Rising like a Phoenix

to be so broken

to have

f a l l e n

so deeply

that the only thing

you can do is

rise

into a new you

(phoenix)

         An ex-roommate gave me this book called “inward “ by yung pueblo. There were no capitals on the book’s title or in the author’s name. It was given to me by a roommate during winter for our own holiday gift exchange thing at the last minute during the holiday. One of my roommates and my best friend, Emily, was Jewish but does not always practice all the traditions often except Hannukah. That roommate I mentioned earlier and I were not religious, but we grew up celebrated Christmas. We decided to have a gift exchange to give each other individually a small gift. He found this book online and thought of me. It was a book where I could either read from the front to the back one poem or more a day, or I could read one poem randomly at times when I feel the inspiration. At first, I read it one by one from the first half of the book. I loved each writing and poem that came out of the book. Not wanting to jump to the ending so soon, I decided to put it aside to read a poem on a random page when I felt the inspiration. It was around March, and I was feeling content with everything that happened in Phoenix and with myself. I got the inspiration and went to a random page that talked about this poem. I get chills when I read it because I was living in a city called Phoenix and that exact quote describes my journey when I was in Phoenix.

         When I first touched Phoenix, it was the weekend before New Year 2011. At that time, I was taking a solo trip by myself because I was in the mood. I was planning it around two weeks prior. When planning solo road trips, I only planned for a place to stay and how many days I would like to stay there. Then I would drive to the hotel first and then go with the mood on what I would want to plan to do that day. That was what I did. I visited their local history museum, tried some local restaurants, went out to the Apache scenic trail through driving, pausing to go on a couple of hikes. I celebrated New Year by going to a casino and playing some blackjacks and poker. Arriving there, I could somehow feel that this place was special and that it would not be bad living here as it was a nice city. I did not think much of the feeling.

         Flash forward to 2019, I was teaching at John Barrett Middle School in Sacramento and did not enjoy teaching middle school students. I was in doubt that teaching was not for me at that time but was encouraged by my birth mother to try a deaf school to see if that was accurate or not. I always wanted to teach at a deaf residential school and thought to give it a try. I applied to deaf schools in Riverside, Washington, Oregon, Texas, Colorado, etc. Arizona was one of them. I only got two job offers. After complementing what offer would be best for me, I chose to go to Phoenix Day School for the Deaf as a fifth-grade teacher because it was one state away from California and I could go easily go back as a fallback if it did not work out there. 

         When accepting the job offer, I felt anxious. It was a new start, a new chapter. I was afraid of failing. Whenever I felt anxious, which was days before the moving day, I was drinking. I did try to pack as much as I could. But my packing was disorganized, and it made my apartment at that time sort of a mess. The anxiety got so bad that I went to the hospital. I got some medicine there to help me calm down. I was also fortunate to have my best friend and my former roommate Emily come to help me pack the car and drive to Phoenix together. When being around her, I felt calm and focused. When she was around, I was determined to set up goals: to stop drinking, to see if teaching at a deaf school was good for me, to save up for a car within a year, and then eventually money to go back to school. Emily helped me settle down there and left for her obligations. She would eventually become my roommate later.

         At first being in Phoenix, I did not follow up on my goals. I was continuing drinking after work heavily. I did not save as much money as I wanted because I spent it on beers, hard liquor, or delivering food to my place when I was not feeling like cooking. I did not have a car saved up either. While I do love being at a deaf school with coworkers signing everywhere, teaching was not going well for me. I was trying to focus on going back to school for a different career, but it seems so far away when I was focused on teaching, lesson planning, teacher meetings, IEPs, etc. I was back to my old routine as if I was in Sacramento. Same shit, different cities. I feel like I was trapped in a vicious cycle that I believed the world trapped me in, and not realizing that it was me that put myself there.

         By January, Emily moved in as she needed a place to stay and to be away from her family. She needed to process her life, her emotions and needed to be out of California as well to do that. I needed a friend at home as well. At first, when she was around, I tried not to drink as much. But by a couple of weeks after winter break, I was falling into my old habits and drank heavily. She was starting to get concerned but decided against saying anything until when I was starting to lash out at her. I felt when she was there, I was losing the space that I once had. It was challenging for me to set up boundaries when I was not used to having boundaries at home for a long time. We had some arguments. I did try to improve somewhat on my boundaries and habits, but drinking made it difficult to keep up the new routine.

At work, people were noticing that my communication and thinking were deteriorating. That I was quiet and could not have a clear thought on what I wanted to say. Even when I was teaching, it did not go with the objective as well as I could have. By the end of February before Spring Break, I was called by the principal and was given two opportunities to improve my teaching. Otherwise, she does not think I would be there for another year. I spent as much of Spring Break trying to make a great lesson plan for one of the opportunities that would happen after spring break.

Then coronavirus happened. Granted, it happened a year earlier in China. It did not hit the U.S. until late January. It was slowly starting to spread. By the time spring break happened, the Arizona governor announced lockdown. School closure would last two weeks. I was relieved and start drinking and play video games or watched television more often than before. But I was disappointed I lost one opportunity or that it would be postponed. The next opportunity would have been right after the two weeks school closure. I was starting to be more anxious and drank heavily. I tried to sober up by the near end of two weeks’ closure until the governor announced another school closure for two weeks. Another opportunity either was postponed or gone. I was starting to panic more. During this time, I tried to drink and drink, but the emotions and anxiety were getting stronger, and that I could not hide it any longer. The routine became so mundane that I wanted to do something, but we couldn’t go out much unless it was necessary. I decided to start writing my long-overdue family book about my adoption to pass up my spare time. I was starting to face where I was getting my emotions and that it was unraveling why I was feeling one way or another. It was intense to write about my experiences that my drinking was lessening, but it was on and off.

By early April, the governor did two announcements so close to their dates. The announcement was originally to close the school for another month and then within a few days later, he announced not to have the school open for the rest of the school year. The deaf school decided to teach virtually, but only in reviews, and focusing on IEP goals. I was devastated. I lost two of my opportunities because the opportunities were to teach something new and see how I went with teaching. I remember before meeting with my supervisor that I would tell myself that I would try to fight to get the two opportunities back, but when the meeting happened and she said I wouldn’t be teaching for the next school year, I just did not say anything, but nodded. 

 Not only that but teaching virtually was difficult. Teaching with my students without me physically being there to show them without showing them in person through hands-on experience or guiding them was harder than I thought and thus some worksheets or websites had to be abandoned. Most of my students were already deprived of their native language: American Sign Language and may not always know how to get into specific places on the internet. They may either barely remember or have already forgotten how to use technology to get into specific websites. I have to try to gesture or teach through Zoom video calls and hope that their parents would help them get into websites for more resources. Some parents may successfully know how to get in and some parents were struggling. Some parents simply do not have the time and leave to a relative, the student’s older sibling, to take care of the work. And that may lead to more time teaching how to use technology than the actual time when I was supposed to teaching them stuff to review. Even when students can be disruptive or having behavior problems, it is difficult to try to discipline them from a distance or to get them to focus. If a student is not attentive, we would try to switch our focus to students who are focusing. I wished for a hologram-like you see in Star Wars or in Star Trek in which I could be close to them as possible without physically being there. It was not just me, but also other teachers who were struggling during the pandemic. Our rule of thumb was to do our best to teach them the next couple of months. Already, we have seen little success with some of the students and we feared that more students are behind.

I drank on and off around this time outside of work, even though I was trying to quit because I was grappled with losing the only other thing that I invested my time in besides drinking was teaching. I was worried about the money that I had that made me feel secure. I was worried about leaving this teaching job on bad terms, that I had failed and left behind a wake of serial mistakes and damage I have done to myself, my coworkers, and most of all to my students. When I am not doing my best, my students suffered. And I was certainly not doing my best in the past four years. All the guilt, the shame that I have felt that associated with my drinking and my teaching finally hit me with the realization that teaching was one of the biggest triggers on why I drank. If I want to stop drinking, I must stop teaching. So, on the last week of school, I made a solemn vow. I would stop drinking and stop worrying about why I am staying on a career that caused me more distress and worries about finding a new job and making a new budget.

The first week was difficult without drinking I applied to many various jobs through Indeed, LinkedIn, ZipRecruiter, etc. I had some savings left and I was not too worried about not finding a job anytime soon, but I kept looking daily. When I felt the urge to drink, I continue writing my first rough draft of my memoir. When writing my memoir, it was like reliving my memories all over again. I was feeling what I felt then, knowing what would come next in each sequence of the memory that I wrote, and try to see it from a different perspective, from what I learned in a psychology refresher course online. I felt I was starting to understand myself, the things that I have done in the past, why did I do it. When it became too intense, I backed off. I exercised sometimes, took some meditation practices at home, and took a walk around the area where I am living. When I felt that my emotions and head are clear, I would revisit my writing and try to analyze it from a psychological standpoint.

After a month of searching with failed job interviews, I found an opportunity that offered me a position, and I took it right away. It was at Mod Pizza. My logic was that it was as close to my apartment by work and that I can ask Emily to take her out if I am not at home at a specific time. That my savings would be enough for a couple of months and that by then, I could build up hours and hope to be able to help make ends meet for me and Emily. I started working fifteen hours a week. And by the end of my first month in July, I never imagined that Mod Pizza would be life-changing for me. I worked on all the positions but choose to go with the position of the online order. I taught some signs to my coworkers for some quick reference on what I would need to do because it would be a busy store. I could take over another position if a coworker is absent or sick, so I had a break from my usual position to do something a little different. I was getting compliments at almost every shift I went. I even did not have to bring work at home. It was a nice change of scenery from teaching. When I was teaching, I felt that I had to do so many things and that the work was never done. I would even have to bring work home. I seldom get complimented by my coworkers or my students. Sometimes it felt mundane with the routine or teaching every day when some students needed more pacing to learn more. Being a teacher, I realized, was a thankless job, and teachers do deserve more credit for every student’s future. And that even though I did miss teaching, for me, the stress that comes with it was not worth it.

Not only that, but I get to understand life as a minimum wages worker and their perspective. From an outsider, people may think that we got an easy job making pizzas, flipping burgers, making sandwiches, bagging groceries, etc. But it is not. For instance, at Mod Pizza, we not only have our positions to do while serving pizzas, but we also must clean, stock doughs, take out the trashes, recycling, fill up the soda drinks, close the store, stay afterward to do more cleaning, etc. We do a lot more than people think we do. And it is not always easy, especially when we are on our feet most of the shift with only thirty minutes lunch break. Working as a minimum wages worker makes me realize we deserved to have the minimum wage increased to our worth. As I got to know my coworkers, many people make their livings working on two or three minimum wage jobs just to make ends meet for themselves, their family, or even one more job just so they could try to save money. It is a lot of time they invested in working too often to be away from their family, their friends, from living their lives.

At my job, I get to meet wonderful coworkers and learned about them, their stories, and where they are going. They all have ambitions, dreams, and goals. They all love what they do now, and they all treat each other like family. There was a woman coworker name Olivia during my first month who already learned many signs from her high school days, who inspired me to reach out to more coworkers. Not only I taught them the necessary sign language, but they also wanted to learn more. I bought them a signing handbook, bought a big whiteboard to interact with me, and use a live transcribe app on my phone so when they talk to me, I can read the text from their voices so I can connect with them. I knew one coworker who worked for many years, married twice after an abusive relationship in the first one, and now in a happy relationship in a big family, she was involved. I knew another coworker who was in jail in the past and came out to be sober and that she was a captain, wanting to be a general manager in this store because this job saved her. I knew a coworker got a second job because she was saving up for a wedding with her fiancé.  Even one of those coworkers became a lifelong friend that I felt will last long after I left Phoenix as we hung out almost every week.

I was starting to feel better about myself. By the end of July, I thought I was finished with my rough draft of my memoir and writing out what I needed to write, but the more I went on walks and meditation, the more I noticed that there were negative and repressed memories and the emotions associated with it. There were things that I remember I have done throughout my college years, to my friends, to my former coworkers. Some of them I added to my memoir and some of them I added to my journal. Even talking with Olivia brought out some feelings that I knew I need to deal with. I realized that I never took responsibility or gave those people the closure they need. I felt I need to apologize sincerely, to make amends. At first, I thought it was naive to bring up the past when it already happened. Why do I need to do this? But something tells me that it was the only way I could grow to be a better person. During the Fall season, I was apologizing to many people in my life, despite how recent or how long ago it happened. There were some people that I was grateful to reconnect, to share our perspectives on what happened and what I did to them. There were some people not as happy to talk about the past or finding it to be uncanny. I learned two lessons: 1) That it was never too late to have closure, to relive my lessons, so I can learn, apply. 2) That even if they don’t accept my apology or forgive me, I must forgive myself. By forgiving myself, I learned to love myself again for the abilities that I can do today and for the flaws and mistakes that I made in the past.

When school closure ended and in-person was opening around October, I applied to become a substitute teacher as my second job. I wanted to apply as a substitute teacher because when a coworker of ours at Phoenix Day School for the Deaf was kicked out of his brother’s house, he lived with us in the living room, and on our new budget, we realized that we are barely making ends meet. I decide to go back. I also wanted to go back because now being sober at four months at that time, I wanted to see if teaching was right for me or not. I also wanted to make some amends to the coworkers I worked with last year. It was good to see my former students again, the coworkers, and to cope with managing students without letting my triggers get to me. Some coworkers complimented me on my changes, and I felt positive about what I am doing and where I am going. Some coworkers do not want to do anything with me, and I was okay with that as well. “It was what it was”, I told myself. It was not as challenging but working two jobs was exhausting. I could feel that by the end of the first week, I was burned out. It took some managing

By the end of 2020, I was starting to apply for college for a master’s degree in mental health counseling. I researched earlier during the summer but never applied because I did not feel as ready to start applying. I saw many colleges would accept applications during springtime, so I held off. After my apologizing journey with many people, I realized I love connecting with people, learning their stories. When talking with them, I felt their stories come alive. I could feel their emotions, the choices they faced. I may not understand them completely, but I felt that if I were in their shoes, I would have made the same choices they made. Some confide in me, and we exchanged advice, stories. They felt better and were able to try to change their habits and reapply new things. From talking with them, I realized I want to do counseling. I always wanted to do counseling. When I was in high school and through college days, talking with my deaf friends about their problems or experiences that affected them, I pushed aside my depression or problems to help them, to comfort them. It made me feel good like I was doing something worthwhile. Just by them talking with me, I can make their day feel a little better and hope whatever advice they felt was right, that they would apply it.

I know there are a lot of deaf and hard of hearing people out there that needed counseling and someone to talk to them in our native language. I also know I do not have the money for school and would decide to take loans and be in debt. I would rather do something that I felt would be amazing for me, that I would love to do, even if it means I would be in debt for the rest of my life. So, I applied to four colleges out of Arizona in January 2021. I did not apply to Arizona because their deaf community is spread out and that there are not a lot of resources for deaf adults for support, especially in the mental health community. I wanted to go to Gallaudet University, but their counseling program is shut down. So, I chose four schools. I got accepted to three schools: Fresno, McDaniel, and Springfield. After some complementing, I chose to go to Springfield College on a regional campus in Boston. I chose the school there because I knew the deaf community is expansive and that I would be able to finish my internship hours under a deaf therapist.

This year was not without challenges. Not only that I faced the most difficult year of my life to be sober over a year, facing with so many different emotions and understanding them to try to apply to my life better, to grow. But also, I learned to see who my true friends are slowly. There is a reason that the new roommate became my ex-roommate. When he moved in, he was struggling, depressed. He was confused. I decided to share with him the journey I learned about my past, my emotions, and how I can apply them better. I wanted to share my journey with him so that he could learn to forgive himself a little more, to love himself better. I learned that he was not as truthful about his past as I thought he was. I learned that he took advantage of the stories that I told him, and he made those stories his own. I learned that while he knew I liked someone, he went ahead and dated her and shared those stories. She was falling for the stories that were never his, but mine. I tried to be a better person, a better roommate. But by the beginning of the summertime, I was fed up. I was taken advantage of for my generosity. I expressed how I felt and that I did not want to be his friend anymore because I needed to give myself the self-love I deserved. He was logical and tried to make me the villain of his story, but I knew the truth that he was the villain of his story. He just fell back to old habits of taking advantage of people’s generosity as he did in the past. He spread his perspective of the stories to many of our mutual friends. Suddenly, I was losing deaf friends before I got to share what happened. Suddenly, Phoenix was not a good place to be anymore.

Despite what I went through this year, that poem stood to me today. I have fallen to rock-bottom only when to realize there was no way to go but go back up. It was surreal to read that poem during the near end of my time in Phoenix by random and to reminisce this past year, I have “risen into a new you” as the poem said. That moment, I reflected to the feeling I felt the first time in Phoenix and wondered if then, that I knew I would be here. I never dreamed of all of this happening. But because of living here in Phoenix, I know who I am today. Because of my adoption, my past, the people who I have loved and lost, the people who stood by me today, and new people who I met, they all loved and believed in me as much to lead me toward something better. I know that I have the love and support I have today and that I would rely on them in the next chapter in my life. I am terrified of starting my new chapter in Boston, for M.S. in mental health counseling. I only know a few people there and never have gone there before. I keep thinking what if it wouldn’t work out? It felt like my last chance to start anew once more and that I could not afford to mess it up. But if there is anything that my time in Phoenix taught me and, in my life, it is that if I am afraid, it means it is a good thing. It means that I am ready to start a new chapter with new friends, a new environment, and a new purpose. It means that I am ready for more adventures to try, connections to make and sustain, mistakes to make, and lessons to grow. It means that I keep my head up high, knowing that there are many people I can rely on and are counting on me.

Goodbye Phoenix. Hello, Boston! Hope you are as good for me as I believe you would be!