Echo

Speaking of Confessions…Pt II

1. I listen to cheesy love songs from the 70s 80s and 90s
2. I wrote secret admirer letters to one of my instructors in college out of sheer boredom and the fact that he was extremely unattractive, so I thought it would brighten up his day.
3. I have only 2 more signs to make out with before I’ve made out with at least 1 person of every sign.
4. I used to dial up random numbers on weekend nights because I have a theory that people are so lonely, they’ll talk to anyone.
5. I have videos that would ruin any political career that I could possibly aspire to.
6. I’m a complete asshole and don’t treat anyone well.
7. I once beat up a boy because I liked him and didn’t know what to do with those feelings.
8. I was sexually assaulted by someone I was dating.
9. Sometimes when I lie awake at night, I wonder, if I knew that I could get away with it in the eyes of God and the law, if there is someone I would happily kill.
10. I slept with a guy who looked like my ex-boyfriend just to prove that I wasn’t afraid of my ex-boyfriend anymore.
11. I once told someone I loved him just to get him to sleep with me.
12. I am terrified of cops.
13. I am homophobic towards lesbians.
14. I wake up every morning wondering if someone I love will die today.
15. I am distrusting of people with blue eyes.
16. I can not be in an enclosed space alone with anyone, male or female, without being scared of being raped.
17. I have the magical power of turning guys gay.
18. I have never kissed another girl.
19. I watched an older relative of mine cheat on her husband as I silently raged.
20. If there were no such things as STDs, I would devote my life to having sex all of the time.
21. I have talked to a ghost.
22. Getting people to reveal their inner most thoughts is like sex for me.
23. I have a doctor fetish because I have a thing for people who smell and look “clean.”
24. I wish I could know what sex is like for a man.
25. I’m terrified that people secretly think I’m dumb.
26. I won’t date Asians because statistically, they have the smallest penises.
27. I’d like to start a cult.
28. I think Jesus just had a good publicist.
29. I think women need to stop thinking with their hearts, and start thinking with their penises.
30. I am drunk as I write this.

But not all of these are true.

11/30 Recap

Oh hell yeah! 11/30. The last day of November. It’s beautiful, isn’t? Let’s get rid of these dark thoughts and move on to sunnier days. It’s been a hell of a month, hasn’t it? We had to look at the underbelly of things. Of our lives. Our relationships. Who are we? What is love? What the hell are we doing in this place, granted with the sudden, unexpected responsibility of life?

God, I had to face some ghosts. Didn’t you? But you know what? At the end of the day, there’s always something to live for. Wanting to know the next page of this book.To be surprised by the possibility of love around the corner. Of the good in people. Of a day when you can feel that what you do and who you are really matters in this world. And we all got through it. And that’s seriously something awesome.

So I’m sitting here, doing some writing, listening to my Ambulance LTD CD. It’s so, so good. It’s what Keane is to Brian. Something about it, I just emotionally gravitate towards it. And I was just thinking that…life is good. I love the little roller coasters that life brings. Each month with its flavors, its sweet highs and richer lows.

I’ve been reading a wide variety of books lately and I love how all these people, these writers , have such different voices. Personalities. You end up trying to imagine what kind of person the writer is. It’s kind of why I like blogs. You see the inner workings of so many different types of people. It’s a way of psychically traveling, experiencing far away things, mystical things. It’s hypnotic, the way looking in a kaleidoscope was mesmerizing for us when we were kids.

I feel terrible about my work situation. Everything in life is just a relationship, you know? All relationships are degreed mirrors of each other. The dynamic between my company and I are like, they want me to care more and invest more of my attention on them, but I just won’t. I can’t find it in me because I just don’t love them and even when I try, my heart is not in it. And so they’re offering me gifts to get me to commit to them, but I just can’t. And it’s not fair to string them along. But I don’t know how to say to them that I’m so, so sorry, but I just don’t care enough about the company. They’re so afraid I’ll leave. But I’m just not into it and I think it’s dragging them down. Fuckwittage. Like Helen Fielding would say. I feel guilty because I feel like I’m fucking with them, that sensitive bunch. Nice, nice people though.

Ah, I’m going to try harder. Because I want to be fair to them.

Thought of the day:

It’s the people who possess the most fear who also possess the most sorcerous and instinctual ability to scare. For me, this was kind of a scary thought to mull over.

Speaking of Confessions…

So I was on www.grouphug.us looking at confessions and I found this one:

There’s these two guys in my office, both in wheel chairs. By accident I shouted “here comes the ‘other one’ “

…and I giggled myself silly because it’s totally something I would do. So I was telling Bohr about this one time, when we were filming Cojones, I needed a midget. So I approached this really short guy who I knew through the comedy troupe (and incidentally, who was dating a friend of mine), and I went to lengths to convince him to come play “the devil” for me. So we’re on set and he’s in a little red pajama one-piece jumpsuit with feet and he thinks he’s playing the devil. But I’m really focused at the task at hand and end up blurting out, “Okay, I need the midget.” And from the other side of the room, I hear, “Oh is THAT what I am?!?!?”

I felt TERRIBLE.

Okay, so I just talked to the car dealer and worked it all out. Apparently the $1,000 that was paypalled from my mom’s credit card was a deposit for a $40,000 car. Nice… Michael is lucky he’s autistic. Otherwise, he’d be getting a beating when my dad gets home. But I talked to the guy and he said he’d refund the deposit if I just left him some positive feedback, which I just did. While I was on my brother’s account, I noticed that he had bids out on 4 other cars. And a $9,000 CD changer.

Goodness.

These are the dangers of teaching kids about finances using monopoly money. They have no concept of the true value of money.

Brian is out of town tonight but no anonymous sex for me. I’m on hour 11am-12pm of 24 (Season 1). I’ve been watching those dvds for DAYS and I’m not even halfway through.

I’m reading Bridget Jones’s Diary. It’s really funny. I was actually reading it at Starbuck’s last night, but was so tired, I kept falling asleep. But then whenever a customer would laugh or say something loudly at the counter, I would suddenly looking up at them, really alertly and wide-eyed like I was intrigued by their conversation, trying to pretend I wasn’t asleep. The same way you do at school (or, um…work) when you’re trying to look up enough or shift around enough to look like you’re awake and reading so you don’t get into trouble. But every time I did that, I would remember that no one gives a fuck if I’m asleep because I’m not in school (or, um…work). But the funny thing was that the guy sitting next to me must have thought I was awake because every time I looked up, he would try to engage me in conversation. And I would just stare at him blankly because my brain was still asleep. This little program was just what my body has been trained to do, since I’m a pro at falling asleep in places without getting caught.

In other news, my brother has apparently bought a car on Ebay. My mom noticed a paypal charge of $1000 on her credit card last week and mentioned it to me when she picked me up from the airport. I told her that paypal is like a wire transfer and we figured out that it must have been Michael. We questioned him and he said he bought a Mercedes on Ebay. We were like, “A toy or a real car?” A real car, he says. Holy fuck.

I told my mom to prosecute my brother for fraud. Just to scare him. Because he’s got all of our credit card numbers memorized and he’s always using them to buy random things on the internet.

I’m so glad to be home. Not that I wasn’t glad to be with my family up north. But there’s something to be said about being back in your own place. Emphasis on the “own.”

I know it wasn’t as bad as I feel it was, but I feel really crappy for some of the things I was saying over the weekend. I guess I’ve been very frustrated with the way my body feels, and I’ve been saying things that make my family worry. Especially my mom, when she is already feeling very lonely these days. She said to me today, “You always say how scared you are of losing me someday, but don’t you ever think that I’m also scared of losing you?” And I know I worry my brother when I get really moody and dark. Pain makes you frustrated which makes you desperate which makes you unable to be present for the people who care about you most. And I think I’m frustrated because writing/creativity has always been my outlet but for some reason, that part of me is broken right now and it’s driving me crazy. So I don’t know what to do and I’m starting to feel desperate. Worried that things won’t get better. I’m just trying to relax and breathe and ride this out. But sometimes I wish I could be more emotionally available to the people who love me the most when I get like this. I get so distant. It makes me feel like a monster when I breakdown and can’t control myself. The way I disappear. The way my heart goes numb when my edges get sharp. Edward Scissorhands. You cut the very ones you want to love the most. Just by being you. So you make them stay away for their own good. But that hurts them anyway.

You just can’t win.

Right now is not a good time to get too close to me. Not until I figure all this out. There’s got to be a way out of this corner. Just give me some time and space…I’m trying to figure this out so we can all get out of this alive. But that’s the funny thing about life, isn’t it? No one gets out alive.

I picked up an album by Ambulance LTD. You guys should check them out. Kind of retro pop/rock. Very indie fun. Like something from a Wes Anderson film soundtrack. I love the 3rd song, Anecdote. Very, very cool. #7 (Sugar Pill) is how I feel.

I also finished Survivor, and it talks a lot about the things I’ve been thinking about lately. Synchronicity. I have a knack for picking up a book and it turns out to deal with exactly the themes I’m currently thinking about. I also read Naked Pictures of Famous People, which is a collection of essays by Jon Stewart. It was okay. I didn’t really think it was that funny.

Maybe all this is just projection. Maybe I’m really mad at myself right now. Maybe that’s why I’ve suddenly gone cold and am pushing people away. Punishing the people who try to get too close as a way of punishing myself? But why would I be so angry with myself right now?

Saturday Night Ramblings

An artist without inspiration, may as well be dead.

I’m so damn cranky tonight. My back flared up today and that can always trigger me to be extremely irritable because I’m scared the rest of my life will be like this, dealing with this pain (its this intense pain that shoots from my glute to my ankle and I can’t bend over without it being excruciating). You really don’t think about how physical discomfort can affect your general mood and happiness level, but I think it really does, especially if it becomes a life constant. A coworker made a comment earlier this week that really bugged me…he said that when he first met me last year, I was really focused on things. Life. Very driven. And now, it seems like I just don’t really care about anything anymore. I’ve checked out. And I just sighed, agreed and said, I’ve lost my will to live. I think I surprised both of us with that statement. I hadn’t realized it. But hearing myself say it, I realized it was true. Now before you guys start calling up hotlines to report me, I’ll say very honestly–I’m not suicidal. I don’t want to die. It’s just a feeling of not really looking forward to things anymore, because I know that tomorrow morning, I’ll wake up and that pain will be there, as it was yesterday and the day before. There hasn’t been a single moment in over a year when I was painfree, and I realized last week, that I can’t even remember what it felt like to not be in some level of pain. And God, that’s really depressing. Sometimes I think about the limits of the human body, and I get angry. I think that’s why I fetishize robots. I wish there were robot parts that could replace my malfunctioning ones and fix me. Regardless of all the things I fear though, I still hold out hope that this will get better. I’m too young and strong to be stuck like this.

In other news, my senseless cousin is dating a complete loser. In his 20’s (she was 17 when they met). No job, doesn’t go to school, deals cards at his aunt’s illegal gambling house or something and posts crass comments about my cousin on his website. She sees it and somehow, thinks it’s cute. Yeah, she’ll grow out of it, the relationship will inevitably come to an end, but it still sucks. My cousin Bohr and I were waiting for her to show up to this dinner party thing tonight because we wanted to have a talk with her, but she didn’t show up. We’ve already had a “talk” with the boyfriend on the phone, inviting him out for “ice cream” so we could all get to know each other. Obviously, he was too chicken to come. Perhaps the jokes of breaking his legs didn’t help? (I’m just kidding. But seriously, if he messes with my cousin, we do have baseball bats). Bohr was saying that things like this make him hope he doesn’t have daughters. I’ve always secretly hoped that I never have daughters. So much to worry about.

(ps–my mom is now singing Cher on karaoke right now. “Do you believe in life after love?”)

On the way home from the dinner party tonight, I was thinking about how a friend used to tell me that if she could get God to send me a soulmate, she would do anything for him to send me a guy who would make me happy. I thought about how, every time she said that, I would appreciate the intentions but I would get really sad because it made me feel like she didn’t have any idea who I was. That having a lover, such a superficial thing, would fulfill me. Because I don’t search the world for a lover. I search the world for a mentor–someone who can help enlighten me and teach me, who can lead me. So that I can shake this feeling of always being lost.

Sometimes when people want you in their life, the love they give you is conditional. They want you there in a certain way, on certain terms, and sometimes, those are terms that you just aren’t capable of. And that’s the worst thing. When they don’t realize their feelings are conditional.

My brother has been tense all week because our dad is in China playing basketball, and Michael has been down about his being away and not calling. I think my dad needed a break from certain stressors in his life. But it sucks when my brother doesn’t understand that when my dad turns his back on him, it’s not because of him. Hell, I understand but it doesn’t make a hell of a lot of emotional sense to me either.

(My mom is now singing that Barbie song by Aqua, I think. “I’m a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world.” Deep breath, Julia. It’s gonna be okay.)

So I’ve spent 3 days and 2 nights at home and things are still tolerable, despite the fact that my mom is currently yowling Bryan Adams on our karaoke machine. I, myself, have entertained her with a brooding version of Superstar by the Carpenters before escaping to where I’m most comfortable…in front of a computer.

I went to see The Grudge tonight with Julius, a brilliant illustrator trying to get into animation, and my brother. My brother really wanted to go with us even though he handles horror movies even more poorly than I do. The movie was terrible—it seemed like the director was more focused on what to do that would scare an audience held captive in a theater, rather than what would make sense of the plot. Lots of creepy things jumping out at you. Luckily, there were plenty of vocal African American women in the audience (you know the type) and so their quips gave us plenty to laugh at. In fact, the whole theater was Mystery Science Theatering the movie so it was fun.

When the end credits began rolling, I asked Michael if he was okay. He said yeah, but then bolted out of his seat and out of the theater, like someone about to puke. I think he was really freaked out. I felt bad. Michael wants to follow me everywhere, and sometimes he’ll end up going to places that he hates.

I’ve been going to the gym and playing basketball. Played a five-on-five game the day before Thanksgiving and it was hell because I’ve got this sprained ankle and the back issue and I haven’t run in over 6 months. But I tried and my moves were slow (my crossover was pathetic. and painful!). My line? 1-3, 1 rebound, 1 assist, 1 steal, 1 turnover. Pretty weak. But my guy went scoreless so that was good. I was always a great defensive player. Loved playing defense. No baskets ever scored on me by my defense assignments during the one season I was healthy enough to play in high school. But I also fouled a lot. And was regarded as a mean player and hated around the league. But I didn’t care. I did my job.

Which speaking of, I kind of understand where Ron Artest comes from (read this article). On the court, you’re intense when it’s all you’ve got. When this game is the only outlet you have for all your anger, all that is wrong in your life. And all you care about, is to feel like you’re good at something, for something. And here you are, the only place where you can dominate, when outside, the world makes you its bitch. So you make up in heart and desire on the court, what gets beaten out of you off of it. Yeah, a lot of coaches could tell I had a lot of anger. But I got things done. Gave 110% at all times and demanded that the people around me did as well. It was heart that won games, no matter the level of talent. And I scared the fuck out of the other teams because I was strong and aggressive and played every minute of every game like it was life or death.

Speaking of anger, Mike, the ugliest guy I’ve ever dated (both inside and out), said once that he was afraid to have kids…he was afraid he’d beat them. And I said something noncommittal like, “Oh…no…you…probably wouldn’t” when I was actually thinking, “Dude, I hope you never have kids.” He was a textbook abusive, borderline personality. A terrible human being, even though I was always encouraging him, telling him he was a good person in hopes that he would be able to see himself that way and work towards it. I was hoping he would break the cycle so he didn’t fuck up other people on his path towards self-destruction. It was worth a try, as fruitless and frustrating as it was. Are there are lot of abusive people out there in the world? Or do I just have a propensity for coming into contact with them? Just want to break that cycle…too many innocent kids are getting fucked up in this world.

Things have been heavy lately and I’m just trying to ride this period out. November is always the worst month of the year for me. It’s like being dunked underwater. Completely dark and suffocating. And you just have to hold your breath long enough until it’s okay to resurface.

Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. And yeah, it’s such a cliché, but clichés exist because they’re true. Sometimes it’s about risk management. If you can see clearly enough, you look ahead and predict different outcomes of situations, and then you work towards the one that is better, with less consequences and more benefits. Sometimes there are no benefits and you have to go towards the one with the mildest consequences. Whitney is always saying that happiness is the most amount of pleasure with the least amount of pain. And if you think about it, if something gives you a great amount of pleasure along with a great amount of pain, by the Whitney Meter, it comes out to zero. Whereas, if something gives you a moderate amount of pleasure, with a smidgeon of pain, then it’s like a +1.8* (measurement is an approximation. ;). And by quantifying it, you can see that it is actually better for you. Anyway, math aside, I just want my life to be clean right now. Quiet.

Being home, in our haunted house. It’s funny, neither my brother nor I will sleep in the guest room. I told you guys before, there’s something wrong with the energy of that room. I’ll either sleep with my mom in her bed, or in my brother’s bed and he’ll sleep on the floor, but no matter what, no one is willing to rotate over to the guest room. It’s always noticeably colder and draftier in that room, even though there’s no logical reason for it. I used to lock myself in that closet in the dark to punish myself when I was a kid. Trying to toughen myself up by putting myself in the scariest place/situation imaginable. Whenever I thought I was weak, because I hated myself when I was weak. Made myself learn to detach from fear. Now in hindsight, I don’t know if that was a fucked up, sadomasochistic thing to do, or something that ended up making me stronger in the long run. I really do think that no one can be crueler to you than you can be to yourself. And no one can mistreat you unless you give them permission. Unfortunately, we so often give people permission to mistreat us, without realizing it. Ah…we must all be careful of our own unconscious agendas.

Okay, it’s now 2:51 am. Time for bed.

Happy luring-the-red-man-into-a-false-sense-of-security-before-we-poison-them-with-moonshine-infect-them-with-smallpox-and-rip-off-their-land-for-beads Day!

I’ve got the turkey in the oven, the praline yams are a’bubblin’. Today’s menu features:

I’m watching the Warriors game, and it’s a tense 4th quarter in which they’re completely blowing the game after building up a nice lead. So the situation is serious, the game is almost over and it looks like the Hornets are about to tie or win the game. The players set up, Warriors possession, and Mike Dunleavy Jr. goes to inbound the ball. The station cutting together shots of players, looking intense, from different angles, building the drama. And then the announcer says, kind of amazed, “Thunder just knocked over Dunleavy. The MASCOT just knocked over Dunleavy.”

And they quickly cut to a wide angle of the players, and you see Thunder strutting away, playing to the crowd, and Mike wobbling a little bit and looking around like, “What the fuck? Did that really just happen?”

I wish the camera had been on that scene when it happened, rather than just catching the tail end of it. I thought that really exemplified the conflicts of nature within professional sports. On one hand, the athletes take it so incredibly seriously. There’s a lot of ego involved. These tense moments on the court that mean the difference between winning and losing may as well mean the difference beween life and death. They’re here to do a job; a delicate job–squeaking out a win–that requires almost godly focus and discipline.

And then there are the fans who came not so much to watch exceptionally skilled athletes as to have the all-inclusive wild night out, who merge into a rowdy crowd and demand to be entertained, who dance like morons to be on the Jumbotron, whose life missions at that very moment is to catch a rolled up t-shirts shot from a cannon…as watch the Mascot run around being goofy like a hyperactive village idiot. No offense to village idiots everywhere.

How can the players work under this condition?

Yeah, they get paid millions to do it. Deal with this circus around what they have dedicated their lives to. But it really takes away from the gravity of their abilities, doesn’t it? Like, I think thundersticks should be banned at basketball games. I know the teams will hand them out for free to people sitting behind the visitor’s basket. It was some marketing genius’ idea of making the fans feel more involved in the outcome of the games. If they make enough noise, they affect the other teams ability to score and thus, contributing to a win or loss. And yes, one could argue that a good player should be so focused, that even the distraction and noise of thundersticks won’t distract him. But honestly, I’m not a purest, but if I were a basketball player and had to deal with that noise and distraction every time I was trying to gather myself into a tiny pinpoint of focus, repetitively every few days for months on end, my nerves would be shot. I would have a very short fuse. It’d be really easy for me to snap, in just a heated enough moment.

I mean, you remember Ace Ventura, right? “Laces out” ? Dude, I’m telling you. This is a very, very serious matter.

NBA not banning thundersticks during games= Athletes snapping = Sean Young strapping her penis between her legs.

Check my math. I think you’ll find that I’m not wrong.

So I can’t keep straight anymore which people know I can read tarot cards and which don’t. This is a facet of the mystical side of me that I am very, very private about and very protective of, for fear of persecution and ridicule as much as to keep this ability private because I don’t want people who don’t really need it demanding my help (if I want to read for people or feel like I have something to tell them, I’ll offer. Because when I read for people, it’s not akin to a magic trick for purposes of entertainment. It’s a draining process of digging deep inside someone’s psyche/soul and bringing out hidden pain as part of a healing process). But I’ve always loved the artwork of the cards and wanted to share it, though I let very few people close to my deck. So considering I’ve been working at a scanner company for over a year now, I just figured out that I can scan them and post them so you can see some of my favorite cards. These cards are some of my most personal and private belongings, so be nice, okay?

This card represents me…Air behaving as Fire. Courageous, impulsive, stormy–the slayer of darkness and invisible demons. I absolutely *love* this card.

This is, artistically, my favorite card in the deck. I’ve stared at it for hours before, absorbing its details, the concept of unity despite polarity. Disparity creating unity. Tension creating balance.The blind cupid, the omnipotent, faceless father. ..this card never ceases to intrigue me. It’s also the Gemini card.

The Tower. This card shows a building crumbling and on fire as people fall out of it. A little story about this card…in August 2001, I was in the bay area visiting my family and we had a small get together with my extended family. At the party, my mom convinced me to read for people. I am most comfortable with reading 2-3 weeks ahead because free will often changes outcomes, so the further away a time frame is, statistically, the less possible it is to be accurate because of the amount of free will that can modify a person’s course during every second. So I read for a bunch of people, and this card came up in everyone’s readings. In hindsight of 9/11, that was freaky. But that’s exactly the kind of thing this card represents. This card comes up when someone has tried to build a house on a bad foundation. They’ve repressed problems, ignored them, yet they go on with their lives like nothing’s wrong (like all the tension that had been covered up by our government’s foreign policies. And then the Tower makes the situation blow wide open, forcing things to be dealt with). But those buried issues rot away at the foundation until a huge, terrible event happens that crumbles everything that person had been trying to build. You never want this card to show up. It means you’re going to have a devastating experience that will completely shake up your world, forcing you to deal with the things you’re trying to run away from. You will be so much better off in the long run, but in general, you should be taking care of things in all hopes to avoid the types of events represented by this card. It’ll be things like, a person running away from emotional issues and burying themselves in their work. The tower comes along and blows things wide open…a relative dies, a relationship ends painfully, the person is laid off, so that they can no longer hide their head in a hole and are forced to deal with something. In the end, the Tower is a good thing. But it’s the disciplinarian. You usually want to be conscious of your issues and deal with them as much as possible to avoid this type of event. This is the explosion. It’s like when the doctor has to break your legs again, so that they can set correctly and you can grow. But it is always, always very difficult. I always get very worried when I see this card and emphatic with the person that they have to deal with something. Unfortunately, usually, when people have been avoiding issues and hiding them for so long, they’re set in their minds not to deal with those things. Until something forces them to.

This card I see a lot, too. Two swords being bent by a third. Interference. Dark, stormy emotions. Intense pain.

It’s the threesome card–two in a relationship, one on the side, all connections very very intense. In other words, the “affair” card. But it’s more complex than that. Because love and human relationships is very complex. Sometimes it can mean that someone is unhappy in their current relationship and has strong, secret feelings for someone else, not necessarily acted upon. But depending on the impressions and feelings I get along with this card for the particular person I’m reading for, it almost always comes down to one of two questions: “Were you cheated on?” “You’re in love with someone else, aren’t you?” This is one card I can specifically pick up a lot of energy and impressions on pretty easily. Because if it comes up, the pain is usually pretty great and pressing within that person in regards to a certain love situation.

And this…is my future life partner. Stable, kind. A fair leader. Earth behaving as Water. The soulmate I get to walk a large part of my journey with. He has always come up consistently for years. I really can’t explain to you how all this works, but his energy drops in on me sometimes, whoever he is.

All I’ve gotta say is:

Sho-ya Wang.

Another quote from Survivor. This one is talking about psychic ability:

You can tell people the truth, but they’ll never believe you until the event. Until it’s too late. In the meantime, the truth will just piss them off and get you in a lot of trouble. So you just walk home.

It’s true. You spend more time trying to prove to people that you know what you talk about, trying to get them to trust you, than just telling them that they’re heading towards something they may not want to collide head-on with. But often, they continue down the path just to prove you right/wrong. Or you tell them something they don’t want to hear and resent you for it.

I do that too sometimes. Ignore what I see. The messages from places coming from I don’t know where. Because I don’t want to trust them. That we can really see things. That we can really get messages. That those who can see have certain responsibilities. But the worst things in my life happen during the times I ignore those messages.

Ignorance really is bliss.

She’s a doctor in “biological sciences.” With a name like that, you will want to make an appointment ASAP.

And meanwhile, my mom works with Anita Wang, Harry Tang and Hung Chung (aka “Mike).

Asian names are fucked up.

Final Words…

It’s 12:32am. Officially Monday. This weekend was a good one. I am almost ready to come out of my cave. I am finally finding my life again, able to get my radar in tune to the quirky little corners of life and follow the signals, towards hopefully, weird and wonderful anecdotes to share with you all.

I wish I could stay up all night and finish watching the first season of 24 (I’m at 4am-5am. Or, Episode 5). That Jamey chick looks like a drag queen. Reminded me of this Asian girl I worked with last year. I also started Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk who also wrote Fight Club. I’ll share the two passages I like so far:

“To stand here and try to fix her life is just a big waste of time. People don’t want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. Their distractions. Their stories resolved. Their messes cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the big scary unknown.”

I liked those lines because earlier today, I made a resolution to avoid as much needless drama in my life as possible. I have a tendency to attract drama. A lot of times, it’s because I’m willing to listen to people, to be compassionate. I get drawn into the intimate details of other people’s lives quite consistently. And while I learn a lot and become wiser with each interaction in terms of my own life and human existence in general, often times, those traits get me into situations I absolutely shouldn’t be in. I’m a magnet for all kinds of weird situations. Just ask my friend Matt, who I stopped talking to for a couple of years because I heard through the grapevine after that really bad situation with the evil ex, that he was at a party telling people that I had gotten myself into a crazy situation again. “As usual.” [And then I called him on it and he was embarrassed and apologized and said he would call me later and make it up to me, but then he never, ever, ever contacted me again for years. Until I finally ran into him. Coward. But that’s in the past since we’re talking again.]

I think drama was what we did when we were younger, because being young can be boring sometimes when you’re waiting for life to happen. So you have to fill it up with some excitement. We would go out looking for it, drumming it up, jumping into it, getting sucked into it, whatever.
And it was fun for a while, like playing with firecrackers–dangerous yet exciting until it killed our senses and we get tired of it.

But the older I get, the less I want to go near it. I think I figured out why Geminis don’t like to get close to people. Why we’re so mentally/emotionally detached. Because everyone knows we’re high strung. We have issues with anxiety. We’re the chronic worriers. And when you get too close to other people, as is required in order to have human relationships, emotional intensity is sometimes directly correlated with emotional drama. And high intensity (close emotional proximity) means risking the dangers of being too close to the furious fires of emotional drama. And when a Gemini gets a worrisome thought in his or her head, trust me…it will consume that person, whether the people around them realize it or not.

Usually people can’t tell. I’m always “fine” and friendly. Only those closest to me know just how obsessively I can worry. And I don’t know if even they know to exactly what extent I can obsess over nagging thoughts. Drama makes me physically sick. Because first I worry about the littlest things, from if a comment might have hurt someone’s feelings to if a friend is in an unhappy situation. And this thought is a constant throughout the day(s). If it’s not at the forefront of my mind, then it’s on a shelf where I can see it from whatever thought I’m currently thinking. Sometimes, the worries even take the place of thoughts about sex (God forbid!), which, if I have no drama in my life, I’m usually thinking about constantly. And then my stomach is constantly wound up, I’m nervous and jumpy, I have a constant tension right behind my eyes that I can’t seem to shake, and sleep becomes something my body forgets how to do. Once this process has started, it is very, very difficult to disarm. Unfortunate but true.

So I try to keep my life “clean,” avoiding people who are co-dependent and want more out of a generous person than is reasonable, and trying to recognize people who want to play out negative cycles, and give them a WIDE berth. But the only problem is, my idealism makes me think that if I see a problem, I need to fix it. I see someone who’s unhappy and I want to solve it. As Sarita says, I like to pick up three-legged kittens, even though I don’t really want a kitten, but I’m afraid that if I don’t do it, that kitten will never have a home. And before long, I’m some old lady with a ramshackle mobile home that always smells funky because it’s filled with cats (disfigured cats, no less!), and I only venture out in public to pick up cat food, carpet cleaner and last week’s National Enquirer at the 99 cent store, always wearing the same purple mumu and that filthy chewed up straw hat with piss stains on the brim. Not pretty, I tell ya.

But since life has it’s ups and downs and its natural occurrences of drama, usually it’s fine. Most people just want someone to listen to them, to feel like they are being heard, and to maybe get an objective opinion and to be able to see their situation from a different angle. But sometimes, when you get into the oppressive and tenacious whirlpool of people who thrive on drama, require drama, invite drama and use drama to keep you in their lives, that’s a really bad situation. Completely draining.

I think I’m jaded these days. I’ve met so many people who have kept me around because they wanted me to play out something unhealthy with them, and who created drama just to keep me in their lives and bat me around, that I’m so wary of almost everything that is dramatic. How can you tell if a person is really someone in need? Or if the person is just pretending they’re drowning so that when you reach out to help them, they pull you in because they’re intent on drowning, but they don’t want to do it alone?

I said it a long time ago. “The devil likes to play a drowning man.” Be careful.

I think the difference is what you do with the people in your lives. I know I’ve had my share of drama in my life. I know that I’m not completely blameless in some of them. But these days, I’ve done a lot of soul searching and have gotten better at recognizing things that shouldn’t be in my life, that will create needless drama and endless suffering on my end (endless because someone who craves drama will NEVER be the one to let go of the person whose presence helps them whip it up). And it all comes down to: Set reasonable boundaries, and STAND by them.

When a person is truly in need, they ask for your support, and you let them lean on you so they can heal or figure out the situation. But at the end of the day, they want their suffering relieved. They want the issue in their life resolved. I’m all about being supportive of that person. Because this is healthy. But then there are the people who don’t really want the things resolved, even though they say they do, or they honestly think they do. So often, drama is so engrained in these people, that they can’t imagine a life without drama, so they cling to it, and will whip up more if they feel the current level of drama in their lives is being threatened. STAY AWAY FROM THESE PEOPLE.

These are the people I was afraid of when I wanted to go into a career of clinical therapy. I’ve got a woman’s intuition and empathy, but a man’s mind. I’m logical. I’m solution-oriented. And I go nuts when I give people advice and it becomes clear they don’t really want to solve the problem and are just making me go through the motions for attention. There are a lot of people who go to therapy and it’s like emotional masturbation. They get to outlet about their
misery, wallow in it, and the therapist is the audience. And they want to do it over and over and over again because it feels good. Masochistically good. And when you don’t want to feed this cycle anymore, they get upset with you, acting like you’re abandoning them. But they would never want to solve the problem so they could end the misery. It would mean not getting to emotionally masturbate anymore. I mean, if you were told that once you achieve an orgasm, your sex organs shut down and you would never feel anything down there again, wouldn’t YOU avoid having an orgasm at all costs? Most def. You would FIGHT against that orgasm so that you could keep masturbating and never have it end.

Anyway, now I’m talking about masturbating and I sense that I have severely digressed.

I’m just saying, Survivor is a good book, drama makes me sick and depressed, and I don’t want any more three-legged, one-eyed kittens.

Second passage from the book:

“To calm this girl down, to get her to listen, I tell her the story about my fish. This is fish number six hundred and forty-one in a lifetime of goldfish. My parents bought me the first one to teach me about loving and caring for another living breathing creature of God. Six hundred and forty fish later, the only thing I know is everything you love will die. The first time you meet that someone special, you can count on them one day being dead and in the ground.”

Yeah, of course I would like this passage. I was talking about this in September, I think. About, how people have to realize that the statement, “I would never hurt you” is always false and misleading, because they will hurt the ones who care about them, just by being human. People you love will eventually hurt you, guaranteed. Because they die. You’ll care about them and best case scenario is that they’re awesome and bring all kinds of rays of sunshine into your life……………….before they DIE. And that’s tragic.

I have trust issues with God.