Thump

Observations:

1. I have a three distinct personalities.
2. Particular people will always make my heart beat faster, no matter how long its been.
3. My clogged ear has created an interesting sensation of being cut off, aurally, from the world around me.
4. The people that I most want to understand are the ones who don't want me to explain.
5. An inordinate amount of streets, stores, and phrases bear your name, causing item
6. It's nice to be hugged by an old friend and told "it's alright kiddo, you'll be okay".
7. It's nice to feel good, but it's that same kind of good that was before. It's good only because I'm forgetting what I'm missing.

Desert

At some point last night as I was laying on the couch, trying not to think of all the things that had been keeping me up every other night, and an image drifted into my mind.

I was in the desert, near Tucson. At first it was normal, just a view akin to the hundreds of pictures I have of the desert in Arizona. As it stayed in my mind I let myself feel like it was mine, like I lived there. In an instant everything drained out of me. I owned this place, and because of that ownership I was cut off from the couch, from the apartment, from the thoughts in my mind that were eating away at me. I felt, laying there, like I didn't belong where I was. Then I imagined leaving, and what I would say to people...

"I'm leaving. I don't know when I'll ever come back".

And they would be sad, and I would be sad. And it felt sad and it felt painful in my head, but it somehow felt right.

I think it's time for me to go when I graduate; maybe not to Tucson, but somewhere. I know I'll take my baggage with me no matter how many of my possessions I get rid of, and there's nothing I can do about that.

The last time I left everything behind I moved from Singapore to China. I packed all of my clothes in boxes, and I got rid of everything else. Everything. Unfortunately that baggage got translated into bad habits and bad decisions in Shanghai, rather than being translated into an opportunity to gain a new perspective.

Hopefully I don't do that again.

Social Networking

I think it's funny when people that have never met me or had a conversation with me block me on Facebook.

forget

If i dont respond, I will forget. If i put these papers back in my bag, they will go away. If I don't know how to do it today, I will learn tomorrow.

If I don't respond, if i don't acknowledge, it will go away. If I forget then I will remember something I forgot before.

If i don't say it back it must not be true.

If it doesn't happen again, it wasn't meant to be.

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"I Am Not Myself These Days"

"I tell him that I dont know where I'll be when he returns. It's more of a show of bravado than any version of truth. I know I'll be here. Unlike Jack, no matter how beneficial a disappearing act might be for me, I could never tear myself away from a show in progress. Even when the plot's tragic ending is apparent to the entire audience. Perhaps there's a deus ex machina that will lower from the ceiling and turn the whole debacle back into a romantic comedy. Never can tell. Paid the full ticket price, might as well stay".

Delete

When in doubt, delete all of it. Never let it linger, and never be nostalgic for it.

Don't look back.

I don't have the thought for titles.

Commence bottling it up.

Things that make you feel good

Morphine and its synthetic derivatives (hydrocodone, oxycodone, fentanyl, dihydrocodeine, diacetycl morphine etc) are odd substances, like the whole opiod class of drugs. They are addictive, and they make most people feel wonderful. Unlike crack, speed or ecstasy, they won't use you up and leave you looking like a horrible shell of a person after 6 months of heavy use; in fact, many people are prescribed opioids for their entire lives for chronic pain conditions. It even takes incredibly high doses of them to kill you, unless you're an idiot and drink or take other drugs with them.

There might not even be any problem in your life if you were constantly taking them forever, or at least for a very long while. The problem arises when you dont' have an unlimited supply, and they aren't around forever.

Isn't this the case with most things that you want but could never have an unlimited supply of? Everything would be wonderful if you could keep getting as much as you wanted, its the lack and the desire for more when you "run out" and reach that empty "pill bottle" that's so bad. At some point this forces you to give up and stop asking for more, and look for something else that can make you happy on a deeper level.

Is there a deeper level of happiness? Or can everything just be equated back to substance use? It's really all to do with brain chemistry after all. Happiness is just the release of dopamine, seretonin, or other neurotransmitters, whether it was caused by a drug or a person.

If everything is really just like drug addiction, then what's the point of anything? What is happiness, anyways? What is being content? What is it that I see in most everyone around me but not in me? What is this capacity to feel normal that is lacking? Why do I feel like a shell, when there is no "thing", no person, no substance causing the release of those chemicals in my brain?

Am I just 21 and stupid? Or am I feeling a return of something that was gone long ago? Am I really just as clinically depressed and unstable as Dr. Best thought I was when he doled out all those prescriptions? Did it really go away? Did it just so happen that those prescriptions ran out the minute that I met Luke? and Luke ended the minute I met Zachary? Has my life just been one long splotch of discontentedness with things that forced me to feel happy (sometimes for years at a time) mixed in?

What's wrong? I don't know. I'm sitting here in the library about to cry because I just want my mom to come pick me up.

Mantra

"You must do the thing you think you cannot do".

Family

I was just on the phone with my sister, who I haven't spoken to in a few weeks. At some point during the conversation I got this feeling in my got that I couldn't describe until I realized what it was; it was that feeling of having a family. Maybe it's being busy with so many other things, or maybe it's that my family is spread out (literally) across the country in Tucson, San Francisco, Chicago, and Philadelphia, but I had forgotten what it felt like.

We are a product of our families, and so many recent events in other people's lives have reminded me of that. I'm proud to be a product of mine, but hardly anyone has had a chance to meet them since my parents have moved, and my sisters haven't lived at home since I was abroad.

Here they are.

Mom & Dad (Left). My mom was the daughter of Swedish and German immigrants, a pastor and a homemaker. She put herself through just about as much shit as I have, but pulled through, went back to school and got a masters in clinical psychology to do counseling, primarily with adolescents and couples. Dad's from a large Catholic family (two sisters and two brothers); he grew up in Ohio and Indiana, got a degree in English literature from Vassar and ended up getting an MBA and buying out the international arm of a marketing consulting company and moving his family abroad. Go figure. If I get my sensitivity and capacity for poor early life choices from my mom, I get my stubbornness and "knowing I'm right"-ness from my dad. We butt heads a lot.

Kim (right) is the oldest of my two sisters, both of whom are older than I am. She was a wild child in high school like I was, but did a better job of staying on top of school while she did it. She played rugby in high school, likes to cook as much as I do, and she's a fun drunk. She took full advantage of her high school education in Singapore and went to Washington University in St. Louis, waitressed for a year, and then went to med school at University of Pennsylvania. She's doing her residency at the hospital there now.

Erika is like me in other ways, and more interesting ways. Neither of us like asking restaurant staff for anything, ever. Neither of us like complaining to anyone who has just sold us something, even if we were just grossly ripped off. On the other hand, both of us find it incredibly easy to complain about minute things in life, constantly. We're both pretty much only happy when we're with someone, romantically (though this has worked out better for her, being married and all). Neither of us know what we want to do with our lives (though this has worked out better for me, being younger). We can laugh hysterically about almost anything, even nothing (and that's happened quite a few times, there's a video on Facebook). Erika went to Calvin, but the boyfriends she's gone through have always been more of a focal point, each one more likely than the last to be "the one". Oh, we also both think we're fat and unattractive, I'm just more receptive of complements then she is.

This is Zack, our second dog. I wish I could find a picture of our first, Bailey (black lab/german shepherd mix), but there are none, at least that I have. He's seven and he's small for his breed. We got him in China when I turned fifteen at a sketchy pet store near where we lived. He's full of energy for his age and most people assume he's still a puppy, but he's adapted nicely to almost-retired life with my parents, and gladly curls up to bed at 9PM under my dad's desk. He's a fan of chocolate, despite the fact that it will kill him in large enough quantities, and of anything left on the counter within his reach. He likes having his belly rubbed, and he's more than happy to cuddle with you and give you kisses when he finds you crying in your room.

He also knows exactly when it's dinner time.

Doors

"Now you got it
everything you asked
burned your bridges
so why you turning back

My doors won’t fit you through
Your head’s too heavy to
What could I give you now
I’m still the same tale "

-Nadia Ali

Sleep

another night

same couch same bed

more pink no fight

too much diphenydramine

another night

netflix will push

it under six again

more shows

more laughs

nothing real

nothing mine

those real things....

they never lull me off in time.

another night.

Flip

Flop.

I think that around half the things that I say are complete bullshit. The only things that I'm sure that I feel are negative.

So what exactly is compelling me to continue?

Is it like how things taste better when you're starving?

Is it just pure masochism?

Or is it just a drug that can't be swallowed, insufflated, smoked, or injected?

--------------

A conversation between myself and Zachary three days ago:

Z: "I want to ask you....are you passionate about anything anymore?"

S: ".....no, not really."

Z: "It's just that I've been watching this happen...and I wanted to ask, to see how it was."

S: "Well, it's not good."

Purpose

Looking at your catatonic body reminded me so much of times in my life I stared into the mirror and watched anything of any value slip out of my grasp and smash on the floor.

No one deserves that, but it seems it has happened to most of us that have found something real to live for.

Not that 'real' is any nicer or prettier, but it's better because its real. Or at least that's what they say.

More Backlog

The only thing important
Are these points breaking
Perspectives snapping
Stale frosting between
burnt everything else

It’s So Hard to Chew.
Chew down it goes
Down into acid and eaten
Recycled again to new
Layers
New staleness,
New points breaking.

And the same god damn cake.

A Long Time Ago

December, 2008 - I walked into the garage on a Sunday morning, my parents were just leaving for Church. My mom saw the look on my face and asked me if everything was okay. She knew nothing was okay.

A tear fell down my face and I ran inside and sprinted up to my room, planting my face in my pillow and sobbing, just sobbing until nothing but these strange alien noises could come out of me. I screamed at the top of my lungs for God to kill me because I just couldn’t take it anymore and I didn’t have the guts to do it myself.

The night before, I left Zachary at his new apartment, helped him take some stuff in. He knew I was feeling shitty and asked if I wanted to stay the night, despite having slept the whole day and not having a chance in hell of falling asleep. He said it would be good for me, and that it would be good for him.

I stayed. I stayed and lay there with his body wrapped up in my arms, holding him as close as I ever could because I never wanted to let go, ever. Some part of me thought I found perfection there in my arms, some part of me knew my heart was breaking into far too many pieces to count.

Somehow I fell asleep and woke up and headed back home to my parent’s house on Sunday.

***In the midst of this a friend asked me, as a form of comfort, "will any of this matter in a year?"

It matters.

All Bad Things Have a Beginning - Sometime in the Middle

The first time I did something I wanted to do was at the suggestion of a friend on the bus in Singapore.

"You know, they don't have any boys in dance club", he said. "I hear they'll accept any boy who auditions just because of that". I auditioned the next day, and was put into the lowest group. I didn't know what I was doing, but I thought I could dance. I got better the next year, and I switched out every P.E. class I had for a dance class, and on top of that took the elective dance class every term. By the end of 7th grade I was in year long pre-professional dance program. We met every day after school for four hours, and then on weekends for eight hours a day.

"You're gonna go pro, I just know it" -- I'll never forget this, what Ms. Pong, my dance teacher said to me one day towards the end of the year.

My dad decided to move to Shanghai at the end of the year, and I had to leave the program.

The first time I gained 90 pounds was when I moved to Shanghai. I didn't dance after that, unless it was at a club, and unless I was drunk.

Today, I am an economics major. I am not toned. I have a little bit of a belly. I can still pop and lock and somewhat impress people on a dance floor if I try, but I mostly dance in my bathroom.

Nothing is like being on stage. Every time I see someone perform I hate them, and myself, a little bit.

They're so tiny.

1/2 + 1/2 + 1/2 + 1/2 = i lost count.

I remember when I made this.

Things Best Expressed as Integrals

Too often I'm defined by the bounds of integration. Maybe one day I'll become indefinite.

All Bad Things Have a Beginning - 1

The blog title is stupid. And emotional. But its true. Often I have sudden surges of memory that rush back to my mind and for five minutes I'm paralyzed and I relive them. Those are the days that I am not myself. Those are the days that I realize I am not the same person I was 5, 6, 7, 8 years ago, and I won't be the same again tomorrow.

Slowly we all start to expose how we got to where we are today. Here is the start.

My first kiss was on a grassy patch separating my grandmother’s neighborhood from the whir of the inbound traffic on the Edens expressway. He pulled me on top of him and wrapped his legs around me and said, “This is what it should be like”. I agreed. His breath smelled like cigarettes and alcohol and the taste was so much more experienced than I was.
The first time I smoked was on the balcony of our apartment in Shanghai. It was after midnight and I had just been told that I wasn’t really inhaling when I smoked. I sucked in the smoke from the cigarette and covered my mouth and forced myself to suck it down into my lungs. It was a five-minute high, and all I remember was praying, feeling like I could finally hear and see God up in the sky. I was 14.

The first time I drank I was with new friends. We had a bottle of vodka that we stole from my parents, a bottle of sprite, and a carton of orange juice. We watched porn and played a drinking game that involved a shot every time someone said the word “what”. We took a lot of shots. We wandered around the well-manicured grounds of the apartment complex: three drunk expatriates on the other side of the world. I sat on a bench and I bawled for no reason. I was a sad drunk back then. I was 14.

The first time I did drugs I was in a DJ booth at a club whose name I can’t remember. They were passing around a CD case, and on it three white lines had been cut from a little baggy of white powder. They told me it was called Special K, and it would make me feel like I was floating. The four shots of tequila that I had earlier made the decision an easy one. I did float home, in a taxi down the empty A20 highway that led out of downtown Shanghai and into the outskirts of the city. I don’t remember anything. I was 15.

I don’t remember the first time I did ecstasy. I know it happened, I remember the feeling. I remember snippets of the many times I took it after. In clubs, at shows, at home watching TV. I remember seeing the most beautiful moments I’ve ever seen in my life. I remember feeling love for myself and the people around that I had never felt before. I don’t remember anything else. I don’t remember how many times I took it, how many colorful tablets with all their little markings on them I swallowed. I don’t remember how much money I spent or how much I stole from my mom’s sewing box where she kept all her cash. I don’t remember how many people I lied to, and I don’t remember whom I hurt. I know that all these things happened. I just don’t remember. I think I was still 15.

They are shards, fragments, pieces, slivers, images, clips, feelings, locations, neon signs, bottles of liquor, baggies of white powder, tablets engraved with spiders, @ signs (those were the best), and smiley faces, cab drivers, stairwells, cab rides that flew by, packs of Marlboro reds, my friend Vivian’s fridge full of beer, her balcony where she smoked hash, wads of 100RMB bills and midnight cab rides to go see a dealer who lived where the streets and buildings only had numbers and no names and I didn’t belong, and men that made me feel attractive and wanted and worth something. I just have these pieces left that I don’t know what to do with; everything was in pieces then.

The first time someone told me something was wrong with me I was in the office of Steven Devore Best, psychiatrist and neurologist. I yelled and then I cried and then I yelled at my dad and then I kept crying. He said it wasn’t normal for someone to experience that range of emotion in a twenty minute period. I don’t remember what else he said or what else he told me in those 30 minute, $300 sessions. I just remember leaving with lithium, then Trileptal, then Wellbutrin, then Lexapro. I remember thinking that he didn’t like me very much. I was 15.
The first time I felt dead was the next 6 months. I didn’t cry and I didn’t laugh. I didn’t fantasize about committing suicide and how much it would affect my family anymore. It didn’t give me some odd sense of pleasure to listen to the music that I would want to play at my funeral. I fought with my parents less, and I did my homework a little more. But on some level I was angry; and I held onto that anger for a long time. I was almost 16.

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