❝If you want it all, you must be ready to give it all.❞

first time i am on my da in 91 weeks, according to my profile. would like to start again but not sure if i still have it in me. 

Maybe it’s me, the weather, the school, or god knows what else, but I don’t think I’ve been happy. I’m tired of having to sit through hour after hour of incompetence, of boredom, of not being challenged, and of the hypocrisy of this institution. I should think I was happy last saturday, because -even if only for an hour and a half - I started to question fit and happiness. I need to get away, and I’m still clinging, blindly, maybe, to the hope that there’s something out there that’s better for me. I never thought I’d be this disillusioned. I am not happy. I am not happy and this shouldn’t be because I made this choice. Graduation is in a little more than 5 months.

I promise I will get away from being stifled, and from being jested, jeered and mocked by teacher(s) / people around me for my Chinese grades. Is your self-esteem so low that you have to find joy from tearing mine down? It seems I am getting punished and stigmatized because/even though I try/tried.

I found in my phone a long diatribe I wrote on the first day of school this year. Everything still resonates with the same feelings that have a semblance to anger, regret, and maybe even grief. I will write back after graduation, and I will write if I still have feelings for this insanity.

let me tell you - 

18/5

• 8.00 - awkward bonding session where we just sat in separate entities, ate food, and judged everyone
• 12.25 - awesome video during bio but was stoned on the trance music
• mad kanji studying
• 3.20 - late for 3rd lang ; sn thought it was 3.30 and only realized on the way ; i was just late
• almost didn’t get to take the test - 悪い学生！どうして！！どうして！！！NO 3.30 CLASS!
• 3.30 - “okay you can take it from 6.15-7.15.”
• went to the library 
• 3.50 - sr comes and after a lot of phone calls “sensei wants to meet you”
• 3.55 - “クラスに行きたいですか？”　”。。。行きたくないです。”　”じゃあ、今テストをします。” “O GOD”
• 4.00 - traumatizing test
• 5.00 - break. goes down to canteen and find kim/ev/hs :D haven’t seen kim for 2 years, and ev for like 3. :’)
• 5.15 - goes to library to borrow books
• 5.30 - goes to class and find kim/ev/hs are in that class too :D frivolous 3rd lang session - didn’t learn a thing / kept laughing at and talking about weird things / lazed around
• 6.00 - half the class leaves for some concert
• 6.15 - yay!

19/5

• NEVER TRUST GOOGLE MAPS WITH YOUR LIFE AND YOUR SAFETY AND YOUR CHILDREN BROTHERS SISTERS PARENTS. “take xxx bus to xxx location and walk xxx meters” me: “okay.” half an hour later, stranded in the middle of the expressway between advert about “spot anything suspicious” and a suspicious, loitering man.

❝Without hope, life is not worth living.
So you, and you, and you,
you gotta give them hope.❞

she first appeared on the sidewalk of midnight detroit, and ran through the city between the howl of fall and the silence of winter. she sat with her hands crossed over her knees in the rubble and i found her in the splashes of sewage water.

we built this city on peeling paint and titanium, and walk the streets smelling and only smelling of rust and metal. days spent daring each other to walk through that door, walk up those stairs and can you break all nine of those windows, and hanging from unsheathed copper wires. the dimmed lights like capsules of jaundice, diseased with the oil that stained the shattered lamps. standing at the edge of the roof, she pushed me, and  we both landed in trash, headfirst into metal and concrete.

we built this city. but now i return to where we used to run against the wind and only solitary rubber tires lie buried in brick, metal, and dirt. november, creaking hinges, and the northern cry has long gone. in the stillness of the limbo between fall and winter i scratch at the coagulation of dirt, and if i can find even the tiniest bit of that glorious neo-classical ceiling, i promise to tell you the story - 

❝I think about how there are certain people who come into your life, and leave a mark. I don’t mean the usual faint impression: he was cute, she was nice, they made me laugh, I wish I’d known her better, I remember the time she threw up in class. And I don’t just mean that they change you. A lot of people can change you – the first kid who called you a name, the first teacher who said you were smart, the first person who crowned you best friend. It’s the change you remember, the firsts and what they meant, not really the people. Ethan changed me, for instance, but the longer we are apart the more he sort of recedes into the distance as a real person and in his place is a cardboard cutout that says first boyfriend. I’m talking about the ones who, for whatever reason are a part of you as your own soul. Their place in your heart is tender; a bruise of longing, a pulse of unfinished business. My mom was right about that. Just hearing their names pushes and pulls at you in a hundred ways, and when you try to define those hundred ways, describe them even to yourself, words are useless. If you had a lifetime to talk, there would still be things left unsaid.❞

❝To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends. To appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.❞

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

I love every part of this quotation.  When looking ahead to the future and to what you want to do in life you have to think about what you’ve done in the past that felt successful and try and recreate it on a grander scale.  Too often people look only at the monetary gains and not at the deep relations they have made, the people they have helped, or the happiness they have felt.  These are the things we need to focus on and where we need to find worth in life.