Fifty-one.

I hate San Francisco.

This past week, I found myself captivated by Ling Ma’s 2022 novel, Bliss Montage. Hers is the first book I’ve been able to keep in my hands without giving up in quite some time—the last was Robyn Crawford’s A Song for You: My Life with Whitney Houston. I’ve written before about my on-again, off-again inability to read, which is to say that I’ve been having a hard time reading most books all the way through as of late, whether due to a shortened attention span or other underlying psychological issues like my lingering depression, so this is a welcome development.

Ling Ma first came to my attention with the publication of her first novel, Severance, in 2018. At the time, I was on a mission to read as many works as possible by writers of Asian descent, and hers joined my ever-growing list that included Ken Liu’s The Paper Menagerie, Yiyun Li’s The Vagrants, Lisa Ko’s The Leavers, Hanya Yanagihara’s The People in the Trees, and, of course, Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem—I suppose I was looking for The Great Asian American Novel (not counting the latter, obviously). But Bliss Montage arrived a few years later when I could barely ingest food, much less an emotional tour de force of a story, and I put it on the back burner for when my future self would be ready.

In the months leading up to April of 2022, I was feeling rather disaffected. Mask and vaccine mandates had begun to be lifted, and with that came the so-called "re-opening" of the economy that resulted in hiring sprees across every major industry as companies struggled to replace not only the employees that had chosen to retire but also those that had lost their lives to the novel coronavirus. I had been fortunate enough to weather the worst of the pandemic by working from home, yet I worried that my career was going nowhere.

Henry, my then-boyfriend, was trying to land a new job, and I watched with some envy as he fielded interview requests from recruiters left and right. Being a consultant, he seemed to have ample exit opportunities because it was generally assumed that he had much to offer. In contrast, my expertise as a niche banker was rather narrow, and I had a hard time convincing recruiters that my skill set would be applicable to their open requisitions. Moreover, I was in a bit of a funk, and I procrastinated on my own job search process.

I’ve never been one to derive my sense of self-worth from my career, but it’s also true that I was questioning my place in the world at large. I feared that continuing down the same professional path would lead me to a dead end because I would appear overly specialized in that specific field. However, I didn’t know what I would do instead. I couldn’t return to the creative industries where I’d gotten my start because I’d been away for too long, meaning that I would either have to start from scratch or accept lower-paying positions that wouldn't help me to afford New York’s high cost of living. On the other hand, I didn’t want to stay at my existing company because I could foresee no real growth. I thought about targeting tech companies, but my preliminary conversations with their human resources personnel evidenced that they didn’t believe my skills were transferable. Beyond all of that, the ongoing viral pandemic outside had me thinking more broadly about life: what did I want to do with my limited lifespan?

I think my existential ennui defined my relationship with Henry. As we fell into an easy rhythm of being present in each other’s daily routines, I was reluctant to fully commit to him. Especially after my three-year-long relationship with Jun, it was difficult for me to allow myself to admit that Henry was my new boyfriend for the same reasons that caused my professional angst: I just didn’t know if it was right for me.

"You’re my little experiment," I’d joked to Henry over cocktails one summer night in 2021. We were seated with Luna, his best friend who shared a name with one of my closest friends, in the rooftop area of a Brooklyn food hall (read: a food court with better marketing), who had asked me point-blank about why I was dating him. I went on to explain that I wanted to do something different this time because he would be my fourth serious relationship within a decade. Whereas I wasn’t so consistent with my boyfriends before, I told them both that I planned to always say the same thing to him and his friends so as to leave no room for doubt—we would always be on the same page. Thus, I said that I honestly didn’t know if I wanted to jump into another relationship so soon after my last, but he seemed like a good guy and I was willing to find out. Being straightforward seemed to be the best and most logical policy; I didn’t realize that this one throwaway comment would hurt him, as he would later tell me.

As autumn gave way to winter, Henry began to suffer. His consulting job became unbearably tenable after his boutique firm was acquired and folded into a larger multinational company, and he started dedicating his spare time to finding a new job. Still, he made sure to be with me. He’d come down to my tiny Financial District apartment, sometimes taking it upon himself to wash my dishes or scrub my bathtub despite my protestations. (Why? Well, aside from him being much more of a neat freak than I was, there was an exceedingly simple and obvious truth: he loved me, and that was how he chose to express it.) He would spend four months recruiting before ultimately accepting an offer.

Over the Christmas holiday, I dragged him all the way to Hawai‘i because I wanted to get out of New York and back to a society where I felt more at home. I booked us an overpriced meal for two at a resort restaurant with a table by the windows overlooking the Pacific. We rented a car and drove all over O‘ahu, chasing my craving for lau lau (Hawai‘i’s most ‘ono dish) and taking great care not to drive over any errant chickens. We read books on the sand and failed to acquire Mariah Carey’s themed merchandise from her collaboration with McDonald’s. I got mad at him for something I can’t even remember and spent an afternoon alone, huffily shopping in Ala Moana, before returning to him, contrite. It was our first trip together.

In hindsight, coming back from that vacation was when things between us grew strained, but I didn’t know it then. Aside from our sex life deteriorating, which I chalked up to his work-related stress, everything seemed to be fine. He virtually lived in my apartment with me for a month until I got sick of hearing his irritating coworkers on their conference calls and kicked him out. I put together a Valentine’s Day date for us two, which he claimed was the first he’d ever truly experienced. He invited me to all his networking events, encouraging me to find a new job of my own. I organized another trip, this time to Puerto Rico, because New York was still cold and I wanted to be somewhere warm. I contracted COVID-19 from that trip, spending two weeks bedridden; he went to Trader Joe’s and dropped off at my front door all the groceries he knew I loved without me even telling him. April was fast approaching, and with it a reminder that another year would have passed without my having accomplished anything.

By the time of Bliss Montage’s publication just a few months later, I was a nervous wreck. I perused its synopsis and glowing reviews, concluding that it would be one of those seminal works I absolutely needed to read, but I just couldn’t bear to dive into its contents. So, when the novel finally made its way to me this past week, I had already forgotten its plot and effectively went into it blind. It’s the first book in I-don’t-know-how-many years that I began to read without any preconceptions.

Currently, I’m almost one-third of the way through. I’m fascinated by the narrator’s story as she attempts to parse a romantic relationship she once had—if I were to guess, based on what I’ve read so far, I’d surmise that this is a book about a pivotal breakup. I recognize all the familiar trappings of self-destruction and rancor, because that was how I behaved during my own separation, too.

The worst breakup of my life happened on my birthday. I had planned a weekend getaway to Napa with Henry because I’d never been there before, and it was only a quick flight from New York. Moreover, I was unfamiliar with San Francisco, and I wanted to explore it because I wondered if I should move there, intrigued by its history as the only other famously queer city in the country. Some of my close friends from college had moved there after graduating, and I looked forward to reconnecting with them.

Luna, my Luna, picked us up from our hotel, and we listened to Donna Summer as she drove us up in her car. I told her that Donna’s music made me want to fall in love, knowing that Henry was within earshot. I wanted him to pick up on my hint.

In Napa, we met up with Julie and tasted our way through a couple of vineyards. When we finished, Julie drove us back down. She and I sat in the front seats, catching up, and Henry listened from behind. She had been dating a man for a few years by then, and they were well on their way to getting engaged.

"How did you know that he’s the one?" I asked. I was on my fourth boyfriend, who was in that very same car, and I was thinking about how we were coming up on our first anniversary of dating. "Was there anything that made you certain?"

There were plenty of reasons, Julie explained, but, above all, her would-be fiancé was a kind-hearted soul who she knew she could trust.

"That’s how I think of you," I said, turning around to face Henry.

In response, he beamed. For the rest of my life, I will never forget that smile. It wasn’t triumphant or euphoric—it was tender and loving, a genuine, calm joy.

That night, Henry and I stepped into a nearby speakeasy for a nightcap. Over cocktails and candlelight, I mustered up the courage to ask him something that I’d been wondering for a while.

"Why do you like me so much?"

I can’t remember his response. I can only recall that it sounded clichéd to me, like generic platitudes.

The next day was busy. Early in the morning, he was off to submit his samples to be drug-tested for his new job, and I wanted to walk the entire city afterwards. In the early afternoon, he began to gripe, complaining that he was tired from all the hilly terrain and that he wanted to stop and rest. The grumbling irritated me, because we only had a few hours before our flight back to New York later that night, and there was still so much of the city to see.

"You’re ruining my birthday," I finally snapped. I was so annoyed at him. We found a park in Hayes Valley and sat down on a random bench.

He stepped away to have a look at the park’s snacks vendor, returning with a cold-pressed juice that he tried to hand to me. It was an olive branch, his attempt at making amends.

I don’t know what came over me. My mind swam with dark, intrusive thoughts and I was just angry. I think I told him to go back to the hotel and wait for me if he was so tired, but I probably said something worse than that. Then, I turned and walked away.

I remember wanting to be consoled. I remember wanting him to get up and chase me, to stop me from disappearing, but I refused to look back. I wanted him to know that I was upset.

Blocks later, I turned to sneak a peek behind me—and he wasn’t there. I didn’t know where he was.

Anger, guilt, fear, sadness, remorse, they all crashed within me. I shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have walked away. My brain was a jumbled mess. I should’ve texted him. I should’ve called him. I checked my phone—no missed calls, no new messages. Fuck. I really screwed up. Intuitively, I knew I’d hurt him by leaving him behind. I should’ve fixed things right then and there. I didn’t.

I checked Instagram; he hadn’t sent me any messages. Indignation and resentment surged within me. You know when you see yourself doing something horrible and you can’t stop it from happening? I felt like I was watching myself from above as I navigated to his profile and blocked him.

I was wrong. I was so, so wrong, and I knew it, but I wasn’t ready to face it. I walked all the way back to our hotel, and then I kept on walking. I was too proud. I wasn’t ready to apologize. Union Square was where I ended up and, in lieu of writing to my boyfriend, I wrote to myself. I walked and wrote; I wrote and walked.

I don’t feel like myself.

I’m sitting in Union Square, solitary by a green, round table, to where I walked from Mission Dolores Park. When I travel, I prefer to traverse the city by foot so that I can experience it all firsthand.

I feel the beginnings of that familiar cage, edging closer to trapping me once more.

I am buried beneath the weight accumulated from years of having let myself go. I stopped caring about my food intake and I stopped working out regularly, and now I reap what I’ve sown. My face is too round. I’ve got a second chin and I feel undesirable. Ugly.

A skateboarder just slipped from his board, which rolled straight to me; in one fluid motion that I saw play out in my head before actually doing it, I placed my left foot on it, stopping it, and kicked it back to its owner.

It’s becoming repetitive, it’s too repetitive, it’s all too familiar. He angers me and I flee. This isn’t what I want.

I fear that I’m coming to resent him for monopolizing my time; I resent myself for letting him. I’m not a wallflower, nor do I have any desire to be(come) one.

I don’t think I love San Francisco very much, and I’m uncertain how much of that has been influenced by my biases resulting from these past couple of days.

The ocean calls me. For whatever reason, I walk down Market Street and find myself at Embarcadero Plaza. I’m the same boy who took the train out to Coney Island on a weekday night, freshman year, for no reason other than to meander along the shore, lit mostly by starlight, and to indulge my inner angst.

I’m standing atop the hill where California meets Taylor; I had walked uphill just to prove to myself I could without losing much breath. The buildings (apartments?) are huge, imposing, and I walk past some church with a gothic facade. I feel the same weariness in the soles of my shoes that I last felt in rainy Kraków a decade ago.

I hate San Francisco, I realize.

When I walked off all of my anger, I headed back to our hotel. I felt hollow. I’d made a huge mistake, I knew it, and I was going to face the consequences. We’d already packed up our suitcases earlier that day and left them with the front desk. I figured he was probably waiting for me with them.

I held my breath as I stepped into the hotel’s lobby. I looked around; Henry wasn’t in any of the chairs. Trembling slightly, I approached the front desk and asked to retrieve our baggage. They returned only mine.

My mind spiraled. The only logical conclusion was that he had left me behind and gone off to the airport alone. He was probably seated at the gate, where we would have our inevitable confrontation.

I called for a taxi (Lyft, because I don’t use Uber) to the airport and jumped in. As we drove, I stewed. I can’t believe he just left me. Is this it? Does this mean it’s over? My temper reared its ugly head, and I was angry and sad and guilty and afraid all over again. I opened Instagram again and messaged his Luna a preemptive paragraph of contrition. To her, it must have seemed so sudden. Everything had been fine, and then everything was not.

Upon arriving at SFO, I headed for the JetBlue customer counter. I was about to make a fatal error. I asked the employees if they had any earlier flights onto which they could place me, separating myself from Henry’s. Then, for good measure, I swapped his aisle seat to a claustrophobic middle seat, knowing how much he disliked them. (Because I had booked our tickets, I had control over our itinerary.) I wanted him to know I was upset. I wanted him to be the one to apologize first.

I arrived in Newark the next morning, half-expecting Henry to contact me throughout the day. A bouquet of flowers was delivered to my apartment—overjoyed, ashamed, I read the enclosed card, hoping they were from him, assuming he’d finally decided to say he was sorry. They weren’t from him.

I didn’t hear from Henry for weeks. When I eventually did, it was too late. He had closed himself off to me forever.

For months afterwards, I replayed the events of San Francisco in my head like a bliss montage of my own. I pinpointed every instance, every mistake that added up to the massive implosion of my undoing, and I wished with every fiber of my being to be able to go back in time and stop myself. On one hand, it seemed ridiculous. It was just a changed flight. On the other, it was a massive blowout, a fight without a fight that still left us deeply scarred.

I want to be clear—I don’t equate the events of Bliss Montage with my own, of course, because those of the novel were engendered by an extremely abusive relationship, which my relationship was not. It’s just that my resulting emotional devastation was such that my brain chemistry was fundamentally reshaped.

Now, years removed from my past, I’m going to allow myself to try and let go of the guilt I’ve been carrying for three years. I know how badly I hurt him, because I know how badly I tried to fix it and still he wouldn’t let me. But, I don’t think I can atone for a lifetime. I don’t think it would do anybody any good. I need to release my regrets—I have a book I need to finish.