I'm still wide awake.

 “What if all the beautiful people were disgusting, and the prettier the more disgusting? We would have a totally different view of beauty then.”

Ju: “…First we would have to define disgusting.”

I have been having variations of this conversation with others (and my own very noisy brain) over these past few days. How do we define a trait? How do we decide how to categorize people into little clusters based on a selection of characteristics? Stereotypically, an extrovert is seen to be outgoing, ready to try new things, someone who loves having company. But why can’t an extrovert also be shy and feel alone in the world? Must they always be bold and friendly in new situations? Why can’t an extrovert enjoy singular yet adventurous sports? Why can’t an introvert be bold and outspoken? Who decided that if you were one, you could not be the other? That Extroversion and Introversion were polar traits that cannot co-exist in a person? Why can’t a person be logical and creative? Shallow and silly in some things yet deep in other ways? Beautiful, yet have disgusting traits? And so on. Psychology allows for so many theories on this, but the one I subscribe to is that personality traits are a continuum—like many fine tuning levels that you can adjust with various possible combinations. Because there aren’t just five or six or eight types of people in the world. Personality tests are helpful, insightful, but sometimes I think they perpetuate stereotypes among those who don’t truly understand that a test cannot measure everything a person was, is and will be. Tests are just guides. The words used to described a person are so general at times, and often a person leaks other categories. Stereotypes are just quick assumptions we make about others because we cant be bothered to take the time to get to truly know them. Instead, we want them to fit the rules and schema of our world and forget that they are unique and contradictory creatures.

But back to the discussion of beauty and disgusting traits. Let us say disgusting traits vary from picking your nose, wearing the same underwear every day without washing it for weeks to things that are socially looked down on and disgraceful. Let us then say that beauty is something that we are attracted to, that is appealing to us. If the beautiful were disgusting, and open about their various flaws and bad habits how drastically will this affect the way we the general public views beauty? Would it change? This is a long stretch but if the media were truthful about the flaws, failures, mistakes and dirty, disgusting things that everyone, even the beautiful commit, would we still have the same obsession with beauty? Would we accept that perfection is a concept, abstract, and indefinable? Would we realize that flaws are normal, and that the beautiful are normal and not some being that can do no wrong? Would we realize in increments that we are beautiful too in our own way? We are obsessed with the lives and scandals of the rich and famous, perhaps because their flaws humanize them to a standard that makes it alright for us to have flaws and make mistakes too. It brings them down to our level, so that they no longer tower over us with their beauty. If imperfections could be accepted as something that lives alongside beauty, would the disgusting be beautiful as well?  Because after all, who said that the pretty can't be disgusting, and the disgusting pretty? Our definitions would change I think, if we can accept such loose concepts. 

i truly do have an inflated sense of self.

You are warned: self absorbed rambles to follow

really, you were warned.

I would like to believe in permanence. It suggests that some things last forever, unchanging and unmoving. That some things will never let you down; you would never have to question permanence. It will always be there, even when you are not. Mind, I am not talking about religion, but the simple idea that building, love, people, ourselves, ideas and what not can last forever. Permanence is dependable, however dull the word is. But then I realize I don’t believe in it. Friends, family, they all come and go and that is just the way it is. One day, our mind will go. Ideas evolve. I don’t believe in living by the concept of seizing the everyday as if it is your last, as if you could be gone by the next sunrise. Yet I’m no Little Prince, believing I can leave and return later to an unchanged rose. I need not travel to other worlds to realize I can never expect to return to the same place I came from. Every day I wake up in a different world; a new world (for better or worse) than the night before.

Nothing lasts forever because what is forever? A limited understanding of the infinite? We think our actions so great, our problems so vast, our troubles so mind boggling, but it and us are nothing but specks. Dust. We are dust and so are our ‘great’ worries and concerns. Our tears will evaporate, but all our tears collected would not make a cloud. We are arrogant, egotistical creatures to believe Mother Nature can’t live without us. But where was I? Oh, yes we are impermanent. We are temporary. We change, with each thought, each action, and then we are never the same again.

I’ve never felt that sense of immortality they say we feel at this age; on the contrary, I have always felt conscious of my own mortality. I have never forgotten how easy it could be to die. I am not afraid of death; I’ve seen myself die in many ways. I’ve never imagine myself living over forty. You know those day dreams we have of our future? Of our future family and lives, and what we will be like? Never over forty. I don’t know if that’s strange. Does everyone do that?

Today I suppose has been a thought provoking day. I have been thinking on who and what I am, who and what makes others who they are. I was thinking of what a friend said the other day, of how people used to come up to her and tell them all their problems and how she didn’t know exactly why. And I thought to myself then, yes, I used to have friends come up to me too. But then today I realized there is a distinct difference between those whom listen to the problems of others and those who are empathetic. And you may think of course, well that’s obvious. They are two different things. But it had not occurred to be that sometimes, maybe, we seek out both those types of people. I have never been empathetic. In fact, talking to me is probably like talking to a rubber wall, I understand what you are saying and can repeat it back to you from a different angle, but I don’t feel what you feel. I see where you are coming from, but I am not in your shoes. There are those who can come across as though they feel every drop of emotion in your soul, as though your problem was theirs. Going to the extreme of thinking you should feel every drop of their emotion too, even on the days when they are swimming in so much of feelings they can’t see or think of yours/others. I have met extremes and in-betweens of both. And I hope you understand that you are both, and how precious it is to feel. How special a gift you have that you can feel for others, be so much of a comfort to others, and yet still give sound advice.

And this is the part that I could not articulate earlier today; I am the least empathetic person I know. I regurgitate facts. I have a good memory for facts, but so what? Perhaps the image that has been coming off these past few days has been misleading; I am not as well read as you think. I have hardly read as many literary classics as you have implied. I bits and pieces of what’s happening in class because I love mythology, and have made some kind of hobby to read up on it. If Wikipedia did not exist I would know next to nothing. By the end of this course, we would be evenly matched. What then to be envious about? I am envious of your passion for music, for art and how even at your lowest you still find the strength to stand back up. I am not a passionate being; I have many interests but none that I am truly master of. You are flawed and so is everyone else. You are special, and creative, and wonderfully present in life. You have an honesty about you and how you live your life that I envy. I wish I knew of ways to help bring some cheer into your life, but as I said, I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what people want to hear. 

there are days where I wake up and I wonder who I am. I know who I am supposed to be. I think I'll never figure out who I am.


On an unrelated note, I make an awesome oven baked chicken.

I am at my most poetic when I am my saddest. Everything is a metaphor because everything hurts too much to explain vividly. I start speaking in weird imagery. I start thinking in raw, formless, haikus and inversed sentences like ‘cheerfulness ran down in tears, draining out of me’.  Do you ever have those moments? Where everything comes to you, but you don’t know if you should write it down because its too saddening to read.

Because I feel like I am being dragged into the sea. I’m standing, and then I am not. I think to myself, I can take another wave, and it comes, and then another, and then I am beneath it and I don’t know if I want to get up. I’m not sure it’s worth the effort to struggle against the tide, when it’s so easy to float and let it pull me down. 

I feel like I can barely breathe. Like there is this big cloud of gloom pushing down on me, a heavy weight stealing my breath.

I don’t understand why I cried. I don’t understand why there’s this heart ranching sadness hovering around my room.

I need to get out. I would go for a walk if the gates weren’t lock by now.

It’s so suffocating.

I need to get away from myself.

It’s just one of those days I guess, where you feel so alone you don’t understand how you are going to make it through tomorrow. I wonder how I am going to make it through the night.

Tomorrow there will be the sun. But for now I feel like a hollow box, wooden and plain with a rusty lock from being left out in the rain for too long. 

I’ve been having rather gloomy thoughts lately. The latest book I’m reading, Thirteen Reasons Why, has been in my head for days. It’s a haunting book. I can barely bring myself to read it because it speaks such truth and depth about how little we truly know our actions may affect another. And that idea, the idea that I have unintentionally hurt others and remained oblivious to it---that is haunting my hours. I keep thinking that I’m going to get my own box of tapes. Because I sometimes say hurtful things without really thinking it through. I know the words I say can come across as sharp. There are times when I even mean them to be. Not every time, not all the time, but occasionally.

I don’t start of the day with the intention of being mean. But I know I am. I know a little part of me is mean, envious, and hurtful.

But this blog has already been filled with gloomy posts of dark thoughts, and when I read them back I don’t want that heavy blanket to suffocate me. So I won’t write any more on the book I’m reading or how it’s affecting me. At least not for today.

I volunteered to help out as a waitress/butler at an event for the elderly. It was a themed dinner, revolving around hats and more hats.

I made new friends! And then there’s the joy of knowing you did something good. Helper’s high and all that. It’s an uplifting feeling to know you did something of worth. That you didn’t waste your day.