The hook of this piece is slightly TMI, but bear with me because I have a point.
I have two massive 痱滋 (mouth sores) right now because I bit my lip while on anesthesia during some dental work. I literally just healed from a big one two weeks ago, and I kept eating 煎炸嘢 (deep-fried food) the entire time because I love them, even though I knew it was going to hurt. And now it really fucking hurts. So why did I do this to myself? Because when I see pan-fried dumplings, I can’t help it. They’re too good. I quite literally brought this upon myself.
And then I extended this to my love life, and I realized: I am doing the exact same thing with my heart that I am doing with my mouth.
It took me all of January through August to suck the venom out of my soul last year. Eight months of mending. And here I am again, staring at the emotional equivalent of deep-fried food, knowing damn well what it’s going to cost me. Like, maybe dating just isn’t for me if every time I do this I lose so many HPs?
But I don’t actually believe that. I’m not male-centered. I truly believe that dating and romance is a beautiful part of the human experience, and I don’t regret any of it. But it is so weird to lose so much blood every single time.
SO I DECIDE TO RECLAIM MY TIME.
When senators ask questions during congressional hearings and the subject responds with a bullshit answer, the senator can say “I reclaim my time” to take back the clock. Because the BS answer should not count as an answer. The time was wasted, so the senator takes it back.
So when I experience these BS experiences that I know I don’t deserve, perhaps the correct response is to reclaim the time. Not to pretend it didn’t happen. Not to dwell. But to say: I’m taking back the time you took from me and turn it into something productive. The months of healing, the sleepless overthinking, the autopsy reports I write on relationships that were DOA… that was my time. My energy. My HPs. And I want them back.
Here’s the thing about losing HPs, though.
In any given game, you don’t just heal back to where you were. You level up. You get XP through both winning and losing battles. Your max HP increases. The hit that nearly killed you at Level 5 is a scratch at Level 20. The damage doesn’t change. You do.
I used to think healing meant returning to the person I was before the hurt. Like mending was about restoration, getting back to some factory setting of myself. But that’s not how it works. Every time I’ve healed from something, I didn’t go back. I came back bigger. More capacity. More clarity about what I will and won’t tolerate. More understanding of my own patterns, like the fact that I will always eat the 煎炸嘢, and I need to plan for that instead of pretending I won’t.
January to August 2025 wasn’t wasted time. It was an XP grind. It was brutal and ugly and I hated every second of it, but I came out the other side with a higher max HP than I had going in. The version of me that walked into that situation would not have survived what the version of me walking out of it can now handle.
So when I say I reclaim my time, I don’t mean I erase the experience. I mean I refuse to let the experience be a net loss. I take the time back by converting it. The months of grief become months of growth. The overthinking becomes self-assessments. The pain becomes capacity.
I’m going to keep eating 煎炸嘢. I know this about myself. I love too hard and I bite my lip on anesthesia even harder. I fall for pan-fried dumplings every single time. That’s not going to change, and honestly, I don’t want it to. A life without 煎炸嘢 is not a life I’m interested in living.
But I can get better at healing. Faster. Smarter. I can stop treating every wound like a funeral and start treating it like a level-up screen. I can stop asking “why did I do this to myself” and start asking “what did I gain from this.” I can stop trying to use logic to explain reasons why people wrong me, and get better at preventing people from doing that in the first place.
I am not a dweller. I don’t dwell in situations that no longer serve me. I overanalyze, sure, but it is my time to spend. My experiences to reflect upon and nobody else’s. And if I’m going to spend that time, I’m going to spend it building a version of myself with enough HP to take the hit, eat the dumpling, love the person, and still be standing.
I reclaim my time. Not by avoiding the things that hurt me, but by refusing to let them leave me like some wounded puppy. I don’t let people throw BS at me on my time. Because they are on MY time. I turn that time into something productive, something meaningful. And I will reclaim and reimburse over and over again.