Gilded collar

For the purposes of this exercise, let’s just set aside the semantics and debates surrounding the attempts to quantify or define the concept of the word “happiness.”

Generally, I’m more than happy to make my loved ones happy, not the least of which– selfishly– is because their happiness is paramount to mine, and makes me happy as well. Every now and then, I resent the fact that my happiness is dependent on that of others.

Because at this point, there’s no making my parents happy; all of my efforts until I graduate will be aimed at attempting to mitigate the damage that’s already been wrought, to make up for how unhappy I’ve made them, and only after that can I even spare a thought for their happiness beyond alleviating-the-worry-that-I’m-a-failure-at-life.

Then again, that’s where this entire conflict springs from. For the first two full years of university, I’ve oscillated between making myself happy and doing what I think may appease my parents; I’ve moved from trying to fully please them to compromising between our wishes, but the see-saw between resentment and contrition is evident in my hopping between majors, the fluctuation of grades scattered across my unimpressive transcript, and the lowering personal standards.

The thought that I can make my parents unhappy more easily than vice versa is leaving me rather perpetually glum in the back of my mind, though outwardly I’m more or less fine. That persistent underlying stress makes me feel tense even when I’m in a good mood, and I don’t know if I can take that tenseness for two years– when, hopefully, I’ll graduate and at least assuage the fears of that not coming to pass. Dealing with it for weeks at a time is already difficult enough, and I feel relieved after each semester to feel the tension loosen after exams.

But there’s already a stiffness to my joints as I type and an almost imperceptible clenching of my stomach, a catching of my breath and a dull ache in my chest– that won’t go away no matter how much I try to relax. Stress like this isn’t good for you. It’s not the flash-fire temper of people who are quick to rouse to fury at small things like train delays; it’s almost like a pervasive dread of the future.

Because from here on out, every positive step I take– hopefully positive, assuming they will come to fruition– will be mentally backed by an upturned face, palms facing the sky in supplication, asking (pleading): is that good? will it be enough? are you proud of my progress? do you feel less ashamed of me? have you stopped hurting?

—

tl;dr: I fucked up academically and to be frank, personally feel detached from it, but am stricken by the backlash and shitstorm it’s caused for my family.

Turning leaves

I’m sitting in temporary housing listening to a quartet of girls, three of whom I don’t know and one who’s a temporary roommate of mine– and we’re discussing books. At least, they are, guests of my roommate, all theater girls, and I’m occasionally interjecting from the corner where I sit with my laptop. Aside from a brief demonstration of one of my dance props– after one of the girls had picked up the magician’s-cane-variant I own and mistaken it for a baton– to much wide-eyed appreciation, which I also appreciated, we settled onto various pieces of furniture and I kept to myself.

But the book titles being tossed around are too compelling for me to resist. A Wrinkle In Time. I hadn’t been listening to the conversation until my roommate, sitting separate from her three companions piled onto a futon in our common room, explained Wrinkle’s theory of four-dimensional space. “A Wind in the Door is the sequel– that’s good too.” “Many Waters– that’s the Noah’s Ark-type story.” “What’s the last sequel called?” “A Swiftly Tilting Planet,” I chimed in, unable to hold back. “Ah, that’s the one,” the girl returned, no expression of surprise crossing her face at my input. The titles flew, as we exchanged childhood reading loves– The Little Prince. The Handmaid’s Tale, by one of my favorite authors, Margaret Atwood; the girl who had suggested that book hadn’t read any of her other works, whereas I’ve read nearly all of them, and I recommended them.

Prodigal mannequin

I’m home. I guess.

“Home” is figurative; it was where I lived with my parents for the six-odd years before I started college. But I never liked the state, and experienced a jarring, stomach-churning culture shock when we moved here, having been terribly sheltered and excruciatingly naive– book smarts and single-minded academia do not a street-smart, socially savvy daughter make– so going to college was liberating, if counterproductive, considering it’s merely a different cage.

The area where I go to college is mentally my de facto return point; I suppose it ought to be “home” in that sense. I declared residency, I’ve lived there for two years. But I come back here, my bank accounts were opened here, my parents are here and I have a room in a house here.

Still, home to me is neither my temporary four-year residence nor this state I worked my ass off to flee– it kind of seems to be in a state I only spent five days in two months ago.

—

Solitaire

Normally, if I’m in a bad mood, I’ll be terribly clingy, and my people-person tendencies manifest themselves in full regalia. I’ll want to talk to people, to be around people, to feel relevant, anything but be on my own. Today, after an afternoon of listless time-killing– not even enthused by the idea of free time, or able to burn time on the Internet at the speed I can usually manage– I forced myself to trek across campus in the rain to the group of friends I often dine with, who I get along well with but– I being one and they being four, plus or minus– never do they make the trip.

Perhaps it was things like that that, perhaps it was something else, but this must be a mood of profound apathy like none other, because I do not want to be around people. I left early, tired of going through the motions of normalcy. I wasn’t brooding, and I wasn’t sad. But an absence of mood made it difficult to do anything. I talked as usual and put on a cheerful demeanor. Then I simply left.

I do not have a specific cause for this mood– not even rainy days usually have this effect– and there is no specific solution; talking about this miscellaneous “it” would be pointless. I have no desire to do anything, after the thing I most desired to do today– paint– was made impossible by some forgetful teacher or hungover student neglecting to unlock the art studio.

I don’t like this apathy, but I don’t even feel strongly about that dislike. I feel rather nonexistent. There isn’t even any self-pity or sense of abject depression underlying this; simply supreme lack of caring, seemingly reciprocated by the word. 1 + -1 = 0. It’s a very odd mood. Hopefully, it’ll wear off.

Thesaurus

It is far too late (here, the peanut gallery scoffs at my age, but for every bit of seven-year-old mental age’s delight expressed at nature is a 37-year-old’s worries about life coming to the forefront) for me to be courting the “I don’t know who I am” spiel and indeed, that’s not what I’m doing here. I’m contemplating the fact that most people define themselves through other people. It comes naturally. We have a society. It has definitions.  Some associations are unavoidable– we live in labels and neatly-stacked categories, tame and easy to understand but all too often inaccurate and misleading; they both fail to encompass the finer details of unique individuals and cause some to believe that they must mold to fit and fill those stamps.

A somewhat stream-of-consciousness exercise done at a program I once attended showed that most of my peers immediately identified themselves first by categories and demarcations such as race, religion, or family member (son-daughter-sister-brother) before moving on to more abstract analyses. Meanwhile, my entry was introspective and rife with metaphors. I defined myself in my own terms, not relevant to other people, and reading back– I find that very interesting.

Because in application and in action, I define myself very much by other people. I am a daughter struggling to reconcile her ever-present duties with her transient desires; I am a lover trying to determine where her life path fits; I am a friend and sister who occasionally fails miserably at her role but tries; I am a student, dreamer, pragmatist, realist, whimsical bundle of quirks, trailing off into abstract descriptions that don’t have to do with other people.

Eight nine

It is a rainy Monday when it strikes you.

This is the dreariest of days. This is the topic of conversation, the highlight of small talk and the irony of it all– how are you? okay. you know, it’s already a Monday, it shouldn’t have to rain as well! oh, I KNOW. You are running on something under five hours of sleep, have been for weeks on end, give or take; and you know you should be depressed.

You have been before. Your evenings are bleak, even your mother expects you to be, maintaining a steady barrage of health information and pamphlets documenting the dire side effects of sleep deprivation and the potential mental health damage which may occur. Which may have occurred. Which, unadmittedly, she has contributed to. Which she not only expects to have occurred but expects to see the effects still in place, a martyr in her maternal grief, and worrying her heart out desperately because she is supposed to know what is best. Perhaps she did. Perhaps she does.

There is a grain of truth in all of this. Mentality is a weird thing.

But it is 5:10 pm, and you can’t bring yourself to be depressed. You’ve turned in an assignment, late as it is, and you are hurrying to meet with patient friends waiting to go to dinner with you. The spring rain is a cyclical fact and the grass is so unbelievably green you think it would hurt your eyes were it sunny outside. The magnolias, flowering trees, miscellaneous cherry-tree types which have almost no leaves to speak of but blossoms covering every inch of branch, hang under the weight of rainwater and shower petals to the ground. The grass below them is covered with what looks from afar to be pale pink and white snow. Snow flowers, snow shaped like flowers or flowers shaped by snow, flowers shaped by snowflakes covering the ground below these trees against a backdrop of brilliant green lawn and somehow, for all their losses, the branches are still dense with blossoms.

There have been stranger days in life than being cheered by a rainy one, but it takes a fairly un-depressed– if not level, and more than somewhat whimsical– mind to draw such beauty out of such drear instead of opting for the easy route to wallowing in grumpy gray day brooding.

Whisper of passing touches

The ‘blogosphere’ is an interesting microcosm. Evidently, my blog is mostly anonymous, as are those of many others who desire to write freely about aspects or events in their lives that they would otherwise shy away from expressing, restrained by public judgment or protecting their reputation.

Nothing is private in the age of information. When I went search-engine public with my blog a year or two ago, I began to receive more hits, Google searches alighting upon the unlikely search terms that link to my occasionally quirky post titles or obscure references — a song lyric, a misspelling, a Tupperware container. Yet only those who know me decently intimately or are participants in the events and occurrences I document would be able to surmise my identity. Anonymous bloggers are separated from the confines of their roles in life. If they wish to disclose details that would shock or otherwise surprise people in their lives, by maintaining an identity blackout here they separate themselves from the consequences of the disclosure. The readers can react all they want; they don’t know the writer.

Writing anonymously and freely frees the writer from a constant obligation to one’s readers. I was once a Livejournal junkie, posting and anxiously hoping for comments, wondering if I were important enough to my ‘friends’ and readers to warrant attention or replies, fearing irrelevance. Of course, that was also a branch of my insecurities and terrible lack of self-esteem at the time, but the difference still stands.

There is a curious restriction on anonymous blogging that private journaling doesn’t have, for me; writing in a blog forces me to keep my writing more or less crafted. Somewhat formal. Legible. Loftier than casual but more relaxed than essaying. I still respect a level of writing standards.

I do know that I have readers. A few loved ones & friends know of this blog’s existence. WordPress has a hit counter. Blogspot does not.

Waking stupor

My body is whining in exhaustion, red-eye flight survivor feeling like a final-exam veteran. My mind is wishing for unlikely deliverance, swamped already in the workload that accompanies the second half of a semester. And, cliche of all cliches, my heart? Anchored obstinately on the other side of the country.

On the first day back from a trip like none other that I’ve known, I am sundered. In the unexpected and rare 20-minute break I have between classes, I should be power napping, studying, anything but channeling my silly psyche into an outlet the only way I know how. But the next couple of years can’t possibly pass quickly enough.

Yes, my string of painful March ides has been shattered, and in its wake, me– next month, a familial visit to look forward to, but only as one looks forward to a court date, my character on trial in front of my parents as always; a mindless party or two run dry by weeks of anticipation; a meetup with countless people who, combined, I do not love as much as the handful of loved ones and old friends I encountered during my most recent travels.

None of them as much as one.

Dramatic? Very. It’s the first 24 hours afterward. This withdrawal will dull to a routine hum and return to the usual afterthought over the next couple of weeks until I can start counting down again. For now, though, I’ll keep right on moping as I eat the blueberry muffin his doting mother packed for me while my own mother passive-aggressively disapproved of my actions from afar.

Tributaries of Mnemosyne

Did I count down like this last time? I wonder. Was I this anticipatory? Was I excited, dreading, curious, or all of them? I remember my hands shaking as I walked to the airport, attempting to look nonchalant on the phone, scanning the baggage claim– shaking in nervousness? anticipation? dread? What was it that I felt?

Did I speculate? What did I imagine myself doing, thinking, feeling? How did I imagine it to be? Was I disappointed? I think I was a little disappointed. A little scared. And yet, I’d been doubting myself from the third week, so it was nothing more than a continuation of previous thoughts. I sought the experience; I did not seek the other party facilitating it.

I don’t remember. I remember moments, occurrences, but not thoughts. Not feelings. I don’t remember how I felt. I wrote of afterthoughts, musings, contemplating a viewpoint on distance that I still hold today and apply in my daily life. I’ve remembered other things, in other pasts, breathless nervousness, overwhelmed and enthralled– but now that I ponder it, every past is a memory and nothing more. They do not elicit waves of nostalgia for the feeling, for the experience– I don’t remember what they are. If I did, would I be wistfully nostalgic? (Is he ever? Does my other, I wonder, experience an upwelling of emotion if he looks back? Does he look back?)

Stratify

In line with my atypical brand of femininity– I pride myself upon looking sharp. I also consider myself decently style-savvy. However, I don’t care overmuch about keeping up constantly with current fashions. They come and go. My style is vaguely generic, slightly off-mainstream, but not so much that I’m conspicuous (except for beautiful days where I say to myself, eff it all, I’m going to be as comfortable as a wind-loving hippie), and moreso universally tolerated but not particularly fitting in anywhere– on the stiffer side of casual when I’m out in public. Or completely casual, if I’m not caring/feeling ambivalent/sticking to dorms and classes. (I tend to dress better in the fall and spring, and care much less in the winter, where all I want to do is stay warm– but temperature fluctuations make me sweat too much to want to look particularly nice.) I’m decent to consult for fashion advice, even on styles I don’t or refuse to wear.

Though I count myself aesthetically and socially conscious, I am not fond of shopping as a pastime. I neither find it relaxing, particularly enjoyable (more frustrating than anything, unless I achieve the kind of purchase I aim for– in the right size and price range, neither of which is easy due to my rather petite proportions and college-student frugality, and right style, which is difficult due to the sheer ugliness of recent fashion trends) or practical at all– why buy what you won’t actually get around to wearing much, or buy something of a transient fashion fad that will pass in mere months? (Or even better, shop for clothing that you’re only going to wear when going to shop for more clothing, as is often the observed case?) I don’t overhaul wardrobes every season; there are items I’ve worn for years, because they’re of good, enduring quality and fairly cyclical style. I wear almost everything in my wardrobe, barring a couple of purchases made by my mother that ended up looking less appealing as time went by.

Who am I kidding? Practicality isn’t even considered by today’s girls and women. Shopping is irritating. But I will give a nod to my superiority complex, a quick toss of the head, and the biting statement that even if I don’t like it, I am damn good at it, and do not sacrifice quality for price, or sense for quality.

Such is what happens when you grow up with a fashion-savvy, savings-savvy, all-too-shrewd southeast Asian mother.