Echoes of Vulnerability: Lina Phoebe Jeong and the Intimate Universe of 'I House Them All’
interview and photography by vivian chambers
I House Them All is a book of short stories that contain multitudes within them. When I sat down to read it, I felt profoundly connected—to myself, to the chair I was sitting in, to the ground beneath my feet. And to Lina. These stories are deeply personal, but also deeply interpersonal and unique; the characters feel like friends, or people you hope to meet in your lifetime. Lina has this special ability to reach outside of herself—or maybe within herself—to tell the stories of people with different understandings of the world—different fears and different dreams. But each of these characters have a strange way of ultimately urging you to look inward.
They’ll make you think fondly of the you that you used to be and the people who loved you then. They’ll make you forgive yourself. They’ll make you listen to the noises in your head and make peace with them. And they’ll make you want to keep in touch with yourself going forward—keeping tabs on each version of you, Are you okay? Are you grateful? Do you need someone to sit with you for a moment? It’s okay to ask.
Lina and I met when we were overly vulnerable teens on the internet making zines and telling our secrets to strangers. We lived across the country from each other then found each other years later in person in LA—when being overly vulnerable lost its magic and nurturing intimate friendships felt better (which is, I think, what we were searching for the whole time). I’m so thankful for her presence in my life, and I feel that these stories are going to spread the peace, love, and light that she carries around with her to whoever holds its small frame. Being around Lina is disarming in the loveliest way. This book will make you drop your guard and become softer again too.
We got together to talk about our zine eras, friendship, love, childhood, mental health, and of course, the book, which will be available on Lina’s 21st birthday, March 28th. Here’s a shortened version of our conversation that I will cherish forever.
LINA: I’m so glad that you liked them.
VIV: I’m so excited to talk about them. I took the time to shut all the doors and make the lighting perfect, and I got in the zone. And I read them and was like [gasp]. They’re so well written, first of all, and they affected me emotionally in a way that I haven’t had in a long time. And it was so special reading those words coming from you. I didn’t even know what I was expecting, but they just blew me away.
L: Yeah, I think that’s a big thing. Everyone is like “What is it about?” And I’m like, how do I even… they’re just…
V: You just have to read them. They’re just stories. And they’re so personal and sweet, and they’re all so different too, which I find really cool coming from one person, you know? I feel like you are good at stepping into somebody else’s brain. And I can tell they’re all personal to you, but you’re also coming from the perspective of like an older girl or a young boy. I can’t wait to read the rest.
I want to hear about the process of writing them. I want to know what it was like emotionally, and also how you’re feeling now, being about to release them.
L: It’s funny because I feel so detached from who I was when I first started writing it. Because it took such a long time to put together. It was three years. And I feel like the past three years are… especially in our timeline [being 20 & 21]… we change every month. It’s crazy. So sometimes it’s weird reading now and feeling like I don’t fully resonate with a lot of… the misery. Or like the anxiousness, or the fear. But also, looking back, it’s like oh my God, we came a really long fucking way.
V: I wrote down this quote from Paul Gardner that I read in The Artist’s Way that says “A painting is never finished—it simply stops in interesting places.” I wanted to talk to you about finishing the book in that sense because I feel like that kind of thing is so hard. Even with Uniquely Aligned and I’m sure with All My Friends, finding the place to stop and just say, ‘goodbye, I’m done,’ is so hard. When did you finally feel good about letting the book go?
L: It was an on-and-off writing process, so in the beginning when I was so isolated and everything was so difficult, I was able to just pump it out every single day because I was like squeezing it out of myself. And then, as things got better, I had more things to do on my plate. And I would keep trying to go back, but it’s
kind of like what Alix [our mutual friend and musician Alix Page] has talked about before. Every single night, you go up on stage, and you love these songs, and your fans love these songs, but those songs are written from heartbreak or something really difficult to talk about. And it’s emotionally taxing when you
come down and it’s like… it’s not self-exploitation, but it’s almost like you have to saturate that feeling to give it out.
V: Yeah, you almost have to self-sabotage a little bit.
L: Exactly. So I think that was kind of difficult. And also the feeling of ‘when is it done’ was like—in my head—once it’s perfect. Which it never was. It got to a point where it had to get ripped out of my hands. I think the quote that you said makes sense; sometimes I’m like, you should leave it when it feels good and done, but also, sometimes I just don’t ever get that feeling.
V: A lot of the stories in the book explore relationships, both platonic and romantic, and I feel like we always are talking about this. I wanted to talk more about what you find special about platonic relationships. I’m thinking of the story about the four boys, A Bloodless Brotherhood, and I wanted to hear more about how that was inspired.
L: I love that story. That’s kind of like my love letter to AMF I think. None of the characters were specifically designed after the girls, but I wanted one story to be able to resemble the bond that I think we could have had if we had the chance to be closer. I think AMF was special because it was the first time I felt understood by friends. And I’ve never had anything like that before when I was 16.
I think the way that each of them shows up for each other, even though it’s sporadic and not always congruent, I feel like that is something you can’t forget in friendship. I feel like platonic love is the purest
form of love when it’s done right. There’s no excitement of a romantic gesture. There’s no sexual tension. But it’s like, you just love their presence. And it’s just so special.
V: Exactly. They’re like a chosen family. That’s what I’ve realized recently with friends. I feel like it took a long time to feel understood, seen, and unconditionally loved. Before it felt sort of situational. Finding all of my best friends in college, and meeting all of you guys when I moved here, friendships now feel more like an extension of myself, rather than a person I’m waiting on or wondering what’s going to happen next with. It’s just so pure.
That story was so sweet but so sad. Because it’s so true and underrated and nobody talks about the fact that you just don’t get to live with your friends forever. Like I’m about to graduate after making the best friends ever, and I’m about to move away? Like why? Why are we all going to move away, why can’t we live in the same house forever?
L: You don’t get to know what they had for lunch.
V: No. It’s so weird. Because you’re right, I do think it’s the most pure form of love, but it’s also one that’s just like… it’s so special and so perfect, but it’s also just sort of doomed. I’m thinking about when we’ll be older and get married and have kids, and you’ll still love your friends so much, but things will never be the same again. Which is so sad.
I also want to talk about the story that was more about romantic love, Will You Stay? I feel like you and I can both relate to the… it’s just so hard to let people in and let people see you. And also, I feel like we’re both the kind of people who apologize for asking people to be there. [laughs] I literally apologize for being myself, I’m like, I’m so sorry, am I bothering you? Do you want to stay though?
L: I’m so sorry for taking up space.
V: Oh, you’re going to stay? But do you want to? You don’t have to. I’m not asking if you want to stay, but I do want you to.
L: But I’m not going to say that.
V: I mean, I want you to stay, but you don’t have to stay. Like, do you want to?
L: I only want you to stay if you want to stay, but not because you feel pressure to stay.
V: [laughs] That’s literally what goes through my mind all the time. I also want to talk about what it’s like now that you’re in a romantic relationship. What was it like to let that person in?
L: It is hard to let people in. I don’t know about you, but I think for me, it was because I grew up isolated. I have no siblings, no cousins—it was just me, and my parents were always on the go. I love my parents as adults now, but as a kid, I felt that the way to be the best daughter was to be self-dependent and self-sufficient. I think from that, you start thinking that the only way you don't get in other people’s way is
if you stay confined to this box that you’ve made for yourself. And I think that’s maybe where we start being like, I’m so sorry for my basic needs in this relationship. [laughs] Because once you start crossing that boundary, you think that person’s going to think that you're way too much.
V: Totally. It’s sad, I talk to my roommates about this, but it’s sometimes hard to imagine somebody ever wanting to talk to me about my feelings, be there for me, or want to be around me. Not because I don’t think it could happen, but because it’s never happened, and so it’s hard for my brain to imagine that could be true.
L: I think this story was largely written about that. It was written when I just couldn’t imagine, why would anyone ever want me? Besides attraction or whatever, what do I have to offer you that you would want? That you can’t get from someone else? And then I continued writing it the first time I had ever fallen in love, which was when I was 19. Back then, I thought that love was this overwhelming thing like I couldn't sleep, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t breathe without thinking of them.
V: Limerence! [laughs] It’s total delusion, but whatever, sometimes it’s fun.
L: I thought that’s what love was, and then, that subsided. Then, I think entering into my first real, healthy, and adult relationship was like, oh, you’re just going to stay. You’re staying. And I think that was the biggest thing—that wanting to stay, and offering to stay, and fighting to stay is the minimum. But it can feel so grand to some people. I think that’s what I wanted to focus that story on. And I wanted to make both of the characters complex and weird. Like they each have their niche.
V: Yeah, two totally different things, but they just listen to each other so intently and love that about each other. But they don’t have to understand it or both be interested in it. Which I think is cool. I feel like sometimes you think that you have to like the same things, or be passionate about the same things, or have the same music taste even. It’s better and more real when it’s just like, no I like your music because it’s yours. My best friend Elaine and I have talked about it before—we both have drastically different music tastes, but we both love to listen to each other's in the car. I know every one of her songs and she knows all of mine, but we never listen to them separately. It goes back to the thing about how you know it’s real and good when it feels like friendship.
I know we talked about how you don’t resonate with the misery in the book, which, I’m glad! [laughs] But I wanted to talk logistically about what has changed, or what practices helped you become better and feel better.
L: It’s always a tug-of-war between gratitude and grief. It’s like the grief of, oh my God, I missed out on the first 18 years of my life being so sad. And thinking that everyone else felt that awful all the time and had those kinds of thoughts all the time too. I feel immense grief when I see my friends' home videos of VHS tapes, I’m like, wow, I could have had the most unfiltered joy ever, and I missed out on that, and it breaks me. And then I think, I have that to strive to now. And I think that’s how I come out the other side, waking up every day being so thankful.
Other than that, I think it has a lot to do with professional help. That was big. And having a patient support system even when they don’t understand it and there’s frustration. Relentlessly trying to advocate for yourself. Having the friends that give you the courage to do that. Having friends that don’t give up on you. You’ve got to put in the work. And it’s so hard. Cutting people out that make you feel like you don’t deserve a road to betterment.
Also, eating three meals a day. I think that’s kind of huge. It kind of changes your life. And constant movement. I hate to say it, but the self-help books are kind of right on that.
V: I feel like little things like that are so underrated, especially as young girls. We’ve all gone through phases of not allowing ourselves to eat like a normal person, and you just have to change your mindset to focus on nourishing yourself.
I feel the thing about learning to wake up and think, I’m so grateful. Something switched for me this last summer, and I just started looking at things differently. Like the food thing, I was like, why am I thinking that I need to look a certain way? Why am I not so grateful for having an able body in the first place?
L: Yeah, a functioning, beautiful body.
V: Sometimes traumatic things happen that are so terrible, but they teach you to wake up every day and think, why am I not grateful for waking up and seeing the sun? Every once in a while, I’ll take a deep breath, and think, oh my God, how cool is it that I have air in my lungs? All the little things matter so much.
L: No I agree. A similar thing, I just remembered, I think it was my last hospital visit right before things started to pick up. They had a long case of marble stairs, and I remember walking down the stairs and thinking about the motor skills of going up and down stairs. Like, my brain is sending signals to my legs, and there are muscles that support the bones. And I have that. And I get to do that. And I sound stoned [laughs], but that’s what it is.
V: In the story, The Cat and Mouse Game, the character continuously hears a sound in his head, Eeeeeeee. What’s your eeeeeeee?
L: That story was written the week of the attempt, and the only thing I could do for the four days before that was lay in bed and think about if there were ashes on the floor. And they could get picked up by a vacuum cleaner. That was the only image that would be in my head. I would be watching something, reading something, doing anything, and the only thing I could think about was the image of a vacuum cleaner picking up dust. I think that made me go down a rabbit hole. I wrote down a list of every single image that I could see myself decaying or dying. And I remember calling my dad hysterically and being like, I don’t know how to make it stop, I don’t know how to press the pause button on this. I’m trying to do everything I can, and nothing is working.
I never disclosed to anyone that this had been a pattern since I was a little girl. I remember a lot of people thinking, ‘It’s because you’re so creative. You have such an imagination. And sometimes people with
really great imaginations can go down a dark path.’ That was a constant answer I was getting. Then I was like, okay, I’ll just try to think about really beautiful imaginative things. And then, it inevitably twists back into the bad things. I think that story is just about how you can try to be understood. You can try to make things romanticized and better. But ultimately, sometimes, they fail.
V: Totally. The creative mind thing is so real. I really can’t sleep, and it’s just because I’m thinking all the time. I’m like, maybe I’m just imaginative, but it’s also like, rest is not optional. Or it’s not a privilege—you should be able to rest.
For me, and I don’t know if you believe in God at all, but for me, I just find so much peace and rest in surrendering that to God, but it could be something else for someone else. I literally will just think… oh my God, I don’t have to be thinking about all of this, none of it is real except what is happening right in this moment. Thank God. And it still doesn’t go away, but I can find so much peace within it.
L: Right, you have the capacity to quiet it down. I’m so glad that you brought up a more faithful perspective to it because when I was writing that story, it was a big part of the character Mama.
I have always felt like… you know how people say that desperate people find faith? I have always felt unanswered or unheard until this drastic thing had to happen. And that week of everything happening, I remember getting on my knees for the first time in over a decade and praying to be heard. Then things got progressively worse that week, and I remember feeling like whoever was there didn’t hear me. I’m not prioritized in being heard. And then, as time went by and I started revising this story as well, it was like, well, maybe I was heard. Maybe I was, because I’m here, and I’ve finished the book. And whoever He or It is, maybe my desperation was heard. Although it wasn’t like a sudden shutdown with magical rainbows…
V: It’s interesting to look back on prayers you made years ago. There are so many situations where I’m now so glad that prayers weren’t answered because I love where I am right now. And I wouldn’t be here if they were answered. I can feel now that those prayers were heard, but they were answered with, be patient.
L: We’re on the brink of something. I don’t know if that’s me finding God or a higher power, but…
V: It’s just being hopeful. And surrendering. It’s so easy for people like us who think so much to want to understand it or control it. But being able to be like, I can’t understand this and I won’t, and for you to be like, I can’t understand why I had those dark times and I won’t, but being able to accept it and not beating yourself up over it is huge.
L: Yeah, and I hated hearing it in the moment. Like, ‘something good will come out of it.’ But it is kind of true. Whatever you take away from it, that’s up to you. You can take the thought out of it, I’m destined to have negative thoughts, people always leave me, bad things happen to me, or you can think, well, yeah, but I always make it out. And I have great people. And I remained, and I’m resilient.
‘I House Them All’ will be available for purchase on linajeong.com come March 28th