Category Archives: College

Moving Out

In my culture, there is only two reasons for a girl to be leaving her parents house. One, she is going to marry and she leaves to join her husband’s family. Two, and this one is very unlikely and still hard to see through, she leaves for a better college life.

And the thing is, I don’t fit into any of those categories.

Here is the first thing, I don’t plan on getting married. And this is going to sound contradicting, but I’m not ruling it out either. It’s just that I am not in a place of mind to be thinking about marriage. Marriage, for me, doesn’t mean completion. Marriage, for me, doesn’t mean that life is finally starting. But marriage, for me, doesn’t mean that I am going to be forever stuck as well.

I just haven’t found the person I would like to be forever with, nor do I think it is the time to start looking. When it happens it will happen and I know that there will be no regrets.

Here’s the second thing, I’ve tried college living at home. It doesn’t lead to anything other than depression. The first time I hit depression so hard, it took me months to get over it. The second time I tried my best to not be depressed, but it still came. I have to admit, I’m scared. College scares me. I know I can be good at it, but I know it come with a price as well.

So here is the final question, why am I moving out?

Why am I moving out?

Why?

My parents don’t want me to leave. Honestly, I could live the rest of my life at home and my parents would be okay with it. But do you see the issue with that? I could live THE REST OF MY LIFE at my parents house.

And I know, I know. Who wouldn’t love to live a life full of safety nets? I can buy and do whatever I want, whenever I want, and life would be peachy cause I have parents who takes care of all the bills. Who wouldn’t want that?!

Heck, this is one of the reasons why I waited 24 years before I was pushed into this decision.

Here is another part of this story. I have been conditioned into staying to protect my parents. For over 8 to 9 years all everyone has ever told me was that my parents needed me. And I believed it. My parents relied on me for everything. I had to grow up and I had to change myself over and over again just to satisfy their needs.

But then, you know what happened, my parents mentally and verbally abused me. For years they manipulated their words, and threatened my every thought and action. I couldn’t do anything. All my actions, whether they were purely good or slightly ill intent, were shot down.

I couldn’t even be my own person. I had to be my parents daughter. I had to be the face of my family. I had to be perfect.

That doesn’t sound so bad right? Being perfect.

But perfect is not who I am. I am flawed. And I am perfectly fine with being flawed.

So, what does that have with me moving out? I’ve been wanting to move out since the notion entered my mind when I was 16/17. But I was scared. I’ve been scared of leaving my parents. I’ve been scared of leaving everything I have ever known about my life. My normal was going to be shattered.

My parents need me but don’t want me. My parents want me but don’t need me. It is always one or the other.

They have the need to feel like everything is in their control. So they say things and do stuff that will haunt me for the rest of my life.

And I need to get away from that.

It’s honestly not as bad as it sounds. I’m not in a horrible place. But I don’t feel like I’m really living. I may live in their house, but it isn’t my home. I may have a room, but it really isn’t my room. My parents still feel like they can roam through my junk when they feel like it. And it may just be junk, but it is my junk.

I’m a very private person, other than me writing about my life all the time. But there are limits to my private life. I don’t like knowing that I don’t have a safe spot. And right now, I don’t have a safe spot at all.

So, even though it was my sister’s idea to move out, I am now taking the lead. Even though it was my sister’s plan, I am taking the brute of the aftermath. My parents are acting as if I was the mastermind behind the decision.

My parents know that I am not like any of their other children. I am the one to go out of pattern. The one who may follow their every order but the one to go against every plan they also have.

So, why am I moving out?

I am tired of being pushed and pulled. I am tired of having these expectations without information about what is really going on.

I am tired of not being in control of my life.

These Times are Hard

That is lyrics of a song playing while I thought about titles. Times aren’t hard at all. I’m just having to make decisions for my life.

Last semester, I had to deal with work, school, family, and personal stuff. The stress from it almost drove me crazy.

It was holiday season and I was working almost everyday for over 8 hours. I had to, we had gotten new people, who were airheads, and I felt like the place was going to fall into pieces if I wasn’t there.

I was into my second semester of my first year, and I was freaking out that I was not going to make it. I was scared that I was going to fall back into the person I used to be. The girl who was too scared to show up for class, so I just didn’t go. The expectations were too great, and I too minsulate to be there of any importance.

Since it was the holidays, family were always in talks of what was going on. This year, thankfully, my younger sister took the liberty of handling Secret Santa. But my other sisters would not concentrate on when we would meet, as if to avoid the subject. They wanted us to wait for them, but they didn’t want to be there…

I was having issues with my period… I was stressing so much, I missed a month. Then I tried to calm down enough to actually get it, and then I did. But I missed the month after… I struggled with it since I wanted to be healthy and happy. But how could I be healthy and happy when I was stressing out and not getting my period…

This semester is for difference. I plan on making big changes, to see how things go.

I decided that I was ready for the whole five classes. But to take those five classes, I knew I would have to change something about work. I decided that I was going to not work any day I had classes. I gave myself four days off from work, only to work Fri, Sat, and Sun.

It is something I need. I could not deal with going to school in the morning to receive assignments and know that I could not do them till I was done with work, only to have to be at school early again the next day. I don’t know why I did that to myself in the past.

I figured I could do with one less stressful thing.

I had worked there for five years. In those five years, I struggled through school for two years. One of those years were not successful and I worked through the last year and it was hard. The other three years, I struggled with personal family issues.

This year I want to do something different. The one thing [work] I put so highly, I will put down for a while and give myself time to work on other things.

There will be time in the future to work as hard as I do.

End of the Year Project

14.12.31 end of the year 2

The year started off with new hopes, and a journey of dreams. I started school again with more motivation and determination than ever. To be going back to school with no other support than my own dreams was scary, and I feared every step of the way. But here I am, at the end of the year, and I finished the school year with some strong good grades.

I went through a lot of ups and downs with my physical appearance. I wanted to prove that no matter how I looked I could still be successfully happy. I proved myself right. No matter what words were thrown at me, at the end of the day I was glad to be me and to be going through the experiences that I was.

Through the year I learned that I should not be only seeking support, I should be giving support just as much. The world is not a nice place, and words can go a long way. So be happy for yourself, and be happy for others too, even if you envy them a tiny bit.

Happy New Years, may 2015 bring even more joy and success!

School: Let the Stress Begin

Since school started, I’ve gotten sick, over tired and the most recent on that is still bother me, a cold sore. I knew it was going to be stressful but this is a new level. Every other week is something new. The semester isn’t even half way done yet.

This is going to be an overstatement but it’s a true one. I understand that professors are supposed to give out homework to the standards of schools goals for students. But do they not realize that students have more than one class. So not only do we have 4-5 classes, but we might even have a job, we might have friends and family we want to see, we might need to eat, sleep and honestly shower. Even more, some students have kids to worry about as well.

We get all this stuff piled on our shoulders and our minds are revolving around 12 different things and they still expect us to be sane enough to pay attention in class.

Take my english class for example.  my professor gave us a research assignment to do and the next day we were given ANOTHER research assignment. So while we are working on the second one, we have to be thinking about the first one. On top of that, I was working on the first big essay for my other english class. And I had a math quiz also.

But honestly that isn’t so bad. I went through everything quite all right. I just worry a lot. I worry too much sometimes. Hence getting overly tired, and sick.

I know I’ve just passed over a small big bump of the semester, and there is probably going to be a lot more I’m going to be up against. So I’ve decided to have a different outlook. If I don’t, I don’t think I will be able to finish up the semester with a straight mind. Or a good healthy body.

I’ve been stressing out and have been looking negatively at everything. If I didn’t think I was going to be stressing then I wouldn’t have be so negative. In the past, when I’ve gotten all these symptoms, I’ve looked them up. I’ve tried my best to keep up my health so I was not at all happy when the flu/cold struck me or my lip starts hurting up into a cold sore. Stress is one of the biggest factor in them.

So I’m going to turn this around. I cannot be going day by day worrying when I am sick. I do believe that after these 6 last weeks, I will be able to go up against school work stress free. Plus I need to take some time out of the week to relax and do something fun.

My After Effects Of Depression

I haven’t been able to think straight for a while now. After school ended my goal was to find myself and figure out the reason why I went back to school. I didn’t know it would actually consist of losing myself in the process.

I am lost. Everyday that I don’t work was supposed to be a day full of writing. I wanted to write every moment I could. But I can’t, my heart isn’t in it. I was writing and having thoughts of writing almost everyday when I was in school. Now I can’t even sit down to think about it.

I feel like I am nothing since I have nothing to do everyday. Going to classes was my life for those five months. Now that school is done, I’ve gone back to the girl who has nothing to wake up to anymore.

My reasons for going to school is still the same and the motivation is still the same too. I guess I just added another reason to wanting to go. I want to wake up to something to look forward too. I want to wake up early with a full list of schedules.

I haven’t been sleeping well. I’m not having nightmares, I’m not staying up to look forward to anything, I just can’t sleep. I lay there and hope to knock out but my mind won’t let me.

I’ve been thinking about my after effects of depression.

For a person who never cared about timing, I started to do things in a timely matter. One of the biggest was leaving for work at a certain time. Small things were doing things at 1, 1:15, 1:30, or 1:45. I don’t know why, but I would always look for a time marker.

I don’t do it as much anymore. I know for a fact that it started when I hit depression stage and I wanted to get rid of that habit. I try to take life as it is and not worry as much as I did anymore.

There was this one time in the past when I thought was over my depression, and this habit hadn’t disappeared yet. I was getting ready for work, and when I went outside to my car, it was gone. I came back inside screaming my head off, wondering where and who took my car. I found out from my sisters that it was my mother and I was angry! It was my time to leave and I had no other way to get to work. It felt like my life was out of my control! I started to cry and bawl my eyes out over this fact.

I cried in front of my sisters. I didn’t even know why I did that in the past. But when I think of it now, I guess it was the fact that I was screaming out to them that I wasn’t fine. I needed help, I needed my sisters to help. But I am the black sheep of the family, and everyone is scared to ask me how I am feeling unless I talk to them first. So life went on. My mother came back and I left later than I did normally for work. I was still angry but I did make it in on time.

The sleeping thing is another side effect of my depression. Like I said, I used to have nightmares. It sucked even more since I remembered them, all of them. They weren’t of monsters or anything like that. The people, who had a cause in my depression, they were ignoring me in my dreams. Even though I wasn’t acting any different, even though I was trying my hardest to get things back to the way it was before, nothing was working. They still ignored me and left me out. And it may sound silly but it really hurt me. Even in my dreams they were still causing me pain.

Ever since I started those dreams I’ve been scared to sleep. I started to sleep later and later every night. I would wait till I was crazy tired, unable to keep my eyes open tired, then finally I would fall asleep.

The last one may be the biggest for me. I can’t help but become a hermit crab again. There is no reason to go out. There is no reason to socialize with other human beings. I feel like even though I try to look more approachable, people just don’t want to talk with me.

I don’t even want a boyfriend at the moment, I just want people to acknowledge that I am alive and worthy of talking to. Make me realize that all human beings aren’t bad, since I’ve lost all hope in men already…

Another thing that has been bothering me is the fact that my memory is horrible. I was the girl who remembered everybodies birthdays and sent out cards ahead of time. I was the girl who people could rely on to have everything. But now I refer to myself has the girl who has a memory of a goldfish. Someone could say something to me and I would forget it in the next three seconds.

And in trying to forget what made my depression happen, I forgot a lot of things that happened around that same time. I even went further back and forgot most of my high school years. People could ask me about things that happened to me back in 09’ and I wouldn’t know.

Except, I would remember random weird things. Like the fact that my parents wanted body pillows and a year later I would buy one for each of them. Or the random little conversations I had that weren’t that important.

I’ve become a different person since then. For better or for worse, I live with it and do my best every day.

Yea I’m weird, I’m random, I’m shy, I’m awkward, I’m an ice princess, I’m boring, I’m strange. I’m a lot of things…


Update: Summer is Over and School Has Started!

Wow, I had so much more planned for this. My mind definitely works better at night. I was going to go on and on about how my summer went and how school is starting soon.

I can’t believe how fast everything went this year. I was hoping for more. But like always, I’m sucked into doing so much more for others and not enough for me. I need to save up for next summer. I want to do something fun for myself. I say this but it may not even happen. I need to get these next three and a half years done first.

I think the excited thing about college is the classes I am going to take. I cannot wait to learn everything I’m going for.

So I am scared and worried that I maybe going back for no reason. I’m scared that I am wasting money and time on school. But I know that I shouldn’t be feeling this way. I should be confident about my life choices.

I want to be a writer, I want to be an editor, I want to start a publishing company, and I want to start a cafe with books in it!

My English major is important to me. Going for business is important, going for philosophy and psychology is important. I want all of this. But summer makes me forget everything.

It’s been a while since I’ve written. It was so hard. With work in the middle of the day, I couldn’t think of writing in the mornings before work and writing after work. I was making excuses of having to get ready, and needing to wind down from all the customers I had to deal with in that day.

But since school has started, I can feel the motivation come back. My progress of writing may still be slow but it will be more frequent than this summer. Trying to juggle work and school is hard, but writing is such a big passion for me. I’m not going to let go of it just like that.

Even if I feel like a lot of people don’t get my goals of wanting to be a writer, I want to show them that I can have this dream and get to the finish line.

 

Pros and Cons of Love

There must be something wrong with me. I can’t read about love the same way I did when I was younger. When I was younger I believed the impossible, and now that I’ve aged I still want to believe it, but I find it to be foolish.

I’m currently reading ‘Eleanor and Park’, by Rainbow Rowell. The book mentions how the kids are learning about ‘Romeo and Juliet’ in class. Ever since then, I can’t help but see Eleanor and Park’s love story as another ‘Romeo and Juliet’.

They are starting to fall in love. Such young love.

Was it because my lack of love lines that made me become immune to love stories?

Did I not get enough love when I was younger that I have become ill when love is mentioned?

First love can be such a strong phrase.

I did enjoy ‘The Fault in our Stars’ by John Green. But I don’t think it was the love story that pulled me in. It was the truth in the story of having cancer and overcoming it to have a normal life.

Love does not make me cry the same way it did in the past. Romance does not make me cry like it used to. There is no bubbly excitement anymore..

Maybe it is because I don’t believe in easy love. Is it really that easy to fall in love?

I rather believe in the love were two individuals find themselves love in the random people and fight for that love.

I want them to question that love. And beyond all the reasons against them, for them to still love each other.

I want big arguments that pull out all the hidden feelings. I want little moments of cuddles and light kisses. I want handholding and quiet walks. I want to be held and assured of the others feelings.

Writing love stories is really hard for me. To overcome this I’m going to have to dig deep.

I am starting to see the irony in this writing. Eleanor and Park is what I want in love. Two random people finding love in each other. Now I just have to keep reading to see how they keep that love.

I am extremely jealous of those who can find love. I see people in love with a deep friendship and I want that for myself.

With love, I am a big contradiction. I love ‘love’, and I want to find love. At times I will wish for love desperately. But most of the time I cannot stand it. I want nothing to do with love and I know I will spend the rest of my life alone. I can never choose and at times mention both wanting love and wanting nobody in the same sentence.

It is like now where I sit at school. With an r&b song blasting at one side and a soulful ballad coming across from the other side. I’m here stuck in the middle, indecisive of which song I like more.

So should I open myself up to the kind of love I want or should I stay in my shell of never falling in love?

I don’t know…

Maybe it is all the stories I see around me. All the relationships around me are not perfect but they work. There are times when I see the good in love and times when I see the bad.

Maybe I should stop worrying about all the relationships around me and worry about me. Who cares what other people see in love. I should worry about how I see love.

I want to see the good in love and I should give myself that right. My yearly goal is to never say negative things. I work hard on that and it really has improved my positivity in life. My half-year goal (just made that up right now!) is to fall in love with love again.

 

My College Essay a.k.a Realizing My Dreams

The truth is that I want to be a writer. I have great PASSION for it. But for the longest time I was in great denial about it.

In high school there was a big career decision that everyone had to make and my parents set the goal high. So it put me in confusion. I put myself in general studies for the longest of time with no idea on where to go in life. At the current moment I am just stuck in my studies aka not going to school at the moment.

But at the beginning of this year, I thought about myself a lot. Who I am and what I loved, I even thought about my past, my present and future. The outcome of it was that I wanted to write, or should I say continue writing.

During high school, I spent a lot of time writing. Journals and plots for stories were half of what I wrote throughout the whole day. Right after high school though, I was in a slump. I could not even pick up a pencil or look at a piece of paper. I thought I was suffering from writer’s block. Though I did look up writer’s block and found out that what I was going through wasn’t writer’s block. It was the great denial of wanting to write as a career, and having to do better than a writer.

The pressure of doing better was always there. But in the back of my mind, there was writing. All my stories that I wanted to come to life. A world was building in my mind and it was screaming to come alive.

I had asked myself constantly about what I wanted to do. There were days when it was all I thought about, it got to the point where I was even dreaming about it.

The one dream that will always stick with me, as if I had it last night, happened on a pathway. On each side of this pathway were doors. There was this famous Asian singer there, and he was acting as a dream guide. I meet up with him and he questioned my career path. He took me into this pathway and opened up a door. I was in shock to be honest, because there on the floor was a pile of books.

For the longest time when I thought about goals, I kept thinking about publishing a book. That is what I dream of. Publishing a book of mine is my dream goal. No other idea’s pop into my mind when I think of goals. Every time it is to publish a book.

Why? It is not only that I love to write. I love to read. When I was introduced to books, I was an ecstatic elementary child. I could not wait to line up to go to the library to choose a new book to read. The fact that I could borrow books to read amazed me.

I read every chance I could. I remember the pride I had when my family went to the public library and I could point out all the books I had read so far.

There are memories of wanting to keep reading to find out the progression of a character and the story plot, and it kept me up throughout the night until I could not open my eyes anymore. The excitement when the hero wins, or the sadness that engulfed me when a character passed away, there was also the hatred of evil characters. The climax of story that made me squealing or screaming, sitting at the edge of my chair, too scared to keep reading, and the curiosity that kept me reading. I loved it all.

I loved it so much and it made me that much happier. Every time I finished a book, I would sit there and hug the book, and just take a moment of silence. Thinking of all the great times I had with the book. I felt fulfilled.

That was what I wanted to do. Give that great feeling to some child/teenager who loves reading as much as I do. I wanted to give a fantasy to a reader who wanted to go on adventures, the reader who relied on books to get through the day. I wanted to give a way of escape to readers who needed it.

Writing is what I want to do. I have great passion for it. I have to go through steep mountains and deep rivers for it to happen, but I will climb and learn how to swim if I have to.

Finally, I want to go back to school, for a creative writing degree. I am done with fulfilling others dreams. I want to run and catch mine.