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xx042025 - xiao xiao long (xxl)
we met in school. it must be one of my favorite stories to tell. we were in a small program with ~15 people/year, sometimes more, sometimes less. it was a program where, instead of doing typical finance classes, you managed a (real!) multimillion dollar equity portfolio, donated by alumni. you had to apply for it at the end of your “U1” year. at mcgill, this meant second year (for 4-year students like me) and first year (for 3-year students coming from CEGEP/advanced standing programs). this is how michael was a year younger than me while still being in my class. the interviews — 3 official interviews and a dozen “unofficial” interviews with previous cohorts — determine if you get into the program and who you are paired with for the rest of your undergraduate.
low and behold, michael and i were deemed partners! our compatibility of interests, work styles, and vibes put us in contact for the first time. we were the “TMTeam”: aka the technology, media, and telecommunications duo. too bad good things come to those who wait, because shortly after, i dropped out to work on peko full-time. michael showed me DMs of his glee to have found out i was his partner back then. he had heard rumours of this extremely cracked girl in his grade and was unbelievably excited to finally meet me — and be my partner, out of everyone! followed by the subsequent, sad messages of “she dropped out…” no more than a few weeks later.
though it was probably for the better, i sometimes grieve the years we could’ve had in the bronfman bunkers. the work we would’ve done together was intimate. pairs historically spent hundreds of hours into the morning doing last tweaks to a stock pitch; many a lifelong best friend came out of this program. however, everyone in our class would eventually move to bay street or some other second tier banking city. and that was not what i wanted, nor did michael — but only one of us stuck it out to the end. call an ambulance… but not for me!
it’s hard to say what would’ve resulted if i stayed. this would’ve been a world without peko, without meeting the greatest best friends of my life, and a world where i probably became some unfulfilled nyc banker at best. so i think the delayed gratification of our friendship made my life all the sweeter and fuller. we were also both in extremely committed relationships and lived with our partners. i know we would’ve just been very, very good friends.
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we connected again 2 years later. it was the summer after we graduated and we were both broken up with our exes. michael was in a much darker hole than me — after all, his relationship was twice as long as mine and ended on more tumultuous terms. mine was far kinder, but full of a deep sorrow.
i called him while lying on my couch and we spent hours catching up. i must’ve been one of the first people he talked to that whole summer. i remember his room being very dark and commenting on his fake squash bag that he bought to impress our professor during our interviews the years before. it was a very silly scheme that worked. i couldn’t knock it — he did get in after all!
he told me i was his catalyst to cross the activation energy bar he needed to get his life back together. he then proceeded to make a lot of silly mistakes in the heat of the summer, but all prior to the deepening of our friendship.
for the rest of the season we sent each other silly texts throughout the weeks. they were all genuinely platonic and fluffy, mostly about how we were back on our come-ups and the ways we were improving ourselves. i spent a bit of time in waterloo that summer with anson and joss. on one of those nights, we were supposed to visit the newly debuted UW rizz club but decided last minute not to go. if we did though, i would’ve discovered michael on the other side of the door. the UW rizz club was founded by none other than his highschool best friend, and he drove half an hour to waterloo that night to support his boy.
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the first time michael and i spent a full day together was during one of the happiest periods of my life. i spent the summer crawling through friends apartments in different cities. the previous day, i had seen 5 old friends (all separately) where they handed me off to one another after our allotted hours, like a baton race! but, michael and i carved out a full day of fun together — mainly due to the fact he had to commute 2 hours to get to where i was, and because we never really got a day together ever. we were trying hard to make up for years of lost time.
we ate many free grapes at a whole foods. he witnessed my stomach kill itself after a 10am shawarma. we went to a local trading card shop and he taught me how to play pokemon, then i proceeded beat him in our first game of many. we bought a house plant for my old vancouver roommate. it was all very sweet.
months later, the second time we spent the full day together was also the first time michael and i slept in the same bed. we chatted so long into the late night that we fell asleep peacefully side by side. i had woken up in the exact same spot and felt more comfort than ive known to, sharing a bed with someone else. i only got to stare at michael for a few seconds before he woke up too. he told me he could feel me wake despite the lack of movement on my end, and this has remained true throughout our relationship… to this day, i never get those extra few minutes in the morning to myself. his internal clock is tied to mine when we’re beside each other.
we spent the rest of the week tied at the hip; talking, walking, talking, walking. we played through super paper mario (my childhood favourite game) with a promise of me visiting him in guelph to play paper mario thousand year door (his childhood favourite game). we held hands under the table of a classmate reunion. we did silly substances and visited my friend’s places in montreal. afterwards, we laid on my couch for what felt like hours, talking about how we were going to raise our kids. michael started crying and told me i felt like home. it was all very, very silly. i really liked him! by the end of the week, we were officially in a romantic relationship.
during the rest of my fall syllabussy era, i wrote a lot, smoked an occasional cigarette, and partook in many a drunken bixi ride. i spent a lot of time that autumn thinking about love and how different it felt with michael. because really, i had always loved him from the start — so when did it transform into something more than that? did it already? would it ever?
the next time i saw him in person was when he came to montreal (very last minute decided by him, booked haphazardly by me… a very common reoccurrence in our relationship) for my delayed graduation. i told him that this would likely be one of the few times he would meet my parents given the fact they were moving back home to hong kong. we slept on the couch in my living room and shen and i’s apartment was very full for a weekend. my dad was nicer than normal and only commented on michael’s unemployment every other sentence.
i first told michael i loved him on a drunk bixi ride home in the fall. we went out the weekend of my graduation and i refused to pay for a $30 uber home, but michael did not want me to bike inebriated. so he ran beside me (while holding onto my bike handles) for 6 kilometres back to my apartment at 3am. out of breath, he kept looking forward while i sat on the bixi watching him, not contributing a single pedal of effort into bringing us home.
but more than these moments of giddiness, peace, and serendipity, i think back to our worst fights when i think about why we are together. they say you become closer with conflict. my beloved boss adores the phrase, “lean into the hard stuff.” i have leaned into these hard things so hard that i have drowned multiple times and yet, michael pulls me out of it and i feel like a waterboarded fish jumping upstream.
we have had fights that concluded with me wanting to break up, multiple times. i cannot understate the amount of times i have been at the bottom of my metaphorical well. i have had to address my insecurities and reorient my values more than i thought possible. some people say that love is sacrifice, consensus building, that we are a unit… and that is all a lot easier said than done when you are as headstrong as me.
michael didn’t have a phone plan when we first started dating. i would go days without hearing from him — which is not that great for a very new, long distance relationship. he also was not used to the idea of calling in the evening, or texting at any moment of the day. he would just leave his phone in his basement and not look at it until evening! some outsiders would praise this behaviour, but a very needy-terminally-online new girlfriend like me could not. i told him that this was not going to work, and then he hit me with complete nonchalance. he didn’t even know why i was so upset. i told him, “text me more!” and he said, “ok, i’ll try!” and even then, i still felt like it wasn’t worth the hassle of training him.
but i had a train ticket to guelph, and there, i was again reminded on why our relationship was worth the effort to keep afloat. the first thing i really loved about michael long was his undying childhood wonder. his room and house is still full of toys and it is fully embraced by his family. he’s the oldest sibling with a sister a decade younger than him, and he makes every waking effort to spend time with her, play games with her, and co-exist with her. he defends his younger brother with his life. there is almost never a phone out in the long household. family dinners are technology free; which is not bound by any rule, but rather nobody sees a need or want for them.
if you’ve ever had the absolute pleasure of going on a road trip with michael, you will also know how he is the best passenger/driver to exist for long rides. he is the master of distraction from boredom. he has an unseeingly amount of riddles and games memorized. it’s enough (and ever-replenishing) to last a lifetime, which by virtue, is more than enough for our kids to get through childhood travel.
he grew up in a PhD family neighbourhood and only knew of courtyard culture. without fail, he would wait on the sidewalks for all the other kids to come out. he would make up the game of the day, and everyone would join along. they would eat dirt, leave their bikes unlocked, and have communal toys to share outside. we visited wellington woods during my first visit to guelph and it was a shell of what it once was, but still had some semblance of play. what a special, special norm that we are losing touch with in modern childhoods — but it’s one that we’re adamant on having for our kids.
and again, we talked a lot about children from the very beginning. it is not a secret that i want to have kids as young as possible — i am maximizing for the years i can spend with them and for the energy i can give away. i sped run my early 20s: i hardly said no to anything, i got to start a company that i cared deeply about, i travelled the world on a dime, and i’ve historically always thought about my plans 10+ years into the future. it’s extreme delusion and unfettered determination that has brought me this kind of clarity.
michael, despite only being a year younger than me, does not have this form of foresight. but he has a big heart, is always open to a course correction, and follows what feels right. it’s our combination of hard-headedness (me) and wholehearted flexibility (michael) that makes us particularly strong at making hard decisions quickly, but also has proven itself to be a double edged sword in our power dynamic.
michael first told me he loved me by accident. he called me during the new year countdown and as he hung up, he ended with a “love you, bye!” ever so casually. he subsequently received 5 missed calls from me. “oh, didn’t realize i said that. sorry! guess i just love you now.” as if saying “i love you” was a change from squares to circles on a factory line.
this occurred in the wake of our first, substantial argument. no more than 2 weeks prior, i was in guelph again telling michael i didn’t want to date anymore and that a long distance relationship with no end in sight was not a rational decision for us. i was about to move to boston, we had only been together a few months entirely LDR, it was still hard to reach him most days, and he had zero plans to move — if he did, he wanted to go to california. it was fun but i wanted real security.
i forget what he said to convince me otherwise. it was some amalgamation of “i know this sucks, but what we have is really special…” and many promises of what could come in the future. one of my biggest weaknesses is having my dreams on my sleeve to be exploited — michael definitely took advantage of it that day. he painted out a picture of us together in the years to come. he said that we couldn’t quit on this just because it was difficult now. “that’s the hallmark of a strong relationship! will you really give up on this bigger picture? we can make it happen, even if it’s not now, it will come…”
and of course, many words of liking me a lot… though, looking back, i think michael fought out of pure stubbornness. it was a very reasonable reason to end things, especially that early on, and he hadn’t even said he loved me yet. i was utterly confused but charmed by the way he argued so vehemently to stay together, and his sheer confidence that he could give me everything i wanted, that we let the relationship continue its course.
i think michael is a much kinder person than me. when i think back over the course of our arguments, i’m hotheaded, cruel at times, and quite manipulative to get what i want. not to discredit my awesome pros too, nor michael’s cons. and believe me, michael is stubborn to a fault. many of our fights could’ve been resolved in a sentence, but he’ll haphazardly provoke more conversation out of something small instead of feigning a meaningless defeat. i take things for what they are, but michael loves spending the time to dissect deeper meaning (that sometimes might not even exist!). in a private journal, i write: “michael likes going on these long talks analyzing specific situations — i cannot say i’ve been fond of it in some contexts, but in the ones that matter, they remind me of why i want to have a family with him and him only.” it’s one of those habits that i despise most days at the dinner table but appreciate one-off when he’s talking me through an external interpersonal conflict. in a cost-benefit analysis, it probably evens out at zero.
again, if you’ve ever had the pleasure of working directly with michael, you’d be deeply familiar with how hard he locks in for better or for worse. there have been many 30-hour-straight programming sessions where he gets stuck on a bug and then just finishes the entire PR in one sitting. he, in 90% of times, would’ve been better served by taking a break and coming at it again later, but he is beyond stubborn and derives zero satisfaction until he gets something done and more. it’s a blessing and a curse in the context of our relationship, where much of simple happiness can be found in sacrifice and selflessness.
it’s this paradox between weakness and strength, and love and hate, that makes it hard to write a mostly-lovey thing about my wonderful husband. the truth is i just really despise him sometimes, and in the heart of these moments i love him the most. these moments of conflicts serve as a reminder of how much someone can mean to me. it’s similar to the cathartic sobbing on the bus that makes you feel most human. it’s a remarkable thing to feel so much. michael says that his life was much more simpler when he was just thinking for one person. but man, is it more meaningful now!!!
something that has changed our relationship for the better is the mantra of Just Tankin’ It. it’s absolute surrender with a backdrop of absolute forgiveness for having to do it. it’s a longwinded way of saying to be more selfless for one another, and our insider language is “channeling wenjie”, his 30-something-uncle in china who smokes a pack a day and just does it all for his wife and daughter. it’s simple to see from the outside and it’s reminiscent of that first argument we had, but it’s always zooming out to the larger picture of our relationship and what we’re trying to do for each other in the midst of the chaos of the present. it’s still finding the space in an argument to say we love each other despite our frustration at each other’s stupidity. we can forgive each other for our faults even at our worsts and, yeah — we are a unit. it’s truly a shared joy becoming double and a shared sorrow being… not halved, but more of a shared obstacle to overcome. i can’t understate how fortunate i feel to have a partner like michael long who, despite the many things that anger me, values this form of commitment to our family over anything else.
the last thing i can reasonably write about is how this was not always the case, and how michael has changed my own perspective on personal growth and believing in real, substantial change in others. it takes me a long time to forgive, and even longer to recognize that one person at two different times can be two different people. it’s rosseau-y in essence where experiences form who you are, but there’s a part of me that cannot let go of the people we once were. as the years pass, i still remember deeply what it was like to be 14. there’s still parts of her in my current thinking that i can never deny, nor can i ever forget about — that still shape my decision making today. it’s this inner child that never lets go throughout life!
but of course, change is inevitable. especially in adolescence; not knowing any better, not really having enough brain power to truly understand your place in the world and how you can affect others. but at a certain point — it must click right? and i will admit i am an impatient person when it comes to morality. why should i indulge someone who doesn’t care for right and wrong? combined with growing up with people who have made mistakes but never attempted to reconcile them, sometimes justifying their past behaviour with excuses instead of addressing their own flaws head-on, has made me a less-forgiving person. part of growing up is not only recognizing our errors, but also pushing ourselves out of comfort to do the right thing and share that sentiment.
my deficiency here is that i don’t give people the benefit of the doubt to do the latter. i see actions from the outside that don’t align with my version of good and my brain defaults to: oh, they are a bad character. then, their actions must substantially shift over a long period of time for me to correct this initial first impression in my head. even so, i don’t go out of my way to seek their “redemption”. i don’t even attempt to dig deeper to figure out motives or the background context. it’s a very significant shortcoming i have — and in most cases, it’s a self-selecting crowd that i end up finding myself in.
michael is someone who has been deeply wronged by people like me. from him, i learned that the toughest thing about trust is that it's very difficult to build and very easy to destroy. in another personal diary entry from over a year ago, i wrote about how much anger i felt on behalf of michael.
“i’ve been increasingly frustrated at the easiness of rumours online and how passive falsities stew, to be left ignored and tucked away in the brains of millions. i’m tired of hearing XXL is a cheater and i am flabbergasted around how far this has persisted into his future. mob mentality drove an entire community against a child on the basis of a power-hungry adult with zero evidence but their word, and destroyed a 15(!) year old’s passion, second family, and reputation.
what’s worse is i was a proponent of this! i remember when he was assigned to be my program partner and i had googled his name only to be beckoned by threads of hate, of sneakiness and greed. i had a preconceived notion without even exchanging a single word to him.
he was tainted and never issued a statement against a definitive blow, and his reputation grew into these shoes. he made enemies that hated him without ever meeting him. he went from a quirky kid to a villain marooned by a community, with internet scars that could never be erased. he was unlucky to be a martyr of rampant cheating associated with top players. it was not a factor of luck to not have been one of them, but ill-fated to be positioned as the easiest target. he was scapegoated to what end?? he was a kid — and an innocent one at that!!
years after - mayhap too late, i asked him about the accusations. there was no reason to lie about what had happened so far in the past, and i believe XXL. i know his character deeply now. you do not speak up in the moment because your fate has been sealed. in the eyes of the public, you are irredeemable.”
but beyond a never-avenged, false trading card cheating scandal from almost a decade ago, michael has made his fair share of other mistakes that i would’ve deemed utterly unforgivable if it wasn’t for the fact that i know him now. the present version of michael; the xx who takes the deepest care of me, the xx who puts family above all, the xx who works harder than anyone ive ever met, and the xx i fell in love with. i had to reconcile that this past version of him, who has since repented and deeply reflected on past behaviour — is not the same person from before. yes, they are intertwined, but his past self serves as a constant reminder of “wrong” and is a stronger moral compass than most can hold.
michael is remarkably adept at facing his emotions head-on, and we fight more than i’ve known to because he doesn’t take any bullshit. he is confrontational and yes, it hurts me, but it’s taught me to be more forgiving, to be more empathetic, and to be slower and intentional with my impressions of strangers. it is almost never correct to assume the worst in others. michael is most definitely a stoic; we are people by heart and sometimes we make incorrect judgement calls. we cannot discount someone for one wrong decision, nor can we ever find ourselves assuming others intentions. he has dealt with all of this first hand and it is purely destructive.
so you combine this incredibly empathetic, hard-working, human-idealist hunk of a man — with an ambitious, often-impulsive, and practical do-gooder of a girl, and you get a sped-run relationship with foundations unbelievably strong for the relatively short amount of time we’ve been together, where we argue often but for the betterment of the two of us, and a dynamic where we treasure each other’s strengths and weaknesses.
it is a very, very special relationship that i feel fortunate to have so early in my life. it is rare to find this equally shared devotion to doing something correct, and a constantly challenging but rewarding push to think as a collective being instead of our lone selves. it is equally as scary as it may seem from the outside. but if it’s any person for me to marry, there is no doubt that it had to be xiao xiao long.
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i would love to document all my favourite sweet michael-isms. there are many: