(a material girl) living in a material world

So I've recently realized that I'm one of Those Girls Female Main Characters Hate. You know how female main characters, heroines, are usually Different? How they're typically not popular (though not always a total outcast), and have all these atypical or underappreciated traits that make them just unique enough or different enough from the crowd to be special? So special that few people recognize just how special they are, until the Right Friend or Right Romantic Interest comes along?

These heroines: they're typically headstrong, or like sports, or just don't get femininity, or have suffered some sort of great loss, or just have some perspective on life that sets them apart. Maybe they love the planet; maybe they're horribly jaded; maybe they're just incredibly smart or thoughtful or profound in ways that makes the rest of the world seem shallow and superficial.

These girls are compared to the minor female characters, one type who's girly, superficial, somewhat frivolous. These characters are not necessarily stupid or bad people: they're just less deep, more shallow, usually caring and good-hearted, just not different enough from the rest of the world to be a main character type. These minor characters are girly girls who like pink and dressing up and make-up; they're the characters who care about fashion and fix up the main character; they're the characters who can walk in heels while the main character can only look on enviously. They're the characters who are somewhat flaky, who don't have a passionate world cause (crusading for human rights or the environment, for instance), who like sappy romantic comedies, not cult films or off-the-beat comedy or bloodbath action.

These are girls who are smart but not going anywhere with it. These are girls who just don't stand out. These are girls who are like so many other girls in the world.

And it's weird to realize that I'm one of these girls.

I think every girl always imagines she's the star of her life; if someone wrote a story, she'd be the main character: the special one, the different one, the one who matters and is somehow different from everyone else.

Sometimes, it's really just not that way. It's true that we're all different from everyone else, that we all have admirable qualities. Being mainstream and conformist and "just like everyone else" doesn't negate the sincerity of your emotions or lessen the importance of your beliefs. It just means...well, it means you're not a main character. You're not that special. You're pretty ordinary, pretty average.

That...I tell myself that doesn't have to be a bad thing. It's not. You are better able to relate to others when you have similar experiences. But it's still unsettling, uncomfortable, to come to terms with.

You're not that smart. You're not driven. You're not that profound. You're not that anything.

You love and you care and you worry and you try, just like everyone else. But you're a little ditzy, not as up-to-date on politics as you might like; you're a little shallow, because you like heels and skirts and the color pink; you're a little girly, because you cry at Disney movies and want to have someone to hold you and love you and grow old with you. You're not that independent, or that amazing, or that unique.

But, you think, you're still pretty special - because of all the people who know you and love, despite you not being that Unique and Different Heroine; and because of all the people you know and love in return.

No one is forgettable or replaceable, because of the relationships they've built around them.

So maybe I'm okay with being a material, typical, minor-character kind of girl.

It could be worse.

I could be the Unique Main Character with no friends.

all in or all out

Oh my god, do I love Google or what? First, there's Google Labs that allows me to add my Google Calendar and Docs to Gmail, which makes my life. Then there are the awesome new themes, because I am all about color-coding my life. But best of all, Google has a To Do List feature that I can add to my iGoogle homepage. I think I'm too thrilled for words: Google, you have totally won me over to you for life.

It's that time of year again, too: time to break out my Christmas music. I love the holidays; they're the saving grace of finals period. The music keeps me sane throughout all the studying and the stress and the panic. Oddly enough, I've also brought out my Disney music, which is relentlessly cheering and leaves me with the urge to rewatch my favorite Disney movies again.

I'm back to owning six versions of Carol of the Bells; last year, I had at least twelve, possibly fifteen. I still need to acquire Sleigh Bells, though.

This music keeps me happy while I outline and write my memo. It makes me so much less likely to get to the point of being so stressed out that I snap at people or am unreasonably unapproachable. I like to think I'm generally in a good mood (unless I feel like tacos; but I guess I am more prone to that than to getting angry or confrontational).

I'm an unmitigated sap, and I'm okay with that.

you can fly - higher

They say start fresh, start again. This is a new beginning, a blank slate. Try once more to recreate your life, to build up the pieces of who you are, only this time you can arrange it carefully, as you want.

This is your life. It is in your hands. Take it: do something with it. Create, mold, shape, transform - this is you, your life, let it go and fall to pieces and put it all back together again, in your image, in your will. Your every wish.

But sometimes it's hard to take that breath or that plunge. Sometimes it's terrifying to let it go, to trust that it will be okay, that you will be okay, that things will come together again. It's hard to let go of the past and not be a little, a lot, scared of the future. (因为爱还是未知的未来?)

That is why I cling to the past sometimes, why it's hard to let go of memories or who I used to be, even if they are not all good memories or everything I wanted to be. There may have been failures, disappointments, sadness, anger - but it was mine, it was me, it was (most importantly) familiar. That's why it's easy to miss the friends I had, why easy to make golden and simple the childhood that was never quite so, why it's easy to stay back, cautious, instead of rushing headlong into the unknown - for it could be brilliant, dazzling, profound, or it could be terrifying.

Why are you holding your breath? Why am I afraid to go, to run, to reach for the person I could maybe be? The future I could maybe have? The life that could be fuller, more interesting, more knowing, for all that I have experienced, good or bad?

How will I feel, looking back? How will I know? In the end, in the end, what really matters? When your vision blurs and when you can no longer breathe - what is really important?

I have the people to fall back on, don't I? I have every reason to push forward and try, don't I?

There is this thing called faith, and it is so much more than mere religion.

(我怕时间太快,我怕时间太慢.)

Maybe. Maybe maybe maybe.

Maybe change is something to be embraced, if you have the certainty in yourself, and the certainty in those who believe in you.

Fly, fly, get 'em up high.

tired of this, this is me

There is so much that needs work. Not just in academics, but in who I am as a person.

I know I need to be more confident. I just didn't realize that I was also more closed off than I realized. I'm not as stressed as maybe I should be. I'm not as invested as maybe I should be. I want to know, in the end, where I stand.

There is this distance and I don't know if I will broach it. Where do I stand?

You know. I hate this thing girls do.

When it comes down to it, I don't know that I could pick V or C's side.

When it comes down to it, I'd still want you to pick my side.

When it comes down to it, I'm tired. Of this. Of that. Of feeling like it's (I'm) not good enough.

("You're not.")

take a stand for what you want to be

I've always known I could be jaded and cynical about some things, most particularly life and people and the stupidity that pervades in both, but I've never actually wanted to be a bad person. (Then again, who does?) I never thought I'd be a bad person.

These are the small ways in which I think law school's changed me, and I'm not sure I like it. Instead of making me smarter or transforming me into someone with an elevated ability for analysis, I've just become...a smaller person, empathetically.

You know, it does matter to me what people think of me. It doesn't define who I am, no, but it matters. I care about other people's opinions, especially when those people happen to be people I care about, and like. I don't like not being liked. I don't like being judged. I don't like feeling as if I am stripping myself of any respect I once had in someone else's esteem.

These could very well be my own anxieties and guilty conscience projecting onto others, but either way, I suppose it comes down to one thing:

I don't have to love everything about someone to like her, and whether or not I like her shouldn't affect the basic respect I have for her. So I should stop being a hypocrite and stop talking trash and stop being like a melodramatic high schooler. This is not the kind of person I'd respect. This is not the kind of person I'd like to be.

So...I'm sorry. And I'll say it again.

November 6th. :)

this world has taken its toll on me

If ever anyone were bad at emails, I would be. I'm just not very good at life updates, I guess, over email or over the phone. What should I say? What's important to know? I owe my parents a fairly lengthy phone call about my future.

My future.

I say it like I know what it's going to be like, but it's this entirely nebulous, uncertain thing in so many respects.

I feel like I'm not trying hard enough, and yet I'm so tired all of the time. It's actually rather distressing.

I used to be able to make compound sentences or something like that.

I'm not unhappy, just somewhat concerned and a little stressed, and mostly tired. Is this normal? Was I ever normal?

Not emo. Too tired to be emo. Big Bang's new MV and album is happy-making though. I will go to sleep early and have energy to care about things once again, damn it.

I wish I were better than mediocre at something.

friendship in an hourglass

I met J in 2003, early in the summer when I was 15 and just when she'd turned 13. When did she leave? Her family moved to Singapore either in 2004 or 2005...all the years blend together now, memories of when we were younger, when we were together and apart, freer, more tied up in shackles of our own mind, more naive, less knowledgable of all the mistakes we could make.

I've seen her a fair number of times since then, because for two years after she let, she'd visit each Christmas and each summer. Then there was a gap for a year and half when I didn't see her at all, until she visited this past summer. She's 18 now. I'm 20, 21. It feels like it's been so very long that I've known her, so long since we first made friends, so long since she's been halfway around the world. We've both grown and changed in so many ways that in sometimes I don't recognize her anymore, the little glimpses of her I get from our emails or Facebook or chats. Yet when I saw her in person in July, she was still so essentially her, everything I once knew, just grown up.

I wonder what I look like to her. I wonder what she thinks from what she knows of my life now. I'm not afraid of any judgment from her, not her, never her, but I wonder what she sees. I know I've changed a lot, even in just the past few months. College changed me dramatically from high school in certain ways, especially regarding my relationship with my parents. Law school has already changed me dramatically from college as well, in other ways, possibly the way I relate to other people, or the way I'm more comfortable with myself.

J's gone through so many things I can't even imagine. The world between the U.S. and Singapore are so different, from culture to school system to ease of international travel. There are some things I feel like we just can't empathize with each other about, even if we may sympathize. That doesn't detract from our friendship, no, but it's a matter of fact. She's been through a lot that I won't understand. I've probably been through a lot that she won't understand either.

This applies not just to J, though, who left early in our friendship for another part of the world, and who remains one of my most important people. This applies to anyone who's known me since I was in 8th grade, or earlier, or later. What do you see when you see me now? Maybe it's not where you imagined I'd be; maybe I'm not the person you thought I'd be, or that I thought I'd be. Maybe you don't understand.

And that's okay. It's not fair to think everyone will be able to understand how I ended up here, who I am, what I've done, become, accomplished, achieved, failed, lost.

All that I ask of you is to understand that maybe you can't understand. Accept that. Embrace that. (Love me anyway.)

I'll return the favor, because that's what friends do.

this is the big bang

Boy, I love your style, love your smile
Wish that you could be only mine, be only mine
I can't let it go, I don't know what you're doing to me
You're so fine, ooh you're so fine

Update later, I guess. Oh Halloween, you don't really enthuse me. Now I just need to sleep.