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.

i'm not sure that's the answer you're looking for

Okay, I'm confused and a little creeped out. Mostly confused, though, because I am apparently bad at life. Unintentionally bad, but bad nonetheless.

I should just move to a cave and be horrible to people, and maybe things will be less confusing. I don't feel particularly bad (okay, I do, somewhat) because mostly I am confused.

And selfish.

And it's weird that I have no one "back home" to talk to about this stuff because I'm the eldest of them. Life, how strange...

Who ever expected my life to be even close to this melodramatic? I feel ridiculous.




Also: What the fuck.

Mei is...

Stressed out, mildly ill, and emotionally drained.