faith

just got home from church, and christmas eve service. this year's theme was "how would your life change if you were absolutely certain that God Himself was with you?"
and i thought to myself, how can people who believe in God ask themselves that question? belief in anything implies absolute certainty; otherwise it is not a belief but simply a theory, an idea of some sort. it's not thinking that He's there, or saying that you believe in Him because it's how you were brought up. belief is digging down into that core of solid certainty till you find the place that you would stake your life on, should it ever come to that. and it exists somewhere inside everyone - perhaps for something different depending on who you are - but it is there.
but if you can't find that place, if you can't step out with no certainties other than what you think you believe in, perhaps it's time to think about where your faith lies, and why.

feeling pissy tonight...

what does it say about me that right now, i can't find it in me to deal with other people and their problems?
most of my close friends are trying to handle a lot of stuff right now. finals are stressing everyone out, there's personal stuff thrown in, and basically everyone is going insane. and i know i need to try and find a way that i can give some time to the people who're important to me, especially since i've dealt with some of what they're going through right now: but i can't seem to find a way. i have nothing left in me that i can give to anyone, and it makes me so annoyed sometimes that people expect so much from me when they themselves know how difficult college can be. i feel like i'm being guilted into being someone for others to lean on because if i don't, i'm clearly just a shitty friend.
but i have been there for others for such a long time that i've managed to neglect myself. it's okay for them to disappear off the face of the earth so they can get time to themselves, but god forbid i need to study at MIT, right?

plots and plans

the trouble with being a woman at a top-tier engineering school is that you often lose sight of your own intentions. it feels as though we're not allowed to want to be domestic at all, simply because we want successful careers; but when you start suppressing bits of your consciousness you start going a little crazy at the same time.
i don't know where my career will be in ten years. i see myself in a house with a big, sunny kitchen, a sprawling back garden, and a piano in my living room. we're not supposed to want to be mothers, because it makes us bad feminists. but ever since acknowledging this to myself, i'm somewhat more at peace with the uncertainty of my future. i have none of it figured out, but i still feel better about all the confusion.

i'm making it through

"I’ve heard recently some very sad stories of students just like me struggling just as hard as i am to cope with all the difficulties of college: the work, the teachers, the usual assholes of school, the usual drama. But these kids, for some reason felt like they couldn’t pull through till the end, and ended it. My heart goes out to all the friends and family of these students, and to all the students out there who are feeling down, and who might be thinking this isn’t meant for them. And what I say to that is: how did you make it this far if your not meant for it? They say nowadays that a college degree is the best thing you can have, not because of the money you’ll make after, but because of everything you’ll learn, the goals you’ll pursue, and eventually achieve. Achievement is a beautiful thing, don’t ever forget that. All of you who are feeling down look up and look around. There are people around you who love you, and who’ll notice you’ll be gone, and who will miss you terribly. But don’t only look around, look at a mirror, and you’ll see the beautiful self that you’ve become, that beautiful person who has gone through so much to get to where you are now. Getting to college is such an achievement: now finish it. Achieve your goal. Walk down that aisle to get your degree. Its what you want right? Wouldn’t that be such a wonderful and amazing feeling? So pull through. Thats all I have to say. It’s an amazing feeling. And no one ever said it’ll come easy. If you feel like the work is piling on and you can’t handle it take a sanity break. Step back from the work and just release yourself. Let YOU come out and smile and spread some love. Reach out to a friend. You’ll be amazed at what they can do and eventually you’ll look back and see how amazing that trip was to your destination. Hang in there everyone <3"
reblogged from apt.vagabond, one of my favorite people ever
for this to turn up in my google reader after one of the worst weeks ever is nothing short of beautiful. sometimes all you need is a reminder of why you are where you are; and this was what i needed today. thank you.

the best laid plans

i realized last week that i have no idea what to do with my life, and that i needed to drop a class to stay sane this term. so i dropped it, and changed my major. i don't know what's going to happen with my life, or what i'll tell my parents, or where anything is going, but last sunday when i realized that i don't know anything at all, it was the most wonderfully liberating epiphany i've ever had.
it would be a lie to say that i no longer worry about grad school or whether i'll get a job once i graduate, because those are still very real concerns. but for now, it's enough for me to do what i want to do with my life. yes, it's still sometimes a struggle to find a good reason to get out of bed, but there are so many more of them now. i am no longer living day to day looking for something to keep me going till the next; i just want to be happy, and it is beautiful.

baby sisters

my little sister turned 13 last week, and it terrifies me. i remember realizing a few years ago that she was turning 10 and being freaked out then, but it's worse now because she's only a year away from high school and i still clearly remember the morning she was born. it makes me feel old to come home and discover that she's grown another few inches, or to call and find out that she took the SATs last weekend and is now treasurer of her school's service club. one day next year she's going to start high school, and then eventually go to college, and then graduate, and i am just going to be getting older and older while she goes through the same stuff that i did. i try to call her every so often so that we don't disconnect, and every time i do she talks and talks and asks me for advice and it struck me a few weeks ago that she looks up to me. worst realization ever, especially considering that she's probably smarter than i am. she tells me about the musical she's planning to audition for and i realize that i still haven't watched the video from her last one, this past spring. and then she reminds me that she's taller than i am now, and i think of all the times i used to carry her around, because she was my baby sister and that's how things go, and it makes me a little sad that i can't do that anymore. but then she asks me what to do about the boy that has a crush on her and i remember that i'm still her big sister, because never in a million years would she ever talk to anyone else like she talks to me. i guess i just have to get used to her growing up.

light reading

people seem concerned about me yet again. yes, i am reading a history of suicide. no, i am not reading it for inspiration. everyone has issues in their lives, but mine are not such that i feel i need to take that route out. i am reading it because i feel like it, because it was on the shelf next to a book that a response to a post on gawker this morning mentioned. i borrowed both. the post was about subway jumpers. it's relevant. and i don't really see why i need to justify my choice of light reading to anyone. maybe i'm dabbling in amateur psychology. maybe i'm interested in how religion affected people's lives from the middle ages onwards. maybe, just maybe, i don't actually need to see a therapist.
sometimes a cigar really is just a cigar.

best friends?

instead of doing my incomprehensible physics homework i tend to wander the internets; or in this case my facebook feed. i keep coming across the same note/quiz/thing done by different people, & this time i stopped to read one done by a good friend of mine. and for some reason it got me thinking, do people back home still think of me as a friend? i'm an insanely busy person with a stressful life, but who really understands that? i don't deliberately ignore people, but if someone's life consumes them and they fall off the face of the earth can you still consider them a friend?

the ongoing saga of awkward and exes

well, he doesn't hate me. i'm not too surprised, though only because he's not a bitter person at all. i feel better now; these may be baby steps, but we seem to be back on our way to friendship again.
lately i've felt oddly full of goodwill towards humanity in general, and though it isn't the new year i think from now on i'll try not to be as bitter and angry towards people. deciding that feels nice.

regrets

what do you do when you know you've hurt someone and you desperately want to be friends again?
i dated my first boyfriend for three months, in between junior and senior year of high school. we were good friends all through middle school, and i think that summer might have been the best of my life (not entirely because of him, but still). he's the epitome of the skinny, nerdy white boy, and we were that couple who sat in central park using the uncertainty principle to describe our relationship. and it made sense to us, though maybe not to anyone else. every weekend or two was spent in a different museum, eating gyros and pretzels in central park, pretending to be the adults that we'd eventually have to become; and though we may just have been two silly kids, we were gloriously happy.
maybe i shouldn't have broken up with him when school started again. now i can't remember why i actually did; all i can remember is what i told him instead of the truth, and at that point i wasn't the accomplished liar i am now. he saw through it, we didn't speak for a while, he took me out to see macbeth that spring with some inscrutable reason which i still can't figure out, and then we drifted apart again.
i saw him in april briefly, but we don't talk anymore. maybe i shouldn't bother trying. but i hope somehow he finds this post, because maybe if he reads it and understands then we can go back to being friends.

the politics of hair

despite the fact that i've been dealing with the trials of having mixed-race hair all my life, i never really realized that handling black hair has its own politics. i've been relaxing my hair since i was nine, simply because it was always too difficult to get a comb through the curls, and it's always been just a matter of convenience for me. but today i came across this article on jezebel, and reading the comments was a rather interesting experience. it's frustrating that so many women base their personal appearance on what the world thinks and expects of them, rather than their own preferences, because really no matter what you do you cannot please everybody.
i am not my hair. it does not reflect my intelligence, education, or organizational skills. and most importantly, what i do with my hair is not a statement of where i belong. if there's anything i hate, it's being pigeonholed based on race, sex, my choice of major, anything; but especially something like my hair. i change my hair when i get bored with it, and so do many other women, so why are you going to judge me based on what it's doing today? could you possibly be any more stupid?

on being a purist

i just watched the trailer for the picture of dorian gray, and i can't decide how i feel about it. i enjoyed the book, but i read it so long ago that it has barely any effect on my perceptions of the movie. besides, while ben barnes is not beautiful the way dorian is supposed to be, he certainly is pretty.
the new sherlock holmes, on the other hand, is an entirely different animal. i've been reading holmes since i was six, and after seeing the trailer i was disappointed to see that it's basically your standard action movie, with only a different historical setting to recommend it. i suppose it might be fine as a movie on its own, but as an adaptation of a novel that i am more than familiar with it offends me.
unfortunately i seem to feel this way about a lot of movies. the past few harry potter movies left me cold; neither the jim caviezel count of monte cristo nor the french version thereof were any good as adaptations of the book (as a matter of fact, the more recent movie was an absolute travesty); and even the lord of the rings trilogy was not quite up to my standards by its close. is it better to miss out completely on what could be a good movie or be repeatedly disappointed by failures?

an unintended hiatus

apologies for my disappearance, but i haven't had anything of much importance on my mind lately; so between lack of inspiration, freshman orientation, and a series of relatively serious things happening in my life, i just haven't had much of a reason to write. term started last week, though, so within a month or so i'll probably be back to posting with disturbing frequency ;)
worry not, dear readers, you will get your fix of randomosity soon enough.

accountability

this morning i signed into facebook to find a post from a friend of my cousin, who lives in boston and suggested that i come check out fenway church (since i still don't go anywhere regularly *shamefaced*). i met him almost two months ago, and owing to my having been out of town pretty consistently on weekends i still haven't been able to go at all. it was a nice surprise to hear from him, and i will be going weekly once the freshman cease their invasion of my life, because it's much easier to remember to go to church when you know someone there will call you up and ask why you weren't there last week.

sunday secrets

(reblogged from PostSecret)

it's why He put so much beauty in the world. He can't manipulate our actions and keep us from destroying what we have, but He can make it so spectacular that we don't want to destroy it at all.
here's hoping more people realize this.

MMT

Makes Me Think
a friend stumbled this site the other day and emailed it to me, saying that it reminded him of me. it really does make you think, and sometimes the world seems like a better place after reading it. it's a constant reminder that there's beauty everywhere, and if we don't see it perhaps we are in the wrong frame of mind.

fairytales

it's the way you love me
it's a feelin' like this
it's centrifugal motion
it's that perpetual bliss
This Kiss - Faith Hill

love doesn't actually work like this. a relationship can't be all smiles and bliss. someone who actually loves you will go through so much with you: illness; money trouble; fears; and yes, fights too.
love is heartbreaking and it will make you cry. it will hurt you deep inside so badly that it makes you sick sometimes. love is not easy, no walk in the park. it's allowing one person to bring you by turns utter bliss and deep-reaching pain, because you do the same to them whether you know it or not.
there is no way for any relationship to be simple. human beings are by their very nature complicated creatures. love is being willing to work with this complexity and all the curveballs it may throw in someone other than yourself.
that is how you know you've found love.

O.o

how the hell did i become a relationship counselor for my friends? and since when did my advice apparently not suck?
quite honestly, i fail so hard at people sometimes that i'm surprised when people ask me things like i have my shit together. but i think it's even weirder when they say it's good advice. maybe i should start following some of it...

people worry too much

i love my friends and i get that they love me back, but it still freaks me the hell out when i get people worrying about me. especially on a day like today when i'm running on 3 hours of sleep since yesterday morning and i'm feeling sorry for myself and i kind of just want to wallow in it. as of about an hour ago i'm actually pretty good. i have a new room that is going to be wonderfully sunny and it is yellow. life is just weird sometimes.

faith and tolerance

http://stfubelievers.tumblr.com/
i really hate people sometimes. it's so difficult to stay tolerant of those who are intolerant of faith in general and christians in particular. we're not all crazy, we won't all beat you over the head with a bible, and we're not intolerant douchebags like mainstream media makes us out to be. yes, there are some who only believe because it's how they were brought up, but that's not always the case.
i went through a period of agnosticism a while ago, mostly because life was pretty good and i didn't think i needed God. turns out i was wrong. when i started high school, i spiraled into depression and eventually hit rock bottom; and it's because of that, that i believe the way i do. i wouldn't be on this earth today if God didn't exist, and so because i know He does i trust Him to get me through life.
i'm not writing all this so i can convert my readers: that's not my goal in life. i simply want to get my point across: christians are people too. we don't all lead perfect lives, we don't all have that sanctimonious holier-than-thou attitude, and we're not all uneducated twits who swallow everything they're told. however, we do all deserve the same respect and tolerance of our beliefs that is given unquestioningly to people of almost every other faith.

=)

OMG noise-canceling skull candy earbuds. best shit ever.

things i don't want to say

i'm halfway determined not to go back to new york again; or at least, not to see people who aren't family. when i go back, i go for the weekend most of the time and i only have saturday evening to hang out with friends. i give people at least a week's worth of notice that i want to see them, and invariably i get screwed. plans don't get made, or they do and then someone bails, or family is conveniently taking up an entire weekend and i'm left feeling like nobody actually wants to see me. and then to top it off, people then have the balls to give me shit about how i never visit.
it makes me sad to have to say this, but i am done putting up with this nonsense. some of these people are the reasons i made it through high school relatively unscathed, but i have other people in my life now who actually give a damn about me. i know that everyone's time is precious; so is mine. i'm not going to waste my weekends on a bus just so i can stay home saturday night because plans got fucked again. from now on, if you want to see me that badly you can get yourself on a bus and come to boston. stop making me waste my time.

overpopulation

natural selection
i kind of wish i could say i disagreed with her, because it feels like such a heartless thing to say, but really there are just way too many people on this planet. if people want to make unhealthy decisions and give themselves lung cancer or pick up an STD because of a habit of unprotected sex, then maybe they won't reproduce and the world will begin to recover from the absurd amounts of people inhabiting it.
being able to extend your lifespan and hold off death is also a stupid idea. the world is fucked up, and i for one do not intend to stay in it after my body tells me to go. instead of finding ways to defy biology so that post-menopausal women can have children and we don't die of old age, we should concentrate on improving the quality of life in other parts of the globe. you know, the ones that aren't overprivileged. the ones where people worry about where their next meal is coming from, or whether they'll still be alive in the morning. our resources would be better spent narrowing the gaps in the global spectrum of quality of life.

being jaded

yesterday on my way home from work i detoured through killian court & sat and watched the rain. it felt oddly peaceful to be there, the way it never is during term. and i've been discovering over the past few days that no matter how jaded about the world you think you are, there are moments of beauty that give an unexpected amount of hope.
being on a bus shouldn't logically bring any of these, but driving through connecticut with the sunset on my right pouring gold in through my window conclusively proves otherwise. i wish there was a way i could have taken a photo and captured the warmth and the glow, but alas, camera phones can only do so much.
next time you're feeling jaded, go lie in the grass and just exist.

my ex. again.

i think everyone has an ex that they wish would leave them alone. mine decided to IM me again today. i broke up with him last september after dating for three months, and for some reason he still tries to talk to me.
i defriended him a few months after the breakup, because the temptation to facebook-stalk him was almost as annoying as he was. even after months of my ignoring his messages, he'd still IM me and ask me if we could talk, or if i had a problem with him, or various little things like that, so i did the most logical thing possible: sent him an email. a cold, PR-toned email signed with my professional signature. you'd think that would be some sort of signal, but it appears not. he's IMed me twice more since then, and while i know he just wants to be friends i would prefer not to be. we weren't friends before we dated: why should we be now, when i know that we have little in common intellectually or in any other regard? if it wasn't worth it to me to maintain a long-distance relationship, when i presumably felt something for him, why should it be worth my while now to begin a friendship that can't possibly function?
i understand that it's difficult to have someone drop out of your life entirely, particularly if you dated at some point, but by the same token it's difficult to have someone show up in your life periodically when you don't want to deal with them. and i do realize that this post sounds bitchy, but anything that causes me any stress or irritation gets removed from my life. it's the healthiest way for me to be.

is this how dan savage feels?

sometimes i wish people would stop asking me for relationship advice. i'm on my third boyfriend and finally in a stable relationship. that doesn't mean i have any idea about how anything works. i got lucky. that's about it.
and just because i'm a girl doesn't mean i can understand your ex. i don't know why she stalks you, i don't know why she defriended you on facebook, I DON'T FUCKING KNOW. stop asking me. and stop asking me about cold heartless exes, because i am one and i frankly can't see your perspective.
i don't give advice voluntarily. this might be because it doesn't normally work.

walk on

The sun rises again.
No matter the storms we face.

If raindrops should fall on your shoulders,
let us all tide you over

If the clouds seem to darken where you stand,
please let your loved ones take your hand

And if there is one thing I’d like you to know,
keep this in mind wherever you may go:

If thunder strikes to make the sunny days
seem much less benign
Then the moments passed will make future rays
a much brighter, stronger shine.

(reblogged from a dear friend of mine, Black Polos And Sweaters)

there is no more to say. wherever you go it will rain on you at times; maybe sunshowers, maybe a mudslide or two. but inevitably, the sun comes back sometime. all you have to do is keep walking, with whoever will hold you up if need be, and you'll make it.

i don't want to grow up.

the phone never rings
because you never call
and everyone's asking why i've been such a mess

it kind of hit me this week that people grow up and go places. a bunch of really awesome people made it up to boston for my birthday this past weekend and set the bar pretty high for my next few birthdays. but now they're all gone, and i don't get to see most of them until term starts again, and it's making me more depressed than end of term did. there's too much permanence to this moving away business. a year from now my best friend will have been gone for absolute ages and he may not feel like my best friend anymore. a year from now i may take an internship in a place where i know nobody, or i may have found another lab to have a love-hate relationship with. i don't know. all i really want is to be with my friends and enjoy life, but the older i get the less carefree i can be and the more our paths diverge: and the more distant we may get. if i could have frozen last semester, to go back and visit it at my leisure, i would spend all my time in those last few weeks of insanity before my best friends had to go behave like real people.

holding out

it's so much easier to give in to depression in college than either high school or the real world. nobody checks on you to make sure you go to classes and you don't need to call in sick when you don't want to get out of bed. and it's not infrequent for people to spend days holed up in their bedrooms if they're working or, as is more likely, working their way through all the past seasons of heroes before the next one premieres. all you need is a laptop and a hot pot and/or microwave, and it isn't imperative that you surface for three days. people don't really worry about you if you disappear for a while, they'll just assume that you're busy.
i really hope i don't start doing that.

birthday weekend

you know how you who your friends are? the people who fly up from florida and/or drive 500 miles one way to spend less than two days in boston for your birthday. and who think that a copy of the american bartenders' handbook is a good birthday present.
this weekend has been seriously epically amazing. dinner with 30 friends being seriously rambunctious at vinny t's; wandering out to a bar in the pouring rain; blowing things up in the microwave because wikipedia said it was a good idea; a zillion other things that i can't remember...
birthdays are awesome. i have the best friends ever.

disclosures

i think i'm beginning to understand why you should never tell people who know you that you have a blog.
i know too many people who judge, too many people who can't keep their mouths shut, too many people who are the sort to talk to me about what i write while in the company of others. and now i haven't posted properly in a while, because what's on my mind involves certain people that a good chunk of people know: and while i'd love to just vent it all out like i need to, i don't really feel like subjecting them and their lives to inordinate scrutiny. so i'm once again reduced to dumping my woes on friends while this blog languishes and, in all probability, has an emotional crisis due to an inability to fulfill its intended purpose.
once my life starts behaving normally again and i go back to having regular arguments with people, all will be well and good. until then, here's something happy and fun to amuse yourselves with.

carcinogens

i have this bad habit of working with toxic chemicals.
any kind of glue you can use on a model airplane is bad for you, and of course i never remembered to open the windows when i was building mine.
rubber cement is a lot of fun to play with, never mind that you shouldn't inhale it at all.
two summers ago i volunteered in the pathology department of a local hospital and spent three days a week in the close company of an insane amount of formaldehyde.
now i'm spending my summer in a lab where i deal with toluene and acetone on a regular basis. and it turns out acetone soaks through nitrile gloves. and both make me nauseous.
i worry about myself sometimes, just a little bit.

what's in a name?

i was never the sort of person who liked my name. too many people could neither spell it nor pronounce it, so i did what any rational person would do: changed it. this has been going on since i was about five, with each nickname falling into disuse after i got tired of it or fell out of the circle where it was used.
a girl i knew in middle school just wrote on my wall and used my old nickname. and it took me a second to figure out who the hell she was talking about until i remembered.
i don't even remember who i was in middle school, but somehow that name takes me back.

are guilt trips the best way to travel?

i don't know if i feel any better for having said what i did tonight. my friends back in new york miss me, but are never around when i visit. and the sad thing is, they're the only people i come back to see. they're the only people from high school that i'm at all inclined to make time for, because they're the only ones who ever really loved me.
the memories aren't all bad, but enough of them are. enough that i feel ridiculously alienated when i visit. so many people are so fake to me. they hug me, they tell me they miss me, they say we should hang out; and yet when i look at them all i see looking back at me is the girl who cried herself to sleep every night for months, the daughter my parents almost lost, the girl who was ever so lonely for ever so long. and i can't quite ever forgive them.
there are a select five people whom i am so blessed to have known, not least because each of them did their part to keep me on this earth a while longer without ever knowing it. i miss my besties so much, and i'm so sorry you feel that i've abandoned you. i don't know when i'll be able to say all this to you in person, but if you find me here know that this is for you.

i feel awkward sometimes

i feel like i'm becoming unbearably awkward and shallow. and i can't do anything about it, because i really want to go buy new makeup and there's nothing i can do to change that.
and to top it off, people keep asking me what i want for my birthday and i have no freaking clue. if i tell you, then you'll go buy what i tell you to get, and that's no fun. i like surprises.

storms

watching a thunderstorm from a park on the river is fucking epic. especially when you know the rain is coming and you just don't want to go inside.

standing by in silence

"in the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
~martin luther king, jr

will we watch the fires come closer and closer until they consume us all? the whole world seems to be balanced on the edge of a knife, and as the tensions in iran escalate it looks almost as though the end of the world really is coming.
it is terrifying to watch days like these unfold, but my own inaction is more frustrating than anything else. if we can do nothing more, we can at least pray, regardless of our own personal beliefs.

what it means to be a woman

as women growing up in the US, we often underappreciate the freedoms we are given. we forget what it is to have a real passion for what we believe in, what it means to fight for what we want instead of passively. but if we intend to change the world, we cannot allow ourselves the luxury of ambivalence. women the world over are willing to die for what they believe, and even if we have no need to, it is the way we should live our lives. we will one day have daughters. they should not have to die like her, no matter where they are.

what happens when you spend saturday night at an orchestra concert

• you fall in love with saint-saens all over again
• you rediscover an ambivalence towards violin concerti
  
• you decide the second movement of beethoven 5 would make an epic wedding recessional and it distracts you for the rest of the night
• until you listen to ravel's gaspard de la nuit, at which point you wish you actually played piano
• and you regret not having time to play in the symphony orchestra
  
• and then you text all your wind ensemble friends from high school because you miss them a lot
• but you go download recordings of your senior concert and feel a little bit better
• and then you remember that you also have super awesome musician friends up in boston and feel better still
  

an angry rant about beer

beer should be feminized as far as possible. clearly because i have a uterus i am not to drink real beer, but i am also not allowed to drink cocktails if i want them, because they are too stereotypically girly. the only way i am drinking beer from a stemmed glass is if it's meant to be there in the first place, like a belgian. NO FUCKING WAY will i let anyone rape my alcohol by making it girly.
i have guy friends who are girlier than i am when it comes to drinking. somehow we don't judge men who like cosmos, but god forbid a woman drink *gasp* a proper martini and not a floral beer in a stemmed glass! she isn't drinking beer! she must be shown that beer is okay to drink if you're female! let's take away her whiskey and her gin & tonics, because mixed drinks are so feminine!
can you tell that alcohol-related stereotypes make me angry?

feeding the soul

"i have an inward treasure, born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld: or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give."
~jane eyre

we all do. the purpose of the soul is not to go somewhere after we die, but to keep us alive when nothing else will.
feed your soul as you would feed your body; that is to say, do not fill yourself emotionally, mentally, or spiritually with garbage. believe the good that people tell you, not the bad; and love both yourself and others.

dear parents

the right to life

pro-life
the belief in the sanctity of human life
a child should not be brought into the world if it will have no life fit for a human being: a future of abuse, a painful disability that will result in its death anyway, the prospect of being bounced around an abusive system if put up for adoption.
if in giving birth, the mother's own life is endangered, both lives are at stake since the mother may not survive to bring up her child.
honor killings happen even in supposedly "civilized" countries. if an abortion can prevent a family from killing a daughter or a niece, where is the debate? surely it's better to save one life than neither.

pro-choice
the belief in a woman's right to choose what is best for her own life
many women are not ready to have children.
in some cases, they're university or graduate students on their way to a successful career, maybe even a professorship. a pregnancy can ruin those plans in an instant and she may never fulfill her dreams, choosing instead to have a shotgun wedding and become a stay-at-home mom, or to be a single mother who may not be able to continue and finish her education until it's too late. granted, there are some women who would not resent their children for causing this state of affairs, but there are all too many who would. harboring any sort of resentment in the first place can destroy a family: how much more, then, if it's specifically directed at your child?
and on the other side, we have the underprivileged teenage mother, who doesn't necessarily know how to take care of a baby, and her baby daddy, who assuredly does not. maybe one or both of them come from a broken home and have never lived in a functional family. or maybe he leaves her and she has no job, no way of supporting herself or the baby. what then? is that any sort of way for a child to grow up?

the right to life is not the right to a chance at being alive outside the womb. the right to life is the right to grow up healthy and functional; the right to a life that is as good as, if not better than, the way your parents grew up; the right to actually live.

tony awards (somewhat) liveblog

minor alert. i am not blogging the awards themselves, just my reactions to the whole thing. enjoy the madness.
8:03 OMG PURPLE DRESS karen olivo you are ahhhh gorg
8:04ish OH GOD IT IS BRET MICHAELS MY SOUL DIES
8:07 dolly parton should definitely be falling over. physics fail.
8:12 NEIL PATRICK HARRIS TAKE OFF YOUR CLOTHES your suit: is it leather? it shines much. also, you are hot.
8:15 damn jane fonda looks good. and she's 72. I WANT TO AGE LIKE HER.
8:28 GRATUITIOUS WICKED REFERENCE yeah shrek!
8:29 "and btw" oh neil patrick harris for speaking internet.
8:48 i want that purple dress so much and i must go see west side story
9:06 i suddenly feel the need to go see rock of ages. GRATUITOUS CROTCH SHOT WHAT
9:14 liza minelli is definitely drunk already. what. and you know if they turn the music up on her she will be like DO NOT CUT ME OFF BITCHES
9:18 sound fail. gosh.
9:20 I LOVE HIS VOICE and OMG WHERE DID SHE COME FROM WHAAAT that is not in guys and dolls. my high school is doing guys and dolls this fall.
9:28 WHAT are you wearing? both of you. feathers? a stripey bow? seriously?
9:29 i actually think i might love the bow.
9:32 OMG KAREN OLIVO I LOVE YOU she is bawling and it is adorable
9:51 broadway is dark.
10:03 i want to see god of carnage now.
10:08 good lord. the angry dance out of billy elliot. good lord.
10:16 YEEEE GREEK CHORUS legally blonde looks adorableeeee
10:35 HAIR
10:38 oh cheno =) you are so cute
10:43 this has been such fun, evidently i must do it for every awards show from now on, but i am so done for the night
10:51 OMG THE LITTLE BOYS AHHHH SO CUTE okay i am done for tonight

defcon is destroying my weekend

fuck you, defcon,

• for taking a few awesome people away from me for the entire weekend
• for destroying my chances of going to jp licks with said awesome people tonight
• for making me hella bored whenever it's discussed, because i'm no codemonkey
  
• for making me feel like a needy selfish bitch about it all

what the fuck.

mass media and fear. oh, and stupidity too.

it disturbs me that people can be so credulous of what the media feeds them. that stupid "vaccinations cause autism" scare going around? you'd think teachers would have the sense not to believe everything without checking it first, but that would appear to be the opposite of truth. of course, my high school orchestra director is also apparently a crazy bleeding-heart liberal and only posts media sensationalism on his facebook. he also plays the bagpipes and is an amusing man.
of course, there are other explanations for this too. maybe i'm much more of a skeptic than most people i know: but only the ones from high school. maybe it's the scientific mentality i have. or maybe my standards for the world are also too high. whatever the case may be, there is only one thing i can say that is most definitely truth. the mainstream media (both right and left) needs to have the stupid and the fear-mongering beat out of it. with a big stick.

fear

false
evidence
appearing
real

this is what fear is and i will not live in it.

insomniac

i can hear your bare feet on the kitchen floor
i don't have to have these dreams no more
i found someone just to hold me tight
hold the insomniac all night
~insomniac; billy pilgrim

i went to bed last night and lay awake with my new favorite song stuck in my head. the irony was not lost on me. the virginia gentlemen arranged it beautifully though, so no complaints. though i'm no insomniac, it feels somehow relevant to my life.

i'm no sorority girl

a friend of mine asked me earlier today whether i would ever consider joining a sorority, then asked me for my reasons when i told him i never would.
for the most part, i don't like being around women. we're taught from a very early age that we need to conform as closely as possible to a certain ideal: the face we need to project, the body we should have, and the personality we should express. we're also told to manipulate men and tear down other women in order to get ahead and be "independent," yet society is constantly telling us that we need a man constantly in our lives so that we can be complete.
and women buy into this nonsense, to the point where we're bitchy and catty and will destroy others at the drop of a hat if there's even the slightest sign that it may benefit us somehow.
granted, there are women who don't behave like this and are actually decent human beings, but most definitely not enough.

achieving perfection

"Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."
philippians 8:12-14

judgements

people are ridiculous and care way too much about what other people think of them. a wall post from one friend of mine to another popped up in my feed literally 5 minutes ago, and being the stalker i am, i read it. nothing particularly sketchy (badly spelled though) and halfway through the post i see "for ppl reading this im not lesbo" and it made me go WTF?! like for real. i have sketchy wall-to-walls with my girls all the time and i feel no need to clarify whether or not i'm straight. and just the way it was written made me go "well, what do you think is so bad/wrong about being a lesbian that you feel the need to clarify to people that you aren't one?" it's not illegal, and it's nobody else's business. and if you think your friends are judging you and going to hate you because of your sexual orientation, then maybe you should re-evaluate your friendships and the reasons behind them. friends don't judge each other based on little things like that. come to think of it, nobody should judge others based on orientation.

home #1

people keep complaining at me for deciding against spending my summer in new york. and i wish i could tell them all to shut up and get their own lives on track, but that's probably rude.
when i was deciding what i would do this summer, i told my parents quite plainly that coming back to long island was the last thing i wanted to do, and that i'd only do it if i couldn't find a research position up here. and you know what? they were completely okay with it and understood exactly where i was coming from. unfortunately, most of the other people i know are behaving rather selfishly about the whole thing. i will be doing what i want to do - working in lab, flying kites, and spending time with awesome people - and if people really cared about me they'd understand that.
home is not where you grew up. home is not the place where you sleep every night. home is where you feel you belong. and for me, that's here.

straight a's

i could totally get straight A's here if i could get bored enough. unfortunately, the state of my room often means that i'll default to cleaning it instead of working if i really have nothing else to do. this is probably why i stopped working in here...

the wee hours of the morning

why do people think that it's perfectly all right for them to call me at 330 am simply because i'm now their go-to person for relationship questions? i understand that some things are important, but "can you come to the movies with me friday?" could absolutely have waited till an hour when both the sun and i are generally up. especially on a night that i'm actually sleeping. thank goodness the txt at 43o didn't wake me >.<

surprises

came home this evening and found these on my desk =) i love surprises

evolution

The Matthews/Tancredo Mutual Ignorance Session
i don't know what to say about this. i'm a creationist, in biological engineering, at MIT. over the past few years, i've found it increasingly difficult to understand why a solid comprehension of science seems to automatically negate most people's faith in God. as for me, the more i learn the more i am convinced that it could not have happened by chance.
i don't object to the existence of a theory of evolution. the beliefs that other people hold don't hurt me, and for the most part i go about my life not caring about them.
what i do object to, though, is the way creationists are portrayed by evolutionists. we're constantly all lumped together as pseudoscientists, the religious right, "those people," fundies, all sorts of disparaging terms that imply that we're stuck in the Middle Ages. i realize that a disproportionately large amount of creationists lack a formal scientific background and/or come from religious homes. but religion does not imply ignorance.
i fail to see why evolutionists cannot respect creationists. our beliefs are not such that we reject science out of hand; we simply believe in a Creator who designed that which science studies.

open letters =)

you make me mute with surprise and delight
you and your adorable singing and awkward choreographed-on-the spot dancing
frustratingly i have no words for you
beyond that i am gloriously happy with you

i write open letters because i can't express myself sufficiently any other way. absurdly happy? check. want the world to know it? check. on the other hand, take your butt out of my face? yes please.

cats and the internet

people need to stop creating blogs and/or twitter accounts for their pets. it is not cute. it is stupid and makes the rest of the universe want to vom. same goes for dressing your pets in doll clothes. IMMATURE. obviously you care not for your pet's sanity. also, it means that you are well on your way to being a crazy cat lady. stop talking about your cat. nobody cares what you think he's thinking. what he is in actuality always thinking (or at least what i would be thinking, if i were unlucky enough to be your cat) is something along the lines of DEAR SWEET GOD HAVE THIS GIRL COMMITTED BEFORE SHE DRIVES ME INSANE. and then i would swat you in the face. with my claws.

bathroom awkwardness

i will never understand why people feel the need to start conversations in the bathroom. i guess it's something to take your mind off the fact that you REALLY NEED TO PEE and OH GOD THERE IS ONLY ONE STALL AND FOUR PEOPLE AHEAD OF ME but seriously it can be so awkward. there are two kinds of awkward bathroom conversations.
1) people you once met, but as luck would have it, you do not speak to and thus cannot remember their names.
actually, this one happens outside of bathrooms a lot too. it's just that in a bathroom you cannot make some excuse and get away politely. and of course they remember things about you that you told them, but you have no clue who they are so you're left faking your way through and hoping that they don't realize that they look exactly like four other generic tiny brown chicks that you met last week and you don't know which one they are.
2) people you don't know at all and have never spoken to, but who also know things about you.
this girl auditioned for my a cappella group this winter and we didn't take her, mostly because we weren't looking for girls at the time. she's since become a really big fan and comes to all our concerts. guess who i ran into in the bathroom today. super awks.
so basically if you run into people you know peripherally in the bathroom, do them a favor and don't start a conversation. most likely they just need to pee.

fall term

yay!
made up my schedule for next fall: taking 5 pset classes and possibly choir, and somehow the year doesn't look like it'll suck!
this is exciting!
also one of my pset classes is harmony and counterpoint =) and i should really take choir to get out of sight-singing lab. depends on next term's repertoire...

confusion

it is so hard to tell people you care about that they've hurt you. especially when their knowing it would make life better for both of you. do not understand.

now with lower expectations

so done expecting the world not to let me down. semiformal and my boyfriend's orchestra concert are the same night, same time. can't go to semi because the boyfriend is playing & i have no one else to go with in any case. and like any good girlfriend i am going to the concert (would also not miss shostakovich 12 for anything) and now i find out that the friend i intended to go to the concert will not be there after all. why? he's going to semiformal. so as of now i am lowering my expectations. people damn well better be awesome on my birthday, because that is the only date i am allowed to have any standards for at all.

a new light

sitting in my window watching the sunset's light turn soft off the glass and steel apartment building across the field, wondering why it is that the light in which you see things can make them so beautiful all of a sudden when they've been the same old thing for months on end...

awkwardness and hope

hope
dangles on a string
like slow-spinning redemption
winding in, and winding out
the shine of it has caught my eye
~vindicated; dashboard confessional

just out of reach and teasing me is the end of term with a lot of stuff to do between now and then.
and mixing in the personal makes things so much more complex. i have never felt so awkward here as the past two days have made me feel and it is not pleasant.

the tower

i need not to need
i've always been the tower
but now i feel like i'm a flower
trying to bloom in snow
~the tower, vienna teng

is there a way at all to keep yourself from needing to need? when you've been the one needed by others for years you need someone to lean on yourself and the longer you go without that the more you need it. and then you find it and suddenly you're stuck and you can't be without anymore. where is the happy medium?

there is always hope

by the elusive british artist Bansky

oddly enough, what caught my eye was not the little girl losing her balloon, but the message chalked on the stairs. i don't know how i feel about this concept of hope. maybe i should paint this on my wall next year. i think it would help some. paint shopping, here i come!

stupidity =/

do you catch your breath
when i look at you?

please say yes?

opinionated?

people are obnoxious. if you are going to give people your opinions, you must be willing to have them rejected. if you're not adult enough to handle hearing things you may not like from people that you're friendly with, then you're in no shape to function in the real world. this is a problem when you're almost 20. grow the fuck up.

a difficult proposition

one foot in front of the other is harder than it sounds. especially when by 1030 am monday morning your week is already awful and just going to get worse. and when you wake up from a full night's sleep after the weekend and realize you're already running on empty and can't see how you'll make it to the weekend.
this school breaks you, one way or another.

anna molly

i have somehow fallen in love with this song. i think a cappella has somehow expanded what i listen to, because i would never have considered listening to incubus in high school. don't know why.
but the MIT Logarhythms covered anna molly on their most recent cd (Give Us Back Our Spyplane) and it's better than the original. both are good, but it's better a cappella. and i am in love.
it's intense and painful. a song for listening to in the rain.

self-respect

is it possible to be an attention-whore and still respect yourself?
i somehow think it isn't. if you need the attention to convince yourself that you're "worth something," than you obviously don't respect yourself and should probably go see a therapist about it. been there, done that.
if you just want the attention and don't care how you get it, then no, you don't respect your own image at all, and that is the same as self-respect. if you publicize yourself in such a manner that the entire student body sees you as a slut, you have no right to complain about it. suck it up and deal.

explaining cruelty

i want to be wanted. and have the privilege of not fulfilling someone else's wish. that's all. it was done to me, and i want to do it to someone else. that's all.
apparently my last post was disturbing. i am no psycho bitch. believe me, if i were i wouldn't blog about it.

cruelty to animals?

i want someone to fall in love with me, to want me and fawn over me, to be absurdly jealous of all my other boys, to sit at my feet and dance on a string for me. and then i want to walk away and watch his pain before i go back to my boy.
it's my turn to hurt someone.

like a candle in a hurricane

the end of last semester wasn't anything like this is now. even after dropping a class i feel like i have so much falling on me, and there is so much riding on this term's grades that words can't even describe what's going on in my head. it's frightening, because i have so many people who care about me and yet i don't seem to be able to go to anyone no matter how much i know i need to. all i have to keep me going is this coming summer and the thought of the classes that i won't have and the money i'll be making and the stress that won't be hanging over me like a big black cloud biding its time before it opens up and rains on me
and yet i don't understand it, because i know i have more than that. i know i have people who love me and will take care of me if i ask, but somehow i can't bring myself to ask so much of them when they're already so busy with their own worries. it feels like i'm falling back into high school depression simply by not asking for help, but i would rather try and cope on my own because i know i've done it before. and re-reading this, i feel like i am being an idiot, but there is nothing i can do about that.

anonymity and respect

when you are a blogger, it is mostly a given that you post about almost everything that goes on in your life. nonetheless, if you are in a relationship it is unfair to assume that your significant other has given you permission to discuss your relationship on the internet. even if you name no names, there will be people who read your blog who also know who you're dating. the anonymity of the internet does not necessarily prevent damage to a relationship if what you're posting is too personal to discuss even with close friends. whether or not you care about exposing your own private thoughts online, it is a measure of respect for your SO to keep theirs completely private. if you don't have that respect for them, you should not be dating them.

boondock saints

"how far are we gonna take this?
the question is not how far.
the question is
do you possess the constitution,
the depth of faith
to go as far as is needed?"

i have a reasonable amount of faith. not as much as i could have, but certainly not so little that hearing these words does not affect me.

and so i pray that one day i might find the fire that consumes all obstacles and drives those who are fortunate enough to possess it in all that they do.

kissing your cares goodbye

the world could not possibly be more awesome today.
i've dropped physics because my comprehension of the class never really recovered from those two weeks of deadness.
this droppage won't negatively impact the rest of my undergrad. and it'll make my grades awesome for the rest of the semester. yay having a decent GPA!
declared my major today (or rather, my undeclared-ness because it's not possible to declare bioengineering until sophomore year). yay, i'm a real person now!
oh wait, the world could be more awesome. it could be properly warm out. and sunny. but it's not raining!

craving drama?

do we all feel the need for drama and angst in our lives? i've had two (or three, i can't count) unpleasant angst-fest nights in the past six. and it's the stupidest thing, because except for that two-week span of death by flu, my personal life has been pretty enjoyable since december. and yet somehow i've become even more neurotic than i was before and my subconscious seems to be maufacturing stress about absolutely everything. especially my relationship with my boyfriend. it's like my brain is telling me that things are going too well with him and so there obviously has to be something, somewhere, for me to worry about. is this (albeit mild) paranoia normal at all?

hell of a good man

it takes a hell of a good man
to be better than no man at all
~hell of a good man (blues song)

so true. so damn true. single and lonely are not the same thing. it's possible to enjoy not having a man; being obligated to nobody but yourself, not hurting anyone but yourself, taking care of nobody but yourself, the list goes on and on. and after all, almost good enough isn't good enough. sometimes you need time off from relationships to realize how much you yourself are worth. there's no need to settle for less just to have someone. hold out for special, not average. you deserve it.

attainable goals

i want to be happy like a bird with a french fry.
such a simple goal, to be pleased with little things instead of worrying about the whole world.
that is what i really want.

summer research?

O. M. G.
i've been looking for summer research positions (and when i say i've been looking, i mean i started sending emails last night and sent one out before i got distracted by the internet). nonetheless, the one i sent last night is super-important, because the lab does EXACTLY what got me interested in biological engineering in the first place. guess what's sitting in my inbox when i wake up? there might be a spot open for me for this summer!
i am honestly so excited it is not even funny. i think i might be a huge dork.

absence : love :: wind : fire

absence intensifies real love in the same way that the wind will cause a forest fire to grow.
and skype still qualifies as an absence.
i miss my boyfriend and i am trying to go the week of spring break without going insane on days that we don't get to talk. this is difficult. but the learning, it happens.
loving someone is allowing them to cause you the pain of missing them.

passions

i sometimes wonder if i've chosen the right major. they tell you to choose something you're passionate about, something that'll make you happy to go to work, but they never tell you what to do when you have one but not the other.
music is what i do. it's always been a part of my life, but in the past less-than-a-year it's become more so than it used to be. and last week in rehearsal i found a part of me that gets so incredibly fired up by what i do that it seems to tap into something inside that i never knew i had and yes, i become an incoherent little ball of energy, so much so that i can't help but want to share it with everyone around me.
but i don't feel that for anything else. i'm not including interpersonal relationships in that "anything else", because i think they are an entirely different sort of thing and need to be handled exquisitely carefully. but bioengineering? i'm fascinated by it, yes, but i can't find that passion. and i don't know whether i used to have it and it's just been submerged by my general indifference towards my classes, or whether i genuinely don't have it at all. and that makes me afraid, because while i don't want to be a starving artist (even for the sake of doing something i genuinely love), neither do i want to wake up some morning thirty years from now and realize that i should have been a music major after all.
i just want to find that fire and be able to use it towards everything in my life. i feel like i would be so much better at everything if i could.

the new facebook

people need to shut up about how much they hate the new facebook. yes, it's imitating twitter, which annoys me in and of itself. yes, it updates you on the mindlessly insignificant things that people do on facebook. no, i don't care what groups people join or what they post, but i am adult enough to ignore that and just get on with my life. and if you bothered to look at the rest of the site before making your judgements and filling my feed with stupidity, you would have seen that only the homepage has changed significantly. do i like it? i think i'm ambivalent. but just like you got used to it the last time facebook changed, you can suck it up and get used to it again. now please, get lives.

worry

yes okay i know i am ridiculously screwed up but why do people feel the need to worry about me? worry about your own damn lives! it just makes me feel worse to know that i'm on your mind and that you don't think i'm okay. i have less than a week till spring break and i am handling things as well as i possibly can. stop distracting me from it by saying you're worried because I ALREADY KNOW YOU ARE SO AM I GODDAMNIT I CANNOT HELP THE SHIT THAT IS GOING ON IN MY LIFE.
it feels better to get that out. but seriously, people need to stop worrying about me. it bothers me.

halo

everywhere i'm looking now
i'm surrounded by your embrace
baby i can see your halo
you know you're my saving grace
halo~ beyonce

this is what it feels like to be loved in spite of your failings. to know that yeah, i may be crazy messed up, but there's at least one person out there who wouldn't want me any other way. it makes life feel better somehow.

simple wishes

all i want right now is a day where nothing happens that makes me want to cry. is that too much to ask?

stuck on a rollercoaster

why is it that life ping-pongs between being really awesome and sucking really absurdly hard?
it would be more okay if it happened day-by-day, but hourly? i don't understand at all why it has to happen like this; whether the universe is messing with me or if it's me having mood swings or what is going on. all this stress i suppose is just getting to me and there doesn't seem to be any way i can get it to go away! even spring break doesn't look like much of a reprieve...

chill.

wow. people can be so awesome.
so the world decided to SUCK this morning, for a variety of reasons that are unfortunately almost all related to classes. and it was so depressing and i was soooo frazzled, to the point that my calc test almost gave me a panic attack. yup, fun.
BUT the test was actually okay it turns out. and i had lunch with awesome people afterwards, and seriously just hanging out with them and not worrying about life made things so much better. and it's awesome to be proposed to by a friend even when you know he's joking.
AND my advisor is such an awesome woman. dropped by her office later today & we basically hung out for an hour. and we talked about making the world a better place one person at a time and it completely restored my faith in the world.
so basically what i am trying to say is that when you're stressed out, take some time out to chill. eat chips, watch stupid videos on youtube, whatever you do when you're not working. it's so much healthier than you could imagine.

bless the broken road

every long-lost dream
led me to where you are
others who broke my heart
they were like northern stars
pointing me on my way
into your loving arms
this much i know is true
that God blessed the broken road
that led me straight to you

i totally just fell in love with this song. it makes me feel so zen about life in general. like, it sucks sometimes, but sometimes it puts you in a really awesome place and you have to stop and wonder "would i be here now if everything had been perfect way back when?" and you know what? a lot of the time the answer is no. and i think it's much more difficult to be bitter about the past when you look at the big picture.

boston, why do you suck?

specifically this whole ADD weather thing we have going on. tis ridiculous. like yesterday it was 60 degrees out and it was beautiful and i was running around in a tank top. today? there is slush coming out of the sky. not rain, not snow, slush. like seriously boston? what is your problem?

watchmen

the default state of humanity is savagery. we are innately selfish, disorderly beings with little, if any, regard for anyone other than ourselves. and all of mankind's achievements have been built on the bodies of others, both literally and figuratively speaking. there is much to despair of in our society, and unfortunately we seem to be reverting to the me-first mindset now. am i afraid for the future? absolutely. we keep finding more efficient and detached ways to kill each other, as though it will protect us from death. salvation does not come from within.

god have mercy on us all.

human existence

will i lose my dignity
will someone care?
will i wake tomorrow
from this nightmare?

i was watching rent tonight for the millionth time. and this song never fails to make me cry. and i always wondered why, until it hit me tonight. this song is the anthem of human existence. no matter what goes on in your life, the ultimate question most people seem to ask is not 'when will this crap end?' they say instead 'is there somebody, anybody, who will care enough to talk to me, to listen, enough to just be here for me?' they ask 'will this destroy who i am? will it consume me into nothingness? am i wasting my time? will anyone at all hear me?'

and quite often, nobody does. that's not the way things should be. as people we are placed on this planet not to indulge ourselves, but to make it a better place. that friend of yours with the self-esteem issues? the girl who's always alone at lunch? don't pass them by. be there when they need you. you could change a life.

simplicity?

all you need to make life seem okay is something to look forward to.

like instead of how i'm going to get owned by my physics test tomorrow, i can think about how there'll be a new xkcd up in the morning. or how i have no bio homework due friday so i can effectively start my weekend a day early! or how i could get marshmallow peeps again!

gosh. simple things for simple minds?

frat boys!

you know how awesome it feels when one of your friends tells you he might be in love with you?

yeah, neither did i until yesterday. seriously, i love frat boys. or at least this particular frat, because the guys are awesomely cool (yes, it helps that it's my boyfriend's frat, but that's not actually the main reason i love them), the food is good, and they have a hamster. a freaking HAMSTER. and she is adorbs. and tickles when she walks on your arm =).

so i eventually got out of bed at 4 yesterday afternoon. had dinner at the frat, studied for bio, tried to study for physics, and then proceeded to have really weird conversations. about roombas and sodium hydroxide and gun licenses. and mice. and stuff. and despite the fact that i probably didn't actually get much done, yesterday felt so good. such a nice little break from the insanity that is MIT, actual human interactions, basically a lot of good stuff.

i'm feeling better about life now. also, my bio test was the easy.

the little things in life

why is it that little things can make such a difference in life?

last night was interesting, and a whole lot of fun for the most part, and i didn't go to bed till nearly 5 this morning. i finally got out of bed at 4 this afternoon and i'm actually making an effort to be productive. and i ran into some of my awesome friends when i went to get lunch/dinner/whatever you call it and was forcibly reminded of why life doesn't suck.

i guess life can't be that bad when you've got people who think you're awesome despite all evidence to the contrary. or when you have marshmallow peeps. yellow bunnies.

life sucks. then you die.

what the fuck. the world is just throwing more shit at me it feels like all the time. but really what i want to know is how i got into this school. like seriously am i just too dumb to realize that i should quit when i'm trying to do the impossible?

there is only one thing in my life that has not utterly gone to shit. and that is my relationship with my utterly awesome awesome boyfriend, who i expect is slowly but surely realizing that wow, he picked a hella crazy chick this time.

seriously though, i am nothing if not a fixer-upper. i don't handle stress well, and i am a better liar than i should be. as in, people think im normal. and smart. i am most likely neither of the two, and definitely not the first. i have bouts of normalcy, yes, but i have periods of i don't even know what to call it - absolute instability? yeah, sounds about right.

but fixer-uppers have potential, yes? what do you call someone who's just so messed up that even she has no idea where she could possibly go in life?  i'm no superwoman like i wish i could be. not even a miss independent. i can't even try to go to sleep tonight despite the fact that i have to be up in seven hours, because i can't handle being alone. my only current security is a block away and probably asleep by now. and who's going to understand what i want to say if i call them anyway?

i feel like i should just tell the world to stop wasting its time on me.

something's gotta give

i feel like i'm going to fail something this semester. i haven't been well enough to go to physics in a week & a half & we have a test monday. i have somehow also been ridiculously set back in calc. which is stupid, because i understand it all.

and i can't afford to fail anything, because if i do i might end up taking an extra semester to earn my degree. because everything i'm currently taking is either a prerequisite for my degree requirements, or i just won't have time in the next few years to re-take it if i fail *coughphysicscough*

and taking an extra semester would be TOTALLY POINTLESS and would be an admission of defeat. i have no idea how i got into this damn school but no way in hell i'd ever admit that it chewed me up and spit me out and i couldn't take it. i can't let it get the better of me: i'll deal with whatever it throws at me, that much i know. what i can't figure out is how i'll handle it and what'll happen to me.

seriously, all i want to do is curl up in bed and cry and not come out for a few days. i wish that would solve my problems.

x's and y's

so i was on facebook today and what popped up in my feed but a notification that my ex is no longer married. turns out he married a mutual guy friend. and to the best of my knowledge they're both straight. this is hella weird. and to my chagrin, also prompted a moment of facebook-stalkage which unfortunately embarassed me quite a bit. made me wonder why i'd dated him. BUT i got a philosophical point out of it.

there are x's and y's in everyone's life. x's are just exes. you dated them, you broke up, you're okay with it. y's come back to haunt you. people have met them and they can't understand why you dated them and then you think about it and realize that YOU don't even know why you dated them and then you say OH MY GOD WHY AM I SO STUPID and then you are IN THE THROES OF AN EMOTIONAL CRISIS and then there's nothing for it but to call an emergency confab with the girls and trade horror stories. and that's why you call them y's: because you don't know why you dated them.

nonetheless, you can be philosophical about a y. especially if they were a high school y, because you rationalize it as a) i was young and stupid or b) well, i got one mistake out of the way safely or c) i'm a better person for it. seriously, you can use "i'm a better person now because of it" to rationalize ANYTHING.

except if, like me, you aren't, and you're just really sadly convinced that your y is a loser and feel kind of bitchily entertained about it. which is just how i am.

i'm back!

viral infection? sure. cleared up by wednesday? not so much.

had a nasty bout of flu last week; today was literally only my second day really out of the building in a week (in my book, spending six hours at medical on wednesday doesn't count as out of bed. not with an IV in the back of your hand anyway.) and i am pooped.

not too tired to blog my latest epiphany, though! my boyfriend's been seriously amazing the past week: picking up meds for me, dropping by to check on me before & after classes, and really i seem to be more of a handful when i'm sick and can't get out of bed than when i'm bouncing around all lively and obnoxious. kid doesn't complain. ever. and i feel weird that he does so much for me (i don't know if i mean actually physically doing stuff, though he does) cuz it just boggles that i can't put my feelings about that into words. i dunno...this is rambling a lot i guess...but like i call him when i need something or if i get freaked about something cuz he's just always solidly there and normal. like when my nose bleeds (like now: yeah parenthetical statements!) i can call him cuz he knows some stuff just weirds me out and bugs me and he's okay with my weirdness and he is a reminder to Chill Out sometimes.

seriously though, my nose is bleeding. and my mac is white. it's time to go.

medical update

medical says there's an 85% chance that i have a viral infection. which should be gone in the next couple of days. which i have most likely already infected people with. which, however, is no longer contagious.

i am now continuing my quest for the perfect burrito.

the universe doesn't totally suck

never mind. the universe is not a totally sucktacular place.

people are awesome enough to randomly make you soup when you get sick and the geese are off killian court .

still got a headache and don't want to work, but medical hopefully will not take too long with me so i can come back and work/go to bed early.

things are sort of evening out.

i hate the universe

i am deathly sick. we are competing on saturday.

i have a calc test on thursday. and crap-tons of work to do.

and i am deathly sick. FML.

national anthems, specifically american

why do performers feel the need to embellish the national anthem? there is a right way to sing it. it's called following what was written and what has been the national anthem for eternity. i am not condemning changing the key: i personally don't think you should sing it where it was written if you can't do it well.

but adding riffs and just doing things to the song that should not be done? unacceptable. follow the damn sheet music. find it on the internet if you don't know how it should go. do you stick riffs into the middle of classic hymns? no. not at all. doing it to the star-spangled banner is unacceptable. YES DAMMIT R&B ARTISTS I AM TALKING TO YOU ALL. STOP COMMITTING MUSICAL CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY.

vienna teng and love, in unequal amounts

sail your sea

meet your storm

all i want

is to be your harbor

~harbor- vienna teng

is this what it means to be in love?

to be always there for someone not because you want to feel needed, just to be there as though it can somehow confer stability when they need it?

to walk life's roads together because you can, because you want to?

wind tunnels what?

what the hell. why did i choose a college with not one, but TWO naturally occurring wind tunnels?

oh the joys of being tiny and light and getting blown away =P.

also, geese on killian court are an abomination. that is all.

lobby 7 > prozac =)

there is something about the combination of music and perfect architecture that is better than prozac. yesterday was an iffy sort of day (i'm really bad at spacing out my work, so i end up doing it all the night before it's due) and we had rehearsal and i really didn't want to go. to cut a long story short, though, we ended up singing in lobby 7. lobby 7 has the best acoustics ever. notes just hang in the air like clouds of golden and beautiful and honestly it made life so much better, if only briefly. music is unbelievable.

why people suck

wow. why is it that when you tell people that things are mandatory they still DON'T FUCKING SHOW UP and they DON'T FUCKING TELL YOU BEFOREHAND and they don't even have passable excuses/apologies?!

this has been a source of frustration for me since about mid-december. people are douchebags. and like i understand that y'all are busy, but if you have legitimate conficts you also know about them beforehand, yes? yes. so EMAIL YOUR DAMN COORDINATORS WHEN YOU KNOW YOU CAN'T MAKE IT!

sorry. i'm one of the co-chairs for an upcoming concert and we're doing intense prep for it and people keep not showing up. and it's the same people always who don't show and don't email either of us chairs and it's just ABSURDLY frustrating. it's probably time to send a bitchy email.

seriously, i was in an awesome mood earlier and then went to a MANDATORY writing session and people STILL didn't show and now i'm just kind of pissed off. but i'm going to play rock band. so it's probably all good in the end.

blink 182 is no big deal

ok people. blink 182 is back. so? BLINK 182 IS NOT THE MESSIAH,  just another band from circa middle school. get over yourselves people, and get real lives. especially y'all who are in college which is CLOSE TO THE REAL WORLD. and for goodness' sake, they weren't even that good. fun to listen to, yes. good musically? not so much. ten years and nobody will actually remember/care what they did. there's a reason you hear so much about dead composers. what they wrote was real music. now get your asinine status updates out of my feed. some of us are actual adults.

brass rat

the 2011's had their ring premiere this weekend. i want my brass rat. really badly. but i have to wait an ENTIRE YEAR for premiere, and then a million more for the actual delivery. one reason it sucks to be a frosh.

PHD comics

Piled Higher and Deeper

i love this strip. absurdly. it is making me afraid of grad school but it is awesome nonetheless. including shakespeare in the strip? a happy for me.

man i'm a dork.

kiki dunst

i was watching spiderman 2 this evening. that scene where mary jane goes running to peter in her wedding dress? and she's all smiley and pretty? i miss the old kirsten dunst. i feel like she's gotten really sad and shlumpy recently and i don't like it...

dear kiki dunst: please dress well and be happy again. we miss the old adorable you. muchly. love, the world.

life = good (or, more randoms)

i have the most adorable bio TA ever. she's tiny and puerto rican. and adorable. honestly, i'm going to all her office hours just to hang out.

realized that the credit limit is actually a good thing, because if it didn't exist i would almost certainly be taking seven classes this semester instead of five. like, four humanities classes instead of two. i am officially a lunatic.

first choir rehearsal of the semester is tonight!

i have a 926-page course reader for my music analysis class. 926 pages of classical scores. the world has exploded in showers of epic and awesome.

in short, life = hella f'n sweet.

first day randoms

i am such a dork. i'm sitting at my computer listening to beethoven's 9th & reading the score along with it.

math TAs have god-awful accents. as if that weren't enough, SO DOES MY PROFESSOR.

i hate being re-taught vectors a million times in one day.

colored chalk makes me absurdly happy.

people need to learn that my having class is a non-negotiable state of affairs. if you want to talk to me, it will not kill you to wait till four like my away message tells you to. stop it.

i'm beginning to think in terms of facebook statuses. evidently i am on the internet way too much. I WILL NOT TWEET. really and truly.

i get such joy out of score reading it is hilarious why am i such a dork?

i like diet coke. it sparkles.

i refuse to make sense anymore.