Echo

Fighting for things is not always conducive to making them happen.
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Instructions came in loud and clear. There are rules. And in life–every test, every battle, every game, has rules. Sometimes you stop questioning who made the rules, and you say, I trust it. I trust that if I follow the rules, I will get exactly what I want. And so you follow the rules.

In my dream last night, I found a whole city covered by a thunderstorm sky and rainbow.  I could walk freely in that city, as myself. The thing that people loved, was that I was their size, a normal girl, but if I reached up my hand, it would grow and touch the sky. Like a giant hand reaching out and touching the surface of water, rippling the sky and rainbow. This world was just a drop of water and we were safe in it. People would cry, hug me, instant family, so grateful, the greatest miracle they’d hoped for, to witness that the sky was not untouchable. It was just illusion. And this was everything I’d ever wanted in life. Just to give those people that.

I don’t know why you would want it this way. But I can understand why you would need it this way.

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Saturdays used to be sources of huge anxiety. Saturday morning Chinese school. I was always feeling overwhelmed. It was hard. I didn’t enjoy it. I used to dread it so much my parents finally stopped making me go.

Then Saturday became our day of worship. The whole family went to the gym. This I liked.

This Saturday will be a very good day.

Went to my Aunt Jodie’s house and she showed us Edison’s kindergarten report card. Everything was excellent except the cryptic handwritten note from the teacher under the behavior section:

Needs to make better choices.

First of all, that’s not constructive at all. “What does that even mean?” I asked my aunt. She said that was what she wanted to ask me. She said she asked Edison and he had no idea what he was supposed to improve.

When I told B, he laughed. That can be said for most guys in their 20’s, he said.
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12:12 again
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That’s one of the hardest lessons to learn about love. It doesn’t matter how much you love someone, how much you have in common, how much attraction there is. You have to be compatible. You have to want for the relationship to succeed on terms both people can accept and feel comfortable with while having their needs nurtured and met. If you can’t stand strong as yourself while also supporting 1/2 of the foundation of a relationship, then you don’t have a working relationship.

No amount of love can bring dreams to earth if there’s no place to land.

I’m back in Fremont and was talking to Bohr who’s been fighting with his girlfriend again. I told him that we’re both very passionate, intense people. We need passion in our lives. But there can be passion without conflict. Some people need conflict in order to continually renew passion, and this is unhealthy.

I told him, when you look at a relationship, you weigh the positive and the negative. But you don’t add them together, and if there’s more positive than negative, it’s a good relationship. The positive may add up to a million, and the negative may add up to 10, but if those 10 are things that impinge on your NEEDS to be happy and to feel like yourself, then you have to consider those.

He told me he understood. That he needs to feel secure in a relationship, and when his girlfriend is constantly talking about her exes, it drives him crazy. He’s asked her to stop, that it makes him uncomfortable, but she does it at choice moments. He hates it. And he wonders if she does it to constantly make him feel jealous, because jealousy is what she accepts as proof that he cares about her. And it’s making him feel crazy because as much as he tries to explain to her that these issues they have, they can be resolved, they keep having the same arguments that escalate, and she’ll sit there and listen to him while he tries to reason it out, and then at the end, will walk away and say, let’s not talk about it anymore.

I can hear it in his voice, he’s getting backed in a corner.

I told him that end of the day, each relationship is a we. It’s communication, it’s two separate and individual people building something between them that should make them feel secure, appreciated and the best versions of themselves they can be. He needs to be very clear about who he is at the core, and what his needs are. And if the relationship starts taking him further and further away from who he is at the core and what he needs, he needs to get out before something happens that will really hurt his idea of self and his self-esteem.

He told me that this conversation, everything we were saying, he knows. He’s had this same conversation with his friends, and everything he says, everything they tell him, he knows. But it’s not from lack of caring about each other, lack of love. He thinks it’s nothing wrong with them and their feelings for each other, but the fact they constantly fight about little things and it turns into these big ordeals.

But the fact they are fighting is inherently a problem with them, and their communication or chemistry between each other.

I told him that psychologists studied couples and found that it’s usually not what couples fight about, but how they fight that reveals if the relationship is healthy and will last. It takes two people onboard working towards the same goal to reach a resolution. We take it for granted that two people who love each other and are in a relationship both want the same things. But that’s not always the case. It’s possible that one or both people don’t want a resolution, and are clinging to the conflict. And if that’s the case, it can be detrimental to both people, the longer they stay in the cycle.

We have to be very clear about what we need. In life. In a relationship. We can’t compromise our needs. If we try to change our needs, we’ll only fight demons. But the right people for us will fit our needs, will want to fill those needs, and you will understand and fill theirs.

You never give up what you NEED to be yourself in a relationship. If you do, you’re giving up too much.

That man will give you a very lonely life.
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Crying for no apparent reason means there is an apparent reason. You just don’t know it yet.
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I know I don’t trust very many people but my friends have pointed out that a lot of people I didn’t trust in the past, I’d talked myself into trusting because I figured I was not trusting them out of some paranoia, but they turned out to be people I shouldn’t have trusted. Michelle always points out that I have an almost psychic perception about people. Specifically, she says my suspicions always arise from some kind of hidden truth. But the issue is I talk myself out of my perceptions. And when I think about it, the people in my life, the ones I do trust, I see them pretty clearly. I know what they are and what they aren’t. But I just trust them. I know exactly where they belong in my life. It’s never a question.

So what about people I do question? Is my lesson to show a leap of faith, that if my psychic antennae is pulling up problematic vibrations, even if I don’t know what they are, to walk away, even if the people don’t understand and think I’m being “irrational?” Even if they try to talk me out of it?

Julia, your gut is rarely wrong. Even if you are wrong, what’s right will still be there for you even after you’re wrong. Never doubt yourself on the things closest to you. And don’t forget this when your head gets lost in the noise. That antennae of yours was the greatest gift they gave you.

Well, the root of the word “passion” means “to suffer.” So what does one do when born with a passionate temperament?
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Cleared to swim!
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why am i still awake? how did this happen?

cold
cold water
surrounds me now
and all
i’ve got
is your hand
lord can you hear me now
lord can you hear me now
lord…can you me now?
or am i lost?