hmm.
i want a lot to happen that i can write here tonight. =]
Archive for November, 2001
cabin fever
I want to be a more interesting person. I want to live a more interesting life. I want to have more interesting conversations. I want all these things, but there’s nobody who can do it but me. I’m the only one who can make the effort to make things more entertaining for myself. I’m the only one who can make my life take more daring and crazy paths.
Why don’t I? Why don’t I put myself into positions where I can experience? Why is it that I always try to play things safe? When I’m with people that are like me it’s fine, people who’ve never taken chances in their life. People who just do what their parents tell them to.
But now, I’ve met so many people with such crazy experiences and crazy things that have gone on in their life and crazy things that they’ve done and it makes me so jealous. It makes me want to break away from this disgusting mould of mock-normalcy and depression that I call my life.
I bet I’d enjoy things a lot better too, if I had less time to think and more things to just do.
love test
this love test was pretty cool! I didnt think it would be accurate either, but like dave said, it guessed my past pretty well with just a few questions… so maybe….
ethnicity
how i relate to being vietnamese
“do vietnamese people really eat dogs?” incredulous and greedy eyes asked me a few weeks back. I knew what they wanted to hear, so I gave it to them, “Yeah, they actually do. My dad used to have a pet dog, and one time he couldn’t find it and found out that a neighboring village had had a huuuge feast.”
“Ewwwww!” Laughter, disgustedness, all rolled into one.
I can’t possibly express how I feel about my ethnic identity in those moments. I feel like running away and throwing away my last name and starting up a new name like… Kim Lee or something so vague that nobody would know exactly what type of Asian I am.
For a large part of my life I didn’t know that I was Asian. I think I thought I was either mexican or white — those were mostly the kinds of kids who went to my old school. I had a couple asian friends, but those never worked out. I would think that I was white because I never really hung out with the fob kids, I chilled with the richer, smarter suburban raised white kids. I thought I was one of them.
That is, until the inevitable “Hey look I’m chinese!” as they pulled their eyes up from the corner to create a grostesque mask that looked more like an interpretation of retardation than an interpretation of being asian. “Hey Kim, look! I can be related to you now!”
“I’m not Chinese! I’m Vietnamese!”
Shrug, mumble watevers, and then it’s forgotten about as we move on to different and more important subjects like hopscotch and four square.
When I was in second grade, my parents started me in Vietnamese school. For the first time, I was totally immersed in the Vietnamese community. It was nice being around other kids like me. Kids who hated other vietnamese kids just as much as I did.
It’s a common stereotype to think that vietnamese people smell like fish. To think that they eat dog… and to think that they’re all poor, live in dirty household and work at the flea market haggling for “one dalla”.
Somehow, thoughout my younger years, I inherantly picked that up. I knew it and I hated it. I hated being vietnamese. I always wanted to be white. It seemed so much easier. I surrounded myself with white friends, and even when I became interested in Japanese stuff I still chilled with an all-white group.
It wasn’t until Freshman year in high school that I started to associate myself with Asian people again. For the second time, I met asian people who weren’t completely fobby and filling the stereotype of gross asian people. I made friends that were asian, and pretty soon I became backwards of the racist I was.
I was now less prepared to make friends with white people.
There was a certain new feeling of bonding. A certain, hey look. you’re asian, I’m asian. We’re both living in a predominantly white country and check it, we’re here together. We havea bond.
No matter how much I tried to deny it and denounce it. I had a minor case of the “AzN PriDe”s.
HOwever, these days, I still can’t comfortably identify myself with being vietnamese. I go for another route – Identifying myself as an american born asian. Why does it hurt sometimes when I say that I’m vietnamese?
I don’t know. Maybe its because of the ignorant people who automatically wonder if I’ve ever eaten dog meat.
But then, maybe it’s because I look too closely to the connotations behind words.
Maybe it’s because I’ve always wanted to be white.
i feel poetic
for you is written : an extended haiku
for you is written
this note that i penned myself
with blood of my tears
pain is tears and blood
when words cut apart my heart
too painful to bear
next to me it lies
this note that i penned myself
for you is written
empty
day in day out im split and torn about what to write here. i write so much at times. write so much and for no reason just to empty myself of all the shit that’s going through my head. but then i never know what to put here. what will i write for the people that i know so that they can know how i am doing? i’m alive i guess.
it makes me happy that people stop by and read this. it makes me so glad that people care enough to read about it. yet at the same time it makes it so difficult for me to figure out what to write about.
at one time it was so easy. links and entries and tell you what i did during the day. but i don’t want that anymore. i don’t want to be just another journal slash blog with a webcam pic and uninsightful entries about what i ate for dinner and the people that i encounter through the day.
yet, what else do i know? what else can i write about? i struggle. it comes to others so easily it seems. i envy them. what interests me? what can i write about?
it all goes back to my lack of passion. a subject i already addressed… but something that’s been bothering me still. herein lies the root of all my problems. still, i can’t write about things that i really am worried about because — well, because i’ve written it before.
my lack of passion. my lack of motivation. the bane of my existance.
“That’s so old!”
my brother, “So, do you have a boyfriend?”
me, “Nah. I donno, most of my friends are in their twenties or close to it”
my brother, “Haha! THat’s only one or two years older than you”
“Twenty is so old!”
—-
I still haven’t grasped the fact that in less than two years I’ll be officially in the twenties. It’s hard for me to grasp sometimes my friends are in their twenties. When just talking, it doesn’t feel like they’re that much older than me (and they’re not)– but when I hear anything over twenty, I think “oh, thats OLD!” Even if I hear twenty it seems old to me. Even if in four months I’ll be 19. Only one number off from 20.
When I was an eighth grader, I dated a boy that was a junior in high school. He was four years older than me at that time, and yet somehow the 13 17 difference doesn’t seem as far to me as the 18 -> 20 distance. Me? Date a twenty year old? Whoa. That would mean that I’m dating a grownup or something.
My brother says it’s because I still act like I’m twelve. That could very well be the fact.
how it is
“Why is it that people with Asian Parent Syndrom simply refuse to change? It’s not like it’s a hard thing to get rid of. I’ve been in 3 relationships with girls who all suffered from APS and its been the same every time.”
“It’s harder than you think to break away. It’s something that’s ingrained from you from childhood. This is the color blue. This is a lamp. This is a TV. You’re stupid. You’re a loser. You’ll never amount to anything.”
“I don’t think it’s that way.”
“That’s the way it is.”
“No.”
“This is stupid. Why are you trying to claim to know my situation when you don’t?”
“I do. I’ve seen it many times.”
========
You need to learn more, because what you said shows that you’re truly ignorant about the psyche and also the people who live their lives within the said ‘APS’. You think you have it all figured out, but you will never understand it unless you’ve lived through it.
I also really don’t appreciate the fact that you acted like you know me and you know what I’m going through. Just because Asian parents have similar child-raising styles and whatnot, it doesn’t mean that they’re exactly alike and neither are the people you’ve been with or me.
We’re not alike, though your mind would like you to put all of us asians who have gone through rough parenting into the same category. It’s different for everybody and it’s different for me.
There’s only one person I’ve ever met that’s ever been able to understand what I’ve gone through. And it’s not you, so don’t try to give me that “Yes, I know” shit, because you can’t know unless you’ve been through the same type of thing or worse.
It’s not just parents, either, it’s everything put together with mental imbalances that causes the pain.
When you haven’t experienced, you can’t understand, you can only pity empathize and sympathize. But you will never know because you never lived it.
You probably think that it’s not that hard to figure out. You think you see it clearly, and that’s the way it is for most problems from the outside. But when you enter the problem it becomes a tangled web of this and that, and it’s not all just yes no right or wrong.
And I know this is probably just going over your head, and no matter what I say you’ll probably be like “yeah, i know i understand… but..” But I want you to know that you really don’t understand, and I can tell by what you said today that you probably never will.
—-
In the future, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t judge me my parents and what I’m going through from posts I make on the website because it’s not the full picture and it’s simply the place where I express myself. Consider it a privilidge that you’re allowed to look into my life, but don’t use it as a tool that you can use to “know” me or try to give me pointers on how to live my life, because that’s what you were doing, implicit though it may have been.
I hate it when people do that. You’ve only known me for two weeks and you think you have me all figured out and you’re already commenting about my life as if you’re so familiar with it. That’s the biggest load of shit I’ve ever heard in my life.
If you’re going to be that way, you might as well stop talking to me because that’s not the kind of friend I want.
mental distress
my distress doesn’t come from being in college. my insecurities don’t come from being here and suddenly realizing i don’t amount to shit. it stems from a family life that deeply ingrained in my mind that i’m a retard and that i will never succeed in life.
sure they’ll lie to the public. they’ll talk about how great i am. sure they’ll pretend our life is perfect. even to my face. but then when i’m asleep or out of earshot — so they think — i hear the shit they’ve said about me.
don’t you love it when you know where your problems stem… and yet you can’t do anything to fix it because it’s so unbearably fucked up that you can’t even begin to imagine how to change yourself. it’s like normal people are a brand-new ball of yarn. and i’m an unraveled piece of shit that cats have played with.
I put myself through this distress and I know it, but I can’t let go of it. The feeling is the only feeling truly familiar to me. This feeling doesn’t scare me any more. This feeling is almost comforting… simply because i can recognize it coming.
The feeling that scares me the most is ultimate happiness. The feelings that I run away from are those feelings that make you feel so good you lose yourself.
I can express my feelings like this not because I’m keen or because I’ve suddenly discovered the fact that I’m a disturbed person on the inside. It’s because I’ve known these feelings all my life and I’ve had years and years to form the words to describe these feelings. years of thinking to myself. years of feeling as if nothing I do will help my anguish.
happiness lonliness emptiness
I’m a really insecure person. I know that, the people around me know that. It seems incurable, this nagging feeling on the inside of me that I’ll never be good enough… That nobody likes me… That I’m bringing people down. Where does it come from?
I wonder if it’s a psychological imbalance in my head. Some days I feel as if everything is perfect. I couldn’t be happier or in a better position. Nothing could be better than that moment. And then… the emptiness comes.
The emptiness is worse than the insecure feeling, I think. The emptiness is when all emotions become void. When nothing has any meaning and everything seems pointless. The emptiness means quiet hours sitting and contemplating on why I even need to live on this earth. Contemplating why I exist.
And then it’s back to my old lonley insecure self again.
It must be part of the PMS cycle.
