Author: Liljumper

I really dislike games sometimes. Not because I don’t like to play or not because I don’t have fun, but because of the competitiveness. It’s that floodgate, that door I don’t want to open. I can get really competitive.

I really have only two switches here, on and off, either full on or none at all. I’ve just lived with none at all, and it’s been okay. I don’t miss being competitive. But I wondered why I didn’t like being competitive and games and what not.

They’re not fair. They’re about luck, manipulation, and an always loser. There are so many instances where no matter how well you play, you lose, just because the luck is against you. They’re about trying to trick people and get them to do something that’s better or lying.

And no matter what, they’re always about finding a loser.

It’s fine to say you love games. I just don’t. I don’t like any of those. I like to think if I play my cards right, I’ll be okay. I like to not have to manipulate people. And I like a world in which it doesn’t matter who is a loser, or if there is one.

So it’s fine, and probably right, to say I can’t handle competitive games. And it’s absolutely true.

I don’t judge people who love them. Just different strokes for different folks. I don’t think they’re worse people at all, they just like the strategy, the chase, the invisible crown.

I just don’t want it.

Closure. That’s what everyone wants. They always want to know what went wrong, which is totally understandable, how do you improve if you never know what to improve on?

And what always irks, bothers, and keeps people up at night is when they don’t know. When they don’t know what went wrong. It’s morphs from wanting to be better to obsession, wondering what they did wrong, was it me, was it my habits, what happened! It becomes something you can’t close the book on, because when your next relationship similar things happen, you can’t help bringing it back in your mind, “maybe this will be what ends us”.

I never got closure on the end of my relationship. For a while I struggled with that, I wondered, “What did I do wrong? What about me wasn’t right? What should I or did I say?” and it kept me up at night. I wondered what wasn’t right about me. I moved on, but it irked me. It nagged and I wondered, why.

And today, I know why. It was him. It wasn’t me, because I tried the best I could and maybe so did he (although I doubt it). You may say, well isn’t “it’s the other person” the oldest excuse in the book? But I won’t get into my particular situation.

The whole relationship I would take the blame for things I had no blame in, just so I could fix it. If it was my fault, at least I could fix it and work on it. But it never fixed, no matter how long I tried, because, get ready for it, it wasn’t my fault.

In the end, we just didn’t work, not because I didn’t try, but because we were never going to work. From the position I live in now, I know that. It wasn’t about what I did wrong, it was that it would never have worked.

It’s not really closure. I didn’t get to break up first, never got to tell someone how bad they were, never got to say goodbye, but I think it’s the best I’ll ever get.

I have never been a really polite person. With my family I never said excuse me for burping and with my partner now I didn’t. Until he said it really bothered him, for him it was a respect thing. And I got really mad, mad that I had to change my behavior, but then I realized why I was really mad.

I was really mad because I had to literally excuse myself for my behavior, something that was totally natural and necessary, because I could explode if I didn’t. Plus when I am really sick and nauseous, burping helps me the most.

Yeah yeah, I know I’m a rude person. I can live with that, but what I couldn’t live with was that people were telling me I had to apologize, excuse myself, for something I felt should have been fine. Historically, belching and bodily functions were more accepted than it is today. Society and history has changed a lot and made it more regulated with manners and eating practices to disallow certain bodily behaviors and expressions. It was about creating a more rigid order about not only what was normal and abnormal, but what was allowed and disallowed. Burping was excluded and deemed rude and inappropriate. But let’s just remember, it wasn’t always that way.

I’m not trying to excuse it, if people feel it is rude, that’s okay, I can respect that. But just the idea behind it irks me and makes my skin crawl.

I never want to feel ashamed or have to apologize for me and what I do or am. I don’t think it’s a particular deal to burp, it doesn’t bother me or when people do it, I don’t think it’s gross, that doesn’t bother me. But being forced to say “excuse me” every day while feeling like I’m going to throw up and literally doing the only thing that made me feel less sick sickened me. It’s not like I burp for fun or try to burp my ABC’s. It sickened me because I don’t think anyone should need to say something like that. I can’t think of a behavior like burping where I feel people should have to say excuse me.

Maybe urinating in public. But let’s be real, they shouldn’t need to say excuse me, they should just be able to find a bathroom. That was a horrible tangent….

Anyway, I dislike being made and needed to verbally excuse myself for something I don’t think there’s anything wrong with.

But let’s also be real, I will still say it. Because I love and respect people who might feel it is disrespectful. Ultimately, while I hate myself doing it, I care about people that I love more. And in public.

Which is pretty sad I guess, because beliefs and principles be damned, societal pressure can get pretty heavy isn’t it? Because if I walked around and burped and what not, how fast do you think I’d be called rude and disrespectful?

(Which is how it has to function, you have to feel like you’ll be an outsiders, disrespected, and taboo if you don’t follow societal conventions….or have really no care for what people think of you, which (sadly) I don’t have)

Stronger people than I would stand up for what they believe in, unapologetic expression.

And I’m not doing it to be rude, and if you can’t stomach that, then just take the abstract notion I’m talking about. Because it’s not just about burping, it’s about feeling like I’ve always lived in a position in life where I need to excuse myself, for being ‘bossy’, for ‘taking control’, for asking questions, for being somewhere I wasn’t supposed to. I have always felt that I’ve needed to apologize because of the gender I occupy and the position in life I occupy.

I want to be unapologetic about who I am.

I have missed so much about the US, but mostly food, let’s be real. Isn’t that what feels the most comfy about home that you miss?

Food: Bagels, Donuts, Chipotle, Delis and Deli Sandwiches, Swiss Miss Hot Coco, Pull and Peel Twizzlers (not because I used to eat this that much, but because they occupy a special nostalgic place in my heart and I was on a roll)

Baking wise: VANILLA EXTRACT!

General: How easy everything is, Shopping centers (one stop for all shopping needs), Forever21, Drugstore’s (although here you can test the products and colors which is a HUGE plus, but still I miss the range available in the US), more ‘natural’ type of products (it hasn’t really caught on here).

Obviously all of this besides my friends and family <3

WAIT< and obviously LIBRARIES! I miss those a ton, being able to get out any book I wanted and keep them. You can keep them a month here, but the selection for English books isn’t as good.

In the past, I have had a very on-off caring method. It was really hard for me to move somewhere in the middle, it was either I gave it my all or I backed off a lot. This happened a lot when people were in trouble and wouldn’t open up to me or accept my help. It became really painful for me to continue pouring my heart towards a stone wall and so I just switched off.

I don’t think this was the right thing to do at all. But I just got so caught up, so invested in caring, that when they couldn’t or wouldn’t, it hurt me (maybe wrongly so). People have limits and when I was younger, it was hard for me to stand by and support people despite them, especially if they got in the way of what they wanted to change.

I think this was a pretty horrible way to do things. And I wonder if I do it today, actually I don’t really anymore. I’ve matured and gotten a lot better at it, but still I feel myself sometimes wanting to slip back in.

Lately I’ve gotten into the mindset of be the friend I want to have. So all the qualities I want in a friend, I want to be. It’s made me change a lot of things about myself and made me grow, I think. It’s harder now that a lot of my closest friends are so far away and we don’t talk as much as we did, but I am trying really hard.

Doesn’t the title say it all?

Last year I did a lot to try to slowly make more progress in this area. And while I don’t feel these are new years resolutions, I do feel like this are lifetime goals maybe?

But I am going to write a list of things I want to do to make me a ‘better’ person and then try to do one more of these every week. Some are small, some are large. Maybe I won’t succeed, but I will try, and I think that’s enough. Hopefully, they will just become habit and I’ll truly change. That’s my goal if anything, to change. If this process changes me, even if I don’t, for example brush my teeth twice a day, I will have changed and that truly is enough.

So for my list:

1) Brush my teeth everyday

2) Take my vitamins regularly (usually I have streaks where I do, then stop, etc)

3) Reduce my nervous habits

4) Doing yoga everyday for not only exercise, but also peace of mind

This is what I am going to try to do. If I fall off the bandwagon, I’ll put them back on for the next week until they stick. I am confident it will happen. And of course because we live in the world we do, they are reminders on my google calender. I’ll put them in my real calender too, but since I won’t be looking everyday for school, I won’t check it as often. We shall see how many of these stick.

I did a presentation on cannibalism in fairy tales, I could talk about that for a while, but it made me think of fairy tale justice instead.

When I was a kid, and even now, I got this idea in my head that the good people would always triumph in the end, that no matter how hard it got for them, their goodness would prevail. Furthermore, I thought that no matter how many victories the bad guys would win, they would ultimately lose the war. That good would always triumph and bad would fall.

This is something that is in a lot of fairy tales, think Snow White for example. They present justice in a black and white sense. No matter how many times Snow White opens the door for the Step Mother Witch and lets her con her, in the end she survives and the Step Mother Witch doesn’t. Despite falling into a coma, her goodness (illustrated by her natural affinity to nature and the animals) prevails.

And if you think closely, it’s in a lot of books and tales.

And so I thought that this was the way the world worked in real life, that no matter how good I was, or how much I was hurt or suffered, in the end I would be okay, that my goodness would prevail. I thought all you needed to be was good, but that is pretty far from the truth isn’t it? Because really horrible bad things happen to great people, they’re wronged, killed, oppressed, hurt, and sometime, maybe more than that, the bad guy gets away. There is no justice, the wrong isn’t punished and the right isn’t rewarded. Maybe this is super cynical, but I think I had this jaded illusion in the past. So maybe it’s just more realistic.

I’m not saying that the bad always will win and that why bother being good because it ultimately means nothing, I am merely saying, that being good isn’t enough. There is basic injustice, different backgrounds, different reasons why you can’t achieve what you want no matter how hard you work.

I’m not saying don’t try, it’s important to try because that’s what stops you from slipping downwards, but maybe be realistic. Well at least that’s what I’ve gotten from it.

Because I’ve had moments where all I think is, “This isn’t fair, I have done literally everything right, so why is this happening to me?” and at this moment, depending on the person you are, you may say, well God gives us challenges, or it’s fate, or we’re never given anything we can’t handle, or anything like that. But since I’m not sure where I stand in that department, I was just left with a sense of profound hurt, not because I was hurt, but because I felt the world had wronged me. That they had taken something I believed in with my whole heart and showed me that it was a sham. And it was really hard to admit to myself, that no it isn’t fair, but it is what it is. Life isn’t fair.

I know that’s something so many people say, but I always kind of thought, maybe it’s not, but shouldn’t it be?

So maybe that’s why I feel the way I do, or do the work I’ve done in the past.

But this presentation has certainly taught me a lot about myself and how I feel about the world.

I hate making mistakes. I know it’s how we learn and grow, but to me, it has felt like I was failing, and if there’s something I hate more than mistakes, it’s failing.

To me, my own mistakes, not other’s, were a sign I was failing and I was, am, very self critical of myself when I do make mistakes.

I wish I could say I feel so different now then I used to, but I don’t really. I still feel like I do disappoint myself.

And I guess that’s the crux of it all, disappointment. I hate to disappoint, whether it’s my friends or my family, I don’t like that.

Funnily enough, growing up it was never a big deal to make mistakes or disappoint my parents (which I don’t know if that would have been possible, they’re pretty great). When I did make mistakes, even pretty large ones, it was never a big deal. But maybe I created it to be more so in my own head. Like knowing I would be accepted and what not, maybe, definitely, became my own worst critic.

I’m not sure if in my head it was that these people might secretly be disappointed in me, or but that the fear of potential disappointment was even greater so I hyped myself up more about it? This seems like one of those paranoid dreams you have at night.

I’m not exactly sure why I have such a firm connection to disappointment and self disappointment, but I do.

Maybe my biggest fear is to disappoint people? And maybe the people I am concerned about is me? But that just doesn’t feel right. So I guess this isn’t a very satisfying post since I have literally no answers….I’ll think about it and get back to it then!

I have been experiencing this for a while. It’s sometimes difficult for people I meet to acknowledge both me being American and Asian. And so one of those gets erased through the process and it’s usually my Asian identity. I don’t know if it’s because I was adopted and so ‘not really Asian’, but whatever it is, it really bothers me.

I can’t ignore that part of me, and I wouldn’t want to, it’s a part of me. Whether or not I spend time, or spent time living in China, that doesn’t change where I was born or my history.

It bothers me when people ignore it because it doesn’t seem authentic to them. Yes I could have done more to ‘assert my Asian identity’, but should I have to? I don’t think so. I don’t like feeling like I have to ‘prove’ I’m Asian.

I don’t feel like I make people ‘prove’ their identity to me. So why should it mean that I should have to?

It makes me feel quite insulted and disrespected.

But maybe it also reflects something I felt as a kid, not knowing how to accept another identity I didn’t feel like I could belong to, or wasn’t accepted into. Maybe it comes from a reflection of how I felt when I didn’t want to acknowledge that identity of mine. When I was younger, I felt like I couldn’t win because if I tried to ‘act’ Asian, then there would be people, or I felt there would be people, who would call my bluff.

So perhaps it reflects my own fears as a child/teenager, but I’m past that now. I’m ready to start accepting both parts/words in my self identity.

I have been thinking about baby names recently, not because of plans to have a baby, but just in general.

My first concern with baby names is that they weren’t too gender specific (but I was definitely on the fence about this), but another concern is that I want it to be unique. I loved when I was at school where no one else had my name. I wanted my future child to have a name that didn’t necessarily signify to people a specific gender, to feel boxed in about their name (since names are so integral to our identity). At the same time, I want to challenge other people to think beyond gendered names. It’s so confusing and I have so many different ideas about this.

There are names I just love that are gender neutral, Alex, etc, but they’re also generic. They aren’t very unique. So I guess I’m still on the fence about this and I’m sure I’ll come to this hurdle when I do have a baby. But I think it’s important to think about it now.

Maybe the solution is to make up a new name that is both gender neutral, but also unique?