{"id":1529,"date":"2008-06-25T22:11:00","date_gmt":"2008-06-26T05:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/juliashih.com\/blog\/?p=1529"},"modified":"2008-06-25T22:11:00","modified_gmt":"2008-06-26T05:11:00","slug":"1529","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/juliashih.com\/?p=1529","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p>i&#8217;m so irritable today. had a doctors appointment and even called to confirm it on monday morning. she said it was at 3:45pm on the 25th. that&#8217;s wednesday?, i&#8217;d asked her. yes, she said. so wednesday the 25th at 3:45, i said. you got it, she said.<\/p>\n<p>so why did i show up today to be told that my appointment is tomorrow? i just took a deep breath and took this to be another test.<\/p>\n<p>this mercury retrograde was a bitch.<\/p>\n<p>rie is back in town. she&#8217;s my voice of sanity. explained to her that i seem to be suffering from a bout of crazy bitch syndrome. my strain is where i guilt myself into oblivion for being a raging asshole, but guys seem to feel it makes them better people and it actually compels them to want to take things to the next level. i think most of it is in my head. i have issues and a feeling of disconnect with my inner and outer world. my internal feelings don&#8217;t seem to match up with their external affect.<\/p>\n<p>i don&#8217;t know what i&#8217;m so upset about. maybe the lack of work, the lack of writing or the lack of physical equilibrium (suffering from a sinus infection because i tempted my dependency on health products by stopping my daily dose of green powder for a month). just&#8230;antsy.<\/p>\n<p>i was in starbuck&#8217;s reading when this really old toothless guy wearing a frayed but neatly worn suit , dark, leathery skin and body curved with age, shuffled up to me. he definitely didn&#8217;t look homeless, but he moved slowly and carefully, his eyes like murky wells. he stood in front of me for a while before i finally couldn&#8217;t ignore him anymore and acknowledged him. what&#8217;s your name, he asked me. i repeated it a few times, whispering, but it was hard for him to catch. i didn&#8217;t want other people who were listening to catch my name and try starting a conversation later. julie, he asked. this is close enough so i said yes. you&#8217;re a lovely girl, he said then hesitated before adding, i can tell. you&#8217;re very special.<\/p>\n<p>he never smiled the whole time, just looked at me tentatively, like he half expected me to recognize him. he paused and looked unsure of himself. i could feel great need emanating from him, an amorphic loneliness like a tide pool not necessarily devoid of life. he hesitated a bit and finally asked me, slowly and painstakingly, if i would accompany him to see a movie at the theater up the street.<\/p>\n<p>and you know what? i said no. i politely lied and said i had to study but i said no. it was then that i realized he must have pondered the invitation with more than a casual thought. he kind of leaned back, and got that look in his eyes that men get when they&#8217;ve opened themselves up to vulnerability but instead of acceptance, they get a rejection that stabs them in their softest core&#8230;the look that surprises you with the level of hurt you&#8217;ve created, because you never thought you could hurt a man in that way, surprising you so much that you want to put your arms around him and take back everything that has ever hurt him.<\/p>\n<p>it didn&#8217;t make me feel like a good person. he sadly thanked me for this meeting and my time and shuffled off. i could feel the guy at the next table staring at me, but i didn&#8217;t want to say anything to him. i just felt bad. the guy seemed genuinely lonely. but for me, especially in la, anyone could have a dangerous ulterior motive and it seems you have to be guarded most of the time.<\/p>\n<p>aubrey tells me that there are great treasures to be gained when you share time with old people. but i live in la where so many strangers have freaked me out before. david says that this fear of strangers and serial killers is a strictly american thing. maybe this was a sign that it&#8217;s time for me to leave, especially coming off a day that was devoted to discussions of this very topic.<\/p>\n<p>i told my dad that i won&#8217;t write here anymore. and i didn&#8217;t realize it as i was saying it, but as i heard myself say it, i realized it was true. just like the way i felt in taiwan that this wasn&#8217;t where i was supposed to be and i had somehow gotten off course, ever since my birthday i&#8217;ve felt that i&#8217;m in the wrong place now. maybe my birthday was my going away party.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>i&#8217;m so irritable today. had a doctors appointment and even called to confirm it on monday morning. she said it was at 3:45pm on the 25th. that&#8217;s wednesday?, i&#8217;d asked her. yes, she said. so wednesday the 25th at 3:45, i said. you got it, she said. so why did i show up today to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/sbl5mn-1529","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliashih.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliashih.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliashih.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliashih.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliashih.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/juliashih.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1529\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliashih.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliashih.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliashih.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}