it's funny: I always have the words for other people

So it's weird because I was feeling like this yesterday too. The whole "what is the point? why am I doing this?" and "I WILL NEVER BE HAPPY". It is all very dramatic, just like you said, but it doesn't stop being scary or discouraging.

I guess I just want to say I empathize and that, no matter how hard it is for me, I think in the end we can just do our best. I don't think most people have a fixed goal in mind with happiness - and those who do may not be totally realistic. We should spend our lives striving not for some imaginary future happiness but to better ourselves, love ourselves, do something good with what we have. And, like you said, appreciate it.

I don't think you're bland or useless or unlovable. I think you're far too human for that. :) I think you have passion and you have joy and you have sorrow. You care, and you're a friend, and you are smart and capable and it's hardest to convince ourselves (I know how hard it is to convince myself) but I hope it helps a little just to hear the words, even if from someone else.

Now it's only a matter of learning to listen to myself. Or maybe listen to myself less, because I tend to overthink, to panic, to gasp at life like I can't risk the pause to breathe.

plastic smiles on our plastic lives

When people tell me they admire me, I feel like a fraud. They don't know how hard it is sometimes and how much I want to give up. C says she's proud of me for keeping on, despite the struggles. She doesn't know the struggles. She doesn't know that keeping on is merely inertia, not strength of will. I don't know how to stop.

When I see how scared other people are, I feel like a fraud. They have real worries and real fears. They face things I have never or will never, and I should be grateful. They face things I've gone through myself, but I don't know what to say because it's not like I've overcome my own fears. How can I give comfort or advice?

I feel like a fraud either way. I wish I were brave enough to carry on through, one way or the other. I'm afraid of this gray area and narrow space, tunnel vision to the ground because I'm too scared to look back or look forward.

I feel like I don't deserve the right to be afraid, because I'm a fraud.

我的真情不再随便给

What does it mean to know someone? What does it mean to love someone?

They say you can never really know someone without personal interaction, the brutal honesty of eye contact and shared space. They say you cannot know someone without seeing them at their worst, at their lowest, in desperate situations or in unexpected ones. They say you cannot love them if you do not know them.

Why is this so?

What does it mean to know someone? It's nothing more than how much trust you extend to them, how much honesty you receive in return. How do you draw the contours of knowledge and the boundaries of truth? What is knowledge but the dissemination of truth? And what is truth if not the honesty in someone's eyes or in their smile, honesty in words and in laughter and in tears and in gratitude. There is truth in the way they live every day, in the thoughts they think and the words they speak; there is truth in how someone chooses to live their life.

We rarely get the whole picture or the full story, light illuminating every mysterious and unknown corner of a person. Everyone hides in different ways, from different people, carefully selective in who we allow to "know" us. We don masks in our daily lives, switching from one to another in consideration of our audience. No one knows the whole world; we only accept what we see or what we hear or what we experience with a kernel of faith.

Is it fair to ask for someone to be laid bare before us, stripped to the bones of their essence? In life we take what people are willing to give, the light that they choose to shine, and accept with faith their honest choices. This is what is given to us.

What does it mean to love someone if not to trust them?

The concepts of knowledge and truth and love are ill-defined, because words fall short in describing the feeling that suffuses us. No one knows us better than we know ourselves: we know what we feel. We know what it feels like to love.




And if you are in love with a lie - at least you are in love.

(It's never the love you regret, but the lie.)

these are the signs heralding exam period

The onset of exam period makes certain things true:

1. I will spend more time wasting time because I am an executive procrastinator who finds five gazillion other things she'd like to do once the pressure is on and she is faced with exams and deadlines. Organize my bookshelf? Plan for the summer? Plot novels I will never write? Start blogging again about pointless things? Let's go!

2. I will eat out a lot more because cooking takes up time I must reserve for procrastinating on studying. Oh my credit card bill of the month will undoubtedly make me sad. See? This is why I need to plan for the summer and the job I must acquire to provide myself an income. These things are important - clearly more important than the more imminent exams.

3. I will hate undergrads with a passion. I know and love my share of them as long as they are not actually anywhere in my proximity. Undergrads I encounter and am required to deal with personally make me wish there were a ditch or moat surrounding the law school into which all undergrads fell. They are crawling all over the place when exams approach, desperate to find some place to study that isn't their dorm or their overcrowded undergrad library. Understandable, of course. To which I say: GET THE HELL OUT OF MY SCHOOL, YOUNG DESPICABLE WASTES OF SPACE TAKING UP MY AIR. Or, y'know, with actual curse words substituted in.

4. I will still sleep and eat on a fairly normal basis. This is, I hear and know from experience, somewhat uncommon among the general population come crunch time. But I'm old, all right? I went through my periods of shit-awful no-sleep, too-much-caffeine weeks of all-nighters in college. I burned myself out of them. I just don't think the trade off is worth it: when you're that exhausted and pushing yourself that hard, you're not actually retaining much of what you're trying to cram into your brain. You're much better off making an actual schedule instead of pushing everything off until 3am, getting sleep at night, and, um, eating and drinking like a normal functional human being. Your body will appreciate it and so, probably, will your brain.

5. I will have mood swings. I am having mood swings. Apologies in advance if you have to deal with them except, not really, because I hate everything. Except the few things and people I still love no matter what (it's a short list). But, really, I hate everything. "I wish I knew how to quit you" indeed. My life is reduced to quoting Brokeback Mountain - you realize how sad this is, right?

your youth is a precious gift: what will you do with it?

So I have young friends. Sometimes I despair that they make me feel old and sometimes I despair that they are so young and so unlearned to the realities of the world (as compared to my grizzled years of wisdom and experience, of course). Usually these declarations of despair are made in jest or at least not in complete seriousness, because I know the thing about youth is that you get the luxury of growing up. It happens, whether you expect or welcome it.

Sometimes, though, I am profoundly grateful that some of my friends are young, because it gives me hope that they will grow up and learn and grow past certain things like wishing rape on people they don't like.

It's never okay to wish that on anyone, even jokingly. It's not a joke. It's not anywhere near funny.

And it is especially not okay, considering the number of women who have been raped, to wish it on another female. Not that male rape isn't a problem or a crime (it is, and an absolutely under-discussed one at that), but considering that 9/10 rape victims are female, it is a particularly significant issue when people continue perpetuating misogynistic viewpoints.

Please, please figure out that This Is Not Okay.

I said something and the friend in particular did not respond, but I hope it at least got her thinking and that she will be more cautious about saying such things in the future.

Another friend flipped out today when she found out that one of her acquaintances has been raped, making it the third person she knew who had encountered some sort of sexual violence or violation. She was shocked. Understandably so, of course, because it never means as much as it does when it's personal. It hurts more when it strikes close to home and is much scarier - terrifying in its reality.

But the first thing I thought was: You know...rape is not nearly as uncommon as you might think.

The statistics say 1 in 3 women worldwide (1 in 6 in the U.S.) have been sexually assaulted in their lifetime, surviving a completed or attempted rape. That is a pretty staggering figure.

But this friend's reaction made me wonder if hers wasn't just a reflection of the way society at large lives in denial or ignorance about the realities of rape. I know I care and I know people around me who do, but I also know people who don't think about things like this, who probably don't because it's never been relevant for them. It's never become a personal problem until someone - maybe them, maybe a friend, maybe a family member - is raped.

Do we have to wait until that point before we start paying attention and caring?

It's not that I think I'm all-knowing. It's not that I think I know so much more than these friends do. But like another friend, K, said: "I learned a lot about the world after a year or two at college". And it's just that: trying to broaden our minds and worlds to at least be more cognizant of all that we don't know. To understand more how much there is to know.

I'm not trying to judge anyone. I am just hoping people will at least be open to growing past their ignorance and being receptive to all there is out there to learn. And sometimes I am grateful for my young friends because that means they have that much more time to learn.

But you're never too old to keep learning and I hope to, even when I am no longer considered "young".



(statistics from:
http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/sexual-assault-victims
http://www2.ucsc.edu/rape-prevention/statistics.html)

The world is composed of judgmental people.

I am one of those people.

But it's not like I'm not getting judged right back in return.

also look up Acoustic Cafe's Last Carnival

A combination of these two soothe away the school-induced stress headache:

http://www.rainymood.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PMSIkPKzz4

I really have nothing else to say for now; my exhaustion has wiped out any creative vestiges left to blog with. All that remains is a state of semi-panic, semi-hatred for the last two weeks of school I have to - somehow - get through. And then onto exams which, at this point, seem like a relief.

the springtime of our youth?

I love spring. I love it even though the pollen count climbs ever higher and covers the world in a thin film of yellow and has everyone around me (myself included) tearing up and sneezing in the most unattractive manner. Despite the human reaction to spring, the world around me is so gorgeous that I don't mind. I love the sunlight, warm and golden, not yet scorching hot and oppressive like it gets during summer. The leaves are just budding, young and spring green, and the flowers - spring flowers are my favorite.

I keep telling myself and others that my favorite flower's probably the gardenia but I might as well own up to the fact right now that it isn't. I love gardenias - they're pretty and they smell divine, but they are summer flowers and they grow on shrubs. I love spring flowers best: cherry and peach blossoms, tulips and daffodils, irises and hydrangeas and everything that is colorful and perennial and gorgeous.

Daffodils are so sunny and cheerful; tulips come in a palette of colors that just makes me happy. White tulips can be so elegant, too. Whenever (if?) I get married one day, I think I'll want tulips there. They are just so pretty. ♥

There are other thoughts I want to blog about later, but right now I'm just enjoying the gorgeous weather and season.

anyone but dook

Fuck the Dookies are going to be endlessly obnoxious and aggravating tomorrow. More so than usual, I mean.

Oh Butler, so damned close it hurts.

ETA: It serves me right for posting while tired and angry. The word I was looking for was "insufferable".

Dookies in a word.

i'm more than a man in a phony red sheet

So there's a facebook group called "we used to be friends until you got a bf/gf" which symbolizes the common problem of friends becoming MIA once they've acquired a significant other. They get so wrapped up in each other that they forget about spending time with friends (i.e., people who aren't the SO). It's natural to an extent, especially in a new relationship, and it's important to spend time together in order to develop that relationship...but it's a common problem because many people cross an invisible line of spending too much time with only the SO. You can't get so involved in a relationship that you forget to be an independent, individual person with your own interests and friends.*

But that's not really the case here, because this particular friend does see people besides the SO: those people just happen all to be the SO's friends, not her friends. There are a number of reasons why this is also understandable, but in the end I still quite feel like it's not quite right. If it's going to be an actual relationship, both people need to recognize and become familiar with the friends and people important in their SO's lives; it can't just be a one-way street.

At least the friend in question still makes some effort to see the friends (friend) most important to her on her own.

...friend. Just one. There is only one person among the ostensible group of friends who is important enough to make an effort to see and talk to when all other time is spent with the SO and the SO's friends. It's saddening, disappointing, and eye-opening. Though I can't say I'm entirely surprised.

I wonder if there's a facebook group called "we used to be roommates until you got a bf/gf".

Though I suppose I shouldn't be complaining about having the apartment to myself. My main struggle is my lack of reliable transportation now - to school or to, you know, buy groceries. Which needs to be done soon. I guess I'll just have to beg favors and pull out the bribes.

I'm not bitter and I do want her to be happy, even if it's turned out that we're not actually close friends. But if I'm speaking truthfully, the relationship has definitely complicated and added stress to my life. I should totally involve myself in a relationship solely for the benefit of a car. /joking

Nothing in the world right now is worth the drama and stress and emotional engagement required of a relationship.


*I should probably qualify this with the fact that my perspective is entirely colored by how I am evidently in no way ready for relationships or commitment because for me, right now, I come first. My family comes first. My friends come first. And oh man do I need alone time more than I need cuddling/sharing/whatever time.