Love, 2021

12/17, 5:01pm - And then I paused for a moment. I decided to let all of this rest. These thoughts below, as scattered and in-concise  as they are, will be left to rest. They represent a cathartic moment in time. A Time Capsule to what I once was. In the name of the House of Kirby, the House of Shen, and the House we will build together,  May these thoughts Rest In Peace. Amen.

Love,

—Kevin

On December 14th I returned to my Hells Kitchen one last time to collect my final belongings. I sat down on the floor in the same spot where I sat after I moved in. I thought about everything I’ve written about here and everything to come. This is the home I told Mao-Lin I loved him for the first time. All the memories washed over me. Through the experience of writing this letter I feel like I am no longer running away from my past but, instead, running towards my new and brighter future.

I think about all those I harmed along the way - the terrible things I’ve done and said. Words cannot begin to express my sorrow. I seek not forgiveness, but grace and understanding.

Mao-Lin loves me in a way few have. He nurtures me, looks after me, makes me stronger. I think about what he said to me a couple months ago as I started moving more and more of my belongings in. He said “you have a home with me now. This is our home that we will share.” Out of nothing but love he was welcoming me into his home and calling ours. This would be our home. Not his. Ours. 

I started reflecting on my life growing up. Here was Mao-Lin, offering me a home, something I didn’t have much of growing up. I was raised in absolute poverty as a kid. 

I spent ten years living with a violently abusive mother in the projects in Plymouth, MA. The experience was unnerving. The experience was chilling. The experience was violent. I was told I needed to neal before Jesus in pain so that he could heal me and protect me,; apparently my grandfather did the same to her, he was a conservative Catholic. I was beaten randomly and constantly, all while passages of the Bible were read to me. She would tell my sister to beat me, too. What choice did my sister have? She was only a year and a half older than me. The choice before her was to beat me or be beaten. She was, what,  6? 7? 8? She didn’t understand what she was doing to me. She was listening to our mother, as kids are supposed to do. I resent my mother for it. Evil sometimes lurks amongst those closest to us.

Editor's note: On February 11th, 2023, I saw my mother for the first time in 20 years and forgave her. To this today, she has not acknowledged or apologized for the abuse.

On this Christmas I pardon my sister for being an unwitting accessory to violence. She was too young to understand what was happening. She’s just as much a victim as I am.

The violence continued. Her and my sister would take turns beating me. My mother was consumed by the anger from my dad leaving her and probably viewed me as his proxy. All that anger and rage was channeled through abusing me. When I was 8 she took a brick and smashed it into my knee, leaving a permanent scar. I remember crying for help, wrapping the wound in a towel. No one saved me that day.

I have a memory from my time living with her. It was the end of the school day and I was on the bus home. The bus pulled up to where I lived and the driver turned to me and said something like, “are your parents coming?” Shortly after, a friend of my moms ran over and collected me. I remember her saying  “your mom didn’t want to come get you so I’m going to bring you home.” I was seven years old. 

When I was ten I sorta ran away from home. I was visiting my dad in Maine on one of my weekend trips to see him. As he was driving me to the bus to send me back I started crying, begging him to let me stay. He didn’t know the violence I was experiencing, I couldn’t bring myself to tell him about it and my mother always said everything was fine. Everything is always fine for those who hold the power, isn't it? I was simply in his car, crying and begging to not be sent back. He turned around and brought me back to his apartment. I was running away from my mother and didn’t want to look back. 

What would have happened to me if I didn’t run away? I’m sure anger and resentment would have slowly consumed me. Rage would be my north star. Would I have played violent video games? Would I have owned a gun? Would I have resorted to violence against others to escape it all? Would I have killed? I remember having a suicide pact with friends in 4th grade. I was 9 years old.

These thoughts haunt me everyday, the road not taken. They stalk the night of my conscious, lurking in the crevices of the weaker parts of the human condition.

I kept running.

My dad focused his energy in those early days on getting me setup in school  and adjusting me to my new life. He always told me growing up that I needed to get good grades so I could go to college. My dad never went to college, life got in the way. He’s been working class my whole life but he always worked hard to keep food on the table and a roof over my head. He would say to me “do as I say, not as I do.” I think he saw me as his hope for breaking the cycle of poverty in our family. I kept striving for the best grades I could get. Some subjects came easier than others - I sailed through math while struggling with English. I could find the area of a shape but I simply could not process the deeper meaning of Shakespeare. To be or not to be. Is that even Shakespeare?

Once settled in I started playing all sorts of school sports to get in shape and channel my frustration. I played soccer, frisbee, indoor and outdoor track. I tried out for the basketball team and didn’t make the cut. I did a lot of hiking,, it’s a thing you do as a kid growing up in Maine. I did an end-to-end through hike of the Appalachian Trail in 2008 when I was 17, spending 5 straight months backpacking from Springer Mountain, GA to Mount Katahdin, ME. I was walking home, essentially. It remains one my proudest achievement in life.

I kept running.

I have a memory from growing up with my dad. This was when I was 12 or 13? Something like that. We were poor and couldn’t afford the heating bill one month. He bought these space heaters and we curtained off parts of the apartment so we could have concentrated warmth. One night I woke up to the apartment completely filled with thick smoke. I ran downstairs to the living room. Panicked consumed me. I saw tons of smoke coming from the oven, it looked like something was being cooked. I went into the living room and saw my dad passed out on the couch.. I remember screaming “dad, you have to wake up! Dad! Wake up! Come on." There was no response. 

Have you ever woken to a room filled with smoke? Humor me a bit and do a little exercise. I want you to lie down in bed, turn off the lights, close your eyes. Make the room completely dark. I want you to set a timer for 30 seconds and I want you to hold your breath the entire time. Suffocation will build in your lungs, you’ll be desperate for air. The timer goes off, you gasp for air. That feeling you just had? The gasping sensationThat’s now your constant state and getting worse until you find fresh air. You’re 12, maybe 13. What do you do in that moment? 

I opened the front door and stepped onto the front porch, gasping for air. I was in my underwear and it was a cold night. I poked my head back into the front door and screamed again, “dad, there’s smoke! You have to wake up! Dad! I love you, please wake up.” Was I about to lose my dad? Would I have to go live with my mom again? Would the darkness reclaim me? I don't think I would be alive today if I had to go back.

Fire trucks arrived. Someone must have seen the smoke and called 911. My dad and I haven’t talked about this moment since, I’m sure it fills him with shame. My dad saved my life, you know? I will always extend tremendous grace towards him. He’s always had a sense of duty, a trait I inherited. He was adopted at birth and didn’t know his biological parents. I bet they also had a sense of duty and decided they could not, in that moment, raise a child. I assume they saw it as their duty to try and ensure the best future for their child. 

I kept running. 

Getting around was a challenge growing up, we couldn’t afford a car. I walked where I could, sometimes I biked if we had one I could use. I would take the bus if there was one available. Later on in life once I was settled in New York I would end up using my good credit to help my dad buy a car, the first time he owned one in a while. He didn’t have good credit but always told me growing up that I needed it. He paid down the loan 4 years ahead of schedule. 

Life progresses. I did well in school and got accepted early-decision to American University.. As the fall approached it became clear I wouldn’t be able to afford it and I would have to withdraw. I didn’t know what to do next. I found a small farm on Nantucket through the WWOOF program where I could volunteer for a year in exchange for food and a place to stay. I retreated there and set about figuring out what would come next. 

I reapplied to cheaper colleges and ended up spending freshman year at UMaine Farmington, which I hated. I applied to transfer to big state schools on the east coast and wound up at UMass Amherst. I remembered my mom’s address and used it to get Instate tuition - Massachusetts lets you get instate as long as one parent resides in the state. The only good thing my mom did for me I suppose. At UMass I drove buses for UMass transit to help pay the bills. I managed to save up enough money to buy my first car of my own, a 1990 Volvo wagon. My first trusty steed. 

After college I moved to New York and eventually found myself working as a contractor at Google on their shopping program. Shortly after starting that job I went on a date with someone I would end up dating for three years.

Editor’s note: Information about this relationship has been removed.

I kept running.

Between working at Google and being in a relationship  I was able to find clarity with what I wanted to do in life. I had heard from software engineers  I know some of the difficulties they had with their product managers. At the same time I was seeing it first hand internally at Google. They never seemed to truly understand the problems they were solving, always building products with excellent code that no one wanted. How many messaging apps has Google had at this point? 12, 13, 14?

The problem with a lot of data products and services is that they're designed or built by people who don't understand data but think they do. These same people often believe they know what they're doing and that you don't. This is called gaslighting, and it inevitably leads to bad data architectures that grow and fester, evolving into nonstop issues. You have to fix the rot early on and do things right from the start or you will have a bad time. As the tech evolves, you need to evolve with it or things will just get worse. It's hard to hry

All of this is to say, I decided I could do it better and set out to change careers. It was August 2017 and I was 26 years old. I knew I could do it so I set out to make it happen. I left Google to go work for a small advertising tech startup - I wanted to stay in New York and advertising is an industry that allowed me to do that. Is advertising making the world a better place? Not really, no. But there are people on Wall Street who took down the entire US economy cause they wanted to make a quick dollars so I figure it's better than that.

I kept running.

I’ve always had an addictive personality. Swimming, biking, the gym, alcohol, drugs, work. I seem to oscillate wildly between nothing and everything, no in between. There will always be a party girl in me, and I still intend to rage, just in moderation. Everyone needs a vice, a way to escape, a way to be alone. I have no greater peace than being at a concert or party completely alone, surrounded by people I don’t know. Just me, the music I love, and the vibe. 

In November 2019 I signed an offer letter for my first six figure job at a big ad tech company. From May 2014 to November 2019 I had managed to increase my salary from 40K a year to 125K a year, a 300% increase. Not bad for a poor boy from Maine. 

Editor's note: I ended the relationship I was in at the end of 2019. References hereafter to fallout or aftermath are the result of a decision I made.

Wuhan was in the news, something about a new disease spreading. Lockdowns, panic. What in the world is going on? The CDC will be ready, I remember telling myself. Not sure Trump is equipped to handle what's to come but maybe he'll rise to the occasion.

I found an apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. I had no furniture to my name. I had a small amount of savings that I had to completely draw down. I also had (and still have!) excellent credit, which I used to take out a personal loan to pay for the rest of the move.  I spent Christmas 2019 alone, sleeping on an air mattress.

I kept running.

I spent the first few months single in a dark and deep descent into alcoholism. I was angry, I was sad, I was confused, I was alone. On March 8th, 2020 I was drinking wine alone on a pier on the Hudson River and knew it had to stop. I took the bottle, chucked it into the river, and said I would never drink again. I haven’t had a drink since. On March 20th, 2020 New York went into lockdown to try and stop the spread of COVID-19. Two weeks of working from home, they said. The world will never be the same, I remember telling my dad.

Editor's note: I remain sober to this day. 

I spent most of the first half of 2020 completely broke as I worked to pay down the loan I took out to pay for the move. I finally managed to finish paying it off in August 2020.

I kept running.

On October 23rd, 2020 I went for a dinner date at the Smith on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I met him outside, we checked in for our reservations, had our temperatures taken. This was covid, before the vaccines, between surges. We sat down at the table, he looked across to me. “Hello, my name’s Mao-Lin, nice to meet you.” Nice to meet you as well. "Should we order an appetizer?" Yeah, sure, whatever you want. I don’t remember what I was thinking in that moment. Maybe I thought I could finally stop running. 

On this Christmas Mao-Lin and I stand here together at the dawn of a new day in our love. With courage, strength, and empathy we will face the challenges to come. We will reach for our better angels and actualize the dreams we hold in our hearts for our love. The future belongs to us.

All of us.

11/29 bike data:

Weight: 159 pounds, 72.34 kilos

FTP: 190

Power to weight ratio: 2.62

Building towards new numbers. Finding purpose on the bike. Driving towards greatness. Listening to Boris cercle set, complete motivation. Insane music. The beat drops and doesn’t stop. keep moving towards the climax, all out effort.

Im an average cyclist, just trying to better myself. Always people faster than me, that’s cool. Pros are insane. Crazy FTP scores. Need to drive mine higher.

12/17 was the most productive day I’ve had at work in years. Not because I necessarily cleared a lot off my to do list. I simply felt clarity and focus. I wasn’t distracted.

I use music to process thoughts, to channel emotions.

Th plumber came, talk about the fix. Feeling like a home owner. Susan in the basement showing someone around. Sense of community. This is our collective home and we all work together to make it work. Recommit to helping the coop.

I wanted to take the 17th off to reflect but had an interview to do. They could be someone like me and this interview is their chance. Who knows their story. Never try and reschedule an interview on someone, that’s actually one of the most important work lessons. They’ve been getting ready for their moment, don’t want to break their momentum. Open eyes. If this goes viral I want that candidate to know I had an open mind and heart. I always look for potential and understanding.

I want that candidate to know that I was, in that moment, I was fully present in a way that I haven’t been in a long time. Wanted the day off but duty bound.  Candidate had their shot. Can’t reschedule . What if it was me on the other side?  They could have been preparing all week.

One day I’ll work at Google and that’s when I know I’ll have made it. It’s my dream company. The power to give everyone knowledge, information. I don’t have a background in this sort of stuf. I would walk around the block when I worked on a contract at google. Someday I will return on my own merits. Kevin.Kirby@google.com  - that’s when I know I’ve made it.

I look for understanding and curiosity. A willingness to go into the weeds to help untangle things. Do you actually know what you’re talking about or just sorta faking it? 

Minute 24 blondish set lyrics - no matter where I’m going I’m falling deeper down.

How did this happen? It’s not like cercle or Blondish asked me how I was feeling when they did the set. Yet it somehow reflected how I wanted to feel in that moment - warm but deep. Comforting. Soothing. Searching for so long for another set that spoke to me like Fideles set and here it was. In a trance. It felt like the gods were witnessing my final battle against the darkness and they summoned their soldiers to aid me in one last struggle.

The gods of love and courage and warmth and empathy and kindness combined their forces into an army of light. The army of light was by my side for one final confrontation with the god of darkness. I imagined the gods dueling all around and above, my soul their prize. I look up towards the army of light and see their gods pointing towards me as if to say “you have help us.” I take one last look at the darkness, a swirling tornado of memories waiting to consume my soul. I look back towards the army of light and up towards their gods. I imagined life without the darkness, the feeling of profound suffocation. I imagined raising a wand

This week I purposefully let the darkness consume me. But this time was different. This time I was stronger. The memories swirled all around me. I chose to try and give meaning and understanding to it all. I imagined having all of this darkness swirling around me, waiting to reclaim my soul. I stand up, taking one last look around. And then I imagined raising a wand, as if I were a wizard in Harry Potter, and casting the spell: EXPECTO PATRONUM! Out of my wand comes Mao-Lin, embodied in the white silhouette of a patronus

December 16th, beautiful fall day.

December 17th, beautiful fall day. Sat across from a fancy CPW building. Imagined what

I have no idea how to process this.

Walking down west 74th street. Beautiful. Like the gods wanted me to have this moment to process it all. Reminded of how I used to come here when I was younger. Ride the 2 train, sit in the Starbucks, do some work. Someday I’ll live here.

You can skip to the end if you want to see the point or you can read through it all. There’s a larger point to all of it, I promise.

The blondish cercle set was everything I needed in that moment. It was this perfect mix of tropical, melodic, warm, deep. There’s this DJ I follow named Mira who has similar music.

The cercle sets aren’t just about the music. It’s about how the music interacts with the environment around it and creates a mood. I need visualizations that match the music and create a mood and a vibe. I need to feel the energy. I need to hear the energy. I need to see the energy.

Music taste ranges from Lee Burridge by a pool in Bali to Boris raging techno at the grand palais

The Blondish set from cercle dropped. Beautiful set. Filmed outside in the sun. Was the right balance of what I needed that week in that moment. A good beat. Visual reminders of summer and warmth. I watched the set, I could see how happy she was. I could see how happy the audience was. In that moment I had found another set that spoke to me from beginning to end.  It starts with “I believe the most fascinating question in the world is - who am I? What do you mean? What do you feel when you say the word I myself. Towards the end lyrics come in - don’t you want somebody to love? Don’t you need somebody to love. Closer to the end, more lyrics. “This joy affecting all around you, feeling your power. Releasing all insecurities.”  What you are escapes being - profound mystery (find quote from 1:06:45 in set

Mark the day - December 16th, 2021. I found peace. In that moment I reaffirmed my  conviction to marry Mao-Lin.

I listened to the blondish set a second time. I walked outside and towards Central Park. It was a sunny day, relatively warm. I sat down on a bench and thought about nothing for a moment. I found peace in that moment. I found hope in that moment.

I walked back home and reality came crashing in. There was a leak of some sort in the kitchen. Water was on the floor. I had no idea what happened. I called Mao-Lin - baebae, there’s a leak in the kitchen. We worked together to figure out what was going on. We isolated the leak, we lined up a plumber to come by. He said to me “welcome to home ownership, baebae. You have to help handle these things now.” This was our home and I had a duty to protect it

All I could think about in that moment was fixing the leak. I had to show Mao-Lin I could rise to the occasion and look after the interests of our house.

On this Christmas I choose, in the name of Mao-Lin and the home we hope to build together, to confront the darkness one last time. This time I would vanquish it. I imagined raising a wand as if I were in Harry Potter and casting the spell expecto  patronum. Out of the wand would come an embodiment of Mao-Lin, my patronus against the darkness.

I have been through the valley of the shadow of death and looked the grim reaper in the eye when he said it was my time. But what do we say to the god of death? Not today. That’s what I thought to myself.

I looked and saw all of these

On this Christmas I choose to vanquish the shadows and embrace the light. To be worthy of house of Shen I must tear down and rebuild what it means to be from the house of Kirby.

TLee Bur ridge has all day I dream, beautiful music. I listen to it when I’m walking around. When I’m home I really need the combination of music and a visual that matches the mood the music. I want to escape into that moment and be lost.

On this Christmas I choose to emerge from the shadows and to stand in the warmth and protection of Mao-Lin, my patronus against the darkness.

On this Christmas I seek to repent for my sins before the gods.

Do I go to the gym and ride my bike and do all these all the other things because I like them or because of a need for attention and validation? Maybe a mix of both? I’m sure it’s not just because it’s good for my well being, I’m certain there’s a deeper psychology at play here. I told my therapist I would send this to him when I was done, maybe he can help me unpack it (along with *gestures broadly*).

There are people in my life who I know are fundamentally good people. I’m thinking of people like Cedrick. Donald. AJ, Zach, Ken, David. Yeah, a bit messy at times.

Zach, Ken, and Christ especially, have come through for me a bunch of times over the years. There have been a few times in the last couple of years where I’ve had to go to Zach’s for to drop stuff off or pick it up or whatever. I would sometimes text him when I was on the way and be like “is it ok if Iinger for like an hour?” he would say yes if I could. I usually had something going on in my head and needed a distraction.

Music has always soothed me. It’s a way for me to escape, to channel my emotions. If I could channel my emotions then I could control my emotions, I told myself growing up. When portable CD players became a thing in the early 2000’s I got dad to buy me one that came with a strap on pouch so I could listen to music while at tennis practice. When I joined a swim team in New York I found a special headphone set designed for swimming goggles so I could listen to music while I swam.

Add stuff about French tattoos. Liberty, believing in justice. First vote from the heart and the second vote for the republic. Mark my words: Marine Le Len will never have power. The French always find a way. Being a Republican and a democrat, which is to say believing in republicanism and democracy - building a nation state and then giving the power to control it to the people.

Mao-Lin asks me how I know he’s the one. There was a moment a few months into our relationship where we were talking about whatever and he turned to me and said “it’s my job to take care of you now.”  For the the first time in a while it felt like there was finally someone looking after me.

People think they understand poverty. The government releases metrics. Poverty is about more than just money - it’s lived experience and sense of being. Poverty makes everything harder

Tone deaf. That’s what I think when writing something like this. White privilege is real. Lots of lucky breaks

My love for the sun comes from running from the darkness. I want warmth. I want to be warm, comfortable, at ease. Chasing the sun means I’ve escaped the suffocation of the darkness.

I love New York. The people, the culture, the vibrancy.

He has to leave to work in California soon - he has a job that takes him there for a while. Important people, important things. 

I don’t know what about the fideles creative state speaks to me so much. It’s melodic, which I love. Something about the way the music builds and flows through the hour completely soothes my soul. They play their remix of Golden by Fritz Kalkbrenner - he sings

For what remains untold

For what is left behind

I can hear it in your voice

You're just one of a kind

Tonight we're golden

Tonight we save ourselves

We lay our weakness down

That's where we are, where we are

It reminds me of Mao-Lin. I’ve spent countless hours searching for another DJ set online that speaks to me in the way this one does and I simply cannot find it.

Towards the end they play a song where it says “isn’t love important?” 

Our future is together

On this Christmas I commit myself to caring and looking after Mao-Lin in the same way he looks after everyone in his life. This is my final duty in life - to protect him so he can protect others.

All of this is to say - I love him and I intend to marry him.