43 posts tagged “friends”

GRACE: You know, Will has a theory about relationships. One person is the gardener who tends, and the other person is the flower who gets tended to.

which one are you?

"Albert Camus once wrote, "Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken." But I wonder if there's no breaking then there's no healing, and if there's no healing then there's no learning. And if there's no learning then there's no struggle. But the struggle is a part of life. So must all hearts be broken?"

- One Tree Hill (who knew?)

petite belette 9 (10:31:56 PM):	let's get buzzed on saturday
JLC (10:32:00 PM):	sute
JLC (10:32:01 PM):	sure
petite belette 9 (10:32:02 PM):	this upcoming week is going to be hell for me
petite belette 9 (10:32:04 PM):	hellllllllll
JLC (10:32:06 PM):
petite belette 9 (10:32:11 PM):	yeah
HLC (10:32:12 PM):	all nighters?
petite belette 9 (10:32:17 PM):	i have two midterms i think
petite belette 9 (10:32:19 PM):	and the meeting

are there certain criteria on the DSM-IV that characterize this den of loneliness i'm currently sitting in? it's funny - chasing that high - because i feel low for a variety of trivial reasons. that coveted independence that i'd once held - that preference to be alone - is tragically frayed at the ends and i'm not sure if i'm equipped to stitch it back together. i feel like i'm relapsing into a certain state of "broken." and i'm worried that this entire time i've been faking it all: independence, happiness, drive, confidence, to repeatedly paste band-aids on a hole - a void - that i'm trying not to pay attention to. how Sisyphean. 

Last night JR and I were talking and she alluded to the fact that she started thinking about her ex out of no where, despite having distanced herself from that mess. "You know what that means? It means you're going to hear from him soon." Lo and behold, I get a call while stepping off the N train today that he called her while she was sleeping last night after four months of no contact.

Life is funny sometimes. Have you ever woken up to think about a random person, only to bump into him or her on the way off from work? It's funny, because in those moments in which we're unencumbered by the psychic relics and vestiges of the past, we're confronted with them. Like receiving an e-mail from someone whom we'd given little thought to in high school asking how things are. Or watching TV in the living room of someone on whom we'd had a big crush on eight years ago - "ninth grade fantasy" - and rescinding on that past attraction for a mutual friendship. Like seeing the girl who'd dropped out of your high school in sophomore year to become a high class hooker plastered all over the billboards in the NYC subway stations for an ad campaign.

One day you're e-mailing a confrontational message to that "something new" and the next you're dating a guy who not only teaches in your middle school, but is friends with the English teacher who coached you on the debate team nine years ago - something old. And then you're with another friend at a bar and you nonchalantly kiss a "something borrowed" because let's be serious, many bar encounters carry that connotation of St. Elsewhere - Everyone here, knows everyone here is thinking about somebody else. And then forever after, each new encounter is never "something new." It's like browsing through consignment shops for the "somethings used," looking for those with tags first, and the outfits with the fewest frays.

It's disconcerting and comforting simultaneously, how small the world can be. You think the world is this vast and endless array of options and patterns, and then everything seems evermore connected. Hopping off the merry-go-round and going through the revolving doors, only to find that you're not looking for something - and someone - new and novel, but for that elusive connection that feels like the familiar route home you'd taken half your life.

I was a lot like you when I started college; I wanted to chase the dream of making an exorbitant amount of money, live in the city, rub elbows with the rich and famous. But then when I interned at VH1, my supervisor who practically lived in her office would talk about how she partied with Denzel Washington last night. And then I looked at her and realized she had nothing to really show for in her forties." - an old co-worker.

Last night, FJM and I were talking about the long and arduous path to self-actualization and how he has undertaken this feat. You know, pumping and truncating Maslow's classic hierarchy of needs: optimizing and pushing the envelope on the human condition. I alluded to how he reminded me of the teacher, whom I declared as "perfect," in almost every sense of the word. A perfect contrivance, nonetheless.

JLC and I were placing our bachelor degrees on the proverbial tipping scales to gauge what "careers" awaited us with this piece of paper. "We might as well just wipe our asses with a BA in liberal arts, " I said. "Or roll it up and smoke it." Because short of a PhD, we'll be resigning ourselves to the prospects of administrative or executive assistantship jobs for a few years. We'll have our MAs before the age of 23, and that in itself will still not bear the fruit of our ambitions at the age of seventeen, when we thought we would change the world.

But what exactly is a PhD? An MA in this city is as ubiquitous as Halal carts in Manhattan. DM scored a fabulous job at a notable accounting firm with her undergrad degree and a great amount of high school peers have either dropped out of college and settled for working in "personal enterprises" or nothing pursuant to high school. A PhD really is just a pretty huge dick.

I have this crushing fear that I'm settling. Crushing because I'm numb enough in various body cavities to not realize I'm selling myself short. But who are we to judge ourselves objectively behind a 3.9 GPA? My professors have expressed this agenda they have for me to get that pretty huge dick. My chairperson would find it a travesty for me to simply retire upon receipt of my MA. My mom and I discussed life after college - a few years of some administrative or analyst job - before I decide to climb the academic ladder some more.

I have this unnerving worry that I'm compromising my convictions when it comes to people. But what are convictions for Scorpios if not stubborn dogmatism?

Oh how I miss that naivete of high school. That influx of passion circa sophomore and junior year of college. We thought college and degrees boasted innumerable options for us. I don't regret an academic career in liberal arts, it's greatly shaped how I am, for better or for worse. I do know enough about myself that I'll always be doing something more than the 9-5 job.
 
I sometimes wonder what my life would've entailed if I and my parents subscribed to the "American Dream" imperative impressed upon first generation children. If I'd gone to St. John's for Pharmacy - something that virtually anyone I encounter asks me if I'm studying, because of academic association - and not something in the humanities. Or if I was adept in math and became an accountant. Law school is still an option, but I'd have to think about that years later. Or if I had the requisite long-term Asian boyfriend to whom I could refer in family settings, and not have predominantly white guys pick me up at a variety of hours at night. "You're seeing who now? What happened to [redacted]?"

I'd like to believe in the hypothetical. That everything that reveals itself to me is conflated with an endless array of missives and alternatives. I think I'll take my time with self-actualization, not that I'm impossibly far from it. Post-graduate degrees and doctoral dissertations can be deferred, as can that elusive six-plus figure salary. Being twenty-something can't.

i have reasons to whisper "thank you" before i go to sleep. it keeps me in check and it keeps me grounded, no matter to whom or what it is i am uttering those two words to. good night.

from someone who knows enough about me and my material to write this:

It's never bad to keep in contact with [redacted]... I'm sure they know how to party a bit. Fiercely independent people are driven to accomplish something, you're not sure what you're driven to do yet, but you clutch your independence very tightly. I think you need to reconcile the independence you get from your mother with your stubbornness not to be pigeonholed into a career which is what she is trying to get you to do. Mother's really do know best. I think eventually you'll find a cause to devote yourself to and then be able to find a man to come second, but right now your self-doubt is coming from the fact that you're still searching for that cause and putting relationships off while you search... tho in the dim-light of 5am it seems like the search is a poor reason to stop love from finding you...

profound words.

"You can cry, but as soon as the two of you do, don't - it's embarrassing!" - Mom, to a corpulent set of daughters sporting bob haircuts, circa 1992 on the way home from Pathmark.

My grandmother hasn't been able to articulate her thoughts since early May, 2007. She is on a cocktail of prescription meds, one of which is Zoloft. She can't eat, and has a feeding peg surgically connected to her stomach. This means that any one of her four daughters or a home attendant feeds her formula. Any slight deviation - soup, for instance - is a risk, and sipping water may cause her to choke to death.

But this isn't a pity post. I was sitting next to my mom on the M train a few months ago when we were discussing "grown up things." She was showing me what her pay information looks like, various thumbing through documents that were exempt from my teenage eyes. "Well, you're an adult now, so I can show you this stuff," she said.

My grandmother was not a nice woman. I'd lost track of how many strokes she'd suffered, only to be informed by the doctor that this last one - the most severe- was her fifth one. Her fifth one! She and my grandfather went to law school together and she was a judge and he'd eventually risen to the ranks of an important official in one of China's provinces for a term. He jogs almost every morning when the weather allows it, and finds America "boring."

Each stroke took her down a peg - the characteristic stuttering, temporary memory loss, etc. Rather than look to each stroke as a warning to take better care of herself, every time I'd go back to Brooklyn for the weekends, I'd hear her characteristic blood-curdling yelling at anyone: my aunt, my cousin. She didn't exercise or radically revise her habits and had resigned herself to the front of the television. She was the epitome of the bitter old woman. My dad expressed sorrow and said it was up to me to help her around because "her own daughters don't really love her."

My aunt, with whom I have a tumultuous relationship akin to the sadistic stereotypes of Joy Luck Club, had a stroke in her late thirties. She's a very angry woman, like her mother. So now, out of obligation, my mom, aunts, and grandfather have devoted a great amount of time caring for this woman, my grandmother. A few winters ago, when I was home for the winter break, we became some apparition of friends as I'd go with her to her many checkups. What backfired was that I was the middleperson when she and my aunt fought heavily at the dinner table. I remember her washing my feet when I was four years old and she started crying about being buried one day. Now she can barely write out a sentence - articulate as she still can be - and her outbursts are abruptly nullified by a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. Is she even human anymore?

My point is this. I currently have a few friends and family members who are going through trials of loss and sickness. As easy as it may seem to isolate ourselves from all the upset, it manifests in how we read, how thin and fragile our bodies become, our sleeping habits. They say laughter is the best medicine, but I think a spin on that should be people at large. After I went to college and calmed down as a confused and unambitious wild-child, my mother and I became more than just great friends, but we have an incredibly egalitarian relationship. Slight hints of worry still slip out when we go out for lunch because I'm not a Pharmacy major nor am I going to law school, but I've managed to convince her that I will be okay, that having a six-figure salary in my twenties isn't what my life hinges on.

Life's too short to be angry and bitter, to be spent yelling and crying. It's too short to hold onto prior hurtful relationships and grudges. It's too short to cancel friendships because of a fight, only to have one person to turn to, if they're willing. So if you know someone who just looks like he or she needs something - anything - let them know that you care, even if the situation doesn't warrant it. It makes all the difference in the world because there's an energy that effervesces from congeniality. Hey, especially in light of life after Bush, hope is all we have.