i just had an anxiety attack. i am writing this in the hopes of feeling better.

even writing that sentence is really hard. "you call that an anxiety attack? you cried like a fucking baby on the floor and squeezed your shark plushie and couldn't breathe. so what. that wasn't even that bad," is what hindsight is telling me.

i've always had trouble taking up space. i wanted to be invisible. i didn't want to take anyone's time or breath. i didn't want people to look at me or to hear my stupid fucking stutters. we had a staff meeting today and i felt embarrassed and wrong just being there. i just sat my idiot ass down and stayed quiet for 2 hours because i knew that if i spoke, i would

1. stutter
2. lose my train of thought and have a really long awkward silence while people wait impatiently
3. look stupid as fuck as if i don't already look incapable or childish enough.

i was holding it together really well at the end of the meeting to when i walked into my room that i fooled even myself to thinking that i was alright. a coworker gave me a ride and i cracked jokes in her car and we both laughed and it was nice and i got out of her car and walked into my apartment and my housemate was cooking so we shared small chatter and i laughed and we had a good interaction and i went upstairs and i felt my face morph into a blank stare and when i walked into my room i started hyperventilating. i kept thinking, "ok, what's going on. it's ok." and i kept fanning myself because my ears were feeling hot and i paced around my room trying to catch my breath and i wasn't going to let this spill over to something that was going to be much much worse. 

it did, but i still had the capacity to kneel down on the floor slowly and grab a stuffed animal before i curled in on myself and started sobbing. i don't even know what's wrong. i don't know what triggered it; maybe it's just this whole day, or the past three months, or whatever, i don't know. something kept telling me that i'm wrong and i'm making too many mistakes and that i shouldn't even be here and that every single decision i made since march has been a mistake and i just can't seem to do anything right. i make mistakes everyday. i just feel wrong. like i shouldn't be here. 

when i feel very dramatic, on my way to safeway crossing foothill, i think that it'd be ok if i wasn't here anymore. it wouldn't make much of a difference, except to myself, because i'd feel less sad and anxious and embarrassed and wrong and i wouldn't be taking up so much space that i don't deserve. i keep telling myself i don't deserve to be here. i think i'm wrong for being here but i don't know how to fix that. i don't know how to fix this. i can feel better temporarily and smile and do work and get through everything but at the end of the day i am so so so sad and i wish i wasn't in this body taking up so much space. i feel like i don't deserve the air that's circulating in my lungs and i feel bad for hyperventilating. 

i know that i'm depressed, not that i've been doing anything about that. my eating schedule is ridiculous. today i had 3 cups of coffee and a cup of chobani flip yogurt and i can't imagine myself eating anything else tonight. yesterday night i ate so much and made too much food that i couldn't do anything else but eat it. i felt so gross afterwards and i almost threw up but i kept feeling like i need to eat. my sleep schedule is not doing me any favors either. i had maybe 3 hours of sleep last night because i'm so used to sleeping at dawn but i had work at 7am today. i can't handle myself. i need someone to tell me what to do. but i don't want anyone else to know and feel burdened about it.

i need to take up less space. i don't deserve to take up the space that i occupy. i keep telling myself i need to take care of myself tonight if i don't want this to get any worse but i'm also telling myself that i don't deserve that. 

i'm going to see if i can eat anything. then take a shower. i want to lay in bed.

it was the near-darkness of the room, i think, that set my thoughts on a downwind spiral toward memories of you. small ones, insignificant ones, ones that hadn't even trailed in as lost thoughts in moments of solitude.

i thought about the gold butterfly earrings you gave me on my 20th birthday. they didn't even fit into my ear piercings because they were meant for toddlers. you told me that it was gold-coated as though that was prideful thing, but the box it came in was the kind you get with purchase and i knew exactly where it came from. the pink box with the edges lined in green came from the small jewelry corner at Wal*Mart and the earrings themselves probably cost like 20 dollars. for some reason, when i think about those earrings and how you gave them to me and how i tried to fit them into my piercings even though the bar was too short, i get so sad and i end up tearing up, so unreasonably and so unexpected. i don't know what part of it makes me feel so sad. is it that they were from Wal*Mart? or is it that they were from Wal*Mart but you presented them to me as if they were something high-end? was it that they didn't fit in my ears? i don't know. i don't know, but in that dark room, on that rocking chair, with the noise machine on 'ocean breeze' and the toddler drinking milk from her bottle in my arms, i was reminded of that. i don't know. i don't know. i just don't know how i can hate you with every cell of my being one day and miss you with tears that flow without reason the next day.

you're a pulsating pull in the midst of a thousand memories, one memory, too big to contain in the shell of a self i shed long ago. if it were easy, i'd have torn you away from the neurons you occupy and stomped them beneath my feet, feelings and fears and all. the rhythmic knock you tap on locked doors, your sigh fogging up the car's frozen window, dry lips and your hesitant but truthful yet undeserved sorry. your crooked canine tooth, your hand reaching for the length of hair no longer there for two weeks after you get a haircut, your slight lisp between the s and r when you say that's right. none of these things are special to you, but the culmination of those little things threaded you into a web i cannot escape from. 

it's march. i'm reminded of the first time that i walk down university with you.

it's too cloudy to be welcoming, streets bustling with new admits and parents fussing over goodbyes. we meet with your friend and sit around a tall round table in the restaurant, the three of us. the stool has no back support and my legs are already aching from the day before, when i walked back and forth from my dorm to campus four times.

i think you leave to go to the bathroom, or to order a drink or something, and my social deprivation of the past four years lives in the awkward silence between me and your friend.

we walk down shattuck (as i later piece together; at the time, i have no idea what street we're on) and pass by the chain-link fence around the deconstructed bart station outside chase bank and fake-target. i don't have memory of the in-between of seeing that and walking up to wurster hall, but another one of your friends joins us somewhere there.

you tell me that day that you don't like boba in your tea, and that's the first time in a long time that i find out something new about you. i'm reminded of how different we are, and how that difference never seems to converge into similarity over time.

i feel embarrassed to be in front of your friends because i still feel like i barely know you, even though, objectively, i've known you longer. but they know you better, and you've opened up to them, and they're your friends, and i still consider myself just an underclassman who happened to get on your right side. when our silences are uncomfortable and palpable, the silences between you and your friends are inviting. and i feel bad because you don't deserve the cramped silence in between your words and mine.

and that distance between what you want to say and what i hear, what i want to say and what you hear, never lessens over the course of the time that we know each other. it's been a year since i've spoken to you, and the last thing we do is watch a movie that shits on a book that we both love. i ask you for a hug, and you frown uncomfortably as i wrap my arms around you but you stay rigid like you'd rather be anywhere but in my embrace. you don't look back when you leave the theater, and you don't see that i watch your back get farther away.

i'm reminded that it's always been like that; you've always been ten steps in front of me, two years ahead, a person apart, and 375 miles away.

march reminds me of you in a lot of ways, but some in ways that are unrelated to you. birthday, competition, peak of rehearsal, spring atmosphere, reaching for something just out of grasp, cheesecake factory, probability and proportions, the water fountain at bella terra, last hug outside apartment gates.

in some moments when i was younger, i held on to those things as if to claw at the last reserves of who i used to be.

in march, when we walk down university, you and i are two different people who never managed to see the other as more than a thing from the past to hold on to.

lemme have a real moment for a sec. so for the longest time, all i've been wanting to do is get away from my mom. i don't hate her. i just think that i'll end up wanting to delete myself off the face of the earth if i live with her for more than a month. and she's not that terrible now, compared to how she was when i had no choice but to live with her, but i still wouldn't be able to do it.

i told my brother the other day that i probably wouldn't be going back home after graduation, that i'd most likely stay here and do something else. and that was always the goal. and then i was supposed to be free. (and i understand how childish and teen-angsty it sounds to say "oh! freedom from my controlling mother asdfhjahskdfa but i. it's just. it's hard to explain and i am terrible with words.)

but after having told him that (and this has been on my mind even before that, just in abstract thoughts), i realize. i see that i'm just pushing that responsibility onto him. my brother, who runs a hole-in-the-wall restaurant by himself, who likes to buy nice things for himself when he can, who wants to get married and have a family, who wants to fix our own broken one, whose status is always in jeopardy, that guy. he has not done anything to deserve being tied down by our mother who refuses to let her children go. he doesn't even go "home" most days. he pays for that home but our mother just fills it with secondhand antiques and furniture picked up from the streets. it's not a place where he belongs.

and i'm not sure what i am going to do. what i can do for him, or this family, or myself. it seems like someone is always going to have to make a sacrifice in this family.

speaking of which, my dad is going to be spending christmas by himself up here, probably working. my sister and i are both going down to socal. and, when i think about it, i have not spent a christmas with him in years.

and i've also thought about graduation, too. looming. so soon. i brought up to my dad what i've been thinking about. i wasn't sure if i should invite him and her and have that awkward encounter again. (i remember how it was for my sister's graduation.) and he said that it might be better if he didn't go. i said that wouldn't be fair for him. then he said that he would also rather mom not know that he is living up in norcal. i said ok. and later i said that he should come to the university commencement instead of the major specific one. he said he'd be grateful even for that. i felt so bad. like i was sacrificing his being there at my graduation where i'd be getting my diploma, simply because i don't want conflict at the actual graduation. but i can't help it. the thought of having both my dad and mom there and having my mom grimacing and speaking about my dad like he's the spawn of the devil right in front of him and ruining everything is going to make me throw up.

it's already near mid-September, but i still feel like i'm stuck in 2013. as if i haven't grown or changed since then. as if i haven't moved three times.

there were a lot of days that i thought would be my last. on the day that i fainted twice and didn't even remember falling, i didn't think i would see the sun go down. on the day that i locked myself in the bathroom and held a safety razor in my hand with a certain calmness that was luring me away from reality, i didn't think i would set my foot out the door again. on the day that my mother's frustrated scream burst my eardrums into a numbing quiet, i didn't think i would ever hear another sound. i'm sure you've thought that, too. you've been with me since the beginning of it, after all.

i wonder how we even made it this far.

i started volunteering at a youth homeless shelter in January. i volunteer every other saturday nights, and i serve the food that the previous shift cooked. on the first day, it was a vegetable casserole. today, it was turkey chili.

there was a boy who i saw for the first time today who said he was born in '97 and he hasn't talked to his parents in 4 years. i was also born in '97. 

we had a loaf of bread out on the counter, and a girl was smearing some peanut butter on a slice while saying, "i love this bread. my mom used to get this for french toast." 

there was a boy was shivering by himself at a table, head down, sometimes looking up to bite into his sandwich, and with every bite, a bit of strawberry jam seeped out of the bottom. 

there was also a boy who said he had OCD and tried to put everything in order. he asked for a broom and dustpan and started to sweep outside. he kept saying "sir" and "ma'am" and "thank you." 

i don't know, i just feel weird today. it's weird. like everything i've been worrying about for the past week doesn't really seem that big anymore. 

i left three missed phone call notifications on your phone, and i wondered how you would feel when you saw them. would you be annoyed? would you think of me as troublesome? childish? clingy? maybe i was. i kicked at the mound of dirt beneath the swing set. grains of sand crawled their way through the rip in my right shoe that creased and tore ever so slightly with every step i took. i didn't notice that my knuckles were turning a sick white from gripping at the metal chain, but when i let go, my hands smelled like sour rust and made me gag at the back of my tongue.

i was going to ask you to pick me up, and that maybe we'd go to that cheap diner right by state route 22 that you always liked. i thought you'd answer after the first three monotonous tones and ask me what was wrong. i imagined you rolling up to the sidewalk minutes later in your red sedan with the dent in the hood, the rearview window still covered in dust from last September, the streaky wash me i'm dirty still traced into all that grime. i remember etching those crooked words into the dirt with the tip of my calloused finger and watching the ashen particles rub off. when you saw it, you just laughed and said you would wash your car when you had the time, and i guess you never did. 

so i realized that an update post on how i did academically this semester is long overdue. i've thought about making this post for a while but a) i've been lazy and b) actually i have no other reasons.

econ & society: 94.5%
devl psych: 92%
social psych: 87.3%
politics & social change: 97%

in the earlier part of the semester, the class i was most worried about was politics & social change, but strangely enough, that's the class i did best in. maybe i overcompensated for my lack of confidence in that class?

social psych was the class i thought would be the easiest, but i underestimated how terrible i am at waking up early enough to make it to class. i got an A on all my exams and assignments but i got a 0 for attendance. i'm not even upset about it because i've kind of already accepted that i'm not a morning person lol. (and yet, i've signed up for another 9 am this semester.)

so my gpa for the first semester comes to 3.85! which is not bad, considering that i was prepared for the worst and was hoping for just at least a 2.5 (which i would have been sad about, but would have also expected).

one of my friends also told me after finals, "congratulations! you're 1 / 4 of the way to graduation!" and i was like what? what the fuck. time is going by too fast.

anyway, my flight back to berkeley is next thursday which seems like a long time from now but also not at all.

i'm on season 9 of supernatural! almost to season 13, which is the most recent season. i'm mainly watching it for misha collins (i once messaged some friends on a group chat: "is it okay for me to say that i wouldn't mind having misha collins / castiel split me in half?? or is that ungodly???" and their first reaction was like "ok but castiel from which season???"). idk where the plot is going but i think it's been pretty interesting? or maybe that's just me trying to justify all of the time i spent on the previous 9 seasons.

i've told some people (kind of jokingly) that taking exams are the worst on my self-esteem, because, well, here's how my mind processes during exam weeks:

1. i need to study, but i think i haven't paid enough attention in lecture to know the material enough, so i know that if i look at the material i'm supposed to study, i won't be familiar with them and therefore will get stressed; result: i don't study because i don't want to get stressed
2. it's like 3 days before the exam, and i start studying, and everything is unfamiliar (obviously, because of step 1) so i get very stressed and think about how this always happens and how i'm so bad at managing myself
3. i try to cram everything in my head and get mad at myself when nothing sticks
4. (this is all happening while i'm running on, say, 4 hours of sleep and maybe half a meal a day?)
5. i feel terrible on the day of the exam to the point where i feel like i'm going to throw up or have a massive breakdown, though this can be mitigated by my being in the presence of others (in which case i'll feel too self-conscious about letting that be seen by other people!! so i'll pretend like i'm all fine and stuff and that makes me feel like i have some control)
6. when the exam is finished! will leave as fast as i can and have some breathing problems but that's fine because the exam is done lol. then i'll probably go overeat because when i'm stressed i will either not eat or eat too much.

terrible! will try to fix this semester. 

oh! i realized the other day that lip balm no longer works for me. bummer. i think my lips are beyond fixing and are going to... be like this for the rest of my life hahaha! that's fine.

i started this post thinking i was just gonna update on my grades but idk where it went lol. it's 4 am and i'm, uh, well, i should go to sleep.

okay, so. i logged onto my old fb account and read some messages that you and i sent back and forth in... 2014? 2015? i don't know why it's so hard to read through them. it's not like i still miss you. but maybe reading those messages reminds me of how i felt then.

about four years ago, i think i was in love. probably? i don't know. but i was also really young. four years ago, i was sixteen. i was really sure i was going to do music as a career and i thought i was going to go to cal state long beach and maybe teach / volunteer at westminster and you know what, that probably might have happened if everything else didn't go to shit.

and maybe i didn't even want to do music, and maybe i just wanted to do everything that you did. maybe i thought being in love with you meant i had to become, in some parts, you. or maybe i wanted to do those things because it made me feel closer to you, who i was in love with?

but i probably wasn't really in love, because i was sixteen and young and naive and i probably would have fallen in "love" with anyone who took two seconds to actually get to know me.

and maybe that's me right now, too. i mean, not much could have changed. maybe if someone takes two seconds to get to know me, i'll fall in love with them. or maybe since i don't even know what that means, i'll think i'm falling in love but end up hurting myself again.

my mom always told me that women fall in love through touch, and men fall in love through sight. i never really understood what that meant, but all i know is that my heart flutters a lot when you and i share little touches here and there. 

and maybe i wouldn't feel that way if my mom had never told me that; and maybe it was her saying that to me in the first place that makes me feel like that. maybe touches might have never meant anything to me if she never said that. i don't know. but i'm very vulnerable to touch anyway and i've been deprived of that lately. 

on a completely different subject, i've been having a hard time looking at people face-to-face because my lips are beginning to look, um, not very attractive. and i don't think i look that great in red lipstick, which i put on in an attempt to kind of hide it. my skin has also been dry, which doesn't help my self-confidence at all, because i place too much self-value in appearances and other people's judgments. and i guess i might hate myself for that. 

i'm trying to do this thing where i write the good things that happened on a day where i felt particularly terrible, so i bought a little notebook and pen to carry around. i haven't started it yet, but maybe it'll help.

we had suicide training at sspc meeting today and that must have been one of the hardest things i had to do this semester. it made me feel powerless and 11 years old again, and it made me feel useless and 14. 

i forgot how much i like to do jigsaw puzzles because i haven't thought about what i do solely for enjoyment in a long time. 

feelings are always hard to talk about. i have a hard time talking about my emotions or my problems to people i know, because i'm afraid of the way they'll think of me afterwards.

because people can pretend, right, to be consoling in front of your face. a downturn of their eyebrows, a glistening gaze of the eyes, the corners of their lips turning upwards in a sad smile as they say "i understand what you're going through. and it's valid for you to feel this way. you can tell me everything. i am here for you." it's easy to do that.

and it's easy to believe them and tell them, "i don't know, i've been feeling strange lately. i wake up in the morning but i don't actually get out of bed because i don't see a point in it, even though i have a class at 11 and it's already 10:35. but as i stumble out of bed and walk over to the bathroom, wash my face and brush my teeth, and put on my makeup and get dressed, i feel better and i begin to think that maybe it'll be a good day. i put on red lipstick because i think it makes me look prettier and probably makes me feel more confident.

i arrive 30 minutes late to my first lecture but i don't mind because i got a good grade on the first midterm and the professor uploads the powerpoint later anyways. and i start to feel happy as i walk to my next class because i like listening to the professor and typing up my notes; it makes me feel like i'm doing something and being efficient and besides, it always feels good to be just one person taking up one seat in a lecture hall of a hundred other people.

so i feel fine. great, even, enough for me to sit in the first row in my last class about developmental psychopathology and look like i'm listening intently to the professor and nod along when she gazes my way. sure, i feel stupidly self-conscious and worried that the people behind me—those 15 rows full of other people—are looking at the back of my head, thinking, what's she doing, sitting at the front row, she doesn't even pay attention in class anyway, even though the rational part of me knows that none of those people know me and are far too engrossed anyway in the lecture about different developmental pathways of bipolar disorder in children and adolescents. so i feel my hands stutter over the keyboard of my laptop because i'm getting nervous, but i don't think about it, because the rational part of me is loud and it thinks i'm completely stupid to be worrying about something like that. but that worrisome part of me exists and its existence alone is loud enough, so my rational side thinks that maybe i should listen to it, maybe it does have a point, maybe those people are judging me. so when it's 2:59 and the professor says that she'll pick up here on Tuesday, i pack my belongings slowly and wait until the room is mostly drained of students to hurry out the door.

i start to become conscious about the lipstick, because i think it might have gotten stained and rubbed off on to my cheek or something. or maybe it just faded, which is fine, except that i'm reminded of how ugly my lips look when my lipstick fades because my lips are still healing from the last time i ripped at them and the delicate parts that aren't fully healed always are stained red while the rest of my lips look dry and chapped and off-pink. so i start ripping at them again because i think it's the right choice, for some reason. i justify it by thinking that i'm just getting rid of dead skin, and that's sufficient justification until i feel a sting on my lips and see small stains of blood on the nails of my thumb and middle finger. then i think, okay, maybe i should stop. but i kind of know that i'll start doing it again mindlessly later today.

so when i get back to my dorm, i feel better because i'm alone in the room and i can just, i don't know, watch another episode of Sherlock or something. at least until i have to go to a club meeting, but that's fine, because i like that club.

except maybe i don't like that club, because the last time we had a proper meeting, i had to leave the meeting early and was verging on having a panic attack for an unexplainable reason. but i was probably just being dramatic then, making a big deal out of nothing. there wasn't a reason for me to react that way that time. it was just a fluke, it won't happen again, and i just have to not be so dramatic about things this time.

and two, three hours go by and i have to leave for the club meeting, so i grab my headphones and play my favorite songs on full blast. that makes me feel great, actually, and it feels refreshing to walk down Parker with all of the world's noise blocked off with only Serendipity playing into my ears.

but when i walk into the room where the club is meeting, i suddenly realize that i'm one person taking up one seat in a room of 14 other people, and i can feel my heart beating at the speed of DNA, which is pretty fast. i can hear it drumming at the back of my head, over the sound of the song at full volume. the song isn't any help, so i turn it off and put away my headphones.

the meeting is fine. i was rusty in the dyad because i haven't done them in two weeks, but the meeting is fine. and at 8, we all disperse and go back to where we need to go.

except i'm not really sure where i really need to go, so i linger at my desk, fidgeting with my phone, until i put on my headphones again and walk out of the room.

i always love walking in the dark and listening to music. but, for some reason, i keep walking and walking and my favorite songs are blasting in my ear and i'm almost near Parker again and i just need to turn left here and i'll be in my dorm, and maybe i can go to sleep, or take a shower, or watch a movie, or whatever the fuck i want, but i can't do that because for the past 10 minutes that i've been walking, something keeps threatening to spill over and i keep blinking but tears still come back and i cradle my face with cold hands and grasp at the sides of my headphones and squish them closer to my ears in the hopes that maybe if the song is louder, that well of emotions can be stifled and i can just turn left here and go back to my dorm but

i can't. i feel like if i turn left right now, i'm going to let out an unflattering noise from the back of my throat and tears are probably going to flow over and, god, if i start crying, even this noisy pop song at full volume isn't going to be enough to block my own thoughts from taking over my brain.

so i keep walking forward, and i know that there's a coffee shop somewhere down this street. maybe i'll stop there and think or something. or something seems like a better alternative to that. okay, i'll do that.

i don't know, i'm not good at talking about my feelings, but that's how i feel. i've been feeling strange lately."

but i don't tell people this, because of course i know people have more important things to worry about than me and my petty emotional problems. and i hate getting in the way of people and giving them one more thing to worry about. why would i want to trouble them with me? especially for them to think that i'm being melodramatic or overreacting?

after all, can you imagine opening up to someone and becoming vulnerable right in front of their eyes, only for them to think of you like that?

i just put in an application for a poetry workshop next semester... hopefully i get in... it'd be a fun class... hmmm...

the application asked for 5 sample poems, and i just submitted the poems i wrote in my freshman year since i haven't written much since then.

so my first round of midterms is all over and graded, but i'm also getting the prompt for SOC 140's second midterm paper today, so the second round is just around the corner.

i did a lot better than i thought i would do. honestly, i thought i was gonna have like a c average.

econ & society: midterm paper on capitalism & generation of waste; 92%
devl psych: in-class exam & essay; 87%
social psych: in-class exam; 90%
politics & social change: midterm paper on analyzing the new left's direct action approach; 98%

hopefully i'll do better on the next round of midterms, but i've missed a few lectures in the past few weeks so probably not!

it's a good thing i know how to play with html at least a little bit, or this theme job would have ended up so whack.

Hi Mrs. Carpenter! 

I'm not quite sure if you'll remember me, but this is Jenny (Hari) Lee. I was a student in your ERWC class about three years ago. I'm not quite sure what prompted me to write you an e-mail, but I think it was a compilation of a lot of things.

I first wanted to thank you, because I remember you as a figure who was of a lot of help to me when I was struggling with familial issues, especially concerning the issues that arose specifically because of college. I can't recall details, but I do still remember that you gave me advice and guided me in the right direction when I was struggling (what with having to apply for college without the knowledge of my mother and all that). I sincerely thank you for that, because I am familiar with how much of a pushover I used to be, and I may not have had the courage to stand up to my mother and decide to go to college if it wasn't, in part, for you. 

Second, I wanted to update you on the life of this former student of yours. When I graduated from ACE and started my freshman year at CSULB, I found that I didn't feel like I belonged there. I had amazing professors and attended insightful lectures on a lot of subjects, but I had a lot of trouble socially. I also felt like I wanted to academically challenge myself more, but for some reason, that wasn't ever fulfilled in the classes I took. So, halfway through my second semester at CSULB, I decided to reverse-transfer to community college with the goal of transferring elsewhere. The year I spent at community college was, to simply put it, terrible (not because of the school itself, but because I had to take an overwhelming amount of units in case the units from CSULB didn't transfer to the UCs I was applying to). Somehow, though, I managed to get through 2 semesters there. I was fortunate enough to be accepted into UC Berkeley, which is where I am now. I'm living in the dorms (housing is crazy expensive here!) and I'm gradually getting used to the communal way of life that inevitably comes with dorming. We've already started the semester, and although I know that this is going to be another difficult journey, I'm more excited than nervous.

I think what most influenced me to write to you is a random thought that passed me while I was on the bus. There was a poster in your room above the whiteboard that had a quote with a grammatical error. I think it was something along the lines of "In 20 years, it doesn't matter what you ate, where you went, or the jeans you wore." Not accurate, but the important part is the the last bit. When I pointed out that "the jeans" should rather be "which jeans," you corrected it with a post it. I started to wonder if that post-it is still there, or if the poster itself is still there at all. Then, I started to wonder about what other little marks I had left in the places I had visited during my journey to present day. While I was thinking about that, I missed my bus stop, but I quite enjoyed reminiscing about the past.

Anyway, I'm rambling at this point. I'd like to provide you with some other updates! My sister, Betty, is actually starting her freshman year this September at Stanford. She was having the hardest time choosing between Princeton and Stanford, but she chose Stanford in the end (and even though we're both away from home now, we're not far from each other; in fact, we're only an hour away from one another). I was so, so proud of her, and when she called me while I was at school to say that she had been accepted into those schools (plus Dartmouth, which she didn't even consider), I embarrassingly shed a few tears. I am not sure if you remember Betty, but she was in Mr. Brown's class in sophomore year!

I talk to Cazine and Michelle from time to time, and Cazine is studying abroad in Korea this semester. Something that was really surprising to me was that Cazine became friends with someone that I was friends with at the high school I attended previously to ACE. They're both studying in Korea in the same program, and that made me realize just how small this world really is. 

I don't know if this was at all interesting to read, and I hope I didn't take up a lot of your time. I really hope that you're doing well, Mrs. Carpenter. School must have already started in Helendale! I wish you a great academic year (and for there to be no student in any of your classes who just uses words straight out of the thesaurus and doesn't check the definition and context it should be used in before using them! i.e., cadaver should not have been a word used to describe Christopher McCandless' dead body since it's mainly a medical term). 

Sincerely, 

Jenny 

1. A majority of the time when I go to a cafe, I'll order an Iced Americano or black coffee. Or black tea, if I want a less intense bitter taste.
2. I changed my major three times in college; I applied as a psychology major and changed to communications at CSULB, then changed to sociology in community college, and finally settled on social welfare when I was applying to Cal. 
3. I hate conformity but I don't feel comfortable when I'm not blending in.
4. I am terrible at making conversation and I am very well aware of that. And it sucks when I talk to people because I feel like I'm boring them and they'll never ever want to spend time with me again. (Even though conversations work both ways. Like, I'm not wholly responsible for how a conversation goes.)
5. I'm a big fan of keeping things clean and being clean. I hate the feeling of touching the walls of the shower and probably will wash myself again if I end up touching any part of the wall. I hate it when my toothbrush touches the faucet and probably will buy a new toothbrush. I don't lay on my bed with clothes I've worn outside because I don't want "outside particles" to get on my bed. Yeah, I'm that annoying. 
6. There was a point in high school and early freshman year when I wouldn't eat. Well, I'd eat, but minimally, and on the occasion where I'd end up eating a lot, I'd try to throw up in the bathroom but get scared and just cry (again, not serious, not enough to call myself anorexic or bulimic but like, it was a problem at the time, I just didn't know).
7. I tend to love spending money on other people. Not to say I don't love spending money on myself, but it just feels better when I buy things for other people. That's why I tend to dish out on gifts for others on their birthdays (although, I haven't gotten anyone a birthday present in a really long time).
8. I don't really like sweet drinks, so I don't really know why I get boba so often. I always ask for it to be half sweet, but it turns out to be too sweet anyway and I get sick of it halfway through. 
9. I have no idea what I'm doing right now. At all. No idea. None. 0/100.
10. I just realized the other day while at the a cappella performance (or it might have been earlier, at a lecture, or even before that, actually) that I am very much into women who are probably way older than me, are very thin, and look business casual. And wears dark lipstick? I don't know, but yeah, I guess I do have a type. And I don't really have a type for men. Like, usually I just don't like guys my age. So I guess I just, in general, prefer people older than me. Not that it matters anyway, since I'm not interested?
11. Anyway, I tend to write as things just pop into my head, so I forget why I started writing in the first place. This happens often. An example would be the post right before this.
12. People always say things like, "Oh, this place has waaaaaay better coffee than that other place" but I never really notice a difference. Like, I'll go anywhere. 
13. I'm not the biggest fan of croutons or dressing. I'm not gonna eat those cut-up pieces of dried bread. I'll take a dressing to the side and dip my salad maybe. I don't know. I was just thinking about this because I'm eating a Caesar salad right now. 
14. So I said I changed my major officially three times, right? I also almost changed it to political science and econ at one point. And I actually probably would have changed it again if it hadn't meant that I'd have to stay at community college for another year.
15. God, a few seconds ago, I still thought I was 18. It's like time keeps passing and I keep getting older but I'm just refusing to acknowledge it. 
16. Along with a salad, I'm drinking an iced black coffee right now. I have a class in 25 minutes! So fun. 
17. Lately, I found myself saying "So fun!" "Yeah, it's so fun" "That's really fun" and different combinations of that a lot. I think I'm trying to trick myself into thinking I am having a lot of fun and am not just a walking corpse with a mild level of consciousness. 

I don't think I've experienced the feeling of "being in love" for a tremendously long time.

The last time I can say that I've "been in love" is probably in high school, during my sophomore and junior year. I guess the more appropriate expression might have been "obsession," but I was a teenager with a messy life and poor way of expression.

And if I think about it, every time that I've "been in love," it's been closer to "obsession." I became incessantly worried about pleasing the other person and doing everything it takes to satisfy them, and if I ever did something wrong that seemed to make them upset or think of me as an annoyance, I'd worry myself over it for days, wondering, "Why did I do that? I'm so stupid." And in the process of "loving" those people, I came to hate myself.

And I keep writing "in love" with quotes around it because I don't think "being in love" should have made me feel like that. I thought "being in love" was supposed to be a warm, fuzzy experience, not this feeling of being constricted into a smaller and smaller being.

Or maybe I just had the wrong impression as to what "being in love" should be since the beginning. Maybe I just had an expectation that could never happen in reality.

So this "being in love" thing, I don't think I've ever done it properly. But sometimes I get this weird, unfamiliar sensation in my chest that feels strangely like being wrapped tightly around with fluffy blankets in a warmly lit room, maybe with a fireplace blazing somewhere in the background, and I wonder if this time, I'm doing it right.

Settled into my dorm at Berkeley. I didn't notice until I sat down to write this, but my legs are aching. It must be because I walked a lot today (lugging a very full suitcase half the time).

It's a little weird that it would come now, but lately, I've been having breathing problems. I've also been having pretty bad anxiety. Like, I don't think I'm nervous. But I guess my body thinks so?

I think I haven't had motivation to do anything over this past summer, and I've only been doing things because they had to be done.