xAcasiaLeavesx's Xanga

Hello Goodbye

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 13:46:22 GMT

"Hello?"

"Hey, B, what's up?"

"I'm fine too, thanks... so what's up?"

"... what's wrong?"

".... what? How?"

"... Oh my god, I told him all the time... That's terrible, I'm so sorry. Are you okay?"

"Sure."

"..."

"... he did?"

"... he didn't?"

"Well... thank you for telling me... Are you sure you're okay?"

"Sure, I'm okay... If there's anything I can help with..."

"Oh, right..."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm still sorry."

"... oh all right, keep in touch, okay?"

"Good bye."

-----------------------------

Why do people binge drink?
Why do people do drugs?
Why do people fall in love?
Is it because we're missing something inside or is it because we need to be in a constant state of dependency?
Do we compromise our lives to feel secure for a moment?
Why do we forget about the happiness of those around us?
Do we shed our independence to be whole?
Does anything fill up that empty hole inside us, even for a moment?
And why do we always ask these questions too little too late?

Please think one more time before you take another cup.
Please think one more time before you decide to experiment out of boredom.
Please think one more time before you say something that will hurt someone who loves you and who you love.

There might be a lifetime to make up your mistakes
There might be but a moment to redeem them
There might not even be a chance at all.

What is it that the grandmother said to Oskar in ELIC?

"It's always necessary."

Did no one see you under that table?
I wish I did.
I wish I saw the pain you were under, the people you were hanging out with, the good intentions of your heart, the situation you were put in.
I wish I was older when I met you, so I would have understood.
Would I even have seen it more clearly if I was older?
Or did not seeing it more clearly make me older?
I wish I never said those hateful words to you. I wish I left you a shred of hope. I wish I kept in touch with you. I wish so many things, but I can't change what had already happened.

There's so many things I wanted to say.
I'm sorry.
Thank you.
I forgive you.
Stop it.
You're better than that.
I understand.
Please get better.
I love you.

I didn't think it was necessary. I had days, months, years to think it over. Some day, one day, I would swallow my pride and hurt to go back and say it.

Why are these books so true?

It's always necessary.

Children Will Listen (why is into the woods so... good?)

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:53:29 GMT

I love xanga. And will never want it to disappear. But I feel like my facebook notes are good enough for my random bouts of writing. Like this one I'm having 11 in the morning. I woke up like an hour and a half ago, by the way. I think this summer vacation thing is invading my circadian rhythm. Must. Sleep. Earlier.

Watched Dark Knight... Dang, I hated the first batman movie. This one kind of rocked. Maybe it's because of Heath Ledger. I mean, I heard his performance was good, but I didn't expect it to be *that* good. He was kind of still good-but-not-that-unique in 10 Thing I Hate About You. In Brothers Grimm, he was much better. But I really feel like he lived up to Jack Nicholson's portrayal of the Joker. If Nicholson stuck completely true to the comic book version of the Joker, Heath Ledger bought that character in to reality, as something tangible. No one can match Nicholson's creepy laughter (ever. never ever) but no one can live up to the realism that Ledger doused on the character. Even the make-up change lends to the realism- while Jack's Joker was more polished and even-toned, Heath's Joker showed the ugly, incomplete, and cracked face of the Joker, something so subtlely different from the comic book Joker. The original Joker gave me the creeps because it was so out of this world- this one gave me the chills because it was so real and possible.

Hmmm... My voice sounds like crap, it's kind of awesome. I should go running over the summer, improve my cardio, maybe. Maybe.

Working at the hospital Mondays and Fridays. Emergency and Mommy&Baby unit! Fun... I'll probably become an expert on handing out water by the end of the summer. I'll have like almost 60 hours in by the end of the summer, though, it's great. I'm contemplating whether I'll be able to do it during the school year also... Some saturdays here and there, Friday nights...

I have a serious On Air withdrawl. I mean, it's been months... but it was so good!!! I can't follow Iljime or Choikang Chulwoo because... I'm just so not in to historical fiction stuff -_-

Getting used to not having breakfast. It's not good. I keep eating a lot during lunch and dinner instead. Bad. Very bad. Also, I'm craving for Bubble Tea. It must be my let's-crave-random-trendy-asian-food month. First sushi, now bubble tea? What's next, Pinkberry??? Note to self- FLUSHING is the root of evil. Stop being addicted to that town. I blow $50 at least every time I go there.

Damn, it's 5-hour car ride to Cornell? Aggghhhhh.... It's too far away. I think I'm gonna have to visit somewhere else. Somewhere closer.

Little things that make me happy

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 22:50:34 GMT

Little things that made me happy today:

- They gave us lunch at orientation! It was only a flat small piece of pizza. But who cares, free food!

- Popeyes! I went to the one near Hofstra. Couldn't pig out because they gave us free lunch already, but had coleslaw and split a piece with mom. Screw KFC. There are not enough Popeyes on the island. It was small but who cares? I'm willing to have just the coleslaw and a biscuit.

- I bought a swimsuit. And the top and the bottom fits! WEIRD. Maybe my upper body and lower body finally came to an agreement? Normally, the top is obnoxiously short or the bottom is unapologetically huge.

- I discovered ume-tea. Or Maeshil-cha as we know it. Except it's a power form not syrup. But whatever! Delicious! My mommy forgot to buy cran-grape, so I discovered this instead. Now I'm going to go have an iced-maeshilcha party.

Things that might make me even happier:

- Finishing the calc assignment (the end is in sight!!!! only three sections!!!)

- A brilliant dream from god that pinpoints me to the exact college I'm supposed to be applying for.

- My headache going away (they had the ac full blast at the orientation)

- My mom or dad winning the lottery.

M-o-v-e-m-e-n-t

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 11:13:25 GMT

Sometimes I feel like the world keepss moving past me but I can't get up and move. I feel so stagnant and I try to move along with time but I feel glued to the past. Special moments are fleeting but I can't seem to grab anything. Confined and useless. It's not an emptyness but a fullness of something dragging me down. A denial of the flow of the world, a refusal to believe that moments pass, people change, and love breaks.

So I try to keep up with the world. Going to this and that. Looking for a job. Trying to focus on school work. But my attention keeps coming back to the way things were, the way things were supposed to be, and the way I thought things were going to be. People around me have changed. The world has certainly been changed. Times have changed. Why am I not changing? Did I get too comfortable in the fact that I've been living in the same house for more than a few years for a change? Is there a stability that I always wanted and got here that's keeping me from changing? Am I running out on my ability to adapt, changing myself as I used to all the time when I was little?

It used to be awkward to think about how long I've stayed in this one town. I spent two good years of my life here unable to get over a trauma. Always expecting to pick up and move soon. Somewhere in between 8th and 9th grade, I guess I realized that I have to make friends, open up, because I wasn't going anywhere else for a very long time. Now that I'm leaving here in a year, I start to regret those two years I've wasted as a lifeless body wandering around instead of trying to get over it, move on, and spend time with people I've come to know as my friends.

Now I'm stuck in the same situation, but with a little more knowledge and wisdom to protect myself from wasting the year I have left. I force myself to be more active, to be a little bit friendlier. I force myself to swim out of the past instead of drowning in it. I force myself, a little bit at a time, to enjoy the way things are. I force myself.

Off the Record

Sat, 31 May 2008 00:55:45 GMT

I'm feeling so lazy and burnt out nowadays... I have no idea why. I still have 3 regents and 3 finals to look forward to. And I definately need to study for some of those. (Thank goodness, no AP Bio final!) It just seems so pointless nowadays. But it's not. Pointless, I mean.

Am I a bad kid? I keep wondering if I'm a good child to my parents. Like how come I'm still being locked up in my room if I get good grades and test scores and stuff? Why are my parents so afraid of me going outside and meeting people and hanging out with my friends? Am I like totally corruptable and must be sheltered from the world? I don't understand...

Like Flushing. It's Flushing. Nothing's gonna happen. Nothing happened in the city and obviously nothing's happening in Flushing. "Oh no, but you might get MUGGED". Oh. No. No. First off I've never heard of anyone being mugged in Flushing, and second of all, I'm not really a prime target for mugging since none of my clothes/accessories are expensive. It's not like I'm gonna venture in to gang territories and start a war. But that must be what my parents are thinking because they freaked out today when I told them I went to a friend's house in Wantagh. Because Wantagh is such a far-off and dangerous destination.

I keep thinking this must be a result of my failure as a daughter but I don't get it. I'm more afraid of me losing stuff constantly... not like getting mugged or robbed. What's gonna happen when I go away to college??? I'd better move somewhere far far away because otherwise they'd be wasting precious gas checking up on me every other weekend.

Arrrgh, it's not like they're giving me financial support either!!! Okay they pay for my tests. Which happen to be costly most of the time. But like, I feel like there should be a give-and-take relationship established. They'll give me tons of restrictions on what I do with my time and I'll take the money to pay for my field trips, clothes, supplies, and food. I suppose I should at least be thankful that they at least provide me with the ingrediants necessary to feed myself. And really, field trip costs I can handle okay. But clothes cost so much money nowadays!!! Urrrgh.... I think I have enough clothes to last me over the summer, due to the whole buying-stuff-before-korea thing that went on last summer. I really need a job. I'm running out of money FAST.

Our school's prom is tonight. How is it that I immediately think about how I'm going to finance prom stuff as soon as I hear that word? It's like I don't want to think about money... but money matters! I really want a nice, high-quality dress. Like that orange wonder-dress-contraption I word during the play!!!! So poofy on the bottom and just right on the top... Okay but kinda need a JOB because I have NO MONEY even IF i DID find the amazing dress of my dreams.

Oh man. I see a buttload of money going out of my pockets for senior year... Yearbook, t-shirts, trips, prom... dang...

Hm my grandmother's 70th birthday party tomorrow... I don't know what I'm wearing... It's not like I have a fitting dress for the occasion. I'm pretty sure I don't have a hanbok. Yet I'm guessing I can't really show up in t-shirt and jeans. Oh, well... Maybe this will motivate the parents to give me money to buy decent clothes.

Seventeen.

Sun, 11 May 2008 21:32:02 GMT

Seventeen 돌아가고싶어요...

--------------------------------

Startled by the sudden ring, I jumped up a bit and then checked the caller ID. 718, a Flushing number. I wondered who it was.

"Hello?" I answered shakily, wondering what news I was to encounter this time. Please don't let it be another one of those, I begged silently in my heart, like the call about... him.

"Hey, it's Julie," a friendly voice replied. My fears melted in an instant. It was my lucky day. "You know, just calling to see what was up."

"Hey," I greeted her, wondering how long it had been since we spoke last time, "how are you?"

We shared the details about our lives- mostly about school, family, and in her case, work. To my surprise, the awkwardness I had expected was not there to hinder our conversation. I noticed that the language barrier that existed between the both of us was eliminated- our ESL days were over, our English was improved greatly. No longer was the stiff and clear Korean diction clashing with the fluid and rolling nature of Spanish.

"How's Jean Bob?" I half-wondered out loud, reprimending myself as soon as the words came out. Luckily, she sounded hardly offended by this question. "He's doing better. I finally convinced him to go to night school while he worked. I told him- "You better go back to school and take the GED, at least, if you want to support our family. You know you can't get no good jobs if you don't have a diploma" And he dragged his feet doing it, you know, but it worked."

This led to the inevitable question.

"How's the baby?"

"He's so good about being away from his mommy for so long. I mean, I always end up worrying at school... but Jean Bob's mama just adores that baby, and she takes care of him while I'm at school or work. Such a saint, that woman." I can practically feel her glowing in happiness. After all, after being thrown out of her own house by her own parents, Julie had never expected her sudden parents-in-law to take her in so warmly.

"That's wonderful, I'm so glad." I stifle down the sigh of worry bottled up in me. I know the statistics. And while Julie's case may be looking up right now- with her still in school and working, Jean Bob being more cooperative, and his parents, at least, taking care of the young family- but I know that the majority of children raised by teen mothers tend to stay below the poverty line for the good chunk of their lives. I know that Julie will not be going to a decent college like I will. I know that she'll never be doing the stuff that normal teenage girls do during these golden years- hanging out, going to Prom, goofing off, meeting boys...

A cry from the other end. "Ooh, David is awake,"- oh, why that name Julie? Did you feel guilt, too, that you weren't there for him when he needed you two? Did you think, maybe, that as he was slowly dying on the floor from that poison in a glass bottle, God sent you your baby in exchange for his life?- "I gotta go. It was so nice talking to you, we have to do this more often. Come visit next time you come around the neighborhood."

"I'm not going back there ever again," I half-laughed, half-sighed. "but I'll try to stop by where you work the next time I'm in Flushing. You still work at the same place, right?"

"Mmm-hmm," her voice sounded distant. She was probably cradling the baby in her arms, her phone wedged between her ear and her shoulder. I could hear two distinct breaths, one small and rapid, the other long and reassuring. She was a mother- too young, too sudden, too pure, but that she was. The nurturing fit her like a pair of old gloves. "I'm gonna hang up now, bye-bye."

"All right, take care," I tried to put some assurance in to my voice. But as soon as I heard that click, a sudden pain crushed my heart. It was as if someone had pulled a switch that sent those waves of hurt all over my body, stinging my eyes and clogging my nose. I worried for her. I worried for her baby. I worried for Jean. I worried for all of them.

The thought still never leaves me- what if it had been me? After all, we were hardly any different back then. Would I have been able to endure through all that and survived with a baby in my arms, just as she had? Would I have left myself vulnerable to that in the first place?

I fail to find the answers.

Seventeen is too young of an age to be a mother.

-------------------------------

Fact or Fiction? You decide.

Oh. Dear.

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 01:50:01 GMT

It's past 10pm and I'm wide awake... you know what THAT means...

The apocalypse is coming!!!!!!!!!!!

OR... it might be the 1/2 cup of Vault I tried at Burger King today. Man, that is some powerful stuff. Imagine I had something really strong... like Rockstar or Red Bull even... I could stay awake for HOURS. It's a very peaceful caffeine effect though. At least, right now it is. I'm not shaking or feeling all jittery... just really awake. In fact, so awake that my eyes and my mind are not really coordinating together. That might be a minus.

But imagine... If I really had like a huge can of energy drink, I bet I, too, can pull all-nighters. I might want to remember this for AP week. Speaking of which, it's like next next week. And I'm not deathly afraid yet. That makes me afraid though. Like... I should be freaking out!!! I'm a frickin junior for god's sakes!!! Not to mention the fact that I don't feel a bit prepared for AP Comp or AP Bio or APUSH. Or the SAT II's. Damn.

Imagine I was taking something really hard. Like AP Chem. That would be the scariest thing ever. Or like, you know, regular regents chem was tough enough to freak me out a bit. Well I didn't get freaked out because I wasn't really sure what I was learning anyways. Whatever. Or like AP Spanish because I totally hablo espanol... NOT. Or like... some random AP I haven't even heard about because it's not even offered at school. Oh. Mah. Gah.

Hm... I should try to go to sleep. I read two fun books today, so I gotta start reading friggin "1984" tomorrow and finish up the school work I have left. Screw you, George Orwell. Screw you and your books too. I hate frickin "Animal Farm". Why can't our English class pick sensible works like "Our Town"... or Book of Ruth and Book of Esther? Geez. I really don't wanna attempt reading The Color Purple again... or Heart of Darkness again... or A River Runs Through It again... or Pride and Prejudice/Emma again... AHHH WHY CAN'T I LIKE THE SHORTER AND MORE NORMAL BOOKS??????????

By the way, I think I totally should to with the tutoring idea for the summer. Like entering sophomores and juniors is a good target group, right? I'm totally willing to tutor on everything except writing. Can't help with that one. Let me know if you have little siblings (or, you know, you yourself) who might be interested. Or rather, Korean parents, because no kid should want to spend their summer studying for the SAT's.

Nananana say good bye

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 23:45:58 GMT

An alarmingly large amount of men have left/are leaving my life. This can either be a good thing or a bad thing. The good thing is that I'm not/I won't be bothered by them anymore. The bad thing is that I'm not/I won't be bothered by them anymore. Sad, but true. I'm gonna miss being bothered with complaints about 20 AP classes... or about senioritis and college... or about not loosening up my wrist.... or about how annoying certain people are and how they can't just be beat up...

Wait, no, scratch the wrist thing. I'm definately gonna enjoy that comment again when I find a new teacher.

But I'm sure there are positive parts about these men that I'm going to miss. Like being able to share everything about life and not feeling exposed. Or like being able to lean on someone older. Or like being able to be sarcastic to a teacher without him noticing. Or like being able to say things that might be a bit awkward to say to anyone else. And of course, their constant criticism and advices about how to improve myself and my life.

At least almost none of the women are leaving my life. I wish some of them would, you know, maybe not leave but like back away like two feet, but whatever.

Also, an alarmingly large amount of people this week have commented that I would make a good teacher. I believe that teaching is the hardest profession in the world. You have to take care of and parent and nurture and toughen your students. I can hardly wake up in the morning, get dressed and go to school. No thanks!

You are the ONE

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:27:02 GMT

DAAAAMMMMMNNNNN. Epik high's new album is so good! I think I might buy the CD over yesasia if it's not so expensive... The album is very well rounded. I could tell that they've been experimenting with different sounds on this album. "One" definately fits my music taste at the moment. Jisun sounds hauntingly beautiful, as usual. "Ignition" ft. Na Yoon Kwon is quite good too. "The Future" ft. Yankie has edgier lyrics compared to "One" but it sounds so much cooler in terms of experimenting with the background instrumentals. "Umbrella" ft. Younha has a very interesting sound... "Falling Flowers" has an awesome instrumental that reminds me of "Eebyul... Mannam... Geu Joongjum-ehsuh" from the 3rd album and "Words Too Hurtful to Say" which was Jisun and Alex collab song.

Overall, the album is filled with sophisticated sounds with wide range of style. I really feel like they poured a lot in to this one. The subtle touches in the music speaks volumnes. I must say, DJ Tukutz seems more highlighted in this album compared to the other four. Maybe he'll be able to show his skills more with this album? His scratching seems to occupy more of the album than it ever had before.

I can't wait to see the music video. I've seen the preview and Ryuh-won seems like a good match for "One".

Love is Here.

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:54:03 GMT

There's a lot of cynicism in the world. There's a lot of pessimism in the world.

The world criticizes my religion for persecuting others. Yet when others persecute my religion, no one seems to care. The world criticizes my hope- my aspirations for the world- as a mere "ideal" that is "illogical". Yet, when I point out all the "illogical" flaws of the world, no one seems to care. The world criticizes my belief in a being I cannot see, physically feel, or test out. Yet, when I point out that the world believes in many things that cannot be seen, felt, or tested out, no one seems to care.

The world is a giant hypocrite, telling me what I can and can't do, but not following its words when it interacts with me.

Tell me that I'm too optimistic, and I will tell you that you're too pessimistic. Tell me that I'm too illogical, and I will tell you that you, too, are illogical. Tell me that I'm full of prejudices, and I will tell you that you are already prejudiced against me. Tell me that I have too accept the differences, and I will tell you that I'm fine- I'm past the differences- it's you who won't accept my beliefs. Tell me that I'm a hypocrite, and I will tell you that you, too, are human. Tell me.

Tell me. I dare you to.

And I will tell you that still, the Love is Here.