Why am I standing under an umbrella, freezing my butt off in the cold outside an electronic shop at 6:00 o’clock in the morning–the only time it opens during this holiday week–the day right before Christmas Eve with a heated blanket, the color of blood, in one hand and a wallet in the other?

The answer is simple: one frayed wire, a dangerous threat to others and the blanket itself–plus my inability to cope with my past trauma–repressed into a tiny crevice in my brain–plus my severe attachment issues plus my disgusting obsession with sentimentality as a concept.

This is the equation for lack of love combined with the persistence to constantly preserve nostalgia in an object and sadistically relive it over and over, again and again. Nevermind, it’s a little bit more complex than that. There is no simple answer.

Most people wouldn’t bother to repair a heated blanket; they would just throw it out and get a new one. But I’m not like most people. I cling onto things like a parasite, even if I render it unusable. Without its furnace warmth, the heated blanket is just a mere blanket—a rag-tag piece of disposable sheet, layered with excess fluff, so I have no choice but to repair it.

With a crooked smile, I stood before a mustached man at the counter shivering with the blanket laid out across both my arms as if it were a dead infant. “Here,” I said. “Give me two hours,” and I nodded my head, waiting in the corner of his over-cramped shack in between a mop and a broken television, fidgeting with my boyfriend’s bulky G-shock that was slapped on to my wrist–an early Christmas present that I helped myself to.

The only thought that ran through my mind was the fact that: While all the other people are ripping through layers of wrapping paper and self-indulging in excess amounts of fruitcake and roast beef, I will be cuddling with my heated blanket on Christmas—my substitute for a significant other (besides John)—in a frenzy of feels and pseudo intimacy.

~

Outside my door, I heard faint shouting–the teetering of voices that stuck onto the vacant hallways. A woman’s voice. And a man’s voice. The shouting grew louder and louder and then shriveled into silence. Then my door violently swung open, and as a result, I buried myself in a veil of safety, a blanket fort. But it was just papa, so I had nothing to fear.

In the lamplight, I saw him there, my papa, in my ugly pink room, kneeling on the carpet, pecking my forehead with his chapped lips. He broke his pose to fetch a few blankets from the closet and dispersed it evenly on top of my tiny eight-year-old body.

With gnarled and knotted fingers, he tucked me in a cocoon of softness and comfort, digging into the layered blankets creating a masterpiece around me—a creased silhouette, a barrier to protect me amidst the darkness.

The entire time, I giggled in pure bliss, squirming around frantically, while he tried to tuck me in–a game only a father and his daughter could play. I wanted to be tucked in over and over again until I fell asleep, but even I knew that would be asking for too much.

I remember that I lied to him for the first and last time in my life. I mean I felt absolutely terrible about the entire ordeal, but I had to do what I had to do to keep the love lingering in my heart and mind–the components that made up an eight-year-old child who desperately yearned for constant affection, of which she was not receiving due to her parent’s busy work schedule.

It was three simple words: “I’m cold still.” He was about to leave and head for the door, but I pulled him back with these unconscious words that just rolled off my tongue. And it worked, for that moment.

With a fuzzy crimson blob in his hand and a mess of white wires, he plopped it on top me and united the plug and outlet together. One click was all it took for this contraption on top of me to envelope me in furnace warmth and unconditional love.

My papa toppled onto me and pressed his face against the nape of my neck and nuzzled me tenderly, while ruffling my hair into a mop. I could feel his cold tears smother my neck, and in that moment, I wanted to cry too. He finally removed himself from the twin and once again made a beeline toward the door, but this time he didn’t look back not even once. Goodnight. Goodbye.

Immediately without thinking, I squirmed out of my cocoon and pulled the freshly tucked-in flaps out from under me.

“Papa, come back and tuck me in,” I called out into the distance, but there was no reply. The only response that I received was the reverberation of a slammed door that shattered not only the remnants of my over-saturated heart but my world–enough to send an electric shock, a wake-up call,  into the trepidating crannies of my soul. And after that, I never saw my dad again. The day before Christmas Eve, my mama told me that she filed for divorce.

~

After two hours subsided, I revisited the counter with a wallet in my hand. “How much will that be?” I asked. “Sixty bucks.” And with that, the mustached man returned my heated blanket, almost as good as new with the exception of a giant soldered glop on the wire, wrapped in a layer of duct tape.

I pulled out three twenty dollar bills and threw him some extra change for his services. He points to the crumpled picture sticking out of my wallet. It’s my papa, I begin to explain, and he nods.

With his eyes glued to the floor, he informed me that his father recently passed away. So I dug in my purse, marrying my G-shock and the open leather flaps of my Coach bag, found two incenses, and handed it to him. I told him to burn one for his dad and one for mine, not that mine passed away or anything. I told him that he didn’t have to be Buddhist to light the incenses, since I wasn’t Buddhist either.

In a way, Papa did die…when he left my life, when he left my mom to raise three boys and a girl all by herself in both the Cambodian and American lifestyle.

They experienced the Cambodian Genocide together, the death of more than two million civilians–the death of family and friends, loved ones of any sort. They suffered loss together. They flew on a plane together, fueled by the United Nations’ compassion to save our people. They ate together. They slept together. They had four beautiful children together. They raised those children together. And now they divorced from each other, a final consummation that they were willing to do together one last time.

~

Thick fluffy sheets the color of blood. On my floor. Cut into little tiny pieces—remnants of the past. A combination of frayed wires, sausage length, and cloth triangles—in other terms, elaborate abstract shapes. Scissors in my hand. A crumpled picture of my papa in the other. Tears in my eyes.

It’s my twentieth the-day-before-Christmas Eve, the anniversary of my father’s pseudo death, and ate dinner alone (no one ever should have to do that), since my mom went on vacation and my brothers were all out of state at the time. I’m not the kind of person to intrude on anyone’s affair anyways.

At that time, everything spiraled out of control. My boyfriend recently broke up with me, so I buried myself under a layer of blankets that weren’t heated–with scissors in my hand and a mess in my lap with a pint of knocked-over Ben & Jerry’s cookie dough ice cream and a broken G-shock near my bedside. Yes, I did it; I broke the unbreakable; I destroyed my G-shock–a watch that could sustain the bunt of monstrous car tires over and over again and still live to see another day but it failed to survive the hands of a woman with a broken heart.

Three incense were lit, filling the air with a dusty but nostalgic aroma–one for that mustached man’s dad, one for mine, and one for John. Goodnight. Goodbye.