I'm falling in love again

"what is the meaning of life?" you look at me

--forlornly.

you're so cool, but you know it's cringe

i mean, in this day and age?? 

whoa you're soooooooooooo lovely

 

you sat on my bus first 

--i didnt have no clue who you were

say, i avoided you

but i managed to suck at physics too

bro

 

so every lunch we'd sit together 

--WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS FOR ME?!??!

i tried to pay you, but 

you said it was ok (i was poor)

TLDR; you know how the story goes

 

ok maybe you dont know

--i cant assume lol

so i kinda

kinda fell for you 

(...) 

 

ish, you know

--(kinda)

 it wasn't even that deep bro

i swear, kinda

i was in love (just a lil)

 

hey so there's this one time

--in the morning

i woke up early and made a hundred twenty-four postitnotes

each saying the same thing

...but kinda different you know

 

thats how i told you that

--you know,

i loved you (ahh) 

in the good old bus 

n u looked at me incredulously 

 

not today you said

--not now

i was fine

actually i was elated

i did it, i told him, that's all that mattered!

 

fast forward two years

--you're gone,

i'm still here

and i still sit in the same spot in the library

sometimes

 

i remember your face 

--your smile

and i midday dream about

how i would grow up to take care of you

and be someone you would love too!!

 

but im still here

--on instagram, nonetheless 

bro jp is kissing his gf

'n im telling myself waitwaitwaitwait 

but every night i'm up thinking

 

what if 

--whatifwhatifwhatif 

what if i am not good enough (for you)

what if i finally

finally have come to my senses

 

no i say

--i can't think that. 

i need to work hard

(blushes)

for you, for me, for us

 

but what if i cant

--what if it doesn't work out

what if you like skinnier girls

what if you like older girls

what if you like someone else (brooo im such a teenager)

 

I 

--in all my highschoolness

will work hard to be someone 

you could love

'n you could count on

(extra line) because you make me so

(extra line) soooooo so happy  

:)

 

 

 

 

 

 

i can’t learn calculus

 It's always those how to do X and how to think about X YouTube videos online. The thing is, with calculus, I see that I am supposed to add little infinitesimal bits together, but I don't understand it. 

It's the same thing with SAT Prep; I did not know the little tidbits of knowledge like the discriminant and the sum/product of roots until I specifically delved into it. This experience has led me to think that I have to know everything in order to say that I understand it; it's refined my understanding of understanding. 

And this is why I don't get calculus. There's many a course online, but this is also a double-edged sword because when I am on the basics, scrolling from one YT Short about the definition of a limit to the next Short about calculating charge of an infinitely long rod is an experience of all time. It's like those funny-but-too-often-used-so-it's-cliche-memes about what the teacher teachers versus what's on a test. And demotivation is the large shiny cherry on top!

Calculus. I think... it's another form of test. Specifically, it's a form of grit testing, one that is a redemption for all those times crying to your 3rd grade teacher about "WHAT'S A VARIABLE?" and "WHY DO YOU MULTIPLY BOTH SIDES TO ISOLATE Y?" It's like another iteration of school and life in general. 

And it's lowkey-highkey-medium key been a struggle to learn. Like what do you mean f(x, y)? Gasp, THAT THING. *points to what I just typed* This thing has made me rethink what function notation even MEANT. Like, okay, I get why the SAT needs to elaborate that there are restrictions to this and restrictions to that. Anyways, learning is calling. I need to learn this first and then say something. 

Mother I am trying my hardest

 I know there are people who are smarter than me and I know that it was my mistake taking two 4.0 classes in my freshman year and I know that no matter what I do you will never see what I really do and I know that there's other parents who brag about their kids' grades and I know it makes you feel really bad about your offspring, but please give me mercy; I'm doing my hardest. 

I know sometimes you tell me to not call you mother anymore and I know the things that you tell father when you're in your room and I know that you see me as a burden to you and I know that you think that I'm doing nothing, but it's for the better. I don't tell you what I do because I know that you will not understand. I have tried time and time to tell you again and again--in a span of a decade and a half and more--for you to understand, but you never do and you keep on emotionally berating me for doing things that are, on the surface, not good. But through this care I've learned what's good for me in an unbiased viewpoint. I know what I am doing right now, and I have it under control. Sure I can zip it up in my heart but if only you'd understand, I would not have to. To my dismay, it bubbles up sometimes and I can't help it. If only you'd be okay.

My friend K is a delinquent; she's short, wearing the full face of makeup and talking about boys all the time. She drives a dingy, uninsured car. She takes me to eat. She cut my hair and now I look like a sphere with a bowl cut. She did horrible (like ceiling rounded to a 2/10) on the ASVAB. She might not be the brightest in the room, but she's taught me much more than the people I usually hang out with, namely my common comparisons, Y and E and L. I'm not the one to talk about the future and definitely not one to say that I know more about the future than you but yes, I feel like I am going to be with these kinds of people when I grow up. She's taught me the thrill of riding shotgun and blasting Ke$ha. She's taught me normal teenage drama. I, for one, look like a big fat nerd in her eyes, but she treats me like a cool friend.

I'm the person to trauma dump on my friends, too. Here--right at this moment that I am writing this, my friend S is DMing me about... well, things. When I revise this post before posting, heh, I bet that they're asking me things about life. Whatever

My friends do not know that I run this blog. Good. I need to keep my reputation, right? No. It doesn't matter to me anymore. When I first stepped foot into highschool, I would've dreamed to be val or sal or something, getting into HYPSM + Cal. Now, I can't believe how far that is from where I am now. Val or sal is so far away, and the only thing I'm dreaming about are food and cat videos and calculus in my sleep (i know). I wanna be an epic physicist when I grow up. I just... don't know.

There are some times where I get caught up in feelings. Sometimes I look back and think "when I get famous one day, I'll attribute none of that success to my mother" but you always come back and tell me that you're sorry for hitting me or the only thing that matters is my health and you're proud of me for living but i'm aware that it's not true right now. How could I believe it when it's happened tens of thousands of times--this vicious cycle that's so bad it's not a cycle anymore--I can't explain it in words that are grammatically correct. It's like observation and conclusion by true tangible results that are unchangeable which makes it enough to **assume** that it will never be false. (haha...avg math assumption...) But I know it's false because I could kill myself one day and I'll see you being sad when I die. How do I explain this using math? It's like notation that you have to wikipedia search. Maybe IDK the symbols for union or something but it's like--more abstract. 

I dunno though. I really dunno. Maybe I trauma dump too much 

The Thing About Venn Diagrams and Stories

    From when you were in elementary school to probably where you are now, you have probably been formally introduced to the simple Venn Diagram. These two alluring circles overlap in the second dimension, housing words or phrases that your teachers had you "Compare and Contrast" when all other assignments were out of the question. They could be used to help you prepare for the two standardized test stories that Texas pays bajillions of dollars for, or they could contrast engineering majors. Just engineering majors. No other context. Here's a simple Venn Diagram for organisms:

  

SilverStar at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons

    And yes! These cuties are helpful, but only as helpful as the extent of your mental capability in that one highschool English period where it's cold and freezing and cold. And cold. But it has a flaw, and that flaw is something that modern teachers don't bother to tell us about because--hey--they get paid based off of our test scores and NOT how we function as human beings capable of having neurons that fire! 

    And what is that flaw, you might ask? Why is it so elusive, and how does it represent the style of modern teaching that teachers douse us with? (Pretend a crowd is chanting)

    These diagrams gives us the notion that, hey, we can only be one thing at once. We only experience this "present" once, and you only have read the previous word once, and there is only one object to compare to at a given time. A circle only has so much it can overlap to, and in this 2-D space that it is allotted, it cannot do that. Unless you make another circle:

Watchduck., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Or another: 

Watchduck., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Edited.

    And even so, it doesn't explain everything. I can't have a complete thought, a complete comparison with these Venn Diagrams--like, what if I wanted to have this cute diagram doing a simple three-way comparison of some keyboard layouts:

But what if I wanted another keyboard type, namely the Japanese Kana layout? Then, I'd have: 

    Now THAT'S not pretty! And what if I add more and more--hell, I could add an old typewriter format, or the old keyboard with parts that someone scrounged up from the dumpster? And we're not talking about the other languages that have OTHER symbols and OTHER formats, are we? 

    Those things that I just listed--that's life. I can make a life analogy about keyboards to make it evident how diverse the keyboards are, but it'd be the other way around--the complicatedness of life is what makes keyboards complicated. Keyboards are a result of so many languages, so many talking methods, or a theoretical tower of Babel. 

    

    And in this complicatedness of life, we are but a circle in that diagram. It's 2-D, it's virtually impossible to be everything. It's quite hard to encompass everything. It's so hard to understand everything, you are just a circle in the infinite plane of comparisons. It's this statement--this idea--that really gets drilled into you as you go through school in general: because we are just something black and white--a circle or an ellipse or an weird shape that Calc students get nightmares about--we matter not. Let me rephrase that: Thinking about everything in a black-and-white manner (Oh, you're good at Physics, you'll get a 5 on the AP!; Oh, you're ENTP-T? You're ___!) really limits that scope of vision.

    And this limit on vision is then exacerbated by the fact that people don't appreciate the art of stories anymore. 

    A story is an ode to someone. A story is an ode to somebody. In a story, you are in someone else's shoes, in someone else's timeline, in someone else's social circle, in someone else's Venn Diagram. You garner more knowledge, furthering your connections. 

    And you know how people say that you are defined by what you are not? These are the people that look at the half-empty glass and say that they could get their bum out of the chair and fill it. They are the people that are the "growth mindset" that the aforementioned teachers tell us about, the ones so successful that they can drink more water. 

    And in my opinion, they are the ones who are correct! In terms of the betterment of life, of course. So what're you getting to, you yapper? Read more books! Read 'em!

Family

A lot of my friends say that they have familial problems.

Have they ever seen their grandfather grip a cleaver with both hands, forehead illuminated with the shine of condensation and eyes shining with pure, calm hatred? Have they smelled the hot anger with hints of egg and spice coming out of a yelling mouth, while the eyes of said mouth blur and fly with incandescent tears? Have they ever seen their own mother and all the women in the household kneeling, clutching their grandfather's arms, eyes looking and pleading "Stop! Stop! Don't do it, [choose one: baba; (name); lao-ye; lao (surname)]!" amidst cacophony of screams and sobs, their owners lost to time as it flies away in the moment? Have they ever seen the black, round, wrinkled and pained eyes of their mother reflect off raw, emotional pain after the fabric of the two sides of her family rip and tear to individual threads of memories through her life? Afterward, have they sucked the blood off of the mysterious and quite evasive cuts on their palm after they pried their whole house's worth of sharp things from their grandparents' hands, walking to hide them in some closet--any closet, the closer the better--dodging sharp spikes of porcelain that breathed fresh air on their rough surface (in juxtaposition to how smooth their glassy and glossy their skin looks) for the first time since their making? 

Have they ever, despite their unfamiliarity in the language, remembered single every word that spat remorsefully out of their owners' mouths in the span of the five minutes that the time seems to stop in-between the smashing of glittering porcelain cups? 

Have they ever had to replace their cups from the Costco appliances section every few years, not because they have been loved and worn-down, but because their remains still litter the cracks of their kitchen tile? Have they ever seen their mother sigh and feign a smile as they check-out, bidding hello to a welcoming cashier that's probably seen them over and over again, oblivious to the number of cups that their mother has bought?

And a lot of my friend say that they have familial problems. And I say, here? In this economy? And I laugh, same. And they laugh back! 

what i've been up to lately

 Legitimately. Quite literally. Most definitely. I’m absolutely, thoroughly, cooked. 

I haven’t drank water in over five hours. I haven’t slept more than three. I am so utterly, completely, cooked, seared, boiled, stir-fried, fried, sautee’d, and medium rare. Well done. 

I loved someone. They were someone whom i could ground on, whom i could go to with all of my many flaws and shortcomings, and they’d keep on comforting me. But, as everything starts, everything also ends. And then it’s over, for real. 

Everybody wants something from everybody else, whether it’s someone looking for a pet for emotional needs or a mutually beneficial friendship where venting is welcome, everyone is looking for something. That’s humanity for you: to learn from past ordeals–it’s how they survived the winters and learned off of their past experiences. 

Here’s the thing: I’m not a particularly loving being. I’m selfish. I lack many things, and I have friends to compensate for that. I love them for being themselves, I’d love to say. I’d die to believe that. But it seems that I can’t delude myself enough to believe that.

Here's a great controversial example! I love people who believe in religion. I have nothing against them. Whether it’s a face in the sky, staring at them as they make your every move, or belief in spiritual relief when one ceases to live, I want to believe them; I wanna have something, someone, that I could believe in indefinitely, just like them. I admire them to the ends of the earth and back, their unwavering devoutness, their sheer ability to put their faith into something so abstract. 

I don’t have that. I am too grounded on the earth, my head is too closed, and I can’t believe what I can’t prove. 

Can selfishness be a moral philosophy? Can what I just said even be attributed to selfishness? Can we even label thought? Can we label anything? 

---

Recently,

Around once every two months, I go through one full periodic cycle. No, not biologically (well maybe biologically), but mentally: All is good until I do something wrong. 

What I did can be valued in degrees of severity; it could be anything, I could have done so little as to get a bad grade, or a lot as to trespass on private property. I then start to dislike my view of myself–what I did becomes a statement of who I am as a person, flawed and imperfect.

Other people depend on me as a human. If i’m unable to help myself at a given time, I am unable to help them. At this point, other people start to hate me*.

Here comes the reconciliation…

Let’s plot this as a simple -sin(x) graph. Unlike a regular sin(x) graph, a -sin(x) goes to its minimum before it goes back to the minimum. 

I start at the origin of a cartesian xy-plane. 

The severity of my mistake would be the amplitude* of this sin graph, how far the maximum/minimum is from where I started. 

..you know what? I got an interactive graph for you. Simple. haha

knock yourself out! good luck.

Im so cooked bro

When I was growing up--wait, literally just yesterday, my parents said that going to a good college was the foundation for everything else: undergrad MATTERS. Everything. word-for-word. 

Yeah, you know, it sounds good and all, but do you also know what it sounds like?

It sounds like THEY'RE TRYING TO GET RID OF US! ONCE AND FOR ALL, AND TO NEVER COME BACK! 

Guys, they're starting to get tired of us SOUND THE ALARMS they're onto us fr. They know who we are. 

Sometimes It's Better to Not Have Feelings

Feelings are what makes us inherently human. It's what differs us from the likes of Artificial Intelligence, an anomaly that makes us as imperfect as we are. 

But as I wield it, I can't help but to think how useless it is to actually have feelings. Were they initially brought upon us with the desire that, in our caveman days, we would strive to reproduce? Yeah, sure. We couldn't survive without it, but as society's grown, I can't help but feel like it's a drawback--a "nerf"--of what we could actually be. 

It's something we don't yet understand. It's so foreign, concentrated so in the depths of our heads, that we can't possibly measure it in quantitative values. We can only measure what it does to us, and it's so scary that there's an unmeasured force in our heads that we are constantly getting ourselves into troubles of the many. 

Why can't I just do what I say? Why can't I just feel what I need to feel? If feelings are what makes us human, does it mean that we differ from inanimate objects just because we have a biased sense of judgement at all times? Is that the true meaning of living, to differ from in-sentiency--to strive and learn (and inherit prejudice) from our surroundings? 

I eerily sound like Ayn Rand. I should freshen up my knowledge on her philosophy (the only thing I remember was Roark being attractive to my younger counterpart! Don't blame me--read the first few pages of The Fountainhead and you'll see for yourself :sob:)