yas betch, yas

that is not my home.

Finding joy and excitement in what I do instead of frustration, lack of concentration, disinterest, stress. I’ve always known I need systems and avenues and ways of organizing my days and my self so that I can be my best self. I’m just troubled with the thought that there is something wrong with me. Fundamentally different? More emotion? Less focus? 

Things I know I should not do: spend too much time on social media. I’ve always been sensitive to that. I think a lot about what people might think about me. So I adapt and shift my ways to fit that. I want to be comfortable in my own skin. 

Meditation: watching what happened to me. I got hit in an accident, and it drove me, a sensitive soul, into depression and anxiety, frustration at everything that was changing around me, drove me into feelings from the past that resurfaced, to prove to myself that everything about my life sucks and is wrong. Waves of negative thoughts and not helpful resurfacing things.

Why does people feeling sad for me, encouraging me to stop doubting myself or to be more confident in my voice annoy the fucking shit out of me? It makes me feel extremely pissed off. I want to let go of this anger and stop feeling jealous and STOP FUCKING COMPARING MYSELF. I can do it myself.

I feel so damn turbulent. I don’t want to speak. I don’t want to say anything. I want those around me to be hella interested in what I have to say and what I have to do. I want people to listen to me and love me, despite the fact that I am struggling through things.

I feel like a fucking teenager again with all this angst and anger and emotion seeping out of my veins and into my facial expressions. I am jealous. I am insecure. I am so fucking insecure it sickens me, and I want to be rid of this feeling of doubt and anger and annoyance that other people project onto me. Here I am being insanely critical of myself. Not allowing myself to feel. ALLOWING MYSELF TO FEEL IS NOT WEAKNESS. I don’t know how to get that out of my brain. How to get this cycle out of my head and channeled into my art, my being, my desire. I hate feeling pitied. I hate relying on others because I’m afraid that if I finally have a crutch, a rock, I’ll never let go, and I’ll fold into myself and just become lazy. I’m afraid I’ll give up. I’m afraid I’ll become mediocre. I’m dreaming and dreaming hard. Looking to the sky and wishing and wanting and sighing and wondering what it will be like when I get there, oh, when I get there. Will my desires change? Why do I need so desperately to prove myself? Why am I angry that someone else is finding their passion? What is this tiger raging inside, growling, ready to pounce at anything that dares to threaten my vision? Because my vision is all I fucking have. And without it, without knowing that I have some sort of insight, some sort of something to add to this world--I feel completely useless. Reading the 4 hour work week book, and I am reminded that I should maximize my strengths, and not to try to build on weaknesses that won’t be built. ‘Cuz yo don’t got time for that.

Except how do I do this when I feel that my own strengths are weaknesses? In a society built for loud people, how does one as an introverted type gain strength? 

I just take all these things and internalize them inside. Am I afraid of the truth about myself?

I don’t feel inspired. I just feel yelled at all the time. I just want kind rhetoric. But is that what I really want? Do I find every environment toxic? What can I do personally to move forward? Sigh.

Collaboration. Speaking up.

My mind buzzes with tiredness, disregarding the long, groggy nap I had this afternoon, in between watching episodes of Sex and the City and eating soft foods downstairs.

When I dream, I dream of conversations. Conversations that probably won’t exist because I go through such lengths to avoid them in person that they have to appear in my dreams.

I’m not perfect, I know that. Yet, in this current space, I am not satisfied with who I am and how I act. I’ve always been afraid of relaxing, thinking that if I let go of everything, nothing will happen for me. Pressure used to be my motivator. The amount of self-pressure and self-shame and self-pride I put on myself in the past propelled me forward. It kept me going until I eventually burned out and realized that it takes more than that for me to be happy.

My motivation is shot. The energetic self I used to be has reduced into a former shell of itself, not desiring to do anything but sit alone in silence and converse with someone who gets me.

Just on here to really rant about life and blah---

but I just scoured the relationship section of reddit, aimlessly and mindlessly looking at situations people are in and re-imagining my own. ofc I’m always somehow looking for the perfect parallel situation with the perfect advice in the comment section, and it was “there is no such thing as closure, only acceptance, and that comes from within” - some shit like that. ok so I’m just pep-talking myself rn cuz I’m tired but I drank caffeine and I need to sleep --once upon a time there was this dude, we hooked up outta nowhere, I may have mentioned him before in my previous posts blah, but he just caught me so off guard anyways, despite me knowing everything that shouldn’t be with him. Everything is so c l e a r and it’s probably just me with my acceptance and my self-esteem. What I was thrown off from this guy was the way he made me feel, probably the idea of me making a guy like him nervous or caught just as off-guard. He said some shit like “where have you been all year” and “I would’ve dated you if we met earlier” which is probably 100% true but the truth is (if I’m going to self-advise myself) is that WE DIDN’T so we won’t BE. I think I hold onto this sliver of hope in my head even though I know it’s not worth it because I liked the way he made me feel in those fleeting moments, because it’s something I haven’t really felt before. I kept saying that and he kept being surprised at how I’ve never really had a relationship before, only casual encounters with the male kind.

This isn’t the first time I’ve basically been called “dateable material.” And yes I should have more self-esteem than that, but that kind of boosts my ego as a chill AF girl. GAWD this dude fucked me up so bad. I was doing so fine before I met him and had that encounter. I am reminded that he did nothing wrong, everything was quite consensual and enjoyable for the most part but when he said “I really like you but we both have #life to live” all I could think was fuck, he’s right, yet also, fuck, I want more, I enjoyed feeling needed and desired for those few moments. Probably an after effect of having an emotionally absent father, fucking residual daddy issues forever remaining in my soul. Thanks, dad.

ANYWAY. It’s probably the case that it was the last thing that really pierced me and confused me romantically beyond the casual enjoyment shits, and that’s what my mind plays back to all the time. Before him, before that rolling experience, waaaaaas.....no one, except for a guy whose feelings I did not return. But I was the one who developed feelings within 2 seconds. Fuck. UGH. Anyway, acceptance acceptance. I accept what happened and the fact that my mind lingers back to it a lot is because boy am I in a dry spell rn, in all senses of the term, and am in no position to be back out in the game for awhile. Nor do I want to be?? UGH IDK. He was right. He was right about everything, but since I haven’t gone through this emotional toil in such a long time and to this degree, it just lingers in my mind a lot more. I’m sure if this happens again I’ll be able to get over it quicker.

GAWD HE WAS SUCH A SLY FUCKER. DAMMIT. I want to hate him so much and I need to villainize this dude in my head so I can move past him but at the same time I see his name pop up and I kind of want to know what he’s up to. Yet I don’t. And I don’t want to think about him, but I do. DAMMIT. 

my friend and I have enacted a ban on social media, the basic premise being “no scrolling.” no twitter scrolling, no instagram scrolling, no facebook scrolling (the worst) no snapchat story watching.

at least my experience as an infj

-I can’t hold secrets. In the sense that if I’m really not supposed to tell it I won’t, but if I need to recount a third person story to someone else, I’ll just “xyz happened to my friend” as an example when I’m talking to another friend. I dunno. I guess I see secrets as just actual extensions of who people are as complex humans, and if it helps someone else, and I trust that person, I’ll just say whatever it is. My measure for telling secrets and “gossiping” is that if I wouldn’t mind telling the original person with the secret that I told their secret, then I’m okay. So far haven’t gotten in trouble with anyone.

-read this somewhere else on some infj thing (I lurk more than I care to admit) but I am prone to experimenting with drugs for the experience. In truth, addiction scares me so it’s not something I seek out very often or something I’d really do solo (lol maybe except for weed). But when the opportunity rises, and I feel that I trust the people and the situation, my response is usually “why not?” Not gonna get explicit (idk, lol the internet meh) but for most of what I’ve tried, the experiences have been amazing or amusing or wild enough to make a good story. On another note, I do enjoy drinking socially. It allows me to let my stupid guard down and just be honest and real with people while having a blast doing so, which people really like, and which I don’t do quite as much when sober. I also love love love dancing. I love music and get a rush from all the energy around me. I’m the drunk friend who wants to dance on a table top.

-I’m very neutral and terrible and “persuading” people to do anything, because I hate telling other people how to do anything. I think this is partly growing up with a lot of conflicting ideas that I accepted at first but always felt didn’t make sense (my parents are homophobic and a tiny bit racist and quite judgmental, though not outwardly). Once I started making my own decisions, however, I realized that this was just their upbringing/POV and it didn’t have to be mine, because I care about all kinds of people way too much to be judgmental. But in being neutral, there’s nothing I can think of that I strongly, strongly support very publicly--I just quietly stand by my ideals. However, this itself is also internally conflicting for someone who believes that visibility is everything. Then begins the cycle of comparing myself to outspoken activist-type friends and feeling guilty for “not doing as much...”

-Indecision when there’s a clear pathway (though perhaps it is very clear to me, and not as clear to others) makes me irritated to no end. It’s where I get snappy AF. If someone’s like “oh man, wish I could do xyz.” Then I’m like, THEN GO DO IT, DO YOU. However, I’m a hypocrite because when I complain like “oh man, I wanna move across the country ASAP” and someone is like “THEN GO DO IT” I get mad like “STFU YES I ALREADY HAVE PLANS I’M GONNA DO IT.” To me, my useless ranting/complaining is just a release of steam and anxiety and emotions. I already know what I’m going to do later, even though I’m still dreamy or lofty about it. But when I see other people acting “indecisive” or complaining, it makes me annoyed. I’m a hypocrite who thinks I have my shit together better than everyone else, basically.

I read a meme/screenshot/instagram post/internet thingie that said “INFJ problems: having fiercely emotional reactions to hypothetical conversations happening in your head.”

I stalk through so many INFJ shits (it’s a love hate type of relationship with my type. I really hate our woe-is-me attitude online yet it’s also exactly the way I feel. Whenever I read too much INFJ shit I’m like jesus I need to go out into the world and influence my world, I empathize too much with these peeps. I actually dislike being around other INFJ types in real life because they remind me too much of myself. I already self-pity myself enough and feel everyone else’s emotions, I don’t need to absorb yours absorbing mine and even more peoples. STAY AWAY. TOO MUCH OVERLOAD. GET ME THE EXTROVERTS PLZ) and this one just hits the nail on the head for me.

I like to rationalize a lot of my resentment growing up because of the “conservative Christian environment,” but I don’t think that’s what made me feel the way I do about the whole religion.

I think it was just taking Sociology and learning how much of an institution religion is. I don’t see it as a good or bad thing, but am more fascinated than anything about its influence on large groups of people. Deep down in my heart, I do feel a connection to Christianity the most out of anything--however, I don’t think I’m ready to confront it. I’ve just had so much negativity and doubt surrounding it, relating my parent’s strong “faith” to their blind spots and failures. Faith is such a personal thing. I have faith, I’m just not sure where it belongs, how to channel it, but I for sure know that I don’t want to have a faith that mirrors that of my parents. They’ve always done what they could, given their circumstances--but I’m such an outside observer; now that I understand the larger concept of religion (as an institution, and specifically the Abrahamic religions) I’m more fascinated by the idea of it rather than how true it may or may not be. Is it true? Man, I don’t know. But I do feel for sure that nothing is really arbitrary. Or if anything feels arbitrary, it’s arbitrary to the most of our understanding. I do think there’s a larger understanding beyond my own understanding, but I don’t feel compelled to delve into it--I just feel it, and I know it. I know something, not sure what that is exactly.

I was reading this storytelling book and it emphasized the idea of having a universal theme when telling a story.

I love stories. However, something I’ve always struggled with internally is when and how to tell a story. When is too much too much? What I’ve gleaned from this awesome little source is the fact that telling a story is therapeutic, yes, but storytelling is not therapy. There are some stories best left with your diary or with your best friend or with your therapist. The stories worth telling are the ones that you believe in your heart will touch the heart of another person. It’s a fun thought experiment of being raw with yourself but also believing that there is this connection between human beings that can surpass biases and first impressions. In order to function, brains must compartmentalize and simplify, but the best thing about brains is that there is also this great ability to empathize. This is what makes me passionate about life and humanity. My wish for the world has always been one of uniting and sharing and understanding. Perhaps it’s just an outward extension of my wish that others would impart the same grace upon me. 

I get caught up in trying to find the best way to do things, but I have found comfort in the idea that there is no best way, and there is no best time. I’m such a believer in the idea that everything is a grey scale; there is no best and worst, there is only pattern and humanity and the only possible thing or existence that is absolutely righteous must be God himself. If he is black and white, the rest of us 7 billion or so humans must be varying shades of grey.

I’m attracted to patterns and theories and history because they remind me that nothing is really arbitrary. Or if it is, then the arbitrariness is in our minds. We assign meanings to specific events in our lives, and it matters, and it doesn’t matter, and it matters. We’re affecting the time period we are born into with however and whoever we choose to be and act.

I think “teardrops on my keyboard” would be an accurate update to Taylor’s old song “teardrops on my guitar.”

Conversations only run two ways with my super ENFP mom. Either they’re about absolutely nothing or some story about her day at work or some TV show or some family gossip small talk, which I get so bored and unimpressed with easily, or super heavy things like money and the future and all of her years of regrets. “Companion” to the INFJ? Sure, if 99% of the way my mom operates and acts didn’t frustrate me because of how careless she seems at times. I’ve always felt like I’m a more responsible child than my own mother and father, which are ENFP and ISTJ respectively (the ISTJ typing is a guess for my father). And don’t even get me started on my INFP older brother.

We start talking about the super heavy stuff (because that’s always where the conversation ends with me) and my emotions flow and teardrops fall. I get silent, and finally I say “I just don’t want to feel bad for wanting to leave.” “Of course not, I just want you to live your own life and remember to include family in your life.” I always get emotionally jumbled by these situations because that’s exactly the answer I wanted to hear and what I wanted to clear up. Yet why do I still feel some forms of resentment? The past few times these conversations have happened, I’ve bottled up, cried for hours, and have had throbbing headaches and borderline anxiety attacks. The last time this happened, I started Googling how much it costs to get an online therapist and incessantly watched the “it’s not your fault” scene from Good Will Hunting over and over.

Throughout my entire life so far, my coping strategy with the the negative situations we’ve lived through has been to become cold and silent and intensely persevere in a different environment other than the one that deeply upsets me. Adding all this new insight to the fact that I must accept that I react emotionally to things, it’s more freeing to know that I am allowed to cry and feel upset and feel resentment when my family tells me, “be grateful, look at all the blessings we have” when all I want to say is fuck you guys, you did absolutely nothing and I’m unhappy because of you. Which is also emotionally jumbling, because I’ve found many other ways to be happy throughout my childhood by diving deep into my extracurriculars (see my second blog post about my upbringing). As I type this therapeutically (thanks, 2016) I think the emotional roadblock shitshow that my childhood is to me (it’s both awesome and heartbreaking in my brain) is realizing that I took issue with my parents telling me how I should feel. Them telling me to “be grateful” and “have a better attitude” while I was extremely upset caused some major cognitive dissonance as a child; I want to follow what they tell me to do but at the same time I physically and emotionally cannot, my entire self-being cannot process it and goes down shutdown mode. Until that shit resurfaces.

I was iMessaging with a homie and we were talking about boys. We’re similar in that we both are clueless deer when it comes to that topic in life. I’d like to think that I’m competent in most things, except for 1) speaking up for myself, and 2) romantic relationships. Reading that out loud makes me realize how incompetent that makes me...

On a ~ tangent, ~ I can speak up for myself...when I’m asked to speak. If I’m comfortable enough, I have no issues putting on the charm and speaking in front of a crowd. People consider me adventurous and bold (I’ve traveled alone to different countries before and I do things like attend concerts by myself) but what they don’t know is that while I can put myself in a new environment easily, what allows me to do so is the extensive amount of self-restraint and planning that goes on before-hand. Sure, I’ll let myself get lost in a city...from 2pm - 4pm, and then I’ll need to buy some food. I am baffled at how accurate the INFJ label hits me: my Se (Extraverted Sensing, inferior function) game is not strong. It took me 20 years and traveling alone in a different country to realize, holy crap, I get tired, I need food, and I can’t do it all in one day. ANYWAY. I’ll go visit and see these new places, but I am also silent and don’t talk to others when I’m alone. I wait for people to notice my stealthy cat-like presence rather than announce where I am or where I’m going or ask stupid questions. I am constantly reminding myself that speaking up for myself is necessary because sometimes I need help and don’t ask for it and it all goes unnoticed as my heart pounds saying “qurl, you don’t know how to do this go ask someone” but my Ti (Introverted Thinking, tertiary function) says no dude you can figure it out by yourself. Struggles, man. /endtangent.

Romantic relationships. I have many fun, childish stories of boys liking me and me liking boys and nothing much really happening. It’d be like an episode of Seinfeld where stuff happens but nothing actually happens. I fall pretty hard and it scares me because I am nervous about the depths of my feelings and emotions. Only recently (maybe in the past year or so) have I slowly learned that I am a very emotionally affected person, and that it is okay and actually very important that I find outlets to express all emotions that I have in order for me to process them and move on. I suppose it might be all that HSP (highly sensitive person) empathetic shiznits, but I drown out a lot of things because I just feel too much. Also I’m generally a gullible person.

So when it comes to romantic relationships, or even the notion of one, my mind goes into overdrive and imagines 113584x scenarios and does this thing where I don’t take action. There have only been three (maybe four) times so far that I can recount feeling so deeply. 

The first is my guy friend from middle school. We stayed on the phone all night with our new cellphones until we were tired and gossiped with each other on AIM constantly. He even had a girlfriend once and I’d give him girl advice. I let him ride on the handlebars of my bike to take him home. One time, I don’t take him all the way home--I say no, it’s too hot and I don’t want to bike that far. He gets mad at me, doesn’t speak to me for two weeks, then at some school event, he throws a water balloon at me, and then we are talking again. But it’s a little bit off, because he has other friends (girls) who he hangs out with who are not my friends. At one point he teases me, saying I should ask him to the Girl’s Choice Dance. I scoff and laugh in his face. We graduate middle school. He doesn’t tell me that he’s moving to a new high school, I find out and get super super hurt. Our phone calls get a little weird because I’m crying all the time. Eventually, he says something like “I wanted to move to another high school anyway.” I am crushed. Things are never the same between us, I don’t really get over it for a long time.

Then I had a boyfriend in high school. We lasted two months during my junior year. I didn’t let him kiss me, and he didn’t even get to hold hands with me at school. I held him at arm’s length the entire time, telling him that I was afraid he wouldn’t want to be with me if he got to know the “real me.” He promised me he wouldn’t get tired of trying. We exchanged hand-written notes, deleted our Facebooks together, and gave each other CD’s. We’d sit in his car in the parking lot during lunch and talk about music. He introduced me to a lot of new music. We sometimes ran together after school (he was on the track team). We go to winter formal together, I don’t let anything happen. Finally, he stops trying, it’s kind of near Valentine’s Day to boot. I am utterly crushed. Thought he really actually wouldn’t get tired of trying. I tried to make him one last CD of “how I felt about him,” and also wrote him a long letter that I cringe when I think about. I told him I loved him, but I didn’t love-love him. He gets with another girl almost instantly--and I start to resent him. How dare he move on so easily when I am crying my eyes out every single day. I spend my senior year sort of avoiding him and trying to show how much fun I’m having (I do have fun) but it is in vain because he had basically already forgotten me. He did already have a sort of “player” status before meeting me, anyway.

The next real fancy I had was sophomore year in college. I whined in my journal about how I was the literal girl next door, as his dorm room was next to mine. Again, he was a musician who introduced me to new music. Together with a couple of friends we rented a Zipcar and drove 2 hours away to see a band that I hadn’t heard of. Together we longboarded in parking lots and empty streets until 3am. I helped him a lot with his homework because we had so many of the same classes (oh God, it was torture) and he has ADHD. We attend hipster living room concerts and drink PBRs, he introduces me to Reddit, he had such a bubbly energy and was indeed a talented musician. I never made any moves. Sometimes we’d smoke weed together. I didn’t even want to smoke. I just wanted to be with him. We watched a couple movies together and cuddled. At one point him and his roommate were arguing over what cuddling meant, saying that “don’t cuddle with a girl unless you like her” vs. “cuddling doesn’t mean anything.” You can guess which side he was on. Anywho, as much as we clicked, I always knew that he didn’t see me anything more than a friend.

Fast forward to senior year of college. I study abroad in Madrid. I lose my virginity to a French boy the same age as me that I had met earlier that week when I was out with some friends outside of a club, already kind of drunk and annoyed because I just wanted to get inside and dance. These French boys were super casual cool and offered us weed. Yes. I end up making out with one of them. All I can say is they call it French kissing for a reason. They know their stuff. I meet up with him later that week, we lose our clothes and as he reaches in a drawer to get a condom, I say wait, I don’t want to. Why not? I just don’t want to. Well, I am not keeping you here like a jail. You can leave, as you like. I do, awkwardly. He is leaving back to Paris the next day, so I program my going out with friends that night to coincide meeting him where his flat is. I get him alone, and we play the what do you want to do? no, what do you want to do? game until finally I say, I want to kiss you. We kiss. I kind of want to go back to his flat, he says his roommates are there, the only place we’d have to ourselves is the bathroom. I say okay, I guess. We get naked in the bathroom. A second time, he asks me if I want to do it. He finds out I am a virgin, he says I’ll be gentle. I argue back and forth with him, reassuring him and myself that I’m doing this because I want to, and not because he’s asking me to, despite the fact that he keeps saying “why not.” He knows nothing of the years of conservative Christian parenting and family and environment and everything that I’ve lived through, the millions of thoughts that are racing through my mind. We lock eyes. I’m trusting you, okay. A pause. Finally I say okay, go get a condom.

I see him once more in Paris on a layover to a music festival in Amsterdam. He takes me to his mom’s house, we fuck, but I am on my period, and I didn’t tell him about the one-night stand I had in Budapest a week earlier. I apologize for being on my period, and he says, “it’s not your fault, that’s nature.” We end up going for it anyway, neither of us turned on by what is happening. Later we sit outside and I smoke hash for the first time. Do you want to come back? he says. My heart stops for a second and I freeze up. Back to France? Uh, no...how you say. It is cold. To come back to my room and sleep, I am tired. Oh. You mean do you want to go back. Annoyed, I lecture him: in English those have two different meanings. We go to sleep, and he is not a cuddler. I wake him up to take me to the train station that eventually takes me to the airport. On the train ride, I stare at him. You have so much going on in your mind, you think too much, he tells me, with a tired and nonchalant look on his face. If you ever come to the USA, let me know, I tell him. Yes, he says with a sly smile. I sprint my way through directions and ticket booths and somehow barely make it on my flight.

Fast forward to few weeks ago, I got really high and sent him a snapchat of France competing in the Olympics. He responds back with a what’s up ;) and I say not much :P. The exchange is mutual.

Europe was a whirlwind. I spew European art history facts to my mom, telling her all the things I learned and experienced, but what I don’t tell her is the amount of European pretty boys and late night adventures I had which completes the other half of my study abroad experience. The most fleeting encounters linger on my mind and are engrained in my memory forever as the time when I let go, and everything was still okay, if not better. 

I did fine my second semester back on campus as a college senior until right before graduation: Big school concert. Boy. Dancing. Molly. I go home with him that night and walk home through the park the next morning wearing his hoodie and my sunglasses. He is local to my college and takes me to meet his family and his dog. We start talking less and less, one morning I wake up at his place before going to work and we have the “what are we talk,” to which he says “you’re awesome and I would have dated you but you’re graduating, I’m not, and I don’t want to hold you back from your life, we should keep in touch.” I get silent. He is uncannily perceptive (it always throws me off) and says, “now you’re sad.” I say, “I agree with you, we have our own lives to live, but I’ve just never done this before.” Some bullshit like that. I believe his invitation to “keep in touch” enough to end up begging to meet with him one more time before I leave our college town, and it’s him and his bros drinking beers, smoking bongs, and watching worldstar. I sit with them, get very high, and very silent. I take in the moment for what it is, so incredibly hurt for trying to believe something that wasn’t believable. I leave at 4am, he gives me a really shitty goodbye hug, and we part ways. He still watches my snap stories, and when I don’t have the willpower I watch his snapchats of him galavanting around my alma mater.

Backtrack. Currently, I am afraid of the possible depths of feelings I have for the man I made out with on New Year’s Eve at a mutual friend’s party back in the USA. After our second chance encounter a month later that led to a fun night of making out in the snow, he says “have fun with the boys at your school :)”. Oh, I did alright. Look where that shit got me: back to doubting myself and feeling heartbroken over a normal, “American-college-style” hookup. Anywho, with this guy, I am acting and thinking like a kid having a school crush on the cool boy. Except he’s not cool (I’m the cool one, let’s be real here) -- he just happens to be extremely intelligent and inspiring, which is probably better than being cool. At one point in the future he’s going to take a break from his work and just go to South America and build a road. Our conversations are on a different intellectual level, but when I’m not talking to him, I’m thinking about how to be as intellectual as he is, because I’m kind of crass and “millennial” as he calls me. He makes me feel nervous, and I always wonder where the hell all my confidence from studying abroad went. I’m meeting with him to “catch up” in a couple of days, which is wild because I always perceive him to be too busy to interact with me.

As you can see, everything has happened in the last 8 years, yet nothing has happened in the last 8 years. Young adult female loses her virginity. Gets involved with boys and kind of continues to do so. Not sure where here life is going or what it means to actually hold onto a relationship.

Stream-of-consciousness-ish.

It’s not a fun combination being poor, resentful, spoiled, and stubborn at the same time. It’s taken me some time to realize this, but those four negative-sounding adjectives describe me in my home life.

Among many of my friends, something I never talk about is my home, my childhood, or my family, beyond the fact that I have many relatives on my mom’s side. For so long I have shunned any of those topics out of my mind, and as soon as I felt any one of them returning for too long I would choose to ignore those emotions and run away to the next adventure.

I’ve never grown up with much material wealth; I’ve always had enough for what I’ve needed to live decently and was a bright enough kid to delve fully into academics and extracurriculars at school. Before I was born, my parents immigrated to the United States and found a nice little nook of friends and family--just enough to support and raise a family. I was a happy child: excited, smart, energetic, cute, the whole picture. I didn’t always understand what was going on when we moved to smaller and less glamorous apartments because we were always surrounded by such a large family network.

However, financials got tighter and tighter, to the point that we were once homeless and lived in a hotel room. Then, we lived in a long-term stay motel room for the last of my high school years. To cope with all of this, I became extremely resentful towards my parents and was the epitome of a sulky teenager. I became super-involved in school and took on multiple leadership positions. Not a single month went by when I wasn’t on campus for some odd reason or other. Funnily enough, I was a “good” kid and never really did anything bad--I was hard on myself about good grades and did pretty well. I took the college application process so seriously it was ridiculous. I researched and googled everything I could about the entire ordeal, taking great care into finding schools that I liked as well as schools that gave out a decent amount of financial aid. I got accepted into one across the country and that entire journey of self-discovery began.

This entire time, I never really got in the habit of doing chores or learning how to cook because my dad was there to do them. My dad had always been there to give me rides, make me food, wake me up for events. That’s really all I’ve ever known my dad to be, however. I was a sulky-ass teenager because I thought my parents sucked. My dad has never been emotionally there for me. I’d complain to myself and wallow in self-pity, and then be really angry at him for not contributing financially or really doing anything that I understood. He wasn’t the ideal of what my father should be. Neither was my mother; despite the fact that she has always worked hard, I didn’t give her the time of day either because I was disappointed in her for tolerating my father. I wished so much for her to work even more to get us out of our living situation (that she, too, complained about but didn’t do anything beyond what she was doing).

I had a lot of dark teenager thoughts at the time. Thoughts like “why the hell did they even come here if they weren’t going to try hard to provide for our family” or “does my dad even care.” To add even more complications, growing up, I didn’t see my parents love each other. They tolerated each other. My mom guilt trips my dad to no end about how he doesn’t do his job as a provider or shows his love, and my dad stays silent and then lectures her on how bad she is with dealing with money when we’re in a tight spot. I have a theory that because my mom came from a higher status family in her country and then married a lower status man from his country, they’re both very stubborn and not good at communicating with each other at all. There are some issues they don’t see eye to eye on, and I have no idea if they every will. 

Back to me. I went to college, had this complex that I was living my life entirely differently than my parents were, and tried to blend in and relate to my peers. I can, and did, but at times I felt empty: I went far enough away that I didn’t have to talk much about being home or my parents, or how insecure and self-pitying I was about being poor. I had always felt that I was doing everything right: I studied hard in high school and was super-involved. I got into college and started performing well academically and experimenting and exploring. I got involved in organizations, took leadership roles, and grew as a more open-minded and competent human being. I finally started viewing my childhood woes from a different angle. I studied abroad twice and spent three weeks visiting my mom’s home country to visit relatives and better understand my heritage. It took some time for me to figure it out, but I started understanding my past better and realizing how hard I had been judging my parents and how much emotional resentment and unhappiness and embarrassment I had been carrying within me.

I just graduated; I am still dealing with all these negative emotions and trying to not let them affect me. Some of the most valuable experiences I had in college were realizing the depths of happiness I can feel when I let go, finding friends with whom I could be entirely myself around, and discovering the things I felt passionate about. I try to act all tough like I’m so happy it’s all done with, but truly, I treasure my college moments so dearly and my heart still aches with lingering memories. I want to make sure I live my life in a way that doesn’t make my college years the “best years of my life.” I want each continual year to become the best year of my life. College was just the beginning.

I’m almost through the post-collegiate slump. I have exciting plans ahead of me, and I’m actively working on letting go this resentment I have for my parents...it’s not easy and it feels like I’m always taking two steps back into my teenage self as a defense mechanism. As I am now starting to understand the depths of my parent’s failed marriage, I realized that I have been absorbing my mother’s negative, regretful, and depressing emotions regarding my father and also feeling similarly towards him for not being there for me. For years I’ve absorbed my parent’s confusing, strained relationship and have internalized it as me not being good enough for them to love me, despite the fact that they’ve always been proud of my accomplishments. I’ve internalized these feelings for so long and have been so hard on myself for acting “bratty” and “sulky” because I felt like I didn’t deserve to be upset.

I know now (and am constantly reminding myself and teaching myself to move forward) that my parent’s relationship with each other does not define me as a person. Yes, it has affected me tremendously, but it does not mean that I will become them. I’ve always been so scared that if I don’t push myself hard enough, if I am not critical enough with myself, if I no longer am motivated, that I would turn into my parents. I’m learning to forgive them and respect them for what they have done for me, which is given me the opportunity to grow up where I have grown up and let me be my own person. They love me, though sometimes not in the ways I’ve always longed for. All these years it has always been myself holding me back. I am still not the best version of myself when I am around them (which I’ve been around them all summer) and instead of being frustrated with myself for it, I now choose to accept it and see what I can do to heal.

Alright everyone’s gotta start somewhere. And where I want to start is with justifying my reasons for starting this blog and creating this blog and blah blah blah. It’s 1am. It’s 2016. I’m not new to tumblr; I have an old tumblr from high school through mid college which was connected to a @yahoo email. I lost the password to that. Unfortunately it’s still out there somewhere.

I’m no longer in college. I keep a physical journal where I like to jot down random shit and also go on existential rants about reassuring myself that it’s okay to feel emotions. I also write word documents on my laptop (holy shit if anyone ever has the audacity to leaf through my stuff). I’m doing that over-analysis thing of wondering why I should create a tumblr at this point in time when I have other effective ways of expressing myself.

I DUNNO. Maybe it’s the danger of someone I know finding me out. Or of someday giving someone the keys to my deep dark secrets and saying here, this is my tumblr url. Or the thrill of posting and having random people possibly stumble upon this blog. I dunno. I figured I should just do it and stop thinking about it. I am from this generation and blogging is kind of a fun thing. Writing out my thoughts has always kept me sane through the years. It’s not a new thing; the only new thing is the whole internet shindig.

Anywho. A little bit about me: I’m 21, female, college graduate, and an INFJ. I’m in such a love-hate relationship with Myers-Briggs: On one hand, I hate that I define myself under a type, but on the other hand, I spend late nights looking up INFJ shit because it’s the only piece of the internet that feels accurate to how my brain works. And thus, I guess I’ll join in on contributing to the whole INFJ sphere on the internet by categorizing my blog as an INFJ thing. Take from it what you will.