Quitting Pharmacy School for Music

Once upon a time, there was a 19-year-old girl who sat in her dorm room at USC at 3 AM crying in a way she never cried before. Throughout her entire life, she had held on and believed that if she got into a good college and made her parents happy, she would be happy. The only choice given to her from birth was to become a doctor. Nothing else and she never questioned it because she loved her parents.

But for some reason, she couldn’t breathe and all she felt were waves of suffocating grief and a desire to stop existing. Because she was living a dream she never wanted, when she had something she wanted to live for all long. She just never considered it a possibility because she was Asian and she never saw Asian faces on TV or in music.

She decided that she wanted to live because she felt like she may kill herself soon if she continued on the path to medical school. Ironically, with that decision, she started thinking of dying more and way too often. She dropped all her science classes, made the phone call to her parents, and ran on the treadmill until she couldn’t feel any emotions. She became a closet alcoholic and ignored the angry texts and phone calls from her parents that asked,

“How could you do this to us? How could you. How could you.”

It wasn’t because her parents are bad people. They told her she couldn’t sing because they loved her. But in your love, sometimes you say and do terrible things. Pain and bitterness is a two way street and that path was tread too many times.

This is the story of a girl whose greatest pride right now is still breathing. It was written by her inability to look into the mirror because this guilt for breaking her parents’ hearts into pieces weighs down on her every waking moment. It was written by self hatred, bitter anger, and crippling loneliness.

But stories change. Three years into this simultaneously terrible and wonderful journey, I have begun to see some hope. And she’s starting to believe that her story is one that people want to hear or maybe, need to hear. A story that is worth reading because there might be another person out there whose heart is breaking for the same reasons.

It’s 3 AM and I probably won’t be able to sleep tonight like many nights. Change is slow. Years are hard to undo. Sleep doesn’t still doesn’t come easily, but gratitude does. I honestly never thought I would make it to a day where I released a piece of music for people to stream or even buy (like honestly it blows my mind that people would want to use their hard earned money on something I made in my closet) but here I am.

You don’t have to listen to this song. Or buy it. Or stream it. Really. Honestly it feels really strange to promote myself because it feels so unnatural for me as a person. Actually even considering the fact that this song could be successful is really uncomfortable to me because I never really gave myself the chance to consider it. There’s nothing that hurts more than crushed hope, whether it’s from your parents or your insufficiencies as a daughter, creator, and person.

This link takes you to all the platforms it’s available on as well as the music video. It is the first song I ever finished producing and my official debut. I wrote it after I fought with my mom on Mother’s Day (probably about me doing music, can’t even remember).

I end many of my letters with this line, “with all my love.” Because I am sending it, with every inch of me that is still capable of loving, to you. This song is so incredibly precious to me because it’s indicative of change, that even the most broken of people can find a will to stand in their closet and record songs about wanting to live again.