My mind in words.

It’s currently 9:46 PM and I’m sitting in my room writing this because I honestly just have a lot on my mind to spill and let out before this year ends because 2017 has probably been the definition of roller coaster for me in all aspects of my life. This year I experienced a handful of things. From new friends, to heartbreaks, graduating from college and saying goodbye to my life in Irvine, from being sexually assaulted and staying silent about it, to reaching a new emotional low I’ve never been at in my life, at times barely having money to pay my many countless bills to working 65 hours a week 7 days a week at two jobs that I had no time to myself, getting a new car but not having enough money to even pay for it, and now my student loans start next month yet I’m jobless once again. 2017 was definitely something, and I kind of wanted to share all the triumphs and tribulations with anyone who’s willing to read and reflect with me.

If I had to summarize 2017 in 3 words, I would probably describe it with: Depressing, tired, regret. 

Depressing:

If you asked me a couple of years ago how 2017 was going to be for me, I would have described it with flying colors and that everything was going to be amazing. Little did I know that it was almost the complete opposite of what I wanted it to be. 2017 was an important year to me because I knew it was the year I was graduating from UCI. Neither of my parents had money to go to university so getting the opportunity to go through college was a reward in itself and a goal that I wanted to achieve for my parents. Overall it was a bittersweet feeling because as much as I was done with school, I was going to miss being around that college experience as I knew I had to move back to LA no matter what. What I didn’t know was that I was going to be bombarded with problems the second I came back. For a good 2 weeks I didn’t have a place to live and had to sleep on my mom’s room floor because while I was away our landlord rented out my room. For those who didn’t know, my living situation is that my mom and I rent out a place by room from a landlord and we pay for each room each month. For a year or so, my room was just a storage space for the things I couldn’t bring to Irvine and my space when I came to visit every so often, but eventually the landlord said she was losing money and eventually told my mom to clear my room for someone new to rent it out. We don’t have a home to ourselves so if I were to move back, there was no home for me to come back to after Irvine. I thought to myself, it shouldn’t be that bad, my Mom and I had a pretty close relationship so sharing a space was going to be easy. During this period of time, I’ve never experienced my mom yell and bash at me as much as she did. Being back home almost felt like hell because it honestly made me depressed that even my own mom didn’t want me around anymore. In spite of all of these events, coming back home was my first time experiencing the continuing feud between my divorced parents. During my 2nd year of college, my parents went through a divorce, but since I went to school, I was rarely ever around any of the problems going on at home on a daily basis. But being around such a toxic environment nearly everyday from the second I got home, it made me realize that life right now kind of sucked. I begged my mom to let me live alone separately because sleeping in the same room on the ground didn’t feel like a practical way of coming back and starting my adult life. The impracticality was one of the main reasons, but definitely because I was starting to get legitimately depressed, listening to my mom lecture me in a dark room until 1-2 AM, telling me about how I didn’t do enough and that I’m not going to be successful, always crying myself to sleep every night... Yeah, not how I expected graduating from college to be right? Right. Eventually I caused enough problems at home for my mom to agree to let me live apart and right there was when I felt like I was going to be able to start over. Little did I know that finding jobs and just adulting in general was going to be such a difficult thing. I went through at least 9 professional career interviews only to hear back from 2 from which both were just letting me know that I wasn’t good enough. The depression deepened, I started to isolate myself, completely removed myself from all my social media and eventually, everything and everyone from the outside world. I found myself laying in bed at times until 3-4 PM looking out of the window just hoping for it to be night time already so I can just go back to sleep. I stayed away from social media because it made me more depressed seeing my friends having fun while all I was able to do was sulk and feel sorry for myself. But ultimately, I stayed away because I didn’t want people to ask about me.. I didn’t want people to ask me things like “oh so what are you up to now?” “how have you been?” “how’s the post grad life?”. I didn’t want people to worry about me, and also, I didn’t want people to know that I was living my life like this.. It’s weird because looking back to the high school and college Mark, you’d be surprised at how introverted and socially awkward I’ve become these past few months. I pretty much said goodbye to social media for around 1-2 months to try and figure out life by myself, because comparing my lives to everyone around me made me sad and feel sorry for myself. I eventually slowly started to use social media and started talking to people little by little again, but definitely I don’t use it nearly as much as I used to. I hit such a low point in my life that it was honestly difficult even trying to convince myself that tomorrow was going to be a better day because my mind was too fixated on the idea that it would just suck as much as today did. Although I do feel much better now than I did a couple of months back, just thinking back to all the problems I faced and all the problems going on right now makes me depressed once in a while. 

Tired:

Tiring quite frankly is an understatement of how much I’ve exerted myself both physically and mentally these past 6 months. When I think of the word tired the first thing that comes up is that I’m tired of worrying. There isn’t a day where I wake up and the first thing I think about was how much of a financial shithole my life has come to. As sad as it sounds, my family (aka my Mom and I) are not in a good financial state right now. My mom didn’t get approved for a pay increase this past year and my father has fully stopped all communication and financial help with us. Life was okay back then because my Dad had a stable job for a company that he’s been working at for nearly 25+ years. His pay is great and is definitely enough to sustain our middle class lives. But with my Dad fully leaving us, cutting contacts and all ties with my Mom and I, changing his number and moving to who knows where, being able to eat even 2 meals a day became a luxury. With my Mom and I living apart meant we had two different places we needed to pay rent for, our constant medical bills because my mom is diabetic and my surprise ER trip this year in May, bills bills bills, living, breathing, life has become such an expense that we can’t even afford. My mom works as an accountant for a pretty small company, but in retrospect makes 1/3 of what my Dad makes. To sustain not only herself but me on top of that, money has become a big problem these past few months. And with my difficulties trying to find a career focused job, I resorted to working random jobs honestly just so I can help out as much as I can. In the end of October I picked up a retail job at Target as a full-time sales floor and near mid-November I got hired as a desk assistant in a chiropractic clinic in k-town as a part time attendant. My sulking and being depressed eventually turned into working nearly 60 hours a week, 7 days a week just so I can help my mom out with the bills and payments. On average I got about 5-6 hours of sleep every night and had little time to go out and enjoy myself for even a couple of hours. My idea of fun eventually became being able to play a couple or two games of League before going to sleep. I was tired. Although I had two jobs while I was at UCI as well, I never experienced working full-time jobs the way I did these past couple of months. I had the thought in my head, “is this what adulting feels like, because it’s not fun.” But then I later realized, it ultimately sucks because of the situation my life specifically is in. I feel good that I’ve been able to help out my mom financially, but my mind and body has definitely taken a blow in return. I’ve been so busy trying to help that I haven’t been taking care of myself nearly at all. I found myself eating once a day, snacking on small bags of chips every so often to save money, making more instant noodles, cheap pasta dishes and shin ramen in the past 3 months than I ever did during my 4 years of college. To add onto that, I’ve been getting bloody noses nearly everyday, gotten lightheaded at work about 2-3 times, gotten the flu about twice and have been experiencing some colorectal symptoms again that lowkey worries me. (Side tldr: In late 2013 I had an ER trip where I learned I could be pre-cancerous because I had a huge stomach flu episode where they found inflammation in my lower secum. They thought I just had appendicitis at first, but I got my appendix removed back in 2009, so they weren’t entirely sure. I was later genetic tested in January 2014 where they found I carried a gene mutation common in colorectal cancer patients much like my 4 uncles on my mom’s side of the family, 2 of which died in 2010 and 2011 from colorectal cancer. Ever since then I had to always be cautious of things I eat and especially if I started to show symptoms again. Symptoms were things like nose bleeding excessively, coughing blood or rectally bleeding, etc. Which almost all of which, I started to experience again recently) Whenever I got home I felt tired, spent time relaxing by watching a couple of Youtube videos before I slept. Although it was hard I felt good that I was able to financially help my Mom. But even though it’s gotten better recently, I still don’t go days without worrying about my financial stability. My time at the chiropractor didn’t last long because I wasn’t what he was looking for the job and I feel like my time at Target is soon coming to a close because I actually only got hired as seasonal. Looking back at 2017, I’ve never pushed myself this much before and although it’s honestly hard, I need to keep telling myself that I need to keep living like this for the sake of me and for the sake of my Mom being able to financially sustain ourselves in these hard times.

Regret: 

My first regret of 2017 would definitely be spending time sulking for the first half of the year over something that in the end turned out to be a waste of my time. I was depressed and sad nearly everyday for almost 5 months over someone that got over me in less than 3 days. I was honestly afraid of letting myself get vulnerable with someone again because I was afraid of getting hurt, but when I felt like it was safe and the feeling was right, it only lead to disappointment in the end anyways. Always being in the vicinity of each other because we had so many common friends was the worst feeling ever because you always wanted to play it off that you were fine when honestly you were not. It was hard to genuinely feel happy about a day because just the slightest thought of them kind of sucked you into your own depressing thoughts for the whole day. I’m actually happy to say that months later because I’m not around the UCI area anymore and because I’ve been so busy to even think about it, I’ve gotten so much better mentally from this experience, but it’s still a regret that I wasted my last 6 months of college feeling sorry for myself rather than just genuinely having fun. With graduation actually also brought in a whole wave of regrets that I started to think about. I regret not fixing ties with some friends I lost over stupid reasons over the past couple of years. I regret not doing better in college because I know I’m fully capable of being a good student, I honestly just never tried hard enough until it mattered. I regret being so wasteful of money during college and not being grateful of the financial support my Mom gave me during this time, and now that I’m back experiencing having to help out it’s made me realize how wasteful I am as a person. I regret for acting the way I did when it came to my personal life with people, leaving unresolved conflicts, and friendships that just will never be the same or are now nonexistent. And lastly I regret not being a better friend in general. I’ve grown to realize how self centered I lived the past 4 years of my life because if it didn’t benefit me in the end, it didn’t matter to me. My year of reflection ended up becoming a whole list of regrets of things that I can’t fix now and can only move on from and learn from it. I’ve lost touch with so many important people in my life because of how I’ve acted and it’s honestly disheartening to think back to it all. I mean I have friends still here, but it doesn’t undermine the people who were always there for me and I was too blind to realize it. All I did was hurt and break hearts that now that you regret what you did, there’s nothing to fix anymore because it’s already ruined. And for that I want to apologize for everything, to everyone I’ve hurt, to everyone I’ve ignored, to everyone I’ve taken advantage of, and to everyone who I wasn’t there for. I feel like these past 6 months of hardship has honestly changed my perspective of not only the world but myself as well. Lastly my biggest regret is a personal regret. I regret not pursuing my dreams and doing something I actually genuinely enjoy. I regret trying to please my family and not listening to mind for what I genuinely wanted to do. This past year I graduated with a BS in Pharmaceutical Sciences and sadly only 20% of me gets excited being able to say that. Don’t get me wrong, it’s always been a dream of mine since I was young to be in this field. I was that kid in first grade in Christian school that said he wanted to be a doctor while everyone else wanted to be princesses and actors. I always sought myself out to become a medical practitioner, but growing up and all my experiences that helped make me who I am today, I’m sad that my once dream I wish just stayed as a dream. Being able to graduate with this science degree doesn’t excite me as much as I thought it would that even to this day I still haven’t picked up my degree because it kind of doesn’t mean anything to me. (which lowkey I think I should get on that... rip) I regret not listening to my instincts beforehand and pursuing something that genuinely made me happy. If you didn’t know before, I actually have great interest in graphic design and communications and creative fields that encompass these skills. I did the stereotypical thing and listened to what my parents wanted me to pursue rather than doing myself a favor and speaking up for myself and letting me follow my own dream. I consider this as a 2017 regret because now I have a degree in something that I honestly don’t know what to do with. I regret putting myself through all that school for something that doesn’t interest me, and most importantly, I regret making my parents put me through all that school for me just to now shrug it off. I don’t know.... I’m honestly just a bundle of confused still when it comes to my career paths but I’m really hoping I can figure it out within the next few years. But for now, regret regret x100 regret.

Thankful:

If you’ve stuck through reading this for this long, I want to say thanks for sticking and listening to what’s on my mind. This post was a tad meant to be shared, but I mostly just wanted to spray out everything on my mind. So far I feel like I’ve only given room to speak about everything bad that’s happened in my life this year, but I do have to say that there were for sure good things that happened this year as well. Firstly I am thankful for my two mentees that I met this year, Cody and Toan. I first got acquainted with them early in January and seeing the development of our relationships this past year, I can’t be more thankful of two people who took care of me so much during my hard times. During my last two quarters at UCI, my life was a mess of everything, and I’m glad they were always there for me and stuck it through no matter what happened. And even moving back home home, they always check up on me and have even visited me just to see how I’m doing. They may be my mentees but I honestly feel like the mentee in this relationship. I want to thank speficially Raffy and Jon for giving me to opportunity to be on PACN board this year because being able to do PACN this year honestly helped me so much forget about the other stressors I had during my life at the time and put on a good show for everyone to enjoy. Even though PACN in general was stressful, it was probably the biggest highlight of my senior year at UCI. I’m thankful for the board I was able to work with, my suite members, my co-hoes, and thankful for the overall experience. I’m thankful for a girl named Theresa because out of all my littles, I feel like she was there for me during all my lows to always pump some motivation to keep moving forward with my life. It’s honestly really hard for me to communicate my problems with people because I have such a hard time talking about these sensitive types of topics, but for some reason everything feels so natural just being able to talk to her about it. Thanks for always being there through all my annoying messages and listening to all the stupid stories you probably didn’t care about. But thanks for making it seem like you did, it really helps lmao. Quick shoutout to Kevin (Hoang) too. Thank you for always being there for me, and being so persistent and trying your best to make me laugh. You’re honestly a genuine friend and I hope that I can repay you back for all you’ve done for me in the future. Back in October my long time car, ye ole 1995 Toyota T-100 finally reached its limit and broke down to the point where it was too expensive to fix it. I was nearly car-less for 2 weeks. It made it much harder to look for jobs and just get around in general. I was actually considering buying a tap-card because Metro fares were starting to stack up, until one day my Mom came home and surprised me with a new car. When she told me that she got a work bonus that week from her boss for completing a very hard project, she automatically wanted to put a down payment to give me the opportunity to drive a new car. She calls it my “late Graduation present” lmao. All my life, I’ve been driving around a car that was even older than me, so I’m thankful for my Mom for getting me a car that I can actually call mine. Even though I have to pay for the car payments myself (lmao, mom pls), I am still thankful that I have a way to get around now and this is probably one of my biggest highlights of the year. I also wanted to do a quick shout out to my best friends Kevin, Bea and Dia (and Alex too I guess). Kevin and I have been friends since high school but I feel like coming back home this year I’ve honestly gotten to appreciate Kevin so much more because he was there during all my low times and to hear all my annoying rants. Thank you for being there for me unconditionally, even though lowkey its always just because you need rides, lmao. But hey, I’m willing to take that trade for always being there for me. And also to Bea and Dia for always being there to help me realize that we’re still the stupid little shits we are even though we’re “adulting” now. Whenever we all hang out suddenly all my worries I forget them for even just a while which honestly is a comforting feeling. If either of you are reading this right now, then lmao yeah I kinda hide all my feelings when we hang out, but not on purpose though, but because I actually genuinely enjoy the times we do go out, so thank you for making my days more brighter even for just a couple of hours. Lastly, thank you Alex for always being a little shit, because even though we annoy each other all the time, being able to hang out or discord with you when we play league is always a fun time. You’re so bad at League that it actually brings me joy, which is nice. But it’s okay, I suck too, oh well. Thanks for always being down, and thanks for always replying to fast to everything. You’re probably one of my friends that replies the fastest and I appreciate that. Lastly I want to thank the friends I’ve made at Target these past couple of months. It’s kind of reminded me that even after college, it’s still possible to make friends with new people. I was so shy coming in but I’m glad I was able to open up to more people and that I can actually call most of you friends opposed to as just co-workers. Dr. Park at the chiro office was kind of harder to talk to, plus he got rid of me fast lmao, so thanks for always being the true homies and making shifts so much more fun. Shout out to my work best friend Kimberly for always being down to listen to my stories and for feeling comfortable to share your problems with me too. It’s comforting to know that there are people around you that even though they’re going through a lot of problems as well, they’re always willing to be there for you just as much as you are willing to be there for them. I’m definitely thankful for more people, but I just wanted to quickly mention the people who really changed this year for me and made me realize maybe life isn’t actually so bad. Things may be hard, life in general is depressing, but there’s always rays of light shining where you least expect it.

Oh hey well look at that, it’s 11:55PM now. With about 5 minutes left in 2017, I hope this is a fresh start for me. Here’s to a hopefully better year coming up, 2018. Thank you for all the lessons this year 2017. Happy New Year.