This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper
Before I knew that the line in the title referred to an H-bomb, I always thought it was an apt description for a lot of situations in life. I remember hearing from my English teacher in high school that once you write something, it’s not your own anymore and it bears different meanings to everyone who reads it. To me, this line summarizes quiet desperation. How sometimes you expect the end to come amongst pomp and circumstance, but what you don’t know is that the ending started just as soon as everything began and it sneaks up on you. And to cap it all off, you not only lose what you have, you also lose what you might have had, and that is infinitely harder.
During yoga class this week, my teacher talked about how you should cultivate a sense of detachment. In this case she wasn’t referring to not connecting with anything or anyone, but detachment in the sense that you should not be too invested on the outcome of situations. It’s a lesson I need to learn.
I also need to trust that things often work out for the best, and that there is a plan for me. I just wish God would clue me in on it sometimes (:
Damn to the Arrgh
A week ago, my roomate told me that he wanted to move out, and I did an internal happy dance (the running man and robot rendition, I was THAT happy). The day afterwards he said he was moving to Texas and he flew out to look for apartments. By Sunday, he had changed his mind and had chosen San Francisco. Which turned into I’m staying here until my lease ends yesterday. Of course he hadn’t deemed it important enough to actually tell me of his plans, considering that he would have been breaking his lease and putting me in a bad financial position, which pissed me off.
It is an education being around someone whose mood changes so much and who can go from being happy to being depressed in 2 seconds flat. I’m struggling with trying to be understanding of him, but at the same time not wanting to engage him because I never know how he’s going to react. I know the suckfest that is feeling like you don’t belong anywhere, and how isolating and awful that is and I’m trying hard to remember that when I interact with him. What I can’t stand is when he becomes mean and says hurtful and (frankly) childish things to me that are unwarranted and disrespectful. He is also needs so much attention and time that I can’t give him. He’s gotten jealous because I spend more time with my friends. He says he feels excluded when I don’t invite him to do things with me. He complains that whenever I cook I don’t plan for him. Whenever I try to address what he’s saying, he doesn’t listen to me because he reacts with his emotions, and doesn’t listen with his mind, therefore there is no reasoning with him. He’s like a clingy, needy, possesive boyfriend that I never wished to have.
It’s interesting being on the other side of equation now. What I can say now is that I am so glad to have had friends, real friends who stuck with me through my periods of depression. And while I don’t think my roommate and I can be friends because of our personality differences, I will try harder to be more compassionate. I have/had been praying very hard about this situation, and I thought it was all going to be resolved when he left. But maybe God has other plans (who said something like, man plans, and God laughs?), and I just have to be accepting. I know this post is not nice at all, but I decided to put it up because no one knows who I’m talking about. A girl needs an outlet (umm, other than all of the friends that I’ve already bored to tears with this story, or that… complete stranger in the waiting room) sometimes.
Ch-ch-changes
An appropriate title for a post right after the elections. I’m not from the US, but it’s been my surrogate home for 10 years (and counting), and I am elated that so many people recognized that there is need for change and a shift in the national consciousness in some fundamental areas like the environment, and foreign policy. But of course, this webpage is all about me, so to hell with elections (:
I curse the day when I thought getting a roommate through Craigslist was a good idea. What everything boils down to is that it was very poor judgment on my part and now I have to live with it for a whole year. Initially this post was fairly slanderous in nature and I was going to write viciously one sided and embellished accounts of the time he did something and I got SO UPSET but I realize now that that probably wouldn’t be very nice of me, and possibly bar me from getting into heaven. And I really, really want to make it there eventually if only because I want to buy my favorite apostles some beer.
So instead I’m writing about things that need to change with me. I need to be more assertive, and hold my own ground. I cannot keep swallowing my anger or the things that bother me, because eventually I am going to explode, and that ain’t going to be pretty. It’s one of my many patterns, letting people walk all over me while silently resenting it, and I need to start setting some rules for myself.
One of the things that I’ve always believed in is a person’s ability to choose who they want to be, and act accordingly — the truest measure of a person is their actions. I’ve always tried to live up to my image of a good person, someone who was compassionate and kind, who would give strangers the shirt off their back and selflessly give up the last piece of chocolate cake because you know your friend really, really wants it. That image is still there, but now the ideal is tempered by accounting for my human frailties. I get angry and resentful when people try to take advantage of small kindnesses, so I need to start speaking up whenever this happens. I wish I could be more humble and forgiving and that these things wouldn’t bother me, but that is a work in progress.
Being non-confrotational means that I use my go-to defense mechanism when I’m mad – mute withdrawal. And that’s something that I need to work on too, because I realize it comes accross as cold and uncaring, and for the most part I do believe that dialogue is the best way to resolve conflict.
So, a mental toast to new beginnings.
Killing me softly
One of my dearly held beliefs is that school is fun, and learning is awesome.
Right now though, my life consists of work, work, classes, homework, studying, more homework for good measure, sleep, waking up in the middle of the night and lying awake, shivering and whimpering in a fetal position at the thought of just another day of so much WORK, then work again. Three weeks into the semester I am already burning out.
I haven’t been in school for six years; I underestimated what that meant. I have to reference my dusty old linear algebra books for derivations and formulas that I don’t even remember existed. I have put so much effort into this, but I am so scared that my best is not good enough.
But I am not giving up. I can do this – I KNOW I can do this — but what the freak happens if I can’t?
The parent trap
My childhood was — well, not an ideal one. I grew up thinking that I was a disappointment (because I wasn’t a boy), being called stupid (everytime I did something my parents didn’t agree with) and boring (because I liked to read instead of play outside). When I was six, I remember overhearing one of my parents say that it would have been better if I hadn’t been born, and I’ve carried that feeling of unwanted-ness around with me. It’s not that I felt unloved; it was more that I felt my parents loved me despite of who I was rather than because of it.
After a lot of reflection, now I understand that they were very young when they had me, and that they were raising me like they were raised; in their shoes I would have done far, far worse. I don’t blame them for anything, and love my family more than ever. But all these experiences have made an indelible mark on my character, and even though I’m trying to grow and become a better person, whenever I am around my parents I revert to my old insecurities and the worst version of myself. I become defensive, sometimes angry and withdraw into myself. I want to do everything I can to please them, and when their desires and dreams are not in line with mine, I feel incredibly guilty, which in turn makes me depressed and angry. [As an aside -- this characteristic of mine has prompted me to do many a rash thing that I would have never done otherwise. First to come to my mind: enter a freaking pageant. Tons of people staring you while you have makeup slathered on and hair as big as Marge Simpson's while you have a fake smile plastered on your face -- my worst nightmare].
Even the smallest thing that my parents ask for that I can’t fulfill makes me feel like I’m letting them down. My mom asked me for one of those chicken rotisseries (you set it, and … FORGET IT!) thingies on the day before I was supposed to fly back home. I looked in three different stores and called about five more before I gave up. And still I felt like I hadn’t done enough.
When I’m around them, I keep falling into the trap that I’ve dug myself into of thinking only of other people, of their wants and needs and not of my own. I do it unconsciously and I know they don’t expect it of me, but I can’t live with myself otherwise. I don’t know where to draw the line between being nice and pleasing people at the expense of myself.
On complications
When I wrote that I thought there would be more stories to tell, I imagined they would have to do with coming home and finding blood splattered all over the walls, with both Tai and Bud lying stigmata-like on the floor. It never crossed my mind that it would have to do with the roomate and myself. Naively (as my therapist and everybody and their mother have been telling me), I didn’t foresee the possibility that there might be some attraction going on. It’s made things very awkward, and I hate not being able to be at my home and just relax. I find myself avoiding going home or hiding up in my room.
Even though we have talked about it, and we know that things are not going happen between us, that feeling of weirdness is still there. If anyone has any ideas of how to deal with a situation like this, I would love to hear them, because this is more drama than I want in my life.
Weekend blues
The past weekend was hard. The first half of the year has gone by so quickly, and I feel like I’ve been running on empty for a while now and just barely keeping everything together. It doesn’t look like it’s slowing down any either.
This weekend though, I had more time for reflection (which is unusual nowadays) and all that happened was that I ended up a little depressed. Even though I have made progress, it is still hard for me to stop my first impulses. You know what I mean, we all have a kind of mental pattern that we follow unconsciously and that is hard to get out of. So, whenever I have free time to think about my life, I always start by looking at the bad things and putting myself down. This time around it had to do with my being single and almost 30, the fact that one of my exes is in a happy relationship and the other is getting married, and how lonely and pathetic I must seem to the world. It doesn’t help that I feel unattractive, and I’m getting the thirty year old arm jiggle and wrinkles, and dear god, shouldn’t an almost 30 year old woman stop having pimples at some point? It hardly seems fair that I got out of puberty with no boobs and extra acne (:
Trying to change the way you think is exhausting, because you have to be ‘on’ and aware all the time. Whenever a self-loathing thought comes into my head, I need to first realize that I’m doing it and then tell myself to stop. And a second later tell myself to stop again. And again, and again.
Today I want to indulge and give in; I want to think that I’m a fucking moron, that I’m so stupid to even dare to apply to a PhD where they will never accept me, that no one is ever going to love me, and just fucking give the hell up and go home and read a good book and cry.
Date-onomics
For most of my life, I have been a self deprecating, book-loving, geeky nerd. I never dated anyone in high school, and have been in two serious relationships that started out as friendships. So, I finally had my first ‘date’ when I was 27. And when I mean date, is that it was pretty clear that one of us wanted to get into the other’s pants. I’ll let you guess who was who.
Lately, some of the guys I have met have been asking me to do “friendly” things. And this is where the confusion arises. If you are hanging out, not doing anything romantic just doing stuff friends do, by yourselves, is that a date? None of them have tried to feel me up during the movies or done the yawn-hug high school move. I am mostly afraid that by hanging out with them, I am giving them the impression that I am interested. If you hadn’t noticed from this site I tend to have a very playful, blunt sense of humor, which some people might misrepresent as flirting. Then, starts the second guessing – “Ooh, his arm ‘accidentally’ brushed my arm, does that mean that he wants to do me? Or was it just really an accident? Or maybe it was a subconscious manifestation of his desire to do me? Or a coincidence that our arms just happened to be there at the same time – wait, who said there were no such things as coincidences?”
I’m not sure where I’m going with the post, other than I’m way too old to figure out this whole date-onomics thing now. Why can’t a guy just be up front and say – I think you’re cute, let’s go make out? That I can answer with a yes or no, instead of being left guessing (:
Square one
ARRGGGH I totally did jinx myself. Although we had a verbal agreement, the seller decide to put the condo off the market. A (silly, superstitious) part of me thinks that it’s because I posted about it. So no more posts about moving until every i is dotted and every t crossed.
