More than once I’ve been told by girls with tattoos that I have commitment issues. They’re not entirely wrong, though maybe a better word is indecisive. Or avoidant. Or anxious. Or obsessive. Or perfectionist. I’m not sure. I’ve always been an overthinker when it comes to words and everything else, always in search of some feeling, the feeling.

Not quite satisfaction. Or certainty. Or safety. Or peace. More like a fickle god going,

Yes. That.

to some fleeting, arbitrary thought of mine and then absolutely fucking off for every and any other important question I might have, no further elaboration, like being on a call with customer support staffed by the all-knowing universe with the communication skills of an inconsistent lover. That feeling. The feeling.

Anyways, I’ve been thinking about what to do with my uncommitted blank canvas body after I die – or I guess what I would want others to do, since I won’t be here. I’ve been able to rule out being buried, since I can barely decide if I want to live in Seattle or New York or if any place will ever truly feel like home. A final resting place sounds not restful at all. I worry my skeleton will get claustrophobic, or hate his eternal outfit.

Perhaps one of those movie Viking funerals could do, where you get pushed off to sea on a wooden raft, set alight by a singular, arcing, flaming arrow. But would I need to get a ocean or seaside permit? A professional fire archer for hire seems kind of impersonal, so I guess I would need to befriend one before I die, preferably one without performance anxiety.

Maybe cremation will be a little more my speed, certainly more flexible in terms of options. Apparently it’s cheaper than burials, which will ease my frugal Asian soul and maybe my ancestors too. The words involved seem more elegant as well. Pyre, cinerarium, ash, retort, urn. Much better than embalm, casket, pit, plot, grave. My favorite so far is cremulator, the machine that, after incineration of the body, grinds the remaining bones into fine dust – ashes – all in around twenty seconds. The word just sits right in my brain – cremulator – making it all the more a betrayal to see what it looks like, the feeling leaving me as suddenly as it came. No way they clean that thing after every person, and I’m not sure I would want parts of a roommate.

Now the Japanese have a bone picking ceremony, called kotsuage. Starting from the feet and moving up towards the head, family members, using long chopsticks, attentively pick up and place fragments into an urn so that you don’t end up upside down. It’s quite thoughtful of them, what they do for the dead. I wonder if in addition to being handpicked, I could request my bones be ground by hand by my loved ones. It seems intimate, care like mortar and pestle and spices and the feeling.

In this daydream I’m passing through young hands, imagining into existence children I don’t have. Everyone wants a better life and a better world for their kids, but I’m not sure I can deliver. Even if I could, there is a tragedy in succeeding, in becoming a stranger to this, to their better life you did not get to live. For all the things I seem to want, I’m not sure I want this. For me or for them.

I still wonder what it means to be a good son to my parents, whether it is in making them happy or being happy. I only know it involves not dying first. As for being a good friend or brother, I know even less. I’ll keep my hands young just in case.

For all my love of water you’d think I want to be scattered at sea, but I’m scared of the deep and the dark, of fish and all things that maneuver in three dimensions. All the space options – leaving then returning to Earth, or maintaining an obituary orbit, or getting shot into deep space – are all deeply romantic in their own way, yet also a little lonely and a lot capitalistic. Definitely don’t send me to the moon though. I think that’s the worst space one. I would rather stay earthbound.

Turning into jewelry sounds cramped but haunting people could be fun. I wonder if tattoo ink or an ashy artpiece would be even more cursed? I entertained being used to grow fruit trees or flowers but I learned even in death I will be too basic and salty and bad for plants. Maybe just park me with a seaside view, and take my bones with you occasionally when you travel. Being able to visit friends and family sounds nice.

As for how I go, I’ve always suspected that I will die in surgery. Call it a superstition, hopefully not a premonition, but really it’s just the feeling. Like I said, fleeting and arbitrary. My friend once told me that if you want a fortune to come true, you had to eat the paper. I watched him chew and chase waxy paper with iced tap water and it brought me a strange comfort. That gave me the feeling too.

And so when I’m cut open on the operating table like the world’s most depressing piñata, I imagine they will find all the love letters I’ve ever written and swallowed over the years, desires and regrets, a lifetime’s worth, scribbled and choked down in illegible fragments, apologies for all the mistakes I’ve ever made scrawled on bones, organs, and cavity walls, my body holding all the things I ever wished would come true, all spilling out on the operating floor. And somewhere in all that mess, one note addressed to them, the poor surgeons –

Please don’t be sad. It’s not your fault I died. I’ve always been tired and looking for a reason, a moment to let go. I’m sorry. It’s just the feeling.

P.S. If it’s not too much trouble could you pack it all back in? I think it’ll help me burn nicely.