Vacation Blues

Life update time.

There's about one and half months left until I graduate from residency. Doesn't time fly? I'm slightly dreading next week, where I'll be covering MICU night float for one week. But it's probably the last high-stress rotation of my residency until I enter fellowship. 

I've been on vacation for the past two weeks. Before that, I had two weeks of research. So in essence, I've essentially been just chilling for the past month. 

The first week of research was glorious. The Person was out of town visiting family, so I was alone with the cat for a week. I thrive in self-imposed structure. During that week, I was up before 7 AM every morning. I would do board exam prep questions and set a very specific daily goal for my research data collection. Usually I'd finish the first half of this goal by lunchtime. For an entire week I never broke my fast before lunchtime. For an entire week I cooked all my meals and didn't order take-out. After lunch was my "free-time" which I spent however I pleased. This included shopping, buying new houseplants and revamping my balcony garden, reading, and writing. Just before dinnertime, I would exercise with Ring Fit Adventure on my Nintendo Switch. Again, I cooked all my dinners. After, I would work on the second-half of my research daily goal until I finished, and then I would go to bed. 

This probably sounds fucking miserable to most people, but I was a happy camper during that week. I felt productive, I felt well-balanced and self-cared, I found joy in the company of my cat and plants. My favorite hours were in the morning when I would sit by the couch next to the window with my laptop and a pot of freshly brewed high-mountain loose leaf tea, and I would watch the light move, shining on my Maidenhair plant and two pots of cat-grass. 

The second week of research block was not nearly as productive, but it was still a happy one. I celebrated my 30th birthday. YY came to visit with her fiance, and we ate our way through southern California. There was a week of clinic in between that was truncated for scheduling reasons and relatively chill.

Then came my two weeks of vacation. 

I think there are several reasons for this, but when I think back to these past two weeks, I've been increasingly irritable and melancholy. I think the most obvious is the unavoidable knowledge that my "free time" is coming to an end. Other reasons likely include the social anxiety I battled with during my class retreat (which occurred during the first weekend of vacation). And I think the biggest thing is the pressure I've been putting on myself to write.

Writing is only sometimes fun. The majority of the time, it's like feeling constipated and trying to find an appropriate laxative. I've tried many techniques this past month. I bought an Alphasmart Neo2 (which actually worked pretty well when I needed to literally force shit out). I scribbled on a notepad. I messed with outlines, vignettes, free-writes. All of this was dedicated towards the still-untitled medicine rom-com.

Maybe it's not kosher to compare your own children, but my stories are not real children with feelings, so whatever. Med-Rom-Com has been a challenge because it hasn't occupied the enormous amount of headspace over time the way EP has. For one thing, because I stewed in EP for over a decade, most of the characters including secondary ones are full-fleshed people in my head. I know their motivations, can articulate their relationships with other characters. Meanwhile, I've been working on a scene between the hero/heroine, and I feel like I'm still trying to pin down their personalities and mannerisms. It gave me a newfound appreciation for what I'd managed to achieve with EP.

During this pandemic, I discovered the romance genre and have read a bucket-load of romance books. This includes a series called Immortals After Dark, courtesy of a podcast I randomly discovered called Fated Mates. Paranormal romance is not normally my cup of tea, but because I enjoy the episodes where the podcast hosts deep dive and analyze books on their show, I decided I would read the namesake series that the podcast is named after.

It's been an interesting experience. The podcast was created in 2018, so their discussions and analyses are from a current perspective. However, the early books in the IAD series were written in the mid-late 2000s. To give context, this is about the same time I first started writing EP as a high-schooler. It is actually quite fascinating to analyze how our attitudes towards relationships, whether heterosexual romantic or female-female rivals, has changed. The alpha-holes whose "protectiveness" of the heroines now come across as intolerably domineering. Slut-shaming other girls or women is no longer so acceptable or prevalent. 

Anyhoo. Today was the first time in over a year that I consciously returned to EP. I took a notepad and literally scribbled down the problem areas, any out-of-the-box changes that could be made, and what the domino effects of these changes would lead to. Vacation's almost over, but I think if anything, my struggles with Med-Rom-Com have helped me realize that it still needs to stew in daydreams a bit longer. In a reversal, I might just end up taking another crack at EP. Now that I've been emotionally distanced from it for over a year, I'll probably be much less precious about hacking away the parts that don't work anymore.

Raze to the Ground

I haven't looked at my project in a week.

Objectively, I know that one measly rejection is nothing. NOTHING. But psychically, it did something to me. Doubt was already creeping on me, but for the first time in my life, I seriously thought that maybe it was never going to happen. That maybe this idea that had sucked up so much of my brain space for over a decade was completely worthless.


Out of self-preservation, I retreated. I avoided the publishing blogs I once read daily. I ignored my journal. I played Breath of the Wild for hours on end, numbing my brain so that I wouldn't get sucked in too deeply into my thoughts.

A couple good things happened, though.

1) Someone at one of my residency interviews had said something about writing being a lonely thing. This came back to me recently, as I felt like no one around me knew what I was going through. In a moment of weakness, I told the Person about how I was feeling, even though he said he hadn't noticed any change in my mood at all. He couldn't understand why I was feeling so bad about one rejection, especially when we've gone through so many in our medical careers. But all the same, he was there to listen. And it helped.

2)  For some reason or other, I ended up revisiting the BIG BANG blog I used to follow back in college. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Taeyang, aka mister "I need a girl", had gotten married recently. Looking for a fix of nostalgia, I started listening to the lesser-known "old" songs that had been playlist staples for my college years. Always, Foolish Love, Oh Ah Oh, Cafe.

The darkest time in my life was 2009-2010. My first year of college. My confidence tanked after receiving abysmal grades. I didn't know if my GPA was salvageable, or if I could ever make it to medical school.

Coincidentally, this was around the same time I was introduced to BIG BANG. And I am one hundred percent serious when I say that they helped drag me out of the hole I had sunken into. I've written before about what T.O.P meant to me during that period of time, but the long and short of it is, the story of how he made it lit a fire for me. That the surest way of ensuring something doesn't happen is if you give up. Even if it involves losing 40 lbs in 40 days in order to be deemed "slim" enough to join a Kpop group.

I need this break. It doesn't mean I'm turning my back on it all. But I need time to recalibrate. And when it's all done, I need to be ready to raze my darlings to the ground and build something stronger from the ashes.

Bulls on Parade

A lot weighing on my mind these days.

1) I was a hot mess this last Wednesday. Rank lists for residency were due that night. The realization that my future career has now been determined by the match algorithm mowed me over like a train. Instead of going out to our class's rank list submission party, I felt physically ill at the thought of having to chat with my classmates about the match and instead stayed home and played the new Zelda game until my eyes were gonna melt in their sockets. A friend of mine texted me to ask why I skipped the party, and I simply left the response at: "I am mentally indisposed."

2) I received my first query rejection last night while I was at a friend's chocolate fondue party. In hindsight, I was not ready to query, and I was half-expecting a rejection at that point. It was a sort of curiosity-provoked act of impulse while I was waiting for residency interviews, because the agent in question was closing for queries around that time and I was all, 'Oh no, what if they never come back?' Still, not gonna lie -- it stung. I am already feeling very much in doubt about everything, and the letter was like another swing at my kneecaps.

3) Serious question I have been pondering... has my temper been shortening with age? Or is it the cumulative stresses of this political climate/medical life that is short-circuiting my ability to clamp down on my ire? I embarrassingly lost my cool at the Person when we were at Krewe of Muses over something really stupid. I snapped at a friend when he kept talking in pseudo-African accent after watching Black Panther.

4) Along a more serious line though, a friend of mine (Skillet) and I were talking last night about how our medical schools need to do more in teaching us how to handle situations when patients say things that are offensive or inappropriate. The one time I almost really lost it with a patient was right around when Charlottesville happened. As a caveat, this patient may have had some sort of hypomania, as he had very pressurized speech. I saw him in clinic with the intent of asking him to enroll in my research study, and so I listened politely as he talked on and on. That is, until he went on to say that "Some people are asking to be run over" in reference to the girl who was killed when a car rammed into the counter-protestors. I was absolutely livid, and after telling him I didn't agree with him, I said I didn't think he was suitable for my study and left the room.

Skillet, who's very openly gay, told me that he had a patient--an older woman who was very sweet and conversational until she found out that he was from Miami. "Miami... all those immigrants... and Cubans," she said with disgust. When the attending came in, she requested that my friend not see her anymore.

These are only some of the more atrocious incidents I have encountered since living in Louisiana. Last night, I shared the story again of how I had a residency interviewer tell me, "I don't speak Chinese, hope English is okay!" While my friends responded in aghast, a classmate's husband interjected, "Oh, I'm sure she was just being friendly."

"Yeah, I'm sure she was trying to be nice, but that doesn't mean it's okay to say that."

"Well you know, our society is so reactionary these days..."

We changed the subject before he could elaborate further. Which was for the best, because let me tell you, I was not in the mood to drop a truth bomb on his head.

This dude does not understand how insulting it is to be told, "Wow you speak really good English," when you have a fucking English major from Duke. This dude has never had to politely field questions about Chinese food from curious patients, until they tell you, "Oh you have to understand, we just don't get a lot of foreigners around these parts." In short, he does not understand what it's like to be constantly seen as a foreigner in the country you were born in.

And all of that's just from my own experiences. My friend, who is of Korean descent, was asked about her opinion of Kim Jong Un at an interview. When we were on our surgery rotation together, an anesthesiologist asked her if she has eaten dog before.

Yes, I am well aware that in all these instances, these were well-meaning people who genuinely were trying to be friendly. And maybe you can call me "reactionary," or whatever that term is supposed to signify. And yes, I know this dude does not understand what it's like for an Asian-American in this country. Maybe I would have done all of us a favor by gently educating him last night.

But is that my responsibility? This is what Skillet and I were talking about last night, before the rest of our classmates arrived. If we stayed in Louisiana to train and practice medicine, perhaps we'd make a difference in helping educate these communities or break their stereotyped ideas of what it means to be a gay man or an Asian-American woman. But for the two of us, at a certain point we just don't want to bear this burden.

freefall

i was sitting on the couch the other night

scrolling through some old pictures on my phone

when it suddenly dawned on me

there is a human being in this world who likes me.


What the hell?


Do I have a self-esteem problem? I don't think so. Maybe I did, when I was that quiet kid whose aspirations to be one of the "cool" emo kids were botched by a mother that refused to pay for clothes from Hot Topic and a daily tennis routine that annihilated any hope of pale ghostly skin. But you learn things when you strike out on your own for a while. You learn how to admire without coveting, to scoop yourself out of the fatalistic, pessimistic "why was i born this way" hole and tell yourself in a mantra, "i may have been this way, but who says i have to stay this way?" You grow into your own skin and soon enough, you learn to love the most important person: yourself.

And yet, the idea that someone else might feel the same way is fucking unbelievable.

WHY? ARE YOU INSANE? I want to shake this human by the collar, but I'm too proud to appear as if I am fishing for compliments. Since when did I possess the ability to inspire such grand chivalrous gestures? Since when did anyone ever feel compelled to prepare their heart as an offering to this false idol? The only explanation must be extreme desperation or absolute madness.

I'm not trying to be self-deprecating---"Aw shucks, who would ever feel a thing for sad ole me?" It's just that when you spend your whole life watching the ladies around you pair off with the gentlemen to dance, you start to believe that you're just simply not attractive (to the right people)... and that's okay. Just as you learn to accept that you're never going to be the cool emo kid, you accept your dealt cards and move on with your life.

Until you don't.

The Cynic

It's a cloudless Saturday afternoon, perfect for sitting under a red patio umbrella and sipping our milk teas. We talk of quarter-life crises and engagement frenzy, and she asks me if I've read Sheryl Sandberg's post from earlier in the week.

I did. I never read Lean In, but something about that post struck a tender part of me, like a muscle you never knew you had until it makes its soreness known. When I saw the photograph of Sheryl Sandberg and David Goldberg at the end of that aching post, that's when I realized what has changed. That when I let someone into my fortress of knives and ice that night in May, I willingly invited the possibility of being gutted from the inside out.

I tell my mother later in the car about how S and I discussed Sheryl Sandberg. It's been six years since S and I first met, and the conversation today was more solemn than it has ever been. We'd spoken of life and death, of how much we've changed in the past six years, and how much more things will change from here. I tell my mother about S's remark, that she could barely imagine the devastation if her boyfriend of almost three years passed away just as suddenly.

My mother replies mildly, "Oh yes, she's really dependent on him."

Her words startle me. "No," I say slowly. "I don't think that's what she meant."

"But she relies on him a lot," my mother says, her eyes on the road. "She lives at his place. He's the breadwinner between the two of them."

Something finally snaps in me. "Jesus, Mom. Why are you so cynical? Maybe she just loves him!"

There's a pause, as if my outburst has surprised her, before she responds with a short dry laugh. "Love? You guys are still young."

The car pulls up into the driveway, and we don't speak of this again.

Perhaps it is just my imagination, but for the rest of that day, my mother is quieter than usual. We hike through the trails in the old mercury mines in the hills behind our house. We stay near each other as the sunset turns the sky from blue to gold to pink, but neither of us speak a word.

Before I Die

On the side of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in downtown New Orleans, there is a long black wall with orderly repetitive lines in white print:

Before I die I want to _______________________________.

Fragments of colored chalk are scattered all around the concrete. People pass by, perusing through the completed sentences on the board. Some bend down to pick up a piece of chalk and contribute their own entries.

He and I sit on the parking lot curb by the Before I Die wall. The mid-afternoon May sun is warm on our backs. A trio of guys nearby laugh at the entry about wanting to "swim in a pool of beer." We can't leave this place without writing something, I say exasperatedly. Then what are you going to write? he asks.

It's not a matter of having nothing to write, but of having too many. They all sound so cliched in my head. Before I die I want to publish a novel. Before I die want to graduate from medical school. Before I die I want to become a mother. And then, there are other things that come to mind, that I don't to share with him because I am still too self-conscious.

But it occurs to me as we sit before that expansive board of scrawled hopes and dreams, just how much things have changed since our orbits collided. The paralyzing anxiety has been melting over time, and I come to the realization that the thought of checking off the "Before I Die's" with this person beside me isn't such a terrifying idea anymore.

Less than a week later, I sit in my car with my finger on the ignition button of my Prius. He has already gone back into his apartment complex, and I can feel sleepiness already ensnaring my brain. But in that moment, I pause. For months I'd been waiting, listening for that intuition and gut instinct to speak to me, and suddenly, it's there. Clear and crystal as a bell.

Oh fuck it.

I ask him to come back outside. And I take the plunge.

420

My two halves are at war. I am a scientist and dramatist. My nature is to document every little moment, to sculpt a narrative from chaos, to distill logic from the noise of the world, to commit those moments into words before my memories turn gray. And yet since February, the recluse in me has hoarded it all inside, as if these treasures that stay in my brain will forever remain mine and mine alone.

He and I sit at the Carousel Bar in the French Quarter. The carousel spins round, one revolution every fifteen minutes, as the bartender serves two sazeracs on the counter. The canopy above is dotted with fairy lights, and I watch my reflection in the mirrored panels floating overhead, twisting like a kaleidoscope. I can't recall any of the conversation with clarity, but I remember the overwhelming hyperawareness of one's proximity--a hand on the back of my chair, a brush against my shoulder.

When we make it to the House of Blues, the smell of pot pervades in a haze. The stage is larger than I imagined, glowing blue in the darkness. Fifteen minutes until show starts, but the bouncer shrugs."It's 4/20 -- might take another 50 minutes before anything happens." I'd expected to see more gutter punks, with their grunge-punk tattered chic, like at the FKA Twigs show, but it's easy to forget that the tickets for this show were fifty bucks--especially when I won the pair of tickets for free.

I don't know any of Tyler the Creator's tracks, other than "Yonkers" and "She" from a cursory search on Youtube, but my bones move to the beat as the bodies bounce in sync all around me. I don't know the words coming out of the rapper's mouth, save the f-bombs littered indiscriminately here and there. I become one of a myriad, a myriad becoming one dark entity of limbs slinking entranced like a cobra before a spitting snake-charmer.

We talk in the car as he drives me home. I have sat here many times since that first time in February, but I feel on edge--more so than usual. Days away from the eve of my twenty-fourth year, and I remain a thirteen-year-old, watching the string of firsts play out half in terror and half in thrill. After that evening at Bacchanal when the revelations spilled out one by one, he has dealt with me as if I am a deer--slowly and patiently, no sudden movements. I have grown less anxious in his presence in the past two months, but there is something different this evening. Subtle gestures, ghost touches here and there, and I can feel it in the stilted air as we stand on the porch an hour before midnight. When I pull away from an embrace, I feel it, hear it, before I register that flutter of movement against my cheek and realize what he's done. Eighteen hours later, and I am still frozen in that moment on the porch--dazed, feverish, restless, and terrified of the uncharted territory before me.

Sunrise

I wrote about Daisy before. At the time, I'd remarked on how calmly she told me that she'd broken up with her boyfriend. The thing though, is that a few months later, I soon realized that she was clearly far more affected the break-up than she let on.

Post-graduation, Daisy and I have maintained our friendship through music. She recommends a song to me, I recommend a song to her, and our shared playlist is now at 40 songs. Usually, each music rec is accompanied by an exchange updating our daily lives. But more often, Daisy will call me without warning to talk. And for the most part, I will set down whatever I'm doing and oblige.

On Friday, half an hour before my date, Daisy called to confide in me. She revealed that she'd been seeing a therapist. Through the help of therapy, she'd come to the realization that she was over him but not over the breakup itself. Seeking closure, she contacted her ex-boyfriend, whom she hadn't spoken to in six months, and asked to meet. He agreed to meet. I told her to keep me updated.

As it turned out, instead of the closure she'd been hoping for, she left feeling even more confused than ever. Her ex-boyfriend admitted that he'd been insecure about her feelings for him, and how he'd hoped that she would fight for him when he suggested a break. But he didn't know Daisy as well as he should have--that she would guard her emotions and put up a strong face. In the end, she'd appeared unaffected by the break-up, and he parted ways thinking that he had done the right thing.

And while she'd convinced herself that he had moved on with his life, her ex-boyfriend admitted that he was still physically and emotionally attracted to her, and that he had missed her for the past six months. However, he came short of saying that he wanted to be in a relationship with her again. He also told her that when he watched the film Friends with Benefits recently, it reminded him of her.

Instead of joining in her rage at that last part, I saw things differently. I watched Friends with Benefits three years ago and can barely recall the plot, but I harbor a vague recollection of Mila Kunis being the one hesitant to get more serious and emotionally invested in Justin Timberlake. But even if my memory serves me wrong, I know one thing. The man I met last spring did not strike as the type who would so callously suggest being fuck buddies to his ex-girlfriend whom he hasn't spoken to in six months, especially after admitting that he is still emotionally attracted to her. When I told Daisy so, it sent her into a tailspin. Because everyone else she'd talked to had immediately written him off as an insensitive douchebag, making it that much easier for her to convince herself that she was done with him.

Why didn't he say straightforwardly that he wanted to get back together? she asked. Because you didn't give him an opening, I said. Because it's that much harder to open yourself up to rejection when you don't think you have a chance. Why didn't he say anything for six months, if he still cared? Why did I have to be the one to initiate this conversation? Because I know that as much as I might want closure, I am too scared and passive to ever act on that impulse. Because he might be the same as me.

Let me ask you this, I said to her. If there had been no confusion, if he'd made it clear that he wants to get back together with you.... would you be receptive to it? If yes, then I don't think you were right about being over him but not the break-up. I think deep down, you still have feelings for him, which is why you haven't been able to let go and have been so desperate to find closure.

I warned Daisy with the caveat that I didn't know him and could be reading him completely wrong, suggesting that she talk to her therapist before taking what I said too seriously. As it turned out, her therapist read the situation exactly the same as I did. None of Daisy's other friends had seen it the same way. I joked with Daisy that the next time she needed a therapy session, I could just chat for free. But the whole experience made me reflect for some time. Because while I am apparently becoming very good at dispensing advice about interpersonal relationships, there are some things I can't bring myself to do. Daisy was able to initiate the first step by summoning up the courage to e-mail her ex, when she could have easily just let sleeping dogs lie and wonder for the rest of her life how things had gone south. I talked to Y just on Friday about how life isn't a nice and neat narrative, how there are just things in life that we can never expect to get closure for. But now I wonder, if I weren't so proud and so afraid of making myself vulnerable to hurt, is the idea of closure actually as elusive as I've convinced myself to believe?

Five of Cups

Three years ago, on the night of the harvest moon, I pulled the Five of Cups from the witch's deck of tarot cards. She told me what I already knew.

G and I were in the French Quarter on Valentine's Day to see the parades. She wanted to see the fortune tellers with their crystals and cards, lined up at folding tables in front of the cathedral. I was blonde again that day, loose Goldilocks curls tucked under a snapback. G had her palm read by one of the ladies dressed in floral print garb. At first, I didn't want to partake in the fortunes, but in the end some feeling I can't quite describe made me sit down at her table.

Perhaps due to my external appearance, her palm reading was laughable. She told me I had a flair for drama, that I would likely have twins, that I had a tendency to go after the bad boys because I wanted to fix them, and that when I had enough of being a girl and was ready to be a woman, I should stop looking for a bad boy and find a good man. There were a few things she said that gave me pause, but considering the statistical odds of saying something remotely accurate, I was mostly unimpressed. But my interest wasn't in palm-readings. My fascination has always been with the cards.

The first card I drew was Death. Most people would shudder at the Death card, but I already knew what it signified. That rebirth and great change were on the horizon.

I was asked to draw ten cards, but an eleventh slipped out of the deck. The Four of Cups, the Five of Pentacles, the Six of Pentacles, the High Priestess, the Eight of Rods, the Seven of Rods, the Fool, and the Devil. But there were two more that gave me pause.

I'd kept a poker face through the entire reading, but when I drew the sixth card, I couldn't help but laugh out loud. There was the Lovers card, as if I needed a reminder of the thoughts that had been running through my head all day.

Then, there was the Five of Cups. My old friend.

#

When I saw my third-year roommate at the parade yesterday, he asked me how the date on Friday had gone. Normally, I consider myself a fairly articulate person, but every time someone has asked me about how Friday night went, I find myself eliciting a series of "I don't knows" and embarrassed silence. That was when he said to me, "You know, you're the chillest person I have ever met.... Correction, the chillest person I have ever met who isn't stoned. But I have never seen you stress out over anything except for this."

This, in fact, refers to the person who has knocked me into a cesspool of uncertainty. After two months of circling like two panthers, we finally went out for dinner on Friday night. When someone asks you how a date went, what criteria do you judge it by? Awkward silences, stilted conversations, bad food? There was none of the above, but when I went home, there was a strange feeling sunken in my chest.

My friends tell me I overthink things, that I take this too seriously, but the reality is that while I am generally relaxed about most things in my life, I cannot help but react this way to anything that could potentially upend my entire sense of being. And our interactions have all been completely foreign to me, and the unfamiliarity scares me. I have never had anyone pursue me like this--initiate all these text messages, pay for my dinner, walk me to my car almost twenty minutes away, give me a teddy bear he caught from a parade float. The attention is both baffling and flattering, and I have never been so uncertain of how to behave in my life.

Someone once said to me that it was better to be with someone more in love with you than the other way around, but I can't help but think about how off-balance I have felt in this situation. He has made his interest in me abundantly clear, yet I can barely eke out a series of "I-don't-knows" when others ask how I feel in return. I have studied him for two months and can delineate all the ways that our personalities are compatible and analyze all the ways he has treated me exceptionally well, but the part I cannot rationalize my way out of are the spilled cups splayed out before me. The all-consuming intensity I once lived and breathed on is a ghost that still haunts my memories, and the fact that I don't feel the same way now makes me wonder if my brain has overrun my heart.

Gloomy Sunday

I think I've written about this before on here, but honestly, it's hard to remember when you've written over 700 blog posts in the span of over 8 years.

I'm talking about feeling depressed.

Not clinical depression, which I doubt I have. But those random days when you are just simply not happy. Sometimes, you can't even pinpoint why exactly you feel this way. It could be a culmination of everything. Or nothing in particular.

I was depressed on Sunday. I was six lectures behind on schoolwork, but that wasn't what was sucking the  life out of me. I was unhappy and felt inexplicably lonely, despite the fact that both my roommates were at home, and I'd just hung out with some friends at the Krewe du Vieux parade all of Saturday night.

In the midst of all this wallowing misery, the rational core of my brain was furiously analyzing why on earth I was feeling lonely. I am often alone by choice, but typically I revel in the solitude. I was also acutely aware of the fact that I wasn't truly alone. My friends and family were literally only a text message or call away.

I started analyzing all of my faults. I am too proud and too stubborn. I hate taking risks. I have a tendency to be too distant. I run away from affection. I am indecisive. I never initiate anything. I overthink when I should just act. Dwelling on all this was probably not a good idea.

I thought of my two closest friends here, and how I'd seen photos of them on Facebook having fun at a party that I didn't go to because I was at community service all afternoon. The pathetic shriveled nasty thing inside of me wondered if they'd even missed me, and yet, I was too proud to text to say I missed them.

I thought of that time my mom and I were watching Pride and Prejudice on TV, and when we got to the part where Mr. Darcy tells Lizzy he thought Jane had no interest in Mr. Bingley, she turned to me and said, "Don't be like Jane Bennett," and when I asked why she was telling me this, she said, "Your personality is just like hers."

But the truth of the matter is, I'm not like Jane Bennett at all, because I don't even know what I want. My emotions wax and wane between wanting something more and wanting to whisk it all away. And I've been unwilling to admit this to myself aloud, but amidst the miserable gloom I became afflicted with yesterday, I forced myself to confront the ugly and embarrassing truth. That despite being comfortably nestled within my solitude for 23 years, buried under all those layers of rationale and cynicism was the infantile core that still believed that one day I would meet someone whose soul resonated with mine, and that I would feel their presence in my life like a punch in the gut. That I am essentially the ostrich whose head has been stuck in sand because I am afraid. Afraid that taking any step closer means swallowing my pride, shattering whatever fantasy has been preserved in my mental formaldehyde, admitting that I am "lonely" or "settling" or whatever words I've railed against for so long, because even as my head rationalizes everything to pieces, my gut has been silent all this time.

Even though I had a lot of schoolwork to do, I needed to do something. And so, I wrote EP. It wasn't much, a little over 500 words. But it was enough.

Stop running from your problems.

Stop lying to yourself.

Stop trying to hold onto the past.

Stop being scared to make a mistake.

Stop thinking you're not ready.

Stop complaining and feeling sorry for yourself.

Stop trying to make things perfect.

Stop following the path of least resistance.

Today is going to be a great day. I can and I will.

Lights On

Break or seize me 

If the flame gets blown out in the shine 

I will know that you can not be mine 

Live or leave me

Let me tell you all my secrets in a whisper till the day is done.

I sit on the carpeted floor with a half-drunken bottle of Abita Purple Haze as they talk. She's opening a second bottle of champagne and asking S about his plans to propose to his girlfriend. I watch as the liquid lurches as she fumbles in refilling her glass--a telltale sign of her inebriated state. E is playing with the French bulldog, while C helps himself to another slice of king cake (in celebration of the beginning of Mardi Gras festivities in the city). S talks of diamonds and engagements, and I ask how he and his girlfriend met.

Later, I wonder if she would have told us everything if she had been sober. Maybe she wouldn't have told us that she thinks her boyfriend in California is about to dump her. Maybe she wouldn't have said all those other things about her past. Or maybe she would have anyways.

We are a strange group of six. Four boys, two girls. Under any other circumstances, we would have never all become friends. We are essentially your standard dysfunctional yet loveable sitcom cast. But here we are on a Friday night, with a neglected game of Cards Against Humanity splayed out on the coffee table amongst drained glasses of Bellini. They flip their secrets face-up one by one, but I have yet to play my hand.

I can tell you a little something scandalous about each of them, but they have nothing on me. Not because I don't trust them. But because my lack of secrets is the greatest secret of all.

I still remember what she said to me just last Monday, about a girl she knows from back home who is 24, engaged, and still a virgin--exclaiming this to me as if it were the most absurd thing she'd ever heard in her life. Then, there's the last time we played Never Have I Ever at the sushi happy hour at Vitascope, and I sat out because I knew that even more than any of the dirty secrets they each aired that night, the biggest shocker to them would be mine.

I hide this from them, not because I am ashamed, but because I don't want a reaction. I don't need your pity or your incredulity or heaven forbid your approval (and I have dealt with all these before). If they ask me directly one day, I will tell them. But for now, let them speculate of unspeakable sorrows, dark and tragic pasts, or raw heartbreak if they deign to notice that I do not speak--when in fact, the sheep in wolf's clothing is as pure as the driven snow.

Break or seize me 

Let the things that I tell you survive

In the way that you handle your size 

Live or leave me

--"Lights On" by FKA Twigs

Hero's Journey

Piazza d'Italia in downtown New Orleans

While I was working on Act III this past week, I decided to stop and rethink the story architecture. This was partly because I was having some trouble deciding where to go with Aurora, and I figured it would be best for her story to mirror Charlotte's to make the two lines cohesive. And so, I went and charted out the Hero's Emotional Journey for Charlotte and realized a couple of things.

When I was younger, I had this (somewhat irrational) fear that someone would see the story premise I'd set up on Fictionpress and decide to take it for themselves. Eight years later, this fear seems rather foolish to me because: (1) no one is bored enough to steal a half-written modestly-reviewed Fictionpress story; but mainly (2) over the years, I've developed this stubborn belief that it is impossible for anyone else to write EP because it is made up of so many parts of myself.

The first step of the Hero's Journey is generally referred to as Incomplete/Ordinary World. Done correctly, it sets up the hero's Want and Flaw at the beginning of the story, before the inciting event sets the plot in motion. So, I started thinking about what Charlotte's Want and Flaw are, which made me think about what I was like at age sixteen.

When I was a teenager, I had very low self-confidence. It affected all areas of my life. With tennis, I had a tendency to choke -- that is, you're leading your opponent and just at the cusp of closing of a win, only to get nervous and end up losing the match all together. I didn't play piano competitively, but it was the same at recitals--I would play far worse when it truly mattered.

Socially, I was shy around strangers and uncomfortable with public speaking. I remember thinking at the time that being an introvert was a curse in an extroverted world. I wanted to be an extrovert. I wanted to make friends easily, to comfortably crack the same jokes I made around my friends with people I didn't really know.

Reflecting now, I wasn't so much surprised that I used to think this way. I was more surprised by the fact that I hadn't even noticed when I stopped thinking like this.

At some point between sixteen and twenty-three, I stopped treating my introversion as something to be ashamed of. I embraced it. I learned how to flip the ON switch for extroversion when I need to, but my base level remained. I don't know if I still have the tendency to choke, but I don't think I lack in self-confidence anymore. I am stubbornly comfortable with who I am.


Charlotte's Want is courage -- to be able to stand up for herself socially, and to be able to overcome her stage fright in order to reveal to the world the full extent of her musical talent. Her Flaw isn't merely just a lack of self-confidence. At this point, I was reminded of something the Pagan witch I observed in Durham had told me when she read my cards. "You tend not to speak for yourself, because you don't think you deserve it."

I think I don't deserve it? I had been bewildered by that statement. But it makes sense when I think about it now, and it applies to Charlotte as well. Charlotte doesn't believe she deserves happiness, and consequently, this subconscious pessimism becomes self-sabotaging. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This revelation hit me in an epiphany. Because now, I finally saw with clarity how the different threads of Charlotte's storyline all feed into the same Want and Flaw, and now I saw what the story's ending must achieve in order to reconcile the two.

Unfortunately, school starts this Monday. Which means back on the grind, which means holding off on EP until after the next exam in about three weeks. Adios.

eve

I feel the court beneath my feet and I remember.

My hair is short again, like it was back then. My body has whittled back down to a number on the scale I haven't seen since those years. My feet bounce with muscle memory, and I can hear my Barricades squeak against the hard court. There are a lot of things that are coming back to me all at once, but suddenly I remember what it'd been like to play on that center court by the bleachers. I remember what it'd been like when everyone who walked past on their way to the football field and track would turn to stare, as if you were a magnificent tiger on display. I remember how a classmate told me I'd scared her, because she'd never imagined someone like me could growl and scream with such ferocity.

I lacked self-confidence then. I wasn't the smartest, and there were scores of prettier, cuter, extroverted girls out there. But on that court, I had something none of them had. With the racket in my hand, I could almost believe I could fly.

I Don't Know What Progress Report I'm On Anymore

A little more than a week until I go back to California.

I can't wait.

I have come to the conclusion that in my world, school breaks are bad news. I'm sure there are people who come back from these breaks fully recharged, but ever since Thanksgiving Break, I have been suffering from a severe case of DGAF and motivating myself to study has been a Herculean task.

A couple of things to stew over:

During one of my procrastination moments, I compiled all of the chapters of the revised EP draft I'd written so far and put them into one PDF document, so I could read it on my phone at any odd moments. Probably not the brightest idea, given my rule for not going back to revise anything until after a full draft is complete.....

....because ughhhhh, so much work to be done. On one hand, I was impressed by how much I'd churned out in the past year (over 70,000 words, over 250 pages in a PDF). On the other hand, some parts were really bad. Maybe not Fifty Shades level of atrocity, but... still nothing I'd want anyone else to read. The first half of Act I was really obviously a case of holy-pomelo-i-haven't-written-anything-in-YEARS-what-do-i-dooooooo flailing, and the first half of Act II is majorly saggy in terms of pacing. Which might be good, because this draft is gonna need major liposuction to trim down the word count anyways. Also, Act I will need a ton of reworking, because I need to nail down a lot of the details from Rory's side of things in order to revise how much detail I want to reveal in each of the interviews.

But before I can get around to doing any of the above, I need to finish Act III.

And before I can get around to that, I need to slog through this cardiovascular block and make it to winter break alive....bahhhh.

The second thing I was going to bring up.... basically, a classmate of mine asked me out to dinner. It took me by surprise, because 1) the text came out of nowhere, 2) I don't think I'm misunderstanding the implications behind his request, but my initial reaction was pretty much..... huh? You mean me?

I'd rather not get into the details of this whole situation, but basically I left that text hanging there for an hour because I didn't quite know how to respond. On one hand, I've been around this person enough to observe his behavior, and from what I've been able to discern, he is a good person -- well-mannered, polite, hard-working, selfless, and just very nice. On the other hand... I hadn't really been looking at that person in that way.

I read some article the other day about how the so-called "spark" or "chemistry" or whatever doesn't actually mean anything in the long-run; that it's just neuronal responses that wear off over time and don't actually predict how well two people will fare together. But regardless, I'd never felt that "spark" or whatever with this person--our conversations are almost diplomatic, as if we'd never made it out of the small-talk stage (a stage that I am very uncomfortable in, fyi). And unfortunately, I can't help but compare this situation to other ones where I did feel that spark -- usually people with whom I would engage in good-natured teasing or banter.

In the end, I took a friend's advice and said I was busy on the day he suggested, but that I was open to figuring something out after our exam (essentially after winter break, which gives me almost a month to sort my thoughts). I mean, why not, right? One dinner doesn't mean anything. It's not a binding contract for anything, you skittish ninny. But we all know that I have a tendency to protect myself preemptively.

Once, I was talking to M about how much I love being independent, and the thought of having to chain my life to someone else's makes me skittish. Her response was along the lines of, "Eventually, you're gonna meet someone whom you'll want to be chained to."

At this moment, this is not someone I am willing to give up my independence for. But whatever, I have three weeks to not think about this. We'll just have to see what happens in January.

November Dreamer

City Park, New Orleans

On Wednesday morning, I went with a friend to City Park in New Orleans. It was the first time I'd been there since my mother and I went to see the New Orleans Museum of Art when I first moved down there in July. That morning, we walked around the sculpture garden and sat by the lake, talking about absolutely nothing and everything. The sunlight was warm, and the skies were blue that morning. I felt like a cat, ready to curl up in a ball and doze off for the rest of the day.

It has become more and more apparent to me that I live as if I were in the midst of dreaming. I go to classes, I study, I socialize, but the core of my being isn't here. I escape from the banality of the present, because my mind is fixated on the idea that there is something greater for me out there. I keep dreaming of the day that I finish writing that goddamn story--because when you've become obsessed with an idea for eight years, it becomes inextricable from your being. You think that your gift was bestowed upon you so that you could give it back to the world.

Then, there is also the issue of my solitude. As we sat under the veils of Spanish moss draped across oak branches, I tried explaining to my friend, though I doubt she understood me. Most people don't. They ask me if I don't ever get lonely, but what they don't realize is that from time to time, I do. What pushes me through is the same blind faith in the future -- that there is something greater out there. I bide my time. I wait. And that when the time comes, I will know it in my gut.

Whiplash

I can't remember what I've already mentioned on this blog previously in terms of what's happened in my life, but fair-warning -- this will be a bit of a rambling post.

In late August, two days before my first exam, my car was hit by a bus. I wasn't in the car when it happened that Sunday morning -- in fact, I didn't find out until I came out of the school building in the evening after studying all day. In many ways, I was lucky. I wasn't injured. My car could still run. The police had come and written up an accident report. I had the bus company's insurance information. Accidents are common in New Orleans, and more often than not, you'll end up in a hit-and-run or the person who hits you has no insurance. Despite knowing all this, when I got back to my room, I burst into tears, out of sheer stress and frustration.

It took me two months to finally track down my police accident report. Last Friday, my car was finally fixed. I'd driven my newly repaired car for less than a week when it was hit again this evening.

I was in the car this time. I'm starting to feel the effects of whiplash in my neck and shoulders. But for the most part, I'm not injured. My rear-ended car is covered with duct tape now but it still runs. I got the other person's insurance information and already filed a claim by the time I drove away from the accident site. Again, I was sort of lucky despite being unlucky. Half glass empty, half glass full. But as soon as I parked the car in front of my house, all the frustration I'd been bottling up erupted in a cryfest yet again.

Crying is a stress-reliever for me, and almost necessary for me to feel better and move on with my life. But there were a couple revelations I had in the last few hours since this accident. I've mentioned before about how I consider myself spiritual but not religious. I don't prescribe to one particular organized religion. But since college, I've come to believe that everything happens the way it's meant to happen. That there is some higher order that brings certain things into your life and takes certain things away. Some have told me they think it's a defeatist attitude, but I disagree. To me, it's a way of keeping myself mentally at peace with the outcome, because no matter what happens, you can't change the past. You can only move forward.

Even before I adopted this mindset, I was spiritual in the sense that as a young girl, I always wished to be closely attuned with the "other." I'm a logic-driven person for the most part, but I have always been curious about things such as dream interpretation, tarot, fortunes, and such. Not because I necessarily believe these things will script my future, but because I feel that paying attention can lead you to new insights you never would have noticed otherwise. This desire to seek "signs" has also aligned itself nicely with my belief of a higher order.

This same evening, I also discovered that this young man in my hometown who'd been missing since Halloween was found dead. I'd seen the missing person flyers around my newsfeed, but today was the first time I realized that one of my Facebook friends was his fraternity little brother. The man was only 3 years older than me. Moreover, before I'd driven home from school, I'd just come out of my End of Life elective where we'd discussed our last wishes -- what sort of procedures we'd want at the end of life (e.g. "Don't let me become a vegetable.") and what we'd want happen to our body (e.g. burial, cremation, donation, etc.). I'd already had the discussion with my parents before, but I'd never really thought about what I'd want for myself. It's hard to think of it seriously, because when you're young and healthy, you feel like you have so much life ahead of you.

When you're in your twenties, you don't think you could die any moment. You're so busy planning out your future career and future families that you don't think about how tenuous this present moment is. The fact that my car has been hit twice in less than three months--neither of which was my fault, but simply cases of being in the wrong place at the wrong time--is a wake-up call. Because who knows? Because third time's the charm, right? The next time my car gets hit, maybe I won't be so lucky. I read a quote somewhere once. I can't remember who said it or the exact wording, but the gist of it has stuck with me ever since. Most people don't truly live until they realize they're dying.

Halloween Cinderella

I almost didn't go out for Halloween last night.

We studied until 8 PM. Spitfire had been craving fried chicken for days, so we piled up in Asian Jesus's car and headed over to Raisin' Kanes on St. Charles. As we consumed our greased piles of soul food, the conversation somehow led to the topic that had left me fuming mad at him almost two weeks ago.

He'd already given me his spiel. Now his roommate Asian Jesus was trying to articulate why he hated hook-up culture. Spitfire and I listened, patiently, commenting and objecting here and there.

Spitfire and I are older than the boys. Only by one year in my case, and three years in hers. I understood their arguments, for I choose not to participate in the hook-up culture either.

I think you're the type to put your eggs in as few baskets as possible. But you'll put a lot of eggs in.

That's how a friend described me, and in many ways, it is true.

So, I agreed with Asian Jesus when he talked about his tendency to treat relationships with such seriousness and intensity, that the idea of casual engagement of heart and body for one night with no strings attached was impossible for him. But once again, I still felt a hollow apathy about hook-up culture -- in that, I really don't care if other people choose to hook-up. As long as people don't try to force me into their culture, I'm willing to accept theirs.

I tried explaining this to my mother a week ago, and her words were eerily echoed by Asian Jesus last night. Do people who engage in hook-up culture treat their relationships more lightly than others like me, him, and Asian Jesus who choose not to? What will happen if you end up dating someone who's been part of that culture?

Perhaps I am naive and obstinate, but I want to believe that whoever I choose to date will like me enough that his loyalty to me will speak for itself, regardless of how he may have behaved when he was single. Perhaps I don't feel that the ability to separate the emotional and the physical is mutually exclusive from the ability to be faithful.

But what do I know? I have been single all my life. I watch people around me make mistakes and learn from them. But it's been an objective, detached education.

After dinner, I went back to my house. Both my roommates were gone for the night. It was only 9 PM, and I'd been planning to stay-in and study, but suddenly I was overcome with an acute feeling of being very very lame.

I didn't have a fairy godmother. I barely even did my make-up, since I was worried about getting to the club before my classmates dispersed. I put on my blonde wig, tucked it under a bear-eared beanie, paired a varsity jacket with a band tee, and drove to Downtown in my rental Ford Charger. Afraid of the traffic around Frenchmen, I parked my car by the hospital and walked for half an hour to my destination.

It was a chilly night -- the coldest I've experienced since moving here. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and walked briskly down the glitzy Canal Street. The marquee lights from Saenger Theater reminded me of that other fateful October night in New York City, except this time I was alone and thrilled by this feeling of absolute freedom.

There's something to be said about experiencing Halloween in downtown New Orleans sober. Canal and Decatur were packed with costumed partygoers, dolled up and decked out in an eccentric mix of outfits. My newfound blondness and dramatic change in appearance gave me a heightened sense of confidence amidst the momentary blips of terror. Two boys followed me momentarily, calling out and asking why I was walking so fast. At another point, someone purposely reached out to hit me on the shoulder as I walked down the sidewalks of Decatur. I didn't cuss out at them, but the very idea that I could and totally get away with it felt liberating.

In the dark haze and smoke of the club, the packed bodies pressed all around me made me feel feverish. I took off my varsity jacket and wandered through the crowd. The reactions from my friends at the club amused me to no end. I would tap them on the shoulder, and their faces would contort in guarded bewilderment until a flash of recognition would light across their eyes. "SOPHELIA!! HOLY SHIT, YOUR HAIR! I TOTALLY DIDN'T RECOGNIZE YOU!"

I was there for maybe three hours. It felt shorter than that. It was fun, but as I came home and peeled off my guise, I came to realize something. There's an immeasurable thrill in stepping into another skin for one night and feeling the freedom to act unlike yourself. But I would have been just as happy hanging out with Spitfire, Asian Jesus, and him for the rest of the night, discussing our philosophies over soul food and sweet tea, in my boyishly short black hair and school sweatshirt, in my own skin.

5:50

I barely felt it when I saw the words on the computer screen. But slowly it started trickling. It seeped into the crevices, coating my insides until I felt as if my intestines were made of lead, growing heavier and heavier with each passing minute.

Eight years ago, when my mother's father passed away from a heart attack, I'd woken up in the night with a gushing nosebleed. As I read my mother's e-mail, I tried to think of what I'd been doing when it was 5:50 PM in Taiwan.

4:50 AM in New Orleans. I'd been sound asleep. A dreamless night.

I didn't cry for my mother's father then. This time, I didn't cry for my father's mother either. When you are the child of immigrant parents whose families still live in their homeland, there's a distance you can't cross even when you're physically by their side. They've seen all your other cousins grow up before their eyes, but they can count the number of times you've flown to visit on one hand. You, with your muscled athletic frame and tanned skin, so unlike your Taiwanese cousins with their slender limbs and snow-white skin, can only communicate with them in simple sentences and blank stares.

I was never close to my father's mother. In personality, she was the complete opposite of the women in my mother's family. Given how my mother raised me, I couldn't relate to my father's mother much either. I'd heard my mother complain about her mother-in-law before, but it'd been especially frequent a few years ago when my grandmother required a liver transplant. Long story short, family drama had ensued. From that point on, my grandmother wasn't just a kindly faraway entity who always made toast with sunny-side-up eggs and ham in the morning or whose days revolved around preparing dinner. In the aftermath of the drama surrounding the liver transplant, I saw her as a human being unable to confront her own mortality, to nearly irrational ends.

Unlike the suddenness of my mother's father, I knew my father's mother was fading away. The first e-mail from my mother came over the weekend, reporting that she was in critical condition from a lung infection. The second e-mail came a day later, saying she'd been placed on a ventilator. I was in a strange place emotionally through all this. I went to my classes, I studied in my room, I lived life as normal, wondering when the next e-mail would come.

I recognize the heaviness as sadness. But I wonder about that trace of guilt nestled within it -- and why I feel as if I should have loved her in spite of her faults.

Lament

"Everyone cares when it's too late."

The above is a quote I found yesterday on the Tumblr page of someone who killed himself weeks after publishing that post.

Before I go any further, I should probably backtrack and explain how I got there.

Yesterday afternoon, I'd just about snapped. I had sat through four consecutive lectures on spinal cords and radiographic anatomy, and as I drove myself home from school, I was overcome with a severe case of DGAF -- Done Giving a Fuck.

When I got home, I indulged on two snack-sized bags of Flaming Hot Cheetos, which temporarily made me happier but quickly sent me spiraling downward in fatty-guilt. I decided to browse the Internet, and somehow, I ended up on a forum site about Nana. There was no news about Ai Yazawa's health status, and I read some threads with people discussing how much they'd cried when Ren was killed off, or deliberating whether or not Nana and Ren were ideal for each other. It brought back memories of how Ren's death affected me in high school (yes, a fictional character can do that to you), and I played Anna Tsuchiya's "Kuroi Namida" to indulge in my somber mood. While on this forum site, I somehow stumbled across the name "FrankWolf" and looked him up on Google.

That's how I came across that Tumblr. That's how I learned about the young man who was known for his androgynous beauty in cosplay. That's how I read in a Yahoo Answers response that he had endured constant cyberbullying from people who spewed vitriol about his feminine looks and his cosplay hobby, until he could bear it no longer and took his own life.

Later that evening, I was at the gym with a friend, quizzing each other on anatomy while on the elliptical machines. While we were talking, I happened to glance up at the TVs on the wall and was shocked to see the same headline on CNN, Fox News, and ABC News. Robin Williams was found dead, presumably by suicide.

I can't remember how many of Robin Williams' movies I've seen. I recall him most clearly as the Genie in Aladdin and the English teacher in Dead Poets Society (O Captain, my Captain), but I can't claim that he had a significant impact on my life. Still, I was stunned to learned that he had been battling depression. It had never crossed my mind that someone like him could be struggling with depression, but then again, I should have already known that what people show on the outside often doesn't correlate with what's going on inside.

Today, I read an article with anecdotes about people's own battles with addiction and depression. Pieces of those stories reminded me of myself. I don't consider myself clinically depressed, but there are those moments when I lose complete motivation and feel as if I'm staring down into an abyss. That's how I felt yesterday afternoon. I'd already been feeling lonely about my lack of close friendships here, and as I sat in that lecture room and saw a whole year of memorizing body parts ahead of me, it all suddenly became too much for me to handle.

Today, I tried to turn things around. I let myself work on EP for an hour and a half after class before starting my studying. I studied for an hour at a time before giving myself a short break. I found this video during one of those breaks. It gave me some perspective and a much-needed kick in the rear. Whoever's out there, I hope it helps you too.

Parental Units

I don't talk much about my family on this blog, but it's occurred to me in the recent years that there is a wealth of stories in this untapped area. I tell most of these stories verbally to friends for amusement, but the only time I've really ever written any of this down has been for class.

One time, in Professor Hijuelos' class, we had to pick three personal photographs and write an essay related to those photographs. I ended up choosing three different ones and writing vignettes related to each. Turned out the most interesting one to my classmates was my parents' wedding photo. I described in great detail our living room mantel, in particular: lots of Lego sculptures of pop culture icons, such as Ronald McDonald and Yoda. When I went into the story of my parents' wedding photograph, I talked about how they met at a Pizza Hut, and how they didn't really have a wedding or honeymoon--they invited a friend to take pictures at the courthouse and then invited aforementioned friend out to dinner at Pizza Hut afterwards.

My classmates ate this shit up, I kid you not. They started pondering about the implications of first-generation immigrant frugality and the celebration of American consumerism on the fireplace mantle, the symbol of the hearth and home. The only thing I'd ever thought about our Yoda Lego statue was how my father had proudly brought that statue home when Target threw a promotional event for when the Star Wars Episode 1 first came out to see who could guess the correct number of bricks, and I wondered what proportion of the ballots came from our house. (Including my cousins and grandparents who were visiting that summer, and we probably each filled out like 5 ballots per person... yeah.)

Speaking of Target, just today, I went with my mother there to buy some things. Among the other household necessities, she picked out four gift cards and asked the cashier to put 10 dollars on each. Why, you may ask? Because my dad collects Target gift cards, which most people may not realize often come with nifty toys (like balsa wood airplanes or Pez dispensers) and slick designs. He buys gift cards, and then uses those gift cards to buy more gift cards, essentially cycling money through an endless string of Target gift cards without actually buying anything.

Anyways, why am I writing about this? Just now, I got into another argument with my mother, which was really more of an aftershock related to the fight we had before about my editing fees. I mentioned in my previous post about how she has a tendency to pull unrelated crimes out of the ether, but good golly, her attempt today was absolutely egregious. It was infuriating. But if you're curious about how my mind works, it goes like this:

1. THIS MAKES ME SO [fill in emotion here].
2. I need to convey this in writing. / How can I use this for my own writing?

I was planning to rant about it, to get it out my system, but then I realized: A) I've already talked about this before and I don't want to sound like a broken record; B) I hate whiners and don't want to become one; C) Negativity is not good for the soul.

So I decided to try writing about something more light-hearted instead. And still ended up coming back to it in the end. Sigh.