Disguises.

My heart hurts. Like a tangible, physical feeling of pain in my chest. I have people I love around me but I feel alone. And lost. At the end of the day, I roll my car windows down, blast my music, and scream at the top of my lungs while cruising 50 down a 35 road... and still I feel weighed down. It feels like there are shards of glass and ice in my chest and it's hard to breathe. Every moment I feel like I'm at the brink of tears but instead I remain stoic. Even the people I thought knew me well enough to know cannot tell what I feel from one moment to the next. I am the master of disguises and the champion of falsified emotions.

Keep Your Shit Together

So I have major problems with dealing with the opposite sex. In my head, I could carry a totally laid-back and cool conversation with Ryan Gosling or Jensen Ackles. In real life... not so much. Two days ago, I was walking out of math class and it's a joke that my friend Kevin and I have to say "Move bitch, get out the way." so I jokingly said that to him in the hallway that was congested with malignant tumors (aka. the freshmen). Well then I turn around and there he is. Grapefruit boy giving me a look like, "What in the actual fuck?". I just stand there opening and closing my mouth like a fish out of water making noises like "But... I... ah... I mean... uhh..." and he just laughs. Then I just book it down the hall way, leaving my dignity behind. Every single time I meet this guy, he just catches me in the worst possible state. Like no make-up, in my yoga pants, unwashed hair, and arms full of textbook state.

And I have this awful problem of not being able to stay cool when I talk to a cute guy. And I mean this literally. My body temperature increases instantly and I start sweating and the worst part of it... my glasses start fogging up. Everything else I can hide... but it's pretty damn obvious if your glasses are fogging over. And then I have to take them off and wipe them off and it gets embarrassing really fast. Recently I ran into a guy I haven't seen since middle school and since then I've seen him everywhere. He goes to an entirely different high school so there is no reason for me to see him ever. But first I run into him at New West Fest, again at school cause he was turning in a guest pass for homecoming, and today again at the library. And of course I have a hard time keeping my cool. I mean he's cute and all and he's such a sweetie... but he kind of has a thing with Hipster-chick who is my friend to some extent so I have no chance. Not that I would go for him anyways.

Well Shit.

Sooo... I have never been asked to a school dance. So this year I decided to take things into my own hands. So you remember Grapejuice boy? Yeah I decided to do this elaborate thing to ask him to homecoming and well... shit. So you would think that the first thing you should do before asking someone to homecoming would be to see if they had a date. Well fuck me. I spent around two hours making this puzzle deciphering thing that would spell out "Will you go to homecoming with me?" with the intention of giving each piece of the puzzle to him during each period along with coffee and stuff. Well after I planned everything including asking people to do me favors and give him the thingys... I finally asked my friend if he had a date. Well, turns out he did. Some chick name Alathea or something who's in college. Who the hell names their kid Alathea and what a predatory cougar, right? So now I feel like an utter idiot and now I'm gettting a whole bunch of "rejection" sympathy from my friends which isn't making me feel any better. It's not like I asked him and got rejected! I just had plans that got changed is all.

I guess part of me is relieved but truthfully I'm a little heartbroken. To think that I even bothered... Yeah, life sucks and then you die so I'll get over it eventually. Well shit.

50 Shades of Puke Green

He drives me absolutely crazy. I feel like I'm going to spontaneously combust everytime that I see him and even worse... I can't form coherent phrases of speech when I'm around him. Clammy hands, dry throat, feeling a blush that probably doesn't show... all symptoms of a one-sided love affair. Of course, it might just be an insane infatuation but the fact that I've felt this way for about hmm.... 11 years give or take, might be an indication of otherwise. You guys already know this person. Grapefruit juice boy. Yup. The sad, sad reality of my friendzone.

It doesn't help that I'm friends with the epitome of the female species who can write the most amazingly clever epic raps in English and can sing like no-one business. A real life synthesis of Aphrodite and Athena: Aphrena. And as my luck would have it, Aphrena and Grapefruit are friends who go listen to slam poetry together and talk and have class together. But she has a boyfriend so I think it's a little unfair, don't you think? My actual total of interaction with Grapefruit: near and dear to zilch. Oh dear, do I look a little green to you? Fuck me.

And that's not even the worst part. You see, you would think that after a certain amount of time that I would just forget my pride and go for it... but if it looks like a coward, sounds like a coward, and smells like a coward... it's probably a coward. My friends have taken active duty on trying to convince me to ask this guy to homecoming... which I have seriously contemplated. Only problem is that I have absolutely no interaction with this guy anymore. No classes together, no external tech-based dialogue... absolutely nothing. Just the thought of even thinking about asking him (yup, meta-thinking), makes me a little nauseous and light-headed.

I'm pretty sure this guy is 100% oblivious to the fact that I hyperventilate when he's on the other side of the room. I pretty much have it really bad.

Beyond Just Admiration

You know when you enter kindergarten and you're given your very first (among many to come) homework assignment and the teacher asks to you "Write about your hero." Many of us were like, "Psh... easy Superman." or "My daddy, duh." But looking retrospectively on the past (my original answer was my grandmother, even though I barely knew the woman), I realize that kids aren't just being naive when they state that their parents are their heroes. Even though I may despise my mother, she is my hero and my role-model. I realized that loving someone doesn't necessarily mean you have to like them. I may think that my mother is bat-shit crazy sometimes and that she is a psychopath... sometimes she can be the most influential person in my life in that moment.

At first I thought my mom was the stereotypical Asian mother who seemed to channel the dictatorial spirit of Hitler when it came to raising her children. Sure, there are times when I still see her that way but now I see her in a completely different light. My mother is the most selfless person I know. She doesn't care for her own appearance and her own happiness so long as she knows that she is working towards the good of our family. While most Korean mothers have this weird obsession with buying several, exorbitantly priced name-brand purses my mom would rather buy two things 1) Good food and 2) Good books. She has never once bought anything special for herself when she knew that there might be something that my brother or I might need. She would rather keep wearing the same clothes she had since her college years if that meant that she could but books that my brother and I could study from.

She herself values a few things in her life. Education, enlightenment, family, and justice. My mother had really big aspirations when she was younger but was prevented by her gender and her financial status from pursuing those dreams. So instead she immigrated to the US in order to get the chance at some other form of education and regardless of the field of study, she was the top of her class. She never got the chance to continue her professional field after the birth of my brother but she still continues to educate herself. You can never catch my mother without a book on her person. Even if she steps out of the house for ten minutes, she carries a book with her. And these books aren't your stereotypical "mother in her 40's" fiction, these are books like "The Best Science Literature 2012" or "Justice". My mother might be physically aging but her mind is still as sharp and as keen as it ever was. She's still receptive to new ideas and to new ways of thinking when most people her age are stuck in the mindset that they have maintained since their 30s.

My mother also loves to teach and she loves to teach mathematics. To this day, she will still various math textbooks at various hours of the day just because she wants to be able to teach others. Now that she's realized that her passion lies with teaching, she's done everything she can to be able to teach in my school district as a substitute. When most foreign adults don't bother to correct their English after a certain period of time, my mother still studies her old TOEFL vocab books from college and works everyday to improve her pronunciation.

When math teachers are asked by their students "When will we ever use this in real life?" their response is generally "In order to use it to calculate angles in a building or to derive such and such for engineering.... Blah, blah, blah." Kids learn to quickly dismiss math because they think "well, I'm going to pursue art or literature so I have no need for math." When my mother is asked this same question, her face lights up and she speaks in such an animated fashion, I have a hard time keeping a smile off my own face. "Mathematics is the very basis for everything in life. Math is the only way you learn this way of logical thinking and processes that you can't learn in any other discipline. These methods of thinking can then be applied to every other subject. Lawyers have to have some sort of logic and common sense that can be learned through mathematics. Math is the very key to learning how to think."

I admire my mother so much for being someone who may not necessarily be maternal or warm but for being someone who is so driven by her passion. The way that she views life and the way that she values education is something that I think is genuinely cool about my mother.

Why Live in Fear of Confrontation?

So today my brother came home from playing with his friends crying and when I asked him what was up he told me this.

"So my friend and I decided to start a lemonade stand and we made 36 dollars. But then he gave me 4 dollars and told me that that was for my volunteering."

I already knew that my brother bought a lemonade from the store across the street with his allowance money and spent the entire morning in the sun selling lemonade in our neighborhood. My first reaction was out right anger. I kept grilling him about why he didn't stand up for himself and why he didn't say something to his friend when it was obvious that it was unfair what he did.  But instead, he just hung his head and acted like he was in the wrong. When I told him to go to his friend's house and talk to him about it, he flat our refused and was horrified at the thought of confronting his friend. So I dragged him out of the house and rang our neighbor's doorbell and even then he remained silent and refused to say a single word in his defense. So I spoke diplomatically on his behalf. Ultimately they reconciled and his friend admitted to his unfairness so all went well.

However, it made me aware that my brother was very susceptible to the influence of other people and could be easily pushed around. I take pride in myself for the fact that I believe that I am pretty good at standing up for myself and for what I believe in but some part of me still holds back when it comes to confrontation. I think all of us are like that to some degree. For years, I've been saying that I don't care that my old "friend" and I are at odds because I really have no reason to take notice of her. But I still continue to complain about her persistent haughty and self-aggrandizing nature. If I really didn't care then such things shouldn't bother me right? Right. So obviously I've just avoided confronting her about her loud bragging because I am afraid of confrontation.

Why is it that we all fear it? For my brother, he hates confrontation because he's afraid that he will lose his supposed friends by doing so. For me, I hold back because I dismiss it as beneath me to confront certain issues as an excuse for dealing with it. We're scared at what we might lose or what we might be seen as by being confrontational but in the end if confrontation is carried out in a diplomatic matter, there really is no reason to fear it. So I've resolved to be a little more upfront about my opinions and my feelings. Not so far as to become combative, but just enough to be assertive.