glad that you are not. May your soul be at rest wherever you are.
“God does not burden a soul beyond what it can bear.” — Qur’an 2:286
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