Corner #1

So somehow within the span of a month with blogspot, I fell back into a very similar problem that I had with my Xanga. I guess it's time for a new approach. The new theme is inspired by the song "My Little Corner of the World" by Yo La Tengo. I'm going to take photos of and write descriptions or paste bits of dialogue about different places that have played/still play some significant role in my life. I guess the purpose is to serve as a means of reflection on the past more than anything. So here it goes...

Corner #1: The rightmost bench in the UChicago quads

Thursday, January 18, 2007 (I'll just use "A" for any other people in these posts, "S" for myself)
[20:52] A: stephanie
[20:52] S: yeah?
[20:53] A: what are you doing after school tomorrow?
[20:53] S: nothing, why?
[20:53] A: can you go walk around downtown with me? or something?
[20:54] S: Is everything okay?
[20:54] A: not really
[20:54] A: i just need to talk with you
[20:55] A: oddly enough your the only person i trust
[20:55] S: yeah sure that's fine. you know I'm here for you
...
[21:06] S: Could we meet in the quads? It's just nicer to read there
[21:06] A: ok sounds good
[21:08] S: okay
[21:09] A: this means a lot
[21:10] S: really, it's okay. I'm here for you
[21:12] A: thank you

January 19, after school, on the phone: with person, let's call her B:
B: what're you up to?
S: Well, I'm sitting here in the quads waiting for a friend who said they wanted to talk. I guess they aren't coming though.
30 minutes and 3 unanswered phone calls to A later, S goes home.

January 21, S still hasn't talked to A:
[01:14] S: okay, so this may sound like I'm going crazy, but why is it so hard for you to just respond "I'm fine"?
[01:17] S: damn it. I care about you so much more than I'm supposed to.
[01:29] S: you know how much I care about you and yet you can't even take the time to type "i'm ok" or "ctn" or something?

January 24; first contact of S with A since the 18th:
[23:05] S: hey, I can get you the next $400 by next Tuesday if you want
[23:06] A: that sounds good

which brings us back to May 15, 2006, when the payment plan was first established:
S: i know you don't want to think of yourself as meaning that much in my life. i know the very thought disgusts you. but i don't care. you were the only person from school who ever showed they really cared about me
S: and you were there for me through everything and there is nothing i could ever do to repay you for that
A: well cash is nice
...
A: um how high can i go
S: if you want me paying you 100/ month for life then as high as you'd like
S: i hope you know i'm serious about this
A: then do that


It's hard to believe that was almost 3 years ago. It's been over 2 months since the last time I spoke to A which is the most time that has passed between us in silence since 8th grade. It's a good silence though. To this day it's hard for me to understand why I agreed to the payment plan at all. They always say that people in love resort to irrational things but that was just so extreme that it scares me a little.
I guess what I need to do now is make sure I don't fall back into that same mistake of being irrational, clingy, and emotional with a person I might have fallen in love with. I know I fucked up and I'll have to live with that for a really long time, but somehow it needs to turn out differently this time. For his sake.

On Apologies

When it comes right down to it, sometimes "sorry" just doesn't explain how I feel. It's just a word that you say when you do something wrong and it's supposed to make everything magically better. But does it make sense to say the same word when you accidentally flat tire someone's flip flop while they're walking as when you really just messed up and you don't know what else to say? I don't think so. And what happens if the other person doesn't believe you? What happens when "sorry" just isn't enough? What else can you do? How can you show that you're sorry without being seen as clingy?

On the offchance that you read this before you leave (you should know who you are), I hope you know that I'm facing these questions right now. I don't know why you'd read this after I told you not to. For some reason I thought you were the kind of person that kind of thing works on, but I realize now that you wouldn't read this if I told you not to.
Anyway, I don't know what made me rush to conclusions about how you feel. I know I shouldn't have issued that ultimatum to you but there's nothing I can do to change the past. I've already crossed the line into clingy; believe me, I'm aware of that. I just can't believe that I fucked up one of the most amazing things that's happened to me. There doesn't seem to be anything I can say to make you realize how much our relationship means to me (yes, I'm still using present tense. I'm still kind of in denial). It doesn't make sense that it's only been a few hours and I miss you but I do. When I was panicking before my final, I just wanted you to be there holding me like you were there yesterday. It sucks to know I won't see you for a week. I know you want time but I still wish we didn't have to leave things like this.

On Finals

What is it about finals that makes you just want to crawl up in a secluded corner and do absolutely nothing? For instance, the other day I went down by the lake and just watched ducks instead of studying for statistics. I remember back in high school when finals used to be considered a huge deal and everyone would get together and have "study parties" in preparation for that Tuesday and Wednesday at the end of every school year when we'd all crowd into IHouse, Judd 126, or the cafeteria and sit through the pain of multivariable calculus or biology or something.

I don't know what it is about college that makes everything seem different than it was in high school. It's still the same concept after all: have a gigantic monstrosity of a test worth a ridiculously high percent of your grade. The panic I felt before the tests in high school is stronger than ever. The second-guessing on every question is still there. But somehow it seems different.

Now I'm just sitting here blogging instead of studying for economics. I know the panic will set in soon enough. I hate when people see me in that mode. No one here has seen it at its peak yet and I hope no one will just because I know I'd be difficult to console and I don't want anyone to have to do that. I just wish it wasn't the case with every test or quiz or presentation. I remember in junior year when Ms. Aquino bluntly told me this was something I needed to deal with in order to "reach my full potential", whatever that means. Well, I'm dealing... sort of.

T minus 8 hours and 26 minutes until test time.
(who is T anyway? why does he get to minus things?)

On Falling in Love

So it's 2:26 AM and I'm sitting here writing about good ol' Petrarch and his monstrous crush on this girl named Laura... consumption of his heart by love, fear and grief and helplessness, etc etc.
I just opened up my Lit folder to find the prompt sheet for the paper and was faced instead with a list that I made during econ discussion section a few weeks ago (no wonder I'm failing. :P) in response to a question my friend asked me the night before. I'll transcribe it below:

You know that you are in love with someone when...
~ you're lying/sitting around and your mind wanders to thoughts about the other person and you can't help but smile
~ you can just sit in absolute silence with the other person and it just feels right; there's no awkwardness, just understanding and comfort
~ you feel like you would do anything for the other person no matter what
~ you trust the other person with secrets and parts of your past and can tell them these secrets and feel safe about doing so
~ you trust the other person not to purposely hurt you
~ you can just see the person for a few seconds but they instantly make you a little bit happier
~ the other person makes you feel good about yourself, despite insecurities you might have
~ you find yourself wondering how the person is doing even though you just saw them
~ you find yourself thinking about the other person all the time
~ you randomly look up things the other person has mentioned he/she likes so that you can find out more about it and try to talk to the other person about it
~ you smile at the little quirks that the other person has
~ you try hard to spend a lot of time with the other person
~ you feel you can just be yourself- all of yourself- craziness, quirkiness, happiness, depression, can be shown (all the layers of the onion are peeled so to speak) down to when you feel the most vulnerable, and you still feel comfortable with the other person and they know the whole and real you
~ you find yourself wishing that time could just stop so you could spend more hours with the other person
~ you feel comfortable and safe when you're with the other person
~ you can't seem to find words that are sufficient/adequate enough to tell the other person about how much they mean to you and how much you care about them
~ it scares you how much you think about the other person and want to do things to make the other person happy but you can't help yourself.
~ it sucks every time you say goodbye because you just don't want to let go
~ you can talk to the other person for hours and still feel like you can keep going
~ something happens to you (doesn't matter how insignificant it seems) and your instinct is to go tell the other person
~ you start experiencing that Mean Girls "word vomit" phenomenon where you can't seem to stop bringing the other person up in conversations you have with people
~when saying "I love you" doesn't even seem to be enough because ultimately, it's really just three words

With that, it's time to get back to writing my paper.

On Tragedy and its Responses

Why is it that whenever tragedy strikes, everyone gathers in one large mass around it? This is a phenomenon that I have witnessed many times now. When a girl in my grade was diagnosed with cancer back in 8th grade, every single graduation speech was written about her struggle even though two of the speakers had barely ever talked to the girl before. When my friend was killed by a drunk driver a few years ago, tons of people swarmed to form a large facebook group and offer condolences. I even experienced this flood of sympathy myself a couple of years ago when I was mugged and I got messages/cards from people I'd never talked to before and people who I didn't even know. And this repeats itself over and over again.

Call me unappreciative and uncaring, but is it so much to ask to die as just me? Not to sound terribly morbid, but when I die, I don't want people to like me more as a person just because I'm gone. Recently I've realized the transitory nature of life and that ultimately, people from high school will forget I ever existed and people from college will too. Everything as I know it now will only be this way for a short period in the grand scheme of time. The uncertainty of what will happen the next day is what makes life exciting but it's also what makes life frightening. I almost feel like sometimes it's one big game of catch-up and you just have to keep going in a confused frenzy of sorts.

I still remember all of the responses that people had for the drunk driver who died in the crash that killed my friend. I still hold that anger inside me at all of the condolences that flooded in for that guy. That happened three years ago and I still cannot get over the one nagging and undeniable fact that he knew what he was doing was wrong and was putting the lives of others in danger and he still did it anyway. Here I am retreating to this blog to write these angry thoughts, just as I did on my xanga back then. I still believe that everyone deserves forgiveness for their mistakes and I'd like to make it clear that I don't think the driver deserved to die. I know there's no use playing the blame game anymore anyway. But it still stings now to think I could have stopped my friend from dying if I had asked her to stay over longer; I still put blame on myself and the drunk driver.

I have always had a hard time letting go of the past.
I think it's time that I start.

On Growing Up... or Not.

So yesterday night a friend asked me why I never updated my Xanga anymore and I had to really sit down and think about the answer. I remember how proud I was on the day my Xanga became 1,000 days old back in sophomore year of high school. Back then, Xanga was "the thing to have." Everyone felt the need to post every little thing that happened to them that day and I was no exception. Ultimately, I think the reason why I stopped posting was because I felt confined by it in some sense. My life became defined by what everyone else wrote in their Xanga entries and I tried to conform. The last entry I wrote was on December 31, 2007 and it ended with:

"With next year comes many new things: first time going to college, first (and hopefully only) time graduating from high school, first time having to move to a new house (well, I moved from Dallas but I don't remember that at all), and I'm sure many more.
It's weird reading over old xanga entries from 7th grade and see how my priorities and other things in my life have changed. I guess this is what growing up is? The loss of innocence, the loss of the unknown... perhaps gaining the desire to explore more."

That last line reminds me of a poem my friend once pasted to me:
People always say to me
"What do you think you'd like to be
When you grow up?"
And I say, "Why,
I think I'd like to be the sky
Or be a plane or train or mouse
Or maybe a haunted house
Or something furry, rough and wild...
Or maybe I will stay a child."

Lately my parents have been pestering me about what I want to do when I grow up. They ask me questions like, "who do you want to be?", "what do you want to do with your life?", "how are you going to support yourself?" Although I frequently press the conveniently located "ignore" button to avoid such calls, I can't help but wonder about the future sometimes. It's weird to think of myself as "old" now. When I was little, I thought I had the world at my fingertips. At least that's what everyone always told me. But now that world seems to be growing rapidly smaller and I'm not sure I'm ready for it. I still find myself slipping and saying things like "when I grow up..." and my parents rush to correct me by saying, "you're already grown up." It's a scary concept, really.

I'm working to revise my job resumé right now and I can't help but wonder what all these titles mean. AP scholar with distinction, FEIB intern, neuroscience lab intern, ISRC president... in the end, aren't they all just titles? Someone could have the most amazing experience of their lives that would help them at any job, but they would only be able to write a couple of Times New Roman, font 12 words on a white sheet of paper (that is, unless they pulled an Elle Woods). It just seems illogical to me.