Month: April 2015

I am a very proactive person. I make tons of lists, I cross them out, I have high anxiety and my anxiety always bleeds into my dreams. I am easily upset-able, not very optimistic, sometimes cynical, and high stressed (even when I shouldn’t be). Which, as a side note, is why I should do more yoga.

But I am very proactive. I make conscious lists the whole day of short term and long terms things I have to do. I even make lists of things I want to do. I get a satisfaction from crossing things up.

But in general, that’s just who I am. I’m sure I could try to modify the extent to which I am x,y,z but I’ve mostly just made peace with this.

I don’t like always being the proactive person. I wish that people would take some of the responsibility and pressure off of me. Maybe I’m just a control freak. To a great extent, I don’t trust people to do things with me that impact my life. But I always wish that I could just let go. That something could be right without me having to impact it. I want to trust someone enough to let them do something. But when I feel like I have, then they do something that isn’t right or is wrong and it seems to tell me, that of course this would happen and I should have taken care of it.

It’s this horrible cycle, which just leaves me feeling very stressed and pressured most of the time.

I don’t know what I expect or even want in an ideal dream. Maybe someone else like me? But I couldn’t even deal with that. I know that sometimes I am not a good person to deal with, and maybe even having to deal with myself is too much.

No I don’t know what I expect. Maybe I need to be more trusting of people, more relaxing of mistakes. These things just seem like ideal wishes. I don’t even know how I would go about doing this. Maybe that’s why people are therapists.

I guess for this moment, I have just resigned myself to the fact that as of now, it’s just a far off unattainable dream.

It’s like, sometimes I just don’t want to have to make the plans, the week plans, the month plans, to have things work out without me hounding them. I want to know what I’ll eat in the week without having to plan it myself, to direct the day, to orchestrate when things will happen.

Because that’s how I feel a lot of the time, like I’m having to direct my life, not living it. I’m not sure how to describe it. But sometimes I wonder if deep down, under this struggle for control, there’s this lake of sadness. Sadness that I can’t seem to find the trust to let go and know it will be okay. Because I don’t know it will be. I do believe that if I do let go, it won’t be okay.

I feel like if I do let go, things will just go to pieces.

Baby steps right? Which would be infinitely more helpful if I knew where to go.

Because of a lot of things, I have had a lot of time alone. The classes I have had are meeting at different times and sporadically, making me have the most free time while being in school I probably have ever had. I still have work and reading to do, but these things are usually mobile, and reading, despite having maybe four books to read at the same time, doesn’t take too long for me.

So I have had a lot of time recently alone. I know at one day maybe I’ll embrace it and decide to go out and explore alone, but it’s not really what I had in mind or signed up for. I know this is just another of those things where what I expected and what is happening doesn’t match up.

But it’s okay to have an adjustment period and to realize these expectations. I never expected to spend all my time not alone, but I did think that my life here would be quite different. A lot of the time I feel quite sad or angry or resentful wondering where the image of my life has gone. I feel, maybe rightly so or not, that I have given up a lot to have this life I do now. Sometimes I feel so indignant and disillusioned. I know I should feel more positive in general, but it feels just so stark, so different to what I had in mind. Because even if what I thought was only ever an ideal that never would have happened, it was what I thought, wrong as it may be.

I sort of expect people to respond to this with a kind of, well what did you expect feeling. But I know this won’t be the last time my expectations won’t match up to what I thought. I suppose the best solution you can do now is just to work with it and move on.

Sometimes I feel more positive than I do today, and others, like today, I don’t. But that’s all about the process of moving forward and onward.

Maybe some donuts would help.

Chemistry is one of the only courses I dropped. I had a hard time with it, I didn’t know why I needed it at the time, and I knew I wouldn’t do well enough in my standards. I tried for hours a night and went to get help and nothing really helped me a lot. I would have passed, but passing never has been enough for me. I wanted to conquer it and I didn’t know if that was going to ever happen.

My parents were very encouraging both of my choice to try, and of my choice to stop.

But something stuck in my brain, just like another thing from my childhood, was that: I am not good at chemistry. I am not good at math.

I remember clearly when I was in high school, thinking, I am not good at math. I was in advanced math and what not, but I remember thinking, I am Asian girl, I need to be better, and since I wasn’t, I remember shutting that door. I remember thinking, as an Asian, I should be better, but as a girl, I’m supposed to not really be and it was hard for me to think of reasons to try harder. No one ever said these things to my face, well not the girl part, but I remember distinctly when my peers have said that girls can’t do this or whatnot. And this just seemed like people accepted it. It was like a weird unsaid rule and I let it stop me. And it halted my progress from that point, even if I tried to go back, I remember just thinking, no, I’m not good at math, I will never be. I can only be okay, but I basically shouldn’t attempt it, I won’t succeed.

And it was the same with chemistry. I couldn’t think of a reason to stay, or a reason I could do it. Even with the best parents in the world, society is very strong. I couldn’t imagine doing something with science. I had never met anyone who was a female who was in science. I never met a friend of mine who was going into science. My role models at the time weren’t scientists. I just didn’t see it going anywhere for me. No one said I couldn’t do it, but it was almost as if all the whispers, all the lacks of images, all the silence told me I couldn’t and there weren’t any ways for me to combat that. I gave up on chemistry. I regret that so much now, not only because I think it would give me cool insight into the way our world works, but because I let a lot of things in my life whisper into my dreams at night that I couldn’t do it and I believed them.

I never knew how much this was the case until I started watching Bones, a forensic anthropology crime show. I was fascinated and after taking a biological anthropology course I was even more so intrigued in a way I hadn’t felt in a while. I thought, this is so interesting, I want to see more. While I never said, I want to be her. It was the first time I really identified with a character who was a female scientist. And it opened this door into my past and I really thought harder about my choices in life.

I am going to cultivate more varied interests in science and what not now, but I can never go back. I can only learn from my mistakes and never listen to those whispers again. It’s hard when things influence you without even ever being said, but it happened. And I need to always take a moment and interrogate my thoughts.

I need to see my limits and then challenge them. They don’t hold me back, only I do.

Bread for dinner is a huge thing here. I don’t hate it, I like sandwiches and what not, but I am used to eating more varied meals for both lunch and dinner. But I guess I am used to eating sandwiches for lunch. It’s not that I am used to more full or heavier meals at night, although compared to bread I’m sure they are, but I am used to just meals.

I have to plan both lunch and dinner here. And I never just on my own plan bread for dinner. It might also be that I don’t like a lot of sliced meat and I don’t really like sausages. My sandwiches have a very particular type of meat, but they like to also be elaborate. They like to have chips, or be Italian Combos, or have pickles and tomatoes. They like to be meals, they like to be intricate and complex.

And that just isn’t so big here, especially for dinner. It’s usually bread and butter with some meat and cheese. I’ve gotten used to it, but it never feels as fulfilling to my soul. Maybe soul isn’t the right word. Maybe it’s just my inner food heart. I definitely have one of these. Sometimes my inner food heart loves things my heart doesn’t, and sometimes it craves things out of the blue. My stomach heart? I definitely feel like it has a mind and desires.

But it doesn’t fulfill it as much as a dinner at home, a steak and potatoes, a pasta, a soup. Maybe I’m a pretty unhealthy eater, in the sense I love savory, I don’t like skimping, low fat isn’t my thing. I love the fullness, the flavor that bursts out of my mouth, I love the combinations. Maybe my stomach heart is a bit like the rat from Ratatouille. I love the balances of heat and sweet. I love having a meal that is challenging, new, and complex.

And my stomach heart isn’t fulfilled my bread, cheese, and meat, unless it has a spicy vinaigrette with some sweetness inside.

It’s fine for you to say my stomach heart is a picky temperamental fiend.  I’m sure that’s how my partner feels. But my stomach heart also loves to experiment, to try to make my own bread, marinades, and salads. My partner definitely does benefit sometimes from my stomach heart’s whims.

I am not saying I hate bread, meat, and cheese, but my stomach heart isn’t a bread, meat, and cheese type of entity.  I also don’t think I am food snob, my stomach heart isn’t snobby or usually picky, but there are distinct faux paus’ and desires. if denied once or twice my stomach heart doesn’t strike, but it grumbles. And when it loves something, truly, madly, deeply, it’s satisfaction lasts for a couple of days. I like to thing my stomach heart isn’t ungracious or spoiled.

When my stomach heart is happy, then I am happier. It’s not a dictator or a everything or nothing, it just sighs with contentment or shivers from withdrawal.

My stomach heart just wants what the stomach heart wants.

When I visited London, I felt this instant connection and love. I loved the different neighborhoods, the culture, the people. I felt like it was so much easier to feel like I belonged.

For the most part I have viewed where I live now as a means to an end, a place I live, not a home and not somewhere I love. There aren’t my favorite places, my favorite sights, where I like to go when I leave. It’s been school and home.

I want to try to explore my horizons. I want to give here a chance. I want to fall in love with here. Maybe it won’t be passionate or deep, but I want to feel like I know the streets, the people, and the places here. I want to come away from here knowing things, being able to be a somewhat tour guide, to know here. I want to recommend people my favorite cafe, my favorite street, my favorite park. I want to experience here.

I want to explore here. I need to give this place a chance if I am ever going to call it home, in more than just the location sense.

While I don’t know if I’ll ever fall madly in love with here, or if I’ll ever feel one hundred percent at home here, it deserves the benefit of the doubt.

I want to get a travel book and visit the sights, visit the recommendations, the places that are the ‘tops’. I want to make my own tops, I want to explore, to eat, to hike, to walk.

I want to give this city a chance to romance me.

For the last semester and maybe since I’ve been here I have gotten this feeling of drifting, purposelessness. The things I used to do which I felt gave my life meaning changed and disappeared. It was really challenging for me to accept and I spent a lot of time just trying to adjust and figure out what my purpose, future was.

I wish I could say I accomplished it. But I didn’t.

If anything, what I did is finally recognize why I have been so unhappy sometimes. I used to feel like my life was moving towards something, making concrete change, doing something larger than myself. With activism I felt like all the time and hardship and tears were moving towards something and making concrete changes. I felt so stimulated, was learning so much, and had filled my life to the brim with everything. I had a full plate and needed more time than I had. Maybe I am experiencing some sense of burn out, and this is much needed rest, but I am done with that. I’m done with this underlying feeling of not knowing and not feeling like I’m moving. I want to move. I want to go forwards. And being taken away from that was really destabilizing to my core sense of self.

Now that I have recognized this, I can start to try to correct it and find avenues for rediscovery. It’s really hard and I still feel like maybe I used to feel happier in that sense, where I knew things about myself. And now I don’t. I sometimes find myself wondering, who am I, what am I doing?

But maybe that’s the new challenge I have. Now that everything has changed, what do I do with it? With the opportunity to start, where do I begin?

It’s hard and it’s totally overwhelming and terrifying. But I have to start somewhere I suppose.

Because of an eye infection thing, I have been using my glasses for weeks now so I don’t put unnecessary things into my eyes. It’s changed how I felt about my glasses and self and I’ve found a beauty in my glasses I never though I had or thought possible. I used to hate my glasses and thought they made me look so unappealing. But now, I have found beauty in myself with them on, which has made me very pleased. I’m not sure what will happen when I can wear contacts again.

Anyway, tangent aside. On drives home I have been taking my glasses off, because one negative is that if I wear them for long periods of time, sometimes I get a headache.

One night I took them off and just looked around, usually when I take them off I just sleep or something and never just look around.

And it was beautiful.

The lights passing me were diffused and looked like fireworks of color and light from even just a streetlight. It reminded me a Van Gough picture and especially the scene in Doctor Who with Van Gough. It was a way to appreciate the small pieces of beauty that surround us all if we only take a moment to look.

I know not everyone can experience this, but if you can, try it.

I had no choice but to look around, to take the moment and look, and see the beauty that not everyone can see. It was very touching and still gives me goosebumps. It made me truly appreciate, both my glasses, but also my lack of sight. I always thought of it as a huge minus, like if I was in a zombie apocalypse, but this made me really think of the beauty behind it.

Maybe this is just a lesson about gratitude, the silver lining, and the beauty of both silence and stillness.

I am such a crank when I don’t have enough sleep.

Not only am I so cranky, but I either spontaneously cry, or am almost crying the whole time.

I just can’t handle not enough sleep. Usually I’m fine to a certain point, but after that point, it’s just all over for me.  It’s almost as if when I hit a threshold of sleep deprivation of maybe…..70 percent, then after that I turn into a complete wreck.

So I am one of those people who needs sleep to do everything, function, be sane, not cry. With all the traveling and entertaining I have been sleeping around midnight and getting up, on average, at ten, which, seems like a lot, but never feels like enough. I miss my prime sleeping time.

When I was in the US I was going to be, latest, at eleven and waking up around eight and that was so perfect.  I am trying to get back to that, but it’s such a long process where you have to inch your way back up earlier and earlier. Which is hard when there are people over, or you’re jetlagged, or you are traveling.

Now that school starts, it won’t get any easier. Maybe it will in some ways because I will have a set schedule,  but I will have more work to do.

Also when I don’t get enough sleep, my whole health goes downhill. My system, when in balance, is really good, but when something tips, even a little, it’s a very slippery slope.

I need sleep. More and more of it. It’s a daily challenge.

I recently signed up for a Zumba class, thinking that these classes give me an incentive to need to work out. I usually do some sort of yoga and pilates, as well as lots of outside walking, but I wanted to expand my repertoire. I used to do a lot of dancing, and I truly miss it. I used to go outside and just dance in the driveway and it was really freeing and enjoyable, but I don’t have that kind of space anymore.

So I am going to try Zumba, which my sister loves, so that is encouraging, and see if that gives me back that sort of fun dancing feeling.

I was also thinking of trying to do ballet, there are tons of classes you can take. And I would love to do ballet again.

I felt so graceful when I did ballet, but also dance. I had such a concept of my body, the way it moved and felt and I miss that. I knew exactly how to make my body move and I wish that. I felt more confidence in it because of knowing how it moved and felt.

Yes, I probably need to do more dancing in general, because it truly makes me happy. I do it when I brush my teeth and what not, but I also want to learn more, to learn routines and what not.

So I am quite excited about Zumba, but also I want to think about other ways to get back into dancing.

As I mentioned in my last post, the Easter Monday was the first post in a while I had to write on the day and then post it. Usually I have some posts lined up that I have written in advance and schedule to appear.

I do this for multiple reasons, first of all, if I write about something that bothers me, or a strong emotion, I need days to cool off.

Secondly, I also usually need days to process something, and so I don’t just have small ideas, I need some days to process it and think about what I really want to say.

And thirdly, but probably the largest reason, is that I feel quite anxious when I am not on top of my work. And I consider my blog to be part of my work. So for the last week, it was a constant source of anxiety for me, worrying I couldn’t post the blog post on time, or get it done, and worrying about trying to figure out how I could do it.

It has been the end of some traveling for the month of March, first back to Germany, then to London, then to here, then we will travel back South all before school.

With me, traveling makes me very anxious, especially when it is with others. Not because they stress me, but when it’s all on me, I can easily just barrel through it and move on, but other people, lovely as they are, add other concerns and ideas.

So not only does traveling, being at the whims of others, and not being home to take care of what I want and myself, all is very stressful.

When things are very stressful for me, I find it difficult to express my feelings and I in end take a lot of feelings inside of myself, resulting in my anxious habits. My main one, after getting rid of one last year, is to pick the skin around my fingers. It sounds worse than it is, but when you have a loose piece of skin near your nail bed, like from a hang nail, that’s the habit. I don’t just sort of peel bits off.

Usually I don’t do this, and it helps me a lot if my nails are painted, but I’m not home to do this, and so it’s hard to manage the habit. When I am home, I will take off the remnants of my nail polish and hopefully, get this back under control.

It makes me feel very ashamed to have this habit, as it becomes painful sometimes, but also I don’t like having it at all.

But I have come to realize many people have nervous habits, and this is just one of mine. I need to accept it, which I have, and either manage it or leave it.

I am very glad to go home soon so I can do this.