on taking yourself home - by jennifer tsai - jenn's journal

A few months ago, while my roommates and I were sharing a home-cooked dinner together, one of them asked what our biggest fear was. I held the half-chewed rosemary chicken on the tip of my tongue, letting the oils dissolve slightly, as my mind filtered through episodes of past traumatic experiences and the objects, people, and environments associated with them. From mosquito swarms, to drowning alone in a pool, to being completely disowned by my parents, I imagined how I would feel if I was put in something similar to Divergent’s fear simulation room with these things. I ended up saying something along the lines of “losing control of myself”. None of us knew what I meant by this at the time, even myself, so we all nodded lightly and finished the rest of our dinner in a contemplative silence. It took me a long time to comprehend and reckon with this fear. I was no stranger to it—over my first semester away from home (around a year ago from now), I was trapped in a perpetual state of con

A few months ago, while my roommates and I were sharing a home-cooked dinner together, one of them asked what our biggest fear was. I held the half-chewed rosemary chicken on the tip of my tongue, letting the oils dissolve slightly, as my mind filtered through episodes of past traumatic experiences and the objects, people, and environments associated with them. From mosquito swarms, to drowning alone in a pool, to being completely disowned by my parents, I imagined how I would feel if I was put in something similar to Divergent’s fear simulation room with these things. I ended up saying someth