I cupped my hands over the mouth of my mug of hot tea so that only an opening remained for the steam to escape. It curled in a concentrated column of long, silken wisps, occasionally pinwheeling as it fled into the air, backlit by my desk lamp; with even the slightest breath from me it would fragment ruthlessly so I held my breath for as long as I could until necessity forced me to expel it from my lungs in a sudden exhale more cataclysmic to the ribbons of steam than constant minor breaths, but preserving them for a longer time. When I finally pulled my hands away from the mug, they glistened with blueberry-pomegranate-white condensation.

This is what I have done for five minutes instead of studying for my geochemistry exam in less than an hour and a half, for which I remain unprepared.

Having cooled slightly, the steam now wafts at a more leisurely pace unlike that of the thoughts in my head, accelerating in panic as the countdown dwindles.

Life is not bad, though. And writing is like coming home.

It’s been a while since my last post, but here, I am come, returning after already having been awake for four hours this morning owing to jet lag. Just last week, I was across the Atlantic for the first time. And now that the constant high of that experience, the energy strung on a line over the course of the week, has run its natural course, I am subdued.

Why haven’t I posted in a while? I’m not sure. This is my reservoir for scattered, flighty thoughts that somehow still run deep.^ Maybe I’ve been having a superficial stint, as I am wont to do, more extensive than most I experience on a normal basis. Maybe I’m content enough with my life to be more mentally placid, and don’t require this outlet as frequently.

(right, and I’m a card-carrying evangelical Christian, too.)

The latter half of that sentence, perhaps, has some measure of truth. I may not require this outlet as frequently, but that may only be because I’m channeling my nervous energy elsewhere– music projects are the prime distractor for me, from everything of import and anything of value.

Strange, that my more adult musical ambitions are expressions of more child-like dreams and childish yearning.

The words now flow, and rapidly, in a supple stream with only a minor echo of the simultaneous backtracking I allow as I write, skipping back and forth, editing my words as I go.

This and the above were two of the only lines inserted after words were written below them.*

—

The grad student who teaches our chemistry review sessions was going over organic chemistry fundamentals with us. “This carbon only has three bonds,” he said, motioning to a double-bonded atom in a benzene ring, “so it needs a hydrogen.” He drew the line to an “H,” placing it there beatifically when shorthand notation usually leaves the myriad hydrogens out of the ring. “Now it’s happy.”

Is it, really?

Either way, I found it endearing, and knowing what I do about the vastness of scientific mysteries– that is, knowing very little at all, because while we can break and synthesize and deconstruct and clarify and muddle science to ever-larger (dark matter, galaxies hurtling outward, space and time inseparable from one another, timescales too massive to comprehend) and ever-smaller (neutrinos, quarks, sub-sub-subparticles of tiny tiny tinyness, all conjecture and theory and this may or may not exist but only for a second’s fraction imperceptible) dimensions, we still know nary a thing about why things, really, do what they do, and how–

it made sense, in general.

**

—

The write-up about my travels may come, later. I kept a journal in Microsoft Word, typing after a long, exhausting day on my poor toted-across-the-pond laptop plugged into a power adapter for the European-style electrical outlets, and it spans something like nine pages. But none of it’s really fit to post– encapsulations of moments, dry and clinical documentation of a day’s events without spirit. More likely, I will write musings on particular things that flicked across my mind and that, instead of elaborating on in my journal, I made a note about with a single word or phrase at the bottom of the page, below each entry as I wrote it.

Because real musing, real train-of-thought writing that seems to produce the quality I am most satisfied– or content, as it well may be– with requires time, and it shuns structure.

Like now.

***

—

I may or may not have begun to be able to lucid dream. A friend once told me that she taught herself to lucid dream by drawing a dot on the back of her hand with a marker every day until it began to appear in her dreams as well, and henceforth she could participate in her dreams.

I seem to recall a shade of memory, a sudden self-startling when my head snapped back and a dot bloomed upon the hand of my dream-self, much to my satisfaction.

But maybe I was only dreaming that I was lucid dreaming.

At any rate, I still fail to remember my dreams more often than not, and can’t tell clearly whether any of this happened.

I can tell, however, that I am writing right now when I have schoolwork to do.

Isn’t that how it always works best?

—

The weather was disconcertingly mild when I returned to the country. I expected it to be much colder than it was when I left, as if autumn swept in mercilessly in our absences. However, almost kindly, a balmy wind nestled in our clothing as we stepped out of the airport.

Almost mocking, the decidedly-more-bare-than-before trees outside my window pose with the utmost stillness, naked to the elements and bereft of shelter, and their ability to provide such.

—

^ Or so I liked to think during the instant I wrote that. Upon further contemplation, what I write here is really not always deep. It is introspective at times, yes. But the path of such introspection can still sound like child-like lamentation enclosed in a slightly older-sounding vocabulary or writing style. Pretty package, but the contents are still unsophisticated.

* But of course, upon rereading my post, I thought of more to write– but didn’t feel like breaking the incarnation of this lovely train of thought, this written snapshot. So I let the asterisks have it.

** These thoughts have been ever-present after I finished reading “A Short History of Nearly Everything,” a cursory but hefty survey of the history of science– as if such a survey could be anything but hefty at the very least– that my advisor for my first independent paper bade me read.

*** I appear to be utter beans at structured writing nowadays, moreso than ever.

As a side note, almost an addendum to the previous post– I think that learning to bite one’s tongue is one of the more significant marks of maturity. When we’re children, we let words flow freely, unconstrained by society and propriety. We soon learn to obey and observe them, if not to occasionally flout them.

But flouting society’s constraints is one thing. Learning to hold back unnecessary or hurtful words out of consideration for another person’s reaction– not just society-dictated reactions, but personal feelings and sentiment– isn’t straightforward, because people often don’t consider how their words might affect the person they’re aimed at. When they are considered, often the intention is malicious or self-serving– flattery, malicious rumours, the list goes on. Considering a possible reply or comment and refraining from saying it after one realizes that the person may be hurt?

How long does it take for people to learn that, if ever?

It’s very, very tempting to lash out, though. But as I kept myself from pointing out to one friend who’s been depressed lately over a former friend of hers– who, all her close friends have pointed out, was the guilty party in their falling out–  that her withdrawal from her friends and her shutting me out were more painful to me than anything, that she would draw away from the friends who did care about her over one who didn’t even though we were all sincerely distressed by her sadness and my empathetic tendencies caused me to feel frustrated and helpless, I realized that she’d been hurt enough without me making her feel more guilty– or causing her to lash out defensively. She’ll learn in time, and even if she doesn’t, there’s no use making more out of a situation than there is.

One thing that only age-wizened maturity brings: experience. I’ve been in her place before, and her experience also serves to remind me to take my sundered friendships less seriously and treasure the ones I do have.

As always, the other realization that comes with growth– you really can’t help someone who isn’t open to or doesn’t want help.

When and how do people learn these things? How, after my friends and I discussed articles about socially stunted populations in other major countries, do we come to learn these things through the tiresome educational mechanism of human interaction? And how is it that we only learn them from bitter, self-experienced lessons?

It seems a wonder, when one views the cases of those who withdraw from or fail to thrive in society, that we’re functioning at all– if we actually are.

You know there’s something wrong when you overhear a conversation and the words that filter into your head are filed under a tired-sounding “I’m too old for this” with a side of “bah, girls these days”– and the conversation was between women at least twice your age. And that’s a generous estimate.

I’ve long been aware that adults aren’t transcendentally mature or wise, and that in many ways, they’re simply children with experience and slightly more age-honed tact, just as my contemporaries– still young by all rights– are already moaning about childhood nostalgia and getting old. No, you idiots, you’re not old. Suck it up. But we have moved past childhood. And are starting to edge past adolescence. So my significantly older supervisor at the group where I’m interning this summer should be significantly past adolescence, right?

Er, about that.

A former employee who moved to another state– a fairly portly middle-aged woman– came back to visit, and after pouncing on my supervisor, catch-up gossip commenced without further ado. The conversation raised my eyebrows.

“So, how’s the boy,” the woman said, drawing out the final word with the kind of intonation that keeps the sentence from being a question and instead turns it into a near-leer full of insinuations. The kind of “booooooy” that I hear from high school girls. But surely she had to be asking about my supervisor’s son (does she even have a son?) or something. Maybe her son had some sort of ongoing gossipworthy drama. Surely that tone couldn’t be–

My supervisor chuckled. “He’s doing fine,” she said. “What about you? Found anyone yet?”

–what, really? are you serious? blared a corner of my brain. Shhh, let me listen! hissed the Department of Eavesdropping, and the conversation continued as I used minimal brainpower to process my infinite folder of spreadsheets– not that they required terribly much brainpower to begin with.

“I have, actually,” said the woman, who all but giggled.

Okay, that’s nice enough, I told myself, still blinking, wondering if my supervisor had been a divorcee, or if some people applied the sugary adolescent moniker of “boy” past the stage of dating. I mean, you don’t have to be young to date, I thought. And surely the parallels to teenage dating wouldn’t extend that much further than the unfortunate terminology, right?

When I tuned back into the painful-to-overhear conversation, things had progressed a bit.
“He said he noticed me right away, but actually didn’t tell me he was interested in me for a while.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah, he only told me a few days after [event].”
“Mmhm.”
“But he said he noticed me at last year’s [event].”
“What? So he didn’t say anything for a year?”
“I guess!”

…Okay, it’s still not that bad. I think. Even if I’m cringing, it’s not extraordinary to hear things like this. Just because I hear it from 16-year-olds doesn’t mean these specific dynamics of dating aren’t common. Human obliviousness is constant. The cattiest cat at the back of my mind chimed in– And being incredulous that someone would be shyly attracted to her just because she’s, er, not a looker is very mean. Even if I’m less inclined to believe her side of the story because of that…ridiculous simpering tone of voice she’s using. Must not make mental sorority girl comparisons. Or physical Umbridge comparisons. Oops. Too late. I mentally squared my shoulders and forged on.

“So it looks like you’ll be spending a lot more time in [city that former employee moved to], eh?”
“Ahaha, yeah! It’s crazy– three months ago I was like ‘oh, this is boring, oh, there’s nothing to do here,’ and now look! Well, he might come next time. He’s divorced, you know– his son is interested in [local state school] and I can bring him, show him around.”
“How old’s the son?”
“Sixteen.”

Outwardly, I was still crunching data and juggling Microsoft Excel windows, but inwardly, I was doing an impressive cartoon-style stumble. flailing around.

“Ah, okay.”
“Yeah. I was like, I just want to come back here for a visit. The way he worries– it’s so cute! He’s like, ‘be careful, don’t you know that [local big city] is dangerous,’ and I’m like are you kidding me! I’ve been there all the time when I lived here!”

Typically, that should be cute enough. Married couples have that kind of interplay all the time. My mother fusses over my father like she does us. I think that part of my whiplash-flailing incredulity comes from the fact that, despite my awareness that people still date well into their later years these days– hello, ridiculous American divorce rate and ”soulmate! predestined! wun twoo luuurve! MUST BE PERFECT IN EVERY WAY never mind that I’m not perfect AND IF THEY’RE NOT PERFECT I’ll just get unhitched la la la” complex– I expect adulthood to have a fairly significant difference in stability from pre-workforce years. Aside from the daily grind of post-grad life, that stability theoretically comes from a stable home life.

When I was growing up, only a handful of my classmates and friends had divorced parents, and objectively speaking (goodness knows I was an awkward duck), they had trouble socially. I only keep in touch with one (two years older than me, I believe), but she’s never been in a relationship before and dwells on this fact, constantly tossing herself into speed dating and mixers, to no avail and awkward outcomes; it then takes a further toll on her self-esteem. Of course, plenty of people our age do this, and I think my contemporaries need to not obsess over relationships, since we’re young and I’m convinced that they’ll be fine eventually– if you get your own life in order and have enough to bring to the table when the time comes. It makes things smoother.

But what happens at that former employee’s age, when you’re pulling for your twilight years and still unattached? If you’re fine with that fact, more power and less fuss to you. But for the unanchored ones desperately seeking that stability they feel they’re entitled to and/or can’t really be satisfied without, maybe the continuing adolescence isn’t a sign of not having grown up. It’s just a carryover of the problems in the first place that led them to still be single and drifting today. If at middle age, you’re still taking a teenage approach to relationships…well, then. That’s telling.

Maybe I’m being too harsh. Maybe my inner pragmatist is in full regalia today, and my inner romantic can’t be arsed to have a go after one of the best friends of one of my closest friends was dumped by her boyfriend of three years, who is already with another girl while she breaks over and over again. Maybe I’m giving myself too much credit by feeling absurdly knowing-and-older for not having a relationship fuss, inside working (or writing a blog post) while the women twice/thrice my age are outside, lunching and getting caught up, and regular gossip-fueled peals of laughter waft up to me as I type. After all, were I not in a stable relationship, I’d have less of a lofty perch to snark from, though my opinions would likely be the same.

In the end, I’m not fluffing up my “look at me I’m so mature” ego or even balancing precariously on some sort of moral high ground. More than anything, I think I just lament that the state of things is what it is. In rapid succession yesterday, I saw articles about how divorcees, even remarried ones, have worse health overall than constantly married people, and the question of whether the soulmate-centric relationship search is detrimental, and at what degree easing away from it becomes settling. No one can really say. But a bit of introspection on everyone’s part could hardly be unhealthy.

I hope the former employee and her beau find happiness together. I just hope it isn’t stereotypical-American-ly fleeting.

—

The visitor just left, and her parting conversation–

“Have a safe trip,” said my supervisor, “and keep me posted on your exciting news.”
“You too,” said the visitor. “And maybe you’ll have news before me–”
An interrupting rueful chuckle. “Not really, knowing my history–”
A knowing laugh. “Well, maybe by this point, you should be moving exponentially–”

Really, people?

Sigh.

There’s something to be said for therapeutic showers. Therapeutic is the word of the day, and words always come to me under the spray.

They first came to me framed in second person, in self-recriminating commentary– water sluices past the scabs, which trace the hollow of your neck and highlight invisible wrinkles with ripples of brown, like the impression that waves leave on a sandy beach– only the beach is shades of red and purple, dotted with livid pink where the ripples have already begun to flake away.

and you can’t even scrub at them, you can’t even erase this reminder; you must skirt them delicately because it hurts all the same though they no longer sting to the touch– and as if out of spite, you scrub twice as hard everywhere it is safe to, only remembering too late that you’ve cuts elsewhere. Already the cut on the inside of your elbow is scrubbed raw and pink, the scabs lost to the spray.

But as the water continued to wrap around me briefly on its journey down, already I was absently musing that second-person was all too melodramatic, and as if I weren’t already too prone to speaking to myself in my own head, I didn’t need the literary framework to make it all the more literal. And slowly, spurred onward by the knowledge that what I write is never the same as what it is in my mind, though I can see the words as I think them, as if written with pen to paper, quill to parchment as I trace the streams of consciousness like water from a showerhead…

I just let my thoughts wander without dwelling on them.

And now I feel better, if still vaguely isolated.

It’s been a dreadfully long week.

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.

—

Other than that, since my last post, there has been a birthday, there have been plans made, there have been hopes and whimsy and music career prospects and lots of good things but it doesn’t seem like enough in the face of familial disappointment.

I am less independent than I ever deluded myself into thinking I was; never completely self-sufficient, no, but also more dependent on my parents’ approval than I hoped I was.

And to think I ever thought I’d been under pressure before.

Life goes on. The tenseness in my body doesn’t let me carry on as usual.

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.

Books were my constant childhood companions as friends came and went and my naivete and lack of social savvy– academically brilliant I was at the time, but entirely clueless in matters of maturity required from my advanced standing, thanks to a precocious grade-skipping– and to this very day, I retain the desire to get lost in fantastical worlds and fictional lives. Every time I get particularly escapist, I dive for a book– or, as the case may be, well-written novel-length fanfiction.

The conversation sidetracks slightly as my roommate examines a rash from her berry allergy, and the girls discuss the availability of berries at our college’s meals, and berries used in drinks. But little conversations like this, little moments– like a random meeting with a boy I didn’t know, cooking in the basement kitchen where I heated my dinner, asking guilelessly if I’d want any of what he was cooking, which sidetracked into a mild exchange about how nice it is to cook from groceries and save money as opposed to eating out all the time– they are why I stay, and what I live for.

The affirmation that even some of the girls who look vapid are, in fact, intelligent and got into this university on their own merits.

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.

—

The dress is lovely. It’s strapless, and while I normally can’t hold strapless dresses up, thank you genetics, I had fallen for the dress in a store on a whim because the tight 24-inch waist belt is more than effective. It’s flattering, and I look every inch the poised, blue-blooded socialite that lines my campus.

Or not. I purse my lips because the reason I didn’t get the dress when it was in the store was because of its exorbitant price tag, and truthfully I’ve seen dresses I like more; this one merely tickled a fleeting fancy. Seeing it marked down slightly online, my mother bought it for me anyway. Most daughters would be overjoyed. I was unamused, since I had pleaded with her beforehand not to buy it, attempting to convince her that I sincerely didn’t want it.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate it. I like things. I like gifts, and I especially like useful gifts. I like things gotten for good deals even better, and I like giving them. It’s not worth the price for something I’ll never get the chance to wear because I chose not to participate in the elitist, exclusive groups on campus with ludicrous membership fees that host such formal functions. Neither would I have any other occasion to wear such a dress. And more and more, I’m starting to shy away from the paths that would expose me to such things. “Well, if there are connections that can benefit you in the future, you should join,” my mother said blandly.

I nearly cried out in frustration.

Choosing to ignore the alarm that upwelled when I heard that sentiment, I bit my lip. “Please stop buying me these things,” I said, almost flailing my arms in frantically welling panic at my mother, pained at her inability to understand; “I don’t like spending on things I don’t need. It’s not worth it.”

“Well,” she said with a quirked eyebrow, “once you have a lot of money, you will want to spend it.”

“No,” I bit out. “No, no. Even if I did have a lot of money, I wouldn’t like spending it like that. Didn’t you raise me to be frugal?”

My mother used to be proud of me for being frugal. I wanted her to recognize the things I’ve voluntarily given up. I don’t want to be beholden anymore to what she’s given up for me– and with a sinking feeling, I realize that I still want her approval and praise. But she’s taken my penny-pinching tendencies– products of the upbringing that she masterminded, a product that she was once proud of– and attempted to turn them against me; trying to give me incentive to aim for a high-power, high-paying career. As if to release me from the obligation of being financially sensible. This bewildering about-face has left me feeling at sea.

I want financial security, yes. I would very much like to be able to spend more freely. I want to not have to worry about getting the things I need, and the things I want– but not things that I merely like that catch my eye and have no practical purpose other than social peacock feathering!

I’ve tested both ends of the spectrum, and I can say with the utmost certainty that I’ve always garnered more satisfaction out of realizing how much money I’ve saved as opposed to any sort of satisfaction about being able to buy something at its full price. Why flaunt it when I could potentially get something of equal or greater quality for less if I bide my time and play my cards correctly?

Suddenly, I am seven years old again, and I want to be recognized for everything I’ve given up for her, the so-called connections and opportunities she wants me to take advantage of. She wants me to fill the plastic, refined mold. But I chose to forego those, both for my sake and the sake of saving up to $10,000 a year; the more difficult path, not for the short-cutting, the lazy. And perhaps it’s a strategically disadvantageous decisions. I want to be recognized for choosing these paths out of sincere intent…rather than being made to feel a failure for not choosing, in this case, to be deliberately cunning and perhaps less pure of heart.

It’s true, the cunning ladder-climbers get ahead. I’ve tried it and I’m burning the superficial ladder out of revulsion. Joining those groups to make connections, she says. She dismisses my recoiling as bleeding-heart nonsense– it makes sense, this seizure of potential power; it makes sense to get as far ahead as quickly as possible by any means possible. My attitude, she implies, is the one that produces cardboard-box philosophers. Isn’t my mother at all proud of me for, if not being a social climber, at least having a solid character? When did that fall in priority?

I am more my own person these days than I ever was, but part of me is still very much that daughter who tried her utmost to please her parents, and did up until two years ago– when she began to question much that led her to this point. It’s a nice point to turn on. The directions I’ve turned toward have given them apparent cause for alarm. But at the root of it, I still remain with one ear against my parent’s door, waiting for their reaction. Many of my inactive or low periods due to inner conflict, as much as it aggravates my parents, have been due to my own struggle to reconcile my own attempts to figure out what I want out of life and what comprises my happiness– and whether I should be chasing it or doing what maximizes that of those around me– with what they want. I at once resent them for causing such indecision and desperately want them to recognize that I still end up doing almost everything for them– and that when I attempt to seize my personal happiness, I feel guilty and sidetracked. I’m well-trained and conditioned.

I believe that my parents want the best for me, but for all that they are progressively-minded for our stereotype, and for all that they’ve become more lenient, my mother is so adamant in her mindset– all but equating success in life with materialism, demanding this quantifiable indicator of success, and absent-mindedly categorizing happiness as a by-product of this so-called success. Or is this merely the typical result of the kind of success they wish to see?– that I question whether she’s ever been interested in my individually-tailored success. Does she still see her definition of success superimposed on my path in life?

I am my own person, which means that my success will not necessarily be the same as her general exemplar populace’s form of ’success’. Yet more and more, I realize that she truly wants the best for me. The best in her mind is not necessarily congruous with my individual happiness… who the fuck needs subjective, unquantifiable happiness that you can only sense in your own mind when no part of society can protest that you’re successful?

Which I understand to an extent. I want recognition. I want to prove my worth, an irrefutable force in the face of people who either underestimate me at face value for my youth or inexperience, not expecting the finesse which I have hard-earned. I want to be of a status and position where I garner the appropriate respect. But I want to be recognized upon my own merit, and I do not want it to be bought.

She always fervently denies that she compares my brother and I to other people when she regales us with ’success stories,’ instead saying with not a small amount of bluster that she’s merely offering up examples for us to… live up to or use as a guide or surpass. What is that, if not a comparison? A challenge. I think my mother’s inferiority complex has decided to live vicariously through me in that respect, working-and-sacrificing-so-that-my-children-can-have-more-opportunities-and-a-better-life-than-me be damned.

—

But praise or no, frugality is ingrained in me, and her dismissal of what I once was lauded for, in possessing precocious foresight and mature restraint, seems to signify a dismissal of my personal character development– possibly one of the things I cherish most from my time living in this state. It leaves a bitter aftertaste in my mouth above the growing lump in my throat.

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.

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.

But in application, I always seem to think of things in terms of my connections to other people. In that previous paragraph, I let my mind go. If I think harder, I say “singer,” “writer,” “artist,” associating myself with things and activities, but they’re not what first came to mind. Time and again I’ve come to points where I sought to define myself as a single person, only to become sucked back into something– some community, some association, some relationship. I need to belong somewhere.

Part of me would never be happy being a solitary figure, with my ties to others secondary to myself; truthfully and without airs, I can state that I’m not a selfish person. Every time I’ve tried to think only of my own interests, I’ve recoiled. Often much to my detriment. I tend to put others first. Not everyone, but perhaps too many– people I care about, people who I wish to see happy, people who I admire. These sentiments often may not be reciprocated. I’ve walked several one-way streets and come out ranting and swearing, never again will I be used/tossed aside/made to feel insignificant. I’ve chucked three college semesters out the window from being sidetracked by people’s emotional concerns…though among them my own.

If I chose to help people out of selfish reasons, living vicariously off the feeling of being useful or “feeling like a good person”, I would’ve long since jumped ship since I can’t imagine such a flimsy justification would stand in the way of the sheer volume of frustration and self-recrimination that comes from being suckered again. But it is selfish, in a sense. I derive happiness from the happiness of others, whether it be attempting to please my parents or lending an ear to a friend. Yet my own happiness exists, and clashes– the differing interests from my parents, friendships that fade because I no longer identify with the person.

It’s a well-worn cliche, but the closer you let people in, the more capable they are of hurting you– for me, it’s easier to do through inaction and inattention, not conscious action. I’m an emotional rollercoaster, somehow riding a variety of moods (sometimes reflecting other people’s moods) without being unstable…just mutable. I have a strange mentality that I can’t put a name to– either I’m completely emotionally invested in people and lose sight of myself, or I’m so detached that I consider doing something extremely stupid just to see what would happen. My masochistic and sadistic tendencies are both mild and always in flux, but they’re curious.

Perhaps I’m not baffled that I haven’t scared my friends off yet because I don’t express all the craziness at once to everyone, but my most profound fear is being entirely alone. Yet for some reason, now I’m pondering that I shouldn’t fear it so much that I cling desperately to what I do have– because clinging drives many away, for one, and for two, it’s blinded me in the past to the realization that some things are more detrimental to me than can be made up for by the happiness they give me. There are always little things in life that make me happy. If I were totally alone, would I be able to survive? Here I am, looking the fear in the eye and hoping it blinks. The most truthful answer I can give off of a hypothetical is yes, I would survive; life is what it is. But I wouldn’t be happy. For that, apparently, I fear being irrevocably unhappy more than death.

Happiness is a fickle, hard-to-define concept, though. And I don’t even want to touch it, because the process of chasing it, seeking it, attempting to obtain it– is such a very, very screwed-up thing. Especially since the vast majority of people out there, perhaps myself included, don’t even know what honestly makes them happy. So what on earth am I fearing? And why am I spending my time tied up by it? Back to square one.

It’s almost May, and I don’t know how I’ve passed my days up until now. I don’t know why I can’t be productive when I wait, or why I wait like this, and whether or not I should resent myself even more for it. Either I’m completely worthless, or I’ve been looking for my worth in all the wrong places. Consider this a stream of consciousness.