Archive for the ‘Thoughts’ Category
I’m the kind of person who loves to believe in the idea of fate and destiny, but also that you have the power to change it. Either way, I always feel that things happen for a reason, whether it’s a good or a bad thing.
The choices that you make, as little as they are, can change your day, your week, your month, or hell, even a year. Those who’ve watched The Butterfly Effect understand what I mean. Ashton Kutcher’s character makes one change to his past which dramatically alters his present. It’s the same idea that I like to follow, I think.
The thing is that it’s always in hindsight. For example, I chose not to go to the fair this weekend (or next) and instead, I decided to go around different stores looking at laptop models. In doing so, I met someone I hadn’t expected to meet and that completely made my day. Had I gone to the fair, where I probably would have subjected myself to internal awkwardness and a small feeling of indifference, I instead had fun elsewhere.
When I look back on life, there are always the “What Ifs” that pop up. What if I didn’t do this, What if I had? The thing is that for me, I feel as if no matter what choice I make, there’s always something for me to learn. Yes, I have the choice to make everyday decisions, what color to wear, etc, but some things are meant to happen. Maybe I was supposed to meet this person, maybe I wasn’t.
At the end of the day, I can be proud (or not in some cases) of my choices and realize that the lessons I learned will only help me grow as a person.
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I was reading Perfume Dreams by Andrew Lam for my Asian American Studies class. In the beginning essays, he talks about how his family is on the losing side and in dominant history books, he’s nothing more than a small blurb.
That got me really thinking. I never saw myself as part of a “losing” side, mostly because I hold the firm belief that Vietnam would one day see the light and stop this whole socialist shit. But what if, that doesn’t happen? And a few generations from now, very few will remember and understand the importance and meaning of the South Vietnamese flag.
For now at least, most schools and organizations in California know not to use the standard Vietnam flag, but what about another 50 years from now? In a somewhat similar analogy, does anybody still hang the Confederacy flag anymore after all these years?
It makes me sad to think that one day, my children’s children’s children will not understand the fight, the loss, and the pain my family has gone through in order to come to this land of opportunity. My children will call themselves American. Not Vietnamese-American, but American. And with each passing generation, language and culture will be lost.
Knowing all that, I sometimes wonder if my parents did the right thing by coming here to America.
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I was thinking in bed the other day about this friend I have. I’m completely attracted to him, but I know not to make a move because he’s already got a girl. However, our sexual tension is quite massive and I told him that I don’t mind staying his friend as long as I don’t get very inebriated alone in his presence.
That got me thinking about our choices, our desires, our impulses. See, I think that the substances (alcohol, weed, etc) allow us to put down our barriers. In a sense, we’ve all got certain desires, but when sober, we don’t act on them for different reasons. I know that if I were to drink, my judgment would be impaired and I would be more likely to act on impulse than to think it through. However, this doesn’t mean that everything can happen. If you’ve thought about a particular act and have absolutely no intention or desire to do it, even when impaired, you still won’t act on it.
By letting go some of our inhibitions, people can really see what it is that we want or feel. Sure, there are still many cases in which this thought of mine can be disproved, but for the most part, in harmless cases, I find this to be true.
Whether sober or impaired, have you ever done anything that you thought you’d never do? How did you feel afterward?
For me, I’ve had sex with people that I probably shouldn’t have for different reasons. I’ve also said goofy things and apparently, am a little violent. The second statement though, would probably happen without alcohol.
The two times in which I’ve had sex… well, one made me feel awful because I knew that if word ever got out, someone would get hurt. The second was a bad decision because I didn’t want to give him the wrong idea.
As for being sober, the whole Stockton Boy debacle was something that I thought I wasn’t capable of and how it makes me feel now is disappointed and ashamed at myself for doing such things. However, I don’t want to say that I regret making those decisions; I take every situation as a life experience and from that whole mess, I learned a lot about myself.
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Happy Saint Day to Maria Bertilla Boscardin!
This is what happens when you sleep more in an entire weekend than you would during a normal week… even after combining all the days of the week. You come up with weird analogies and have weird dreams. But I’m really here to talk about the former rather than the latter anyway.
So I’m preparing for my braces and whatnot (I know, a little late in life, but better late than never?) and since I have more teeth than my mouth is able to hold, I am forced to extract some teeth (no, this doesn’t include the wisdom teeth I had previously removed). Through all the sleeping and being drugged up this weekend, I realized that this whole process of extraction and the moving of my teeth is a lot like losing someone you love.
Hear me out: You pull out a tooth (or two… or in my case, four) and it hurts like a bitch. It leaves a weird hole in your mouth, a hole that you never had before (minus the ones from your childhood years). And after you’ve gotten the tooth pulled out, it hurts, a lot. It hurts so much that all you want to do is be drugged up for days until the pain subsides or is entirely gone. Even when the pain is gone, you’ve still got that big gap in your mouth. And then the braces start to work. They start pulling the surrounding teeth to fill up the hole. Years later, after the whole process is done, you barely notice that you once had teeth there.
Sound a little familiar? Whether it’s the loss of a friend, a family member, or someone you once loved, you always feel emptier. The pain hurts for days, even for weeks or months and all you want to do (or most people anyway) is erase the pain; make it go away. Eventually, everything else in your life starts to fill in that gap, makes you feel as if you were whole again. Sure, you’ll never be able to replace that hole, or fill it up with something you once had, but with time, you forget that you had lost something so precious to you.
Now, this isn’t typical of every relationship, every friendship, or every bond, but it felt awfully similar. Just be glad I left all the bloody and more painful details out.
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Some of you may have noticed that I do like to share what most would consider something private, or at least a little more intimate. You’ve seen the start of my smoking and my tendency to punish myself.
And a thought occurred to me: Who would I really tell about these things? I haven’t told my sister, my family, even some of my closest friends. I remember during the last few months of last year (2007), I was completely miserable and it didn’t seem like I was improving. Stockton Boy was there with me through most of it and saw me fall so far down and that, upset him. It upset him because he wanted to be a good friend, he wanted to help me but he didn’t know how to or whatever he did wouldn’t help. He was miserable just to see me miserable.
During those times, when I would put myself down and wallow in my low self-esteem, he was frustrated. He yelled at me because I wasn’t paying attention to how he felt, how worried and stressed he had become because of me. I was not trying to get better and in doing so, hurt him more.
I guess what I’m trying to ask is how would you tell a close friend about your self-destructive behavior? Would you tell a friend if you had no plans to stop the behavior? Telling your close friend would only upset him, right? And if you don’t want to stop, then he’s going to keep worrying about you until you do and that would cause more grief, wouldn’t it?
For example, take my smoking (save your fingers; don’t tell me to quit). I tell my sister (if she asks anyway) just about anything and I have refrained from telling her about this. I haven’t even told my good friend, JL, either because the first time he found out, he was really concerned about me. I choose not to tell them because I know that I don’t want to quit right now and having them know about this makes them more stressed out about me.
Are some secrets better left unsaid? Or should you share them with the people that are closest to you, despite knowing how much hurt it can cause?
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