meek.

I found myself lying, face drooping into the slopes of my pillow, weighed down by all the things I should probably be doing and the things I wish I was doing. My uneven posture and tense legs strain from clenching and releasing early this morning from when I was taking my driver’s for the second time. Later, I struggled to cover the rose of my frost-bitten cheeks with multiple layers of foundation. It still shone through, a harsh and unapologetic bloom.

I tend to find myself fleeting from one place to the next, eagerly checking off the menial things off my diary for comfort. Put money into the bank. Check the dates for performance. Get some groceries–especially some salad. I should really get into that. I then crash into bed when they are done, feeling strangely unaccomplished and disconnected to my self.

I picked off the pieces of my body, the mangled individuals cast here and there over the bed. Recollected myself, and gathered together a self that can writes. I try to make meaning of the empty space. No matter how many times I try to keep my desk clear of the clutter, my pens and books with stickers and orange peels litter the top, and stay there until someone else enters.

I see a message pop up from my friend. We find solace in each other. There are friends you meet in blurs to pass messy nights with, and others with whom you reach out for in the darkness, meandering the unknown hills and edging around the crevices. I talk again about my feelings. She returns the same. I feel that there are many of us out there tonight–we are not lost, but just waiting for the winter to pass us over.

 

Hello World

It’s been almost a year since I’ve properly updated this blog. It’s been a long time coming. There were times where I’d recall with quite the pang how much I enjoyed and needed to express myself in a blog, but I was often too busy and many times too afraid to come back to this platform. I’ve just returned from my trip in Busan a week into finishing my first year at Yonsei University. I finally found the soul’s leisure to pick up some books from my to read list, and top of the list was The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. Now, though I would call myself a scholar I admit that it is difficult to force down informationals in a summer read, especially on arbitrary tips on ‘how to be happy.’ However, I’ve heard some rave reviews about it, and I must say that I do agree. It is simplistic, experimental, and life changing.

It is pretty tough trying to stay afloat as a new adult, thrust into the city alone and unknowing, and often against my will I find myself feeling grumpy and defensive against the world. Reading this book reminded me of the little pleasures I have in life, and what keeps me gentle and humble. It struck me how similar my life is to that of the author, having an affinity to the languages but directing myself towards law instead, the short anger spouts and most of all, simply trying to live and enhance a life that is already pretty worth living.She started a blog despite her doubts, and so I’ve decided to do the same.

It is a great summer read, and recommendable to anyone.

Look forward to my Busan trip post!

Thank you everyone who has stuck around,

Sincerely,

Me.

Teenage/Junior Angst and Anxiety and How It Will Be Okay

Hello everyone! I know the content of my blog has been really irregular, with me sometimes moaning about blegh teen stuff and the struggles between juggling school life and social work, with pretty swell photographs and poetry. I’m not really sure who follows me for what, but I’m going to try be more dedicated now and just pump out some content. Well. That’s the thought for now anyway.

I believe that an existential crisis, as melodramatic as it sounds, does not come at some midlife point in your life in your mid 30′s/40′s, but really is viable to strike any individual at any time in life. Sometimes, this can mean a devastating financial crises or juggling the balance between mental and physical health. But really, as a recent survivor emerging from the clasps of a highschool life, I can really relate to alot of blog posts nowadays by juniors who feel sad and lonely and outcasted, especially in the junior year where the mood/feeling cannot fully be expressed in a logical manner, and life can only be described as ‘meh.’ 

Is this normal? I believe it’s quite normal. I’ve never really viewed myself as a pessimistic child- I’m really a turbulent mixture of being serene and nonchalant. However, this was definitely not the case just over a year ago. People underestimate what it is really like to be a teenager, this raging ball of emotions, desires and insecurities, mixed with family and friends and schools all demanding you to figure out what exactly it is that you want to do with the rest of your life. Who are you. What do you want to do. Lawyer? Doctor? Government official?  Please. 

I read this quote somewhere, saying that in this society, we are really asking teenagers to decide what they want to pursue for the rest of their lives, at the age of 18, when just two months ago they had to ask for permission to go the bathroom. And that is just so logical, and so true. Multitudes of times, before I finally got my acceptance letter about 3 weeks ago, I would feel lost and constantly insecure. That is really what it has become, the culminating result and show of achievement, or evidence that states that you have actually not wasted 12 whole years of your life in school. I was a decent student, who worked hard and played hard, but the weight of decisions and the nerve-wracking indecisions drove me to several breakdowns. I don’t know what I want to do with the rest of my life. I want to go to this university but they may not accept me. Why would they accept me. There are so many better students than me.  Doubts, regrets, anxiety, and anger.

All I can say really is that it is a phase in life, a brief darkness in the tunnel. With the constant demanding, demanding, demanding for answers and ideas and work, life can really feel bleak and hopeless. This feeling can hit anyone, and that is okay, you are normal. It does not matter whether you’ve known what career you want to pursue at the age of three, or not.

Seriously though, take my word for it, this too will pass. Phases and insecurities about my body, my appearance, my acceptance seem to be defined by the limited people that compromise our families, friend groups and school. This too will pass. The people that seem to mean everything to you right now, whose opinions can jar you and make or break your day, soon they will mean nothing to you anymore, and life will go on. You will live life, and you will inevitably learn more about yourself. You will meet new people, and you will have the choice of company in the near future. The bogged-down feeling right now, it will soon dissolve. You will have the chance to start again, or grow even further. You will thrive where you are planted. You will be okay. You will be more than okay. Psh. That existential crisis, that ambiguity and the sinking panic that arises from it…those will be things in the past. As it is for me. Things, situations and people that I thought were the biggest parts of me now seem small and insignificant really in the grand scheme of everything that I envision my life to be. I definitely do not have all the answers still, but I am okay with that. Because I know that I have the choice now, not what I believe others will perceive of me. And I am content, because I am me. And the future and plans and all the things that I can achieve is exhilarating. 

I hope you reach that point too.

Marry me

I will start writing again soon. I’m in a non-committing mood, where sharing some of my favorite pics of the week is really the most I can muster.

Anyways, I just thought that first, this woman has an amazing back.

And I want to get married in a forest, with a backless dress, and flowers in my hair.

I wonder how differently or similarly my life will turn out for me. Hopefully it will be wilder than my most unforgiving dreams.

It’s not a nice feeling to be played.

It’s really sad how the only time I ever blog anything is when I am coiling from the burning ashes of my fickle heart.

Regardless, I am wounded and am just staring mindlessly at the bland wall and I am shocked and angry at myself for falling into the same pits of falsely-induced unrequited love. 

Just before my best guy friend left for a trip, we began to spend a lot more time together, laughing and talking and just being the usual us. Except it was different, and he began leaving me hints that I’d be blind not to recognise (bold physical touches, admittence that he did not want to leave me, jokingly mentioning that someone said we look cute together etc). He began to leave obvious hints that he was interested in us being something more and I felt our relationship peak, ready for the next level, something that is, unfortunately, not uncommon between us. 

When he returned however, everything changed and it just wasn’t the same anymore, as he talked animatedly about the girls he talked to and the asses (mind my crude language) he admired on the trip. I didn’t mind until then, because we are young and there are unpreventable elations of the heart. However, things really spiraled last night as we talked about ourselves, and he mentioned that he had a problem with leading people on just because he is unclear to himself. Then he mentioned that he was talking to his old crush again.

Now bitch be tripping. I am furious that this guy, who is supposedly my best friend, would have the audacity to lead me on- and to try let it off casually by just mentioning that he is confused. He even included ‘lol’ at the end. I know that some of y’all would decipher it as subtle hinting to see where I stand or whatever, but this makes me furious because this is not the first time I thought there was something more, before he let me down.

I refuse. Je refuse. I deny. From now on, I refuse to be toyed with, to be baited, to satisfy a need for whatever attention he is seeking. I need a break. I can’t deal with his idiocy any longer.

Senior, betch.

It’s only been four days since I’ve been back at school, and I must admit Senior Year is not quite cutting it.

Being in the IB program, nothing has really changed. Same classes, same friends, same everything. There are so many things that I have to now manage, handle and submit it’s crazy.

I don’t know.

It isn’t that great.

I’m constantly trying to find the good in each day, in each moment. It’s truly, truly quintessential when entering the most challenging year of your academic life. It’s truthfully not all that doom and gloom. There are several things that I’m remarking about myself, which is quite pleasing actually.

I’m more confident. I started wearing sleaveless tops now, something that I’ve refrained from doing for the earlier 17 years of my life due to my insecurity with my arms. Now, I realise that I’ve been wearing tanks nearly everyday.

Not very earthshaking, but this is a memorable thing to me.

Also, I’m no longer intimidated by teachers who I constantly felt like running away from, I don’t care about little children and carry myself with self importance. This is not being conceited. I think I fully deserve it, because I’ve done my part groveling in the scrutiny of elders. I’m a fucking senior now.

So Swerve.

Hahahahaha. Peace.

Sing me to Sleep – thoughts on teenage depression

Sing me to sleep, sing me to sleep. I’m tired and I want to go to bed. “Asleep.”
I love this song by the Smiths, it fully satisfies my old indie music fetish. (Yet others could chide at my slow accumulation of musical culture.)

I admit it’s been a really long time since I’ve written in my blog. I’ve been, unfortunately, distracted with other various sources of internet entertainment- constituted of tumblr and youtube mainly.
I feel that my sense of humour is changing.
Ideas and concepts that I had found before to be embarrassing or crass, topics on sex and sexuality, things that I had once been afraid to discuss come to me more freely to me now.
I feel that the Internet has changed me in that way.
In a background where the internet was sourced from a ‘stick’ and the broadband limited, I (thankfully) spent the majority of my childhood reading my books and imagining fairies and phantoms.
I’m thoroughly shocked when I see all the participation from the 10 year olds to the 13 year olds in social media, with the same level of… awareness, I guess, that I have finally opened myself up to at this age.
The effects that the media has on these young minds is so profound and so blatantly present that I shy away in embarrassment.
13 year olds talk about sex and of suicide, of depression like they know it and of cutting themselves like they’ve felt that grief, it’s just so overwhelming to me.
I acknowledge the fact that there are several kids who truly come from broken homes and are depressed.
However, I doubt that 10 million + adolescents are in that much grief to be talking about suicide.
When I was that young (if you’re 13, yes, you are young) I most certainly did not have it easy.
We were in debt and my family struggled to make ends meet. I lived in a house with constant power cuts and no water, conflicts constantly arose. I never thought once, however, that I might be ‘depressed.’ I did not know what cutting was until I was 16.

Sighs.
I’m not judging anyone, if you feel that you are truly sad and useless then that is your tale.
I am just appealing to those who are just having a rough day, or who are just feeling sad for no reason. I’ve felt that too, and I just want to suggest something.
Try switch off all forms of media and social networking, especially ones with photos that idealise a ‘perfect’ life that seems so different from yours.
Focus on yourself, think for yourself.
It sure helped me.

Sing me to sleep… sing me to sleep…

Where did that come from?

Teenage Angst…especially going onto college

Hello reader, most likely another teenager like me. Life is getting a little tough huh? Suddenly there seems to be a wave tsunami of forms that need to be filled out and outstanding curriculars that need to be recorded. At least, that’s the way it feels for me. I’m at that stage of my scholarly (haha) life where I am pretty much susceptible to all forms of negative influence, and I admit I’m not the brightest little sunflower seed out there nowadays.

An event that triggered this post was my recent toefl + sat exam results. My grades are really good in comparison to the standards of the US or the average school, yet I am incessantly being told that I’m not doing my best- that I can do better.

Now how possibly can I argue about that? Thing is, it’s getting real hard to get a compliment around here. I truly thank my family for believing me that much that they believe that I can push and be one of the best, but repeatedly I get that sinking feeling that my good just isn’t that good enough. 

I guess, what I’m just saying is that encouragement would be a bit more effective with approval and praise. Or perhaps I’m being a spoilt brat about this all. Who really knows.

So, for all my seniors to be, spending waaay too much time on the internet and watching/reading too many series, I salute you. Because even though we may guilt trip ourselves that we are wasting our time by not studying or that we haven’t got the best grades that we can possibly get, we are young. We are teenagers, years full of angst and indescribable joys that we can never possibly get back. So, viva la jeunesse! (hahaha that barely made sense) so yeah. To hopes, and to sorrows. May we find happiness.

 

(Any teenagers wanting to share their struggles/joys of studying feel free to comment below or send me a message!) 

Constellations.

I think this photo is just stunning. Flaws are just part of who we are- and how can one decide what part of you is a flaw or not?
You’re not perfect, no, but I think you’re beautiful.

Highschool Junior Life, college and preparation

I just thought, since I am so overwhelmed and overly satisfied with the amount I’ve achieved today in terms of my future, I would brag about it a little and see what other people are doing. I must (regretfully) admit though, that most of these achievements are rather monetary, compared to what I’m sure the rest of the world’s juniors are doing. Oh well. This is what I do best, blowing some cash. (That’s what she said.) 

(No, that’s immature.)

Today, I got a place in the SAT’s exam, the mock exam, paid for the extra lessons offered at my school and bought the Official SAT Study Guide. (which looks to be pretty basic and useless, atm.) I feel like I’m getting somewhere with the course of all that needs to be done for me to go to college, (UIC, I’m praying) and though the studying part is still yet to be done, I just thought well, this feels pretty great. If there are any juniors (11th graders) or other highschool students reading this, how far are you on your preparations for college?

Besides that, the coolest thing I did today was ride Miguel’s scooter (which he rode to school on, fully dressed in a suit and tie for his Model United Nations conference) around, and shaming all the young ‘uns with their lack of style in their choice of transportation from one class to the next. 

Life doesn’t get any cooler than breaking the rules and cruising in style.