Since I was young, my mom has always said “Actions speak louder than words,” one of those weird sayings you don’t understand until you’re older. It was a mystery to see my mom, someone who never really expressed verbal or physical affection, rearrange her entire life around my academic and extracurricular schedule. As I got older, I found myself unconsciously mirroring her, treating those around me the same way. If one of my friends wanted someone to talk to in the wee hours, when the weight of the world seemed unbearable, I’d be there for them, despite the exhaustion I knew I’d feel the next day at school. My birthday dinners were always on me, my paycheck a worthy exchange for the company of my friends. Whether it was my Asian upbringing, religious obligation, or an unusual empathy I held for others, somehow my priorities were always secondary beneath those around me. I remember at the dinner table sometimes my mom would say, “Loni, you spend so much time talking to your friends - when will you have time for yourself?” and I would smile and say nothing, because I knew the food she had so lovingly prepared was from a full day of grocery shopping and preparation, and that the love she felt towards me couldn’t have been more subtle yet obvious at the same time. The funny thing is, however, I never considered the second part, because I took her love for granted, just as those around me sometimes did. But still, as she was there for me, I was there for everyone else. And I knew my mom looked at me sometimes, and both loved and hated that she could see herself in the acts of service I constantly engaged in.
Around this time in my life, as I entered junior year of high school, I met a boy at school. His name was Tristan, and he was friends with one of my best friends’ younger brother. At first, we would just eat lunch together and talk as a group, but soon we began to message each other online. One lazy weekend, when things hadn’t yet gotten busy, Tristan told me to give PC games a try. And so began my Valorant stage. It was brief and I was terrible at it, but I remember how much fun I had with him and my other friends on those queues. One thing that was strange, however, was that Tristan would rarely be on a voice call with the rest of us, even if we were trying to coordinate on the same team. I asked about that once, and he dismissively said it was because his parents were sleeping, and he didn’t want to wake them up. As it was 3am, this was a perfectly logical explanation, but then I began to notice things that he would often omit, like how he would go inactive for long periods of time, or avoid hanging out with us. I understood this to some extent, but it wasn’t until I had a serious conversation with him that it became clear just how absent he felt. As I began to become more connected to Tristan, I also noticed how often he would skip school, as well as long periods of radio silence that were unexplained. He seemed completely normal whenever he hung out with us, but there was always an unshakeable feeling of something being off. I knew not to press too hard unless he opened up, but I would try to be there for him in other ways, like a younger brother I felt unconsciously responsible for. For his birthday, I got him a Twice keychain that he had wanted, which joined a growing collection of Kpop merch his sister had replenished every year. As he was planning to take AP Bio the next year, I offered to let him use my old journal, if he ever needed notes to look over to help with his tests. I even bought him a gun skin during a limited season, stupidly reciting my credit card info over voice chat because he seemed so excited about it.
However, life tends to have a way of moving the quickest when we’re not paying attention, and I fell out of touch with him throughout my senior year. After inviting him to my 18th birthday party, I only texted him once or twice before graduation. I don’t even think it was a purposeful decision; things just happened in the order they did, and Tristan wasn’t a part of them. Graduation rolled around, and then I vacationed to Hawaii and Taiwan, and before I knew it, move-in day for UW was creeping up.
A few days before I was set to leave, on a final road trip with my friends to the Oregon coast, I got an Instagram call from Tristan’s sister. She told me that Tristan had gone missing the day before, leaving behind his phone and goodbye notes for his family. She wanted to know if I had an idea where he’d run away to, and apologized for calling out of the blue, as I was one of the only people she was connected with that was also friends with her brother. I was baffled, and said that I hadn’t talked to him for a few months at least. Then, becoming increasingly anxious, I shot him a text on messages and Discord, something along the lines of “if you need anything don’t hesitate to reach out, even though I’ll be in Seattle tomorrow.” There was never a response.
Before I knew it, there were missing posters everywhere. The Facebook mom community mobilized, and his face was all over social media, with a message to come back home. Rumors began spreading, how he’d hitchhiked to an Internet friend’s house a state line away, or that he’d been spotted on the Link in Seattle where his sister also lived. Police were able to track his last known location to an Uber drop-off near the border of Washington and Oregon, where the Columbia River was. Despite little information, when school started, everyone was talking about him, speculating where he’d gone, and avoiding the uncomfortable possibility of suicide. However, the feeling of something being gravely off stuck with me, and, deep down, I knew that none of these things were true. But without solid evidence, nothing was certain, and life moved on. A candlelight vigil was held near the Columbia River, where his parents implored the general public to keep searching. But life moved on, and the social media posts fizzled out.
On April 7th, around 4PM, I got a text from my friend back home. While standing in the freezing Seattle wind, I opened a Snapchat message of her crying, asking “if I’d heard.” My heart sank, and I felt completely numb. The bus came and left, and another bus came and left, and life continued to move on around me but I couldn’t. He was dead.
Life is weird. Things come and go, and people become more attuned to the world around them, but for the things that really matter, you can never fully prepare yourself. Although, deep down, I’d always known, reality was so much more visceral, and it tears at you. Your heart, guarded but tender and full of love and excitement, feels like it may very well shatter into a million pieces, but still, still, reality relentlessly comes at you, demanding to be experienced, over and over and over. It doesn’t care that you’re sick, or that you’re already overwhelmed by other things in life, or that you can’t take any more. Some people fall, the weight crushing them, but for those of us who are left, the ones who felt they had no choice but to stand up and face it all over again, the weight becomes almost too much. You lay awake in bed at night, too tired to even sleep, too exhausted to cry, and envision what life would feel like if you had a truly peaceful and endless sleep, but still, the next morning, body sore and mind aching, you get up. Life moves on, and so must we, because if not, how should we live? How can we live?
I’d like to think I made a difference in Tristan’s life. I’d like to think I made his existence just a little better, that buying him Valorant skins and Twice keychains could’ve brought him some joy, but the truth is, I’ll never know. The only thing I was sure of, the only real closure I had, was that I was there for him, even for just a short amount of time. He was a little less lonely because of those that were around him. After all, grief is just the watermark of love. Life is short, and it moves on and on and on, but it’s certainly much too short for regret. At the end of the day, you will never know the true story. So make your actions speak louder than your words. The world can be just a little smaller, a kinder place for each and every one of our soft and hopeful hearts.
