The song that best sums up life at the moment (now THAT's a bold statement). Listen and love it.
30 December 2008
25 December 2008
Home for the Holidays
Christmastime and the holidays are the best time of year to write. There’s something about the combination of cold weather, family and those cheesy Christmas commercials that feeds directly into my urge to blog, har har. After what has been one of the most stressful, ridiculous semesters of college thus far, I’m savoring home-cooked meals, hours-long catchup sessions, and best of all, sleeping in. It saddens me to know, however, that break is going by so quickly – it’s already been a week since I’ve been home. Time really needs to slow the heck down, because this is pretty much the last “official” winter break of uh…life. Fo serious.
Winter breaks have changed so much from what they used to be back in the day. I still remember celebrating the holiday season in elementary school – performing dances, songs and other shenanigans with the rest of the class for the school’s annual Christmas concert. Even high school had its winter band and choir concerts. It was embarrassing then, and would probably be embarrassing now, but having those traditions really got everyone into the holiday spirit, and I do miss having solid benchmark events like that throughout the year.
I think I even miss ugly Christmas sweaters, not gonna lie.
The family and I used to be big on the multi-family holiday get-togethers – you know, the ones with lots of food (read: rice), fruit (read: sliced Asian pears) and frenzy (read: a chance for the parents to gossip and reminisce, also an excuse for them to throw their kids together and learn to deal with awkward social situations). There were potlucks in San Marino, karaoke nights at relatives’ houses, gift exchanges and Christmas feasts at an ever-changing array of homes.
Christmas music, lighted tree, TV blaring.
Kids’ tables, apple cider, intense Nintendo and board game sessions.
It was a great way to grow up, and over the years, these family friends became part of the holiday routine. Since we only saw each other once a year, there was always something to catch up on, some new news to share, a random story to tell. It was comforting to see these families parallel my own, and in a lot of ways, act as projected representations of what was to come.
I remember when the first of the “kids” stopped showing up to our holiday dinners – he went away to college, then graduated, then started his first job. It was jarring to know that such huge life changes were happening to people we had grown up with. We had all gone from sharing toys and candy to talking about boys and the latest video games to swapping college and career advice. Parents started to move away after their kids moved out. The gatherings became more infrequent as each family got more wrapped up in their own holiday plans.
It was surreal and we almost didn’t see it coming, but apparently, we were all growing up.
Then, someone got married. It wasn’t just my imagination then. Life really was speeding by, and the days of careless candy wrappers and shoes piled high in the foyer were over.
Just.
Like.
That.
Nowadays, the holidays are spent with our own immediate families, and I kind of like it that way, though it took a while to embrace this new holiday tradition. It’s a lot quieter without hoards of children running up and down stairs and parents yakking away around a half-cleared dinner table, and the lack of Christmas chaos feels a bit empty sometimes.
But at the same time, even though I miss the kind of winter break we shared growing up, I couldn’t ask for a better one than the one I’ve been having so far this year. It’s rare for the four of us in our immediate family to be in the same place at the same time anymore, and that’s what makes this holiday season so much more poignant.
My parents are always going between the States and Taiwan to visit my grandparents and take care of family business there. My brother’s starting a new job in January. I’ll be graduating in May, and moving to New York (fingers crossed). Who knows how the family dynamic will shift again then?
Kind of makes me think of one of my favourite quotes, however cheesy it might be:
“You'll see when you move out, it just sort of happens one day. One day and it's just gone. And you can never get it back. It's like you get homesick for a place that doesn't exist. I mean it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.”
…except I know what I miss is real.
This holiday season, I’m savoring break for what it’s worth because seriously, for the first time in the four years since I first moved out, I feel like I’m home again.
Winter breaks have changed so much from what they used to be back in the day. I still remember celebrating the holiday season in elementary school – performing dances, songs and other shenanigans with the rest of the class for the school’s annual Christmas concert. Even high school had its winter band and choir concerts. It was embarrassing then, and would probably be embarrassing now, but having those traditions really got everyone into the holiday spirit, and I do miss having solid benchmark events like that throughout the year.
I think I even miss ugly Christmas sweaters, not gonna lie.
The family and I used to be big on the multi-family holiday get-togethers – you know, the ones with lots of food (read: rice), fruit (read: sliced Asian pears) and frenzy (read: a chance for the parents to gossip and reminisce, also an excuse for them to throw their kids together and learn to deal with awkward social situations). There were potlucks in San Marino, karaoke nights at relatives’ houses, gift exchanges and Christmas feasts at an ever-changing array of homes.
Christmas music, lighted tree, TV blaring.
Kids’ tables, apple cider, intense Nintendo and board game sessions.
It was a great way to grow up, and over the years, these family friends became part of the holiday routine. Since we only saw each other once a year, there was always something to catch up on, some new news to share, a random story to tell. It was comforting to see these families parallel my own, and in a lot of ways, act as projected representations of what was to come.
I remember when the first of the “kids” stopped showing up to our holiday dinners – he went away to college, then graduated, then started his first job. It was jarring to know that such huge life changes were happening to people we had grown up with. We had all gone from sharing toys and candy to talking about boys and the latest video games to swapping college and career advice. Parents started to move away after their kids moved out. The gatherings became more infrequent as each family got more wrapped up in their own holiday plans.
It was surreal and we almost didn’t see it coming, but apparently, we were all growing up.
Then, someone got married. It wasn’t just my imagination then. Life really was speeding by, and the days of careless candy wrappers and shoes piled high in the foyer were over.
Just.
Like.
That.
Nowadays, the holidays are spent with our own immediate families, and I kind of like it that way, though it took a while to embrace this new holiday tradition. It’s a lot quieter without hoards of children running up and down stairs and parents yakking away around a half-cleared dinner table, and the lack of Christmas chaos feels a bit empty sometimes.
But at the same time, even though I miss the kind of winter break we shared growing up, I couldn’t ask for a better one than the one I’ve been having so far this year. It’s rare for the four of us in our immediate family to be in the same place at the same time anymore, and that’s what makes this holiday season so much more poignant.
My parents are always going between the States and Taiwan to visit my grandparents and take care of family business there. My brother’s starting a new job in January. I’ll be graduating in May, and moving to New York (fingers crossed). Who knows how the family dynamic will shift again then?
Kind of makes me think of one of my favourite quotes, however cheesy it might be:
“You'll see when you move out, it just sort of happens one day. One day and it's just gone. And you can never get it back. It's like you get homesick for a place that doesn't exist. I mean it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.”
…except I know what I miss is real.
This holiday season, I’m savoring break for what it’s worth because seriously, for the first time in the four years since I first moved out, I feel like I’m home again.
24 December 2008
LOVE.
I think my friends are some of the most amazing people I have ever met. Just thought I'd throw that out there. Must elaborate later.
16 December 2008
Home stretch
"The fact is, that to do anything in the world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can."
- Robert Cushing
Inspiration for this very last part of the semester - three stories to revise and you can stick a fork in me because I'll be DONE.
...diving right back in...
08 December 2008
Had to write a final paper on happiness for a science of happiness class this semester. This is the result, honestly the worst piece of BS I have ever had the horror of presenting to a professor. Thought I'd post it here, though, because it's a lesson to be learned - don't write papers while half cracked-out or on serious deadline. Yikes.
True happiness, then, the kind that sticks around longer than simple transient positive feelings, can be defined as a judgment, an internal decision made by an individual regarding his or her attitude in a given situation. As stated in William Shakespeare's famous play Hamlet, and as quoted in Dr. Monterosso's lecture, "there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Happiness is founded largely on attitude. It is not a certain set o circumstances that determines happiness, but a certain set o attitudes that makes it possible for some people to take their inherent happiness set point and fluctuate on the positive end of it as opposed to the negative end of it. Given that a large part of a person's innate happiness is determined by genetics, as proven in the Minnesota Twins study, the only way to truly reach a level of happiness that is long-lasting, genetics aside, is to adopt a certain attitude toward the circumstances he or she is presented with.
Whether imagined or not, a person's ability to have control over their lives - including the choice to stress or not in a given situation - plays a large role in determining his or her overall happiness level, and this is perhaps best illustrated by the nursing home study. In this study, Adam Galinsky, a professor at Northwestern University, gave a group of senior citizens in a nursing home a plant to care for, and a control group nothing to care for. It was found that the group that had the plants to care for tended to live longer, happier lives than those who didn't, mostly because they felt that they had an element of control over their plants. They therefore felt more purpose in their lives and the psychological state of control - of being able to choose their attitudes - translated into a physical ability to live a longer, richer life.
A person's attributional style is perhaps the biggest determining factor in how happy a person can be said to be - someone who blames himself when things go awry and assumes that the negative circumstances are permanent rather than temporary is more likely to spiral into a pattern o unhappiness than someone who is able to see the situation in the big picture and acknowledge how realistically temporary and negative circumstances are. In a study by Seligman and Maier, two groups of do were left in harnesses for a period of time and then given electric shocks at different intervals. One groups was given a lever to press that would stop the shocks, and another group had levers that did nothing to stop the electric shocks. Dogs from the second group developed something known as "learned helplessness" - that is, that nothing they could do would change the situation that they were in. As a result, these dogs would refuse to try anything to stop their pain, showing signs of what can best be described as an equivalent to human clinical depression. Translated into human-relatable terms, this shows that people who adopt the attitude of learned helplessness do not bother to venture to either know themselves or establish relationships with other people and therefore are a cause of their own unhappiness.
In order to structure a life wherein happiness is a constant, then, it is necessary for individuals to build upon their own internal satisfaction and extend that into interpersonal relations with others. It is without a doubt that social connectivity contributes largely to the happiness level of individuals. Studies have proven that the greater the number of social networks a person has, the more likely he or she is to have a higher life satisfaction rating. Being with other people, whether in a companionship or romantic sense, helps to establish a person's sense of self and gives him or her a bigger opportunity to take on social responsibility that might impact his or her own happiness in addition to helping the other party, and this is how happiness is nurtured and sustained. Intangible life assets, such as forgiveness, generosity and gratitude all tie into individuals' overall happiness.
The difference between animals and human beings is their capacity to have a multi-layered happiness that is independent of external factors. For dogs or pigs, as John Stuart Mills pointed out, happiness is contingent on ignorance, and the general consensus is that it is better to be a dissatisfied human being than to be a satisfied animal. Our ability to think about our actions and e a player in our own lives is what sets us apart and what makes our lives richer and happier."
27 November 2008
Giving Thanks, Thanksgiving
This year, I am thankful for (in no particular order):
1. waking up to the sound of rain in the morning
2. late night Denny's runs
3. tabasco
4. people who wipe off the bathroom sink
5. neatly folded or rolled-up workout t-shirts
6. the Great American Music Exchange
7. finding money (and lots of it) in the pockets of old jeans
8. pepper
9. people who say "whatevs" and "cool beans"
10. random texts in the middle of the day
11. paddling in the San Francisco rain and wind
12. post-its
13. fat puppies
14. actually laughing out loud in the middle of an online conversation
15. honest people
16. milk green tea with boba from Cup o' Joy
17. the sound of my keyboard when I'm typing at a rapid rate
18. people who reply to emails on a timely basis (bc I need to learn how)
19. reverse smileys (:
20. comfortable silences
21. big, genuine heartfelt hugs (no awkward side-hugs please)
22. pizza bagels and the conversations that come with them
23. people who take risks
24. perfectly fluffed pillows
25. gchat
26. chatty people at the checkout counter at Ralphs
27. dried mangos
28. pedestrians who trot across the street and give you an awkward smile because they know you're waiting for them
29. a full tank of gas
30. voicemails that start with "hey, it's me"
31. brunch
32. the smell of sunscreen
33. grape tomatoes and brownie bites (but not together)
34. people who hold doors open
35. homeless people who are not picky about the food I give them
36. parking structures that make sense and do not spiral for 6 stories
37. quiet movie-watchers
38. captions
39. pinky rings
40. ANTM and Top Chef marathons
41. people who enjoy using the word "epic"
42. old artists reemerging to try and restart their careers (see: brandy, hanson, spice girls)
43. mints at the end of a meal
44. facebook albums that consist of old OLD photos from elementary school and high school
45. airports
46. Def Poetry Jam
47. people who are humble and inspire me to be a better person
48. dental floss
49. friends
50. family
1. waking up to the sound of rain in the morning
2. late night Denny's runs
3. tabasco
4. people who wipe off the bathroom sink
5. neatly folded or rolled-up workout t-shirts
6. the Great American Music Exchange
7. finding money (and lots of it) in the pockets of old jeans
8. pepper
9. people who say "whatevs" and "cool beans"
10. random texts in the middle of the day
11. paddling in the San Francisco rain and wind
12. post-its
13. fat puppies
14. actually laughing out loud in the middle of an online conversation
15. honest people
16. milk green tea with boba from Cup o' Joy
17. the sound of my keyboard when I'm typing at a rapid rate
18. people who reply to emails on a timely basis (bc I need to learn how)
19. reverse smileys (:
20. comfortable silences
21. big, genuine heartfelt hugs (no awkward side-hugs please)
22. pizza bagels and the conversations that come with them
23. people who take risks
24. perfectly fluffed pillows
25. gchat
26. chatty people at the checkout counter at Ralphs
27. dried mangos
28. pedestrians who trot across the street and give you an awkward smile because they know you're waiting for them
29. a full tank of gas
30. voicemails that start with "hey, it's me"
31. brunch
32. the smell of sunscreen
33. grape tomatoes and brownie bites (but not together)
34. people who hold doors open
35. homeless people who are not picky about the food I give them
36. parking structures that make sense and do not spiral for 6 stories
37. quiet movie-watchers
38. captions
39. pinky rings
40. ANTM and Top Chef marathons
41. people who enjoy using the word "epic"
42. old artists reemerging to try and restart their careers (see: brandy, hanson, spice girls)
43. mints at the end of a meal
44. facebook albums that consist of old OLD photos from elementary school and high school
45. airports
46. Def Poetry Jam
47. people who are humble and inspire me to be a better person
48. dental floss
49. friends
50. family
Beauty in the Breakdown
Things haven’t been the same ever since my car was broken into nearly three weeks ago. It took someone breaking in for me to break down and slowly build myself back up. In the last few weeks, I’ve gone from desperation to reflection to hope to pure bliss. It’s been a roller-coaster of events and emotions, but I’m so grateful for having circumstances be what they have been – in a weird way, losing so much really made me open my eyes to see not only what I already had, but also what I had already been lacking even before my material things were stolen.
And there was so much I hadn’t even noticed.
So much of this semester has been a test – of my patience, of my time-management abilities, of my own solid sense of self in the midst of so many moving, shifting pieces. If the Nike 10K was any indication, I jumped into this semester with all the hope and ambition in the world – I thought myself prepared for the long road ahead of me; stretched, prepped and charged. I had trained vigorously over the summer for what I saw as a warm-up for the main event: the LA Marathon in March (now moved to May!), and approached the night run as just another practice, an extended version of a familiar route.
“Don’t keel over, please,” I remember saying to my friend as we jumped up and down in the crowd prior to the official start of the race. He gave me a look, a silent “Child, please” before continuing to jump to keep warm. We joked about who would finish first, and how, if one of us did end up collapsing, it would selfishly cost the other his or her final time on account of having to step over the fallen runner.
Ominous words.
I was going into the race with hardly any sleep in the last week, having been on deadline for both my newsmagazine publication and my internship, moving out of my brother’s apartment and into my own, and acting as host to a friend from out of state. Looking back, a marathon – even a 6-mile marathon – was probably the last thing I should’ve been doing given my situation.
But still, I fought on.
Even when, during the middle of the race, I felt myself growing tired and my vision beginning to blur, I pushed on because I was convinced my fatigue was just a momentary phase for me to power through. My only real goal for the race was to never stop running – it became clear, though, that if I continued on at the rate I was going, I wouldn’t even get to the finish line.
So I walked.
But the power and the surge of the people around me motivated me to keep on – so after several steps of power walking, I would increase my pace to a trot and then a jog. There was conviction in my gait, or so I’d like to think. Then, as I rounded the corner for the final stretch down Figueroa toward the entrance of the Coliseum, I felt something click within me. I sprinted. The finish line was so close I could see the ribbon stretched taut across the street, the crowds of volunteers leaning from the sidewalk to congratulate runners, the lights from beyond the gate glaring into the faces of exhausted participants. I could feel the beat of the music from the Coliseum, moving in and out of sync with the rapid thumping in my chest. I felt a burst of energy.
And then everything went black.
Waking up sprawled on the ground with paramedics surrounding you is a pretty dang horrifying feeling. I couldn’t wrap my head around the situation for the longest time, and the words that kept spewing from my mouth weren’t mine. I couldn’t control the way my hands kept gesturing, or how I would wince and twist away from human touch. I didn’t know how to get the paramedics to understand that, and I didn’t have any feeling in my legs. Those moments – and I had no real idea how long I had been drifting in and out of consciousness – were some of the most terrifying of my life.
I was convinced I was going to die.
My logic was shot to pieces and I felt what can most closely be described as an out-of-body experience. It was as though I were already drifting away from the physical world and I was helpless to do anything to stop my mind from escaping from the situation completely. I just remember wishing I could wake up from the horrendous dream, and I squeezed my eyes tightly to make sure my wish came true. My mind began to drift.
But then something grounded me.
One of the paramedics began to ask me questions. Who are you? What’s your name? Where are you from? What did you eat today? What are you studying? Anything and everything to keep me awake, to keep my mind functioning as they lifted me onto a gurney and then into the ambulance. I caught blips of his questions and began to respond in half-hearted jest, trying to make light of the situation.
The sirens only registered half the time.
After spending the night at the hospital and seeing my parents wander timidly through the curtains into the room (separately, only one visitor at a time), I felt myself grow impatient. Not with the situation, the fact that I had to be bed-ridden for another 24 hours and constantly drink fluids (they claimed I had collapsed from extreme dehydration and exhaustion), but with myself, at having let myself get into such a situation as to make my parents worry after my health and well-being. In the dark, I lay awake and chided myself for putting myself in a position of helplessness and causing others worry. This isn’t how I had expected to start off my senior year.
Flash forward to three weeks ago, when I first opened my drivers’ side door to discover what I first assumed to be hail strewn across my seat, and it makes more sense why that break-in led to a mental breakdown later on that week. My first reaction when I glanced up to see my entire passenger-side window smashed in wasn’t panic, but a slowly creeping feeling of déjà vu. It was around 5 p.m., just after the awards ceremony for the dragon boat tournament at Lake Merced up in San Francisco. I had put the speeding ticket I got on the drive up out of my mind, and this just minimized the incident that much more.
In the moment, I felt helpless. It was as though a string of rather unpleasant (to put it lightly) events were following me. Throughout the course of the semester, I felt as though I had been working hard but had lost sight of the reasons why.
I had been focusing so much on establishing something with Bamboo Offshoot, but felt as though I were the only one putting in any effort. Apathy was eating away at my staff, and production had been going poorly despite my efforts to save it.
I hadn’t been able to maintain relationships and keep up with those near and dear to me because I’d been so busy with extracurriculars and school.
I was stuck in the middle of family drama that involved a close cousin being disowned from the family.
I hadn’t been starting up the blogs or freelancing I had aimed to do at the beginning of the semester.
I didn’t have a job secured.
I was behind in all of my class work, and was literally failing a course.
I’d let my parents down by getting myself into this situation and would have to find a way to pay them back for these damages. They would worry.
I had been lacking the purpose I initially began the semester with, and as much as I wanted to trivialize the fact that my window had been smashed and my things stolen, I just couldn’t. It was the last straw in a string of unfortunate events, and I wanted to just curl up in a ball and give up. All I saw were the negatives and the lack-ofs. It was hard to see the situation any other way.
But then I saw how everyone else was responding to the situation, and I knew I could only let myself be down and out for those few brief minutes. A friend’s wallet, phone, purse, ID, credit cards – had all been stolen from my backseat. I felt guilty, whether or not I had reason to feel that way, and I shifted my attention to that rather than focus on my own issues. What I had stolen was replaceable. Take a step back. No one was hurt, no reason to stress. Everything would work itself out. It might not seem like it in the moment, but the situation really wasn’t as bad as it seemed, in the grand scheme of things. I decided not to let myself get to emotionally invested. Everything would be okay.
Everything will be okay.
And everything was fine for those first few days after driving back from San Francisco. I was overwhelmed with the outpouring of concern from my teammates, friends and family, and I truly felt like I had needed something like this to happen to help ground me and put me back on the right track. I had been looking too much at the negatives to see their counterpart positives. The only problem was, I hadn’t let myself get all those emotions out of my head. There hadn’t been any catharsis, and my frustrations had simply been compartmentalized.
The Tuesday night following the Sunday break-in marked my first real emotional breakdown in a long time. In talking to a friend about the incident, I began to tear up, and my emotions and fears began to pour forth. I don’t think I ever expelled all those pent-up feelings, a whole semester’s worth, and it felt like such a huge relief to say everything that had been on my mind for far too long. I’ve always credited myself as being capable of taking on situations and being the comforter in times of distress – I shy away from being vulnerable, and that has translated into a lack of outward emotional reaction to anything big that had happened in the past semester, good or bad. It took a lot for me to admit that I wasn’t okay.
Everything’s a big deal, he said. Everything is a huge freaking deal.
Someone breaking into your car? Huge deal. React to it.
Getting accepted into Teach For America? Huge deal. React to it.
People not meeting deadlines and not respecting the publication? Huge deal. React to it.
Worried about how you’re failing one of your classes? Huge deal. React to it.
Having your parents tell you that your actions are selfish? Huge deal. React to it.
Too much of the semester had been spent convincing myself that things were fine, when really they probably could have been better. I had been running on empty for so long but had had too much pride or had been too buried under layers of denial to see it. I don’t cry enough. Or get angry enough. I downplay successes and gloss over disappointments. It’s not a healthy way to live.
But now, post-reflection and post-breakdown, things have started looking up in a very big way. I’ve taken on the editor-in-chief position for the Daily Trojan next semester, and I’m at once terrified and excited about the opportunity. It took a lot of thinking and reassessing to finally conclude that this was and is the right choice, but now that I’ve committed, there’s no turning back.
I heard back from Teach For America. My final interview is in just two weeks’ time and I’m anxiously preparing for the day-long process.
I met and spoke with Jeannie Kim, the executive editor over at Time Inc. just last Friday. I think I may have an internship for the summer.
So many things, so many circumstances. It’s been quite a trip and this is just the tip of the iceberg, really. I’ve never felt so blessed to have so many amazing people in my life – were it not for them, I doubt these past three weeks would have turned out quite the way they have.
Sometimes, you need to see the pieces of your life for what they are before you can fit a new window in their place. Break in, break down. Fill out, fill up.
It’s looking a lot clearer today.
And there was so much I hadn’t even noticed.
So much of this semester has been a test – of my patience, of my time-management abilities, of my own solid sense of self in the midst of so many moving, shifting pieces. If the Nike 10K was any indication, I jumped into this semester with all the hope and ambition in the world – I thought myself prepared for the long road ahead of me; stretched, prepped and charged. I had trained vigorously over the summer for what I saw as a warm-up for the main event: the LA Marathon in March (now moved to May!), and approached the night run as just another practice, an extended version of a familiar route.
“Don’t keel over, please,” I remember saying to my friend as we jumped up and down in the crowd prior to the official start of the race. He gave me a look, a silent “Child, please” before continuing to jump to keep warm. We joked about who would finish first, and how, if one of us did end up collapsing, it would selfishly cost the other his or her final time on account of having to step over the fallen runner.
Ominous words.
I was going into the race with hardly any sleep in the last week, having been on deadline for both my newsmagazine publication and my internship, moving out of my brother’s apartment and into my own, and acting as host to a friend from out of state. Looking back, a marathon – even a 6-mile marathon – was probably the last thing I should’ve been doing given my situation.
But still, I fought on.
Even when, during the middle of the race, I felt myself growing tired and my vision beginning to blur, I pushed on because I was convinced my fatigue was just a momentary phase for me to power through. My only real goal for the race was to never stop running – it became clear, though, that if I continued on at the rate I was going, I wouldn’t even get to the finish line.
So I walked.
But the power and the surge of the people around me motivated me to keep on – so after several steps of power walking, I would increase my pace to a trot and then a jog. There was conviction in my gait, or so I’d like to think. Then, as I rounded the corner for the final stretch down Figueroa toward the entrance of the Coliseum, I felt something click within me. I sprinted. The finish line was so close I could see the ribbon stretched taut across the street, the crowds of volunteers leaning from the sidewalk to congratulate runners, the lights from beyond the gate glaring into the faces of exhausted participants. I could feel the beat of the music from the Coliseum, moving in and out of sync with the rapid thumping in my chest. I felt a burst of energy.
And then everything went black.
Waking up sprawled on the ground with paramedics surrounding you is a pretty dang horrifying feeling. I couldn’t wrap my head around the situation for the longest time, and the words that kept spewing from my mouth weren’t mine. I couldn’t control the way my hands kept gesturing, or how I would wince and twist away from human touch. I didn’t know how to get the paramedics to understand that, and I didn’t have any feeling in my legs. Those moments – and I had no real idea how long I had been drifting in and out of consciousness – were some of the most terrifying of my life.
I was convinced I was going to die.
My logic was shot to pieces and I felt what can most closely be described as an out-of-body experience. It was as though I were already drifting away from the physical world and I was helpless to do anything to stop my mind from escaping from the situation completely. I just remember wishing I could wake up from the horrendous dream, and I squeezed my eyes tightly to make sure my wish came true. My mind began to drift.
But then something grounded me.
One of the paramedics began to ask me questions. Who are you? What’s your name? Where are you from? What did you eat today? What are you studying? Anything and everything to keep me awake, to keep my mind functioning as they lifted me onto a gurney and then into the ambulance. I caught blips of his questions and began to respond in half-hearted jest, trying to make light of the situation.
The sirens only registered half the time.
After spending the night at the hospital and seeing my parents wander timidly through the curtains into the room (separately, only one visitor at a time), I felt myself grow impatient. Not with the situation, the fact that I had to be bed-ridden for another 24 hours and constantly drink fluids (they claimed I had collapsed from extreme dehydration and exhaustion), but with myself, at having let myself get into such a situation as to make my parents worry after my health and well-being. In the dark, I lay awake and chided myself for putting myself in a position of helplessness and causing others worry. This isn’t how I had expected to start off my senior year.
Flash forward to three weeks ago, when I first opened my drivers’ side door to discover what I first assumed to be hail strewn across my seat, and it makes more sense why that break-in led to a mental breakdown later on that week. My first reaction when I glanced up to see my entire passenger-side window smashed in wasn’t panic, but a slowly creeping feeling of déjà vu. It was around 5 p.m., just after the awards ceremony for the dragon boat tournament at Lake Merced up in San Francisco. I had put the speeding ticket I got on the drive up out of my mind, and this just minimized the incident that much more.
In the moment, I felt helpless. It was as though a string of rather unpleasant (to put it lightly) events were following me. Throughout the course of the semester, I felt as though I had been working hard but had lost sight of the reasons why.
I had been focusing so much on establishing something with Bamboo Offshoot, but felt as though I were the only one putting in any effort. Apathy was eating away at my staff, and production had been going poorly despite my efforts to save it.
I hadn’t been able to maintain relationships and keep up with those near and dear to me because I’d been so busy with extracurriculars and school.
I was stuck in the middle of family drama that involved a close cousin being disowned from the family.
I hadn’t been starting up the blogs or freelancing I had aimed to do at the beginning of the semester.
I didn’t have a job secured.
I was behind in all of my class work, and was literally failing a course.
I’d let my parents down by getting myself into this situation and would have to find a way to pay them back for these damages. They would worry.
I had been lacking the purpose I initially began the semester with, and as much as I wanted to trivialize the fact that my window had been smashed and my things stolen, I just couldn’t. It was the last straw in a string of unfortunate events, and I wanted to just curl up in a ball and give up. All I saw were the negatives and the lack-ofs. It was hard to see the situation any other way.
But then I saw how everyone else was responding to the situation, and I knew I could only let myself be down and out for those few brief minutes. A friend’s wallet, phone, purse, ID, credit cards – had all been stolen from my backseat. I felt guilty, whether or not I had reason to feel that way, and I shifted my attention to that rather than focus on my own issues. What I had stolen was replaceable. Take a step back. No one was hurt, no reason to stress. Everything would work itself out. It might not seem like it in the moment, but the situation really wasn’t as bad as it seemed, in the grand scheme of things. I decided not to let myself get to emotionally invested. Everything would be okay.
Everything will be okay.
And everything was fine for those first few days after driving back from San Francisco. I was overwhelmed with the outpouring of concern from my teammates, friends and family, and I truly felt like I had needed something like this to happen to help ground me and put me back on the right track. I had been looking too much at the negatives to see their counterpart positives. The only problem was, I hadn’t let myself get all those emotions out of my head. There hadn’t been any catharsis, and my frustrations had simply been compartmentalized.
The Tuesday night following the Sunday break-in marked my first real emotional breakdown in a long time. In talking to a friend about the incident, I began to tear up, and my emotions and fears began to pour forth. I don’t think I ever expelled all those pent-up feelings, a whole semester’s worth, and it felt like such a huge relief to say everything that had been on my mind for far too long. I’ve always credited myself as being capable of taking on situations and being the comforter in times of distress – I shy away from being vulnerable, and that has translated into a lack of outward emotional reaction to anything big that had happened in the past semester, good or bad. It took a lot for me to admit that I wasn’t okay.
Everything’s a big deal, he said. Everything is a huge freaking deal.
Someone breaking into your car? Huge deal. React to it.
Getting accepted into Teach For America? Huge deal. React to it.
People not meeting deadlines and not respecting the publication? Huge deal. React to it.
Worried about how you’re failing one of your classes? Huge deal. React to it.
Having your parents tell you that your actions are selfish? Huge deal. React to it.
Too much of the semester had been spent convincing myself that things were fine, when really they probably could have been better. I had been running on empty for so long but had had too much pride or had been too buried under layers of denial to see it. I don’t cry enough. Or get angry enough. I downplay successes and gloss over disappointments. It’s not a healthy way to live.
But now, post-reflection and post-breakdown, things have started looking up in a very big way. I’ve taken on the editor-in-chief position for the Daily Trojan next semester, and I’m at once terrified and excited about the opportunity. It took a lot of thinking and reassessing to finally conclude that this was and is the right choice, but now that I’ve committed, there’s no turning back.
I heard back from Teach For America. My final interview is in just two weeks’ time and I’m anxiously preparing for the day-long process.
I met and spoke with Jeannie Kim, the executive editor over at Time Inc. just last Friday. I think I may have an internship for the summer.
So many things, so many circumstances. It’s been quite a trip and this is just the tip of the iceberg, really. I’ve never felt so blessed to have so many amazing people in my life – were it not for them, I doubt these past three weeks would have turned out quite the way they have.
Sometimes, you need to see the pieces of your life for what they are before you can fit a new window in their place. Break in, break down. Fill out, fill up.
It’s looking a lot clearer today.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
