Category: writing from college

commencement canceled

Lately, I’ve been watching a lot of commencement speeches. I enjoy watching these speeches because it’s like free commencement without paying all the tuition necessary to attend.

People around me are so sad about not having a ceremony, which got canceled shortly after spring break. But, for me, it’s not really a thought that bothers me. The previous semester, I claimed that I didn’t really have that many attachments to endings. Now that I have something to lose, it still doesn’t feel like a powerful emotion to me.

What is a commencement supposed to represent? It is just walking to receive diplomas followed by an inspirational speech that is supposed to motivate us to change the world, or something. It is a ceremonial conclusion to a saga, a nice bow to wrap up an otherwise pleasant gift.

I am grateful that I was able to attend college. But, in reflection, I find it hard to believe that I genuinely had a good time here. I treat commencement not as a goodbye party at the end of the year but just as a needless celebration to an otherwise strenuous journey. Because, when you are hiking up a particularly difficult mountain, the least you want in the very end is a celebration. Sometimes, I just want things to end and go to sleep.

That’s really what it is like to me. I jokingly say that I have been “mentally checked out since sophomore year,” but there is some semblance of truth in that. It was one of those periods of despair that have made me into a stronger person, which I am thankful for. But the least I want is to relive those moments, or celebrate them for that matter.

The four years of college have the temporal association as being the four years of college. They come in a package. Now that I am at the end of my tenure in college, I am able to evaluate objectively how I have experienced those four years in college. I am at a pretty happy state in my life right now, but those four years were not a happy time. The simple truth was that the vast majority of my college experience was a pretty sad time.

This last bit before graduation… it’s almost like the last two months of a presidency before a change in administration. Whatever history books will write about the last four years have already been determined, so I’m just enjoying the last bit knowing that history has not been kind to interpretation.

Of course, this is quite a fatalistic thing to say, and I no longer subscribe to this frame of thinking in practice. Realistically, I am just trying to enjoy this moment as much as I can, attempting to pursue as many interests and relationships as possible. But, as a product of reflection, I am quite metaphorically done with everything.

I can’t wait for it to be done, so I can move on to the period in my life, unencumbered by the past four years.

what if

What if is such a bad thought to have. I frequently have it.

The past four years of my life have been filled with a lot of what ifs.

Most of the time, I just wonder about all the people I could have dated. But, lately, I have the stupidest thought that is bothering me.

In the summer coming into my junior year, I was between plans. I had received an offer for this impact investing firm in Utah, or I could stay in Philadelphia to do research with a professor at Wharton. The impact investing firm offered me a lot of money, more than I had earned that summer with my three jobs in various capacities, yet I was turned off because it was in Utah. I was afraid of discomfort at the time, so I didn’t take the offer and instead stayed in Philadelphia.

Lately, I’ve been wondering about the life I would have had if I had taken that offer. It is more symbolic more than anything. What if I had a life where I was more embracing of discomfort at an earlier age? It was an opportunity to live in Utah for two and a half months, an opportunity I will never have again for the rest of my life. Yet, at the time, it was just something that I didn’t want.

I have difficulties reconciling my values now with the values I have had in the past. I am the same person, of course, but I am sometimes amazed by how differently I thought about my own life back then. I valued such different things, and it is such a consuming thought to think about how my life could have been different if I value the things that I do now back then.

I think the function of regret is like that. If I progressing through a function f(x) right now, I wonder what it would been like to take f'(x) and retroactively construct a past where I would be able to live through the function that I have right now. But, of course, since time only moves forward, it is quite a useless train of thought.

I am literally working in finance after graduation, but I can’t help but wonder about what if I discovered my love for finance sooner. I wonder if working at this impact investing fund would have helped me do that. And, given the nature of counterfactuals, I guess I will never know. But, I wish I could know. So much of my time as an undergraduate has been just floating from one set of values to the next set of values. I probably still have not solidified into my final set of values, but I wish I could. If I were, I would be able to live without regret.

If I have a defined set of values, then I would be able to stay true to myself without ever having to worry if I am betraying myself. During the summer, I don’t even know if I did stay true to them. There were diverging values that were in conflict with each other; one sought security while the other sought novelty. Now, that I have the clarity of hindsight, I wish I had picked novelty over security. It would have allowed me to become the person that I wanted to be a lot sooner. But, as I reflect on my rationale back then, I question whether I was true to myself.

Given the nature of age, we progress towards a set of values that are exposed through our experiences. I suppose a lot of my values now have been defined by what I perceive as regrets in the past. This is one of those incidents. Maybe I knew that I should have taken my initial offer but chose to do something contrary to my nature. That is also a possibility. I have been known to act against my self-interest frequently. But, in regards to the nature of my internal conflict, I am frustrated that I did not know what I do now back then. I wish I knew more about what I valued, so I could stay true to the life that I wish to have, instead of floundering about and making decisions that may have been the result of faulty justification.

I continue to progress to a perception of what I value. Hopefully, I can reach a defined system of values that address most conflicts in my life, so I won’t have the uncertainty of juggling between different set of values that could possibly results in regret. That is what I do not want: regret. And, if I find these values (or, perhaps more accurately, order the values in a way where I would be able to resolve conflicts between them), then I would finally be able to live without questioning the what ifs in my life.

dartmouth

I just got back from Dartmouth. It was an eventful weekend. I bruised the toenail of my big toe. I showed it to a couple of friends. It was pretty gross.

Lately, I just can’t shake the feeling that I don’t deserve the happiness that I have been able to achieve in the past couple of weeks. There’s such a strong side of me that idealizes the destruction of everything I have achieved. It’s not that happiness is uncomfortable; I just don’t feel like I deserve it. The people in my life deserve better than whatever I offer them. It’s such a consuming thought. It’s so hard for me to convince myself that I have something to offer in other people’s life other than sadness.

I’ve noticed that feelings of numbness are usually triggered by a sense of isolation and alienation. Of course, I frequently feel lonely. But, it isn’t until I get reminded of that fact do I feel the numbness that accompanies it. It is usually time by myself, where I am able to think, that triggers this type of thinking. Spending eight hours in a car driving to New Hampshire does wonders for my mental health. Spending 10 minutes each way on the Dartmouth Skiway (owned, not surprisingly, by Dartmouth) ski lift also doesn’t help.

I didn’t get into Dartmouth. But, if I did, and I ended up going, I don’t think I would be happy there. I don’t think I would have been happy at any college that I went to given the person I was when I first entered college. But, especially not Dartmouth.

I dislike exclusivity, which comprises a large portion of my dislike towards Penn. But, from my impression, Dartmouth doesn’t even hide the fact that its campus is very exclusive. It was the last Ivy League school to admit women. And, from what I gathered from some conversations with a couple of Dartmouth students, this attitude of reluctance to embrace change hasn’t changed much. It seems so evident in the architecture itself that it is just feeding trough where the feed of countless mostly elite American boarding schools are poured into. The vibe, from what I’ve seen, is very similar to that of Princeton. If I re-read This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald, I would imagine this school to perfectly fit the “country club” vibe he had described.

There’s some equivalency between exclusivity and loneliness, I would imagine. If we’re talking evolutionary, the function of loneliness is to prevent humans from being separated from their group. Naturally, I would think that exposure to exclusion would invite a similar feeling of loneliness. And, from what I observed, the social life can be stratified into people who have access to the community that would allow them not to feel lonely, and people who do not have access to this community. Knowing myself, I would have been stratified into the people who would never build a community there. It would be quite a similar progression to my experiences here at Penn, I suppose. But, a lot worse, I would imagine.

It wasn’t the frozen eggs (which cracked when hard-boiled) that made an impression on me during the weekend. It wasn’t the fire alarm that we set off after accidentally opening a fire door or my snot freezing in my nose. Amidst the quaint architecture in the secluded Hanover town, all I could feel were the barriers that seem to serve as the fabric of entry. Despite the complete difference in lifestyle, I can’t imagine that this would have been a life I would have wanted.

two gates

Two weeks ago, a friend I was hooking up with wanted to dtr, and I told her that I thought we were “just friends.” She got extremely angry and sent me paragraphs upon paragraphs of texts telling me how I have destroyed her life and demolished her notion of love. A week later, I wanted to dtr with another friend I was hooking up with, and she said she wanted to be “just friends.” How ironic.

It’s quite interesting. If anything, I think being an adult just means that all of your friendships become more sexual. The line between friendship and romance becomes more blurred, and it leaves a lot more room for emotional chaos. Both friendship and romance, of course, are forms of love, and sex is only one medium that separates them. Nowadays, however, it feels that sex has become more and more isolated from the intense feelings of romantic love that supposedly surround it. Sex is an act, and romantic love is a complicated concoction between a feeling, an experience, and a phenomenon.

I think a good test of whether you actually like someone romantically or not is the oral test. The question: Am I going down on this person because I want to have sex with them, or do I actually just want them to feel good? It’s a pretty good test, in my opinion. Another test is the post-orgasm test. The question: Do I still want to touch this person after I orgasm? It also works pretty well, in my opinion.

The more I grow up, the more convinced I become that the only difference between friends and significant others is sexual compatibility. The train of thought goes as follows:

Am I attracted to this person?

If yes,

Have I had sex with this person?

If yes,

Did I think the sex was good?

If yes,

Did they think the sex was good?

If yes, then you have the possibility of a relationship.

It’s a simple decision tree. I could use solver in Excel if I really wanted to.

Given cultural lags in generations, we tend to borrow a lot from Victorian norms to explain things that our culture hasn’t had time to disseminate, and I think the association between sex and romance carries an interesting connotation at this point in time.

Before contemporary post-Victorian sexual liberation, the desire for sex an romance would be simultaneously pursued. There would only be one gate of attraction, and that gate would encompass both sex and romance. But, given the increasing availability of sex, there are now two gates: sex and romance. Sexual attraction does not imply romantic attraction, and romantic attraction does not imply sexual attraction. Although, I have never heard of an instance of romantic attraction not implying sexual attraction.

There is a lot about Asian male subject-identity formation that I could go into, but I feel like it is especially prevalent that Asian males use sexual prowess as a mechanism to secure sexual legitimacy in a culture that otherwise feminizes Asian identity and emasculates Asian males. This results in an active search for sex, which is associated with masculinity, and disregard for romance, which is associated with feminity, regardless whether these associations are actually accurate or not.

I think the term “fuckboy” is a very intriguing product of contemporary culture because it captures the evidence of sexual attraction without romantic attraction. I also think this term is overused and capture a new notion of romantic entitlement running parallel to sexual entitlement.

Given the rising prevalence of incels, mostly through displays of abhorrent violence, there is a lot of discourse surrounding the association between male identity and sexual entitlement as a product of patriarchal norms. And, to a very large extent, I think there’s a lot in our culture that reflects an aesthetic okay-ness in men pursuing sex. But, I think there is also a lot of lacking discourse on the legitimacy of a sexual relationship without a romantic relationship, which reflects some of my experiences.

The first girl I had sex with wasn’t attracted to me romantically. It was pretty sad for a time, but I got over it. In the process of “getting over” her, I have come to understand the distinct division between sex and romance, and I tend to conceptualize it in two gates.

Although I was attractive enough to her sexually to warrant sex, I was not attractive enough to her romantically to warrant a relationship. I was able to pass through the first gate, but I was not able to pass through the second gate. It was also my first time having sex, so the sex was probably not that great either. But, that’s how I thought about it: you can only enter a relationship with sufficient sexual compatibility and romantic attraction.

Likewise, there have been a lot of girls I have been attracted to sexually but not romantically. Some of those girls with whom I was hooking up wanted to be more than just hookups. But, since I was not romantically attracted to them, I tried to be honest and told them that I did not want to be in a relationship with them. This, as you can imagine, has resulted in many girls accusing me of being a “fuckboy” and wanting to stop being friends with me.

I would imagine there is a lot about society that belittles women into being sexual products of their bodies, and I’m sure to a certain extent I am speaking from a place of privilege that does not understand this insecurity. But, regardless, I still think it is interesting how romance has been commodified just as sex has into a means of achieving an antiquated Victorian pairing of sex and romance.

montreal

I came to Montreal this Friday morning on an overnight Greyhound bus that stopped at New York and Albany. The layover at Port Authority was around three hours. I don’t even know the name of the station at Albany; it was probably “Albany Station” or something like that. I came to see Ghostly Kisses perform and my friend who was studying at McGill.

I was sitting next to an obese man for my first two hours of the bus. He was sitting on my left, and the window was on my right. From the beginning, I noticed that it was very hot. There weren’t any dividers between the seats, so a lot of his body spilled into my seat. I tried to be empathetic because I could imagine that isn’t very pleasant for him either. He had his arms folded, and he wasn’t manspreading or anything, and I could tell that he was trying to occupy as little space as possible. It was a thoughtful gesture. But, regardless of his efforts, it was still incredibly hot, and I was still very uncomfortably pressed up against the window. I would imagine that it wasn’t a pleasant experience for either of us.

Around two hours in, my claustrophobia got the best of me. I noticed my heart rate increasing and my breathing quickening. There was the gnawing sensation that emerged from my stomach and carried on to the rest of my body. I gathered my stuff and told him that I was going to search for another seat. He let out a disconsolate “Oh” and let me out. I found another seat quickly after in the row in front of me.

I’ve been thinking about whether I should feel bad about the entire situation, and I still don’t know what I should feel about it. On one hand, it was an overnight bus, and I couldn’t possibly fall asleep with the sheer heat that his body emanated. It was only after I left my old seat did I could feel the comfort of the room temperature air against my legs. It was an instance that reminded me of how little we can appreciate things around us until it is taken away. Things like… ventilation, and space. But, on the contrary, how can we notice the presence of things until only we can feel the void of what once was is present?

—

It was snowing all day today. On my way from the station to my friend’s house, I encountered a couple skiing on the sidewalk to their destination. It was quite a jarring sight, although I suppose I should’ve expected it. There were some houses I passed that had a metal staircase going directly to the second floor. It was very pretty, especially when the same staircase had been pelted with a foot of snow.

Despite the cold, I did not feel sad, particularly. It was such a novel environment with so much to take in. There were some distracting parts like the snow seeping into my shoes after I step on a particularly large pile of snow. I sometimes tried to push the snow back out with my fingers, but that just ended with the snow seeping deeper into my shoe. When it came to that, all I could do was to wait for the snow to melt inside my shoe. As I was walking the wind also pelted the snow into my face like a torrent of cold salt crystals. I would taste the snow, and it would not taste like salt.

I am currently taking a painting class right now, which helps me to better perceive the world boiled down to its fundamental colors. While I can capture most shades of my life with just a combination of red, yellow, and blue, snow exists in a different realm altogether. There seems to be an endless brightness to snow that stands irregardless of the colors in its context. Snow on snow is just as bright as snow on my black iPhone screen. If anything, there seems to be a multiplier effect when I see snow on snow, and that’s just not a thing that you can capture with any variety of a titanium white tube of paint.

—

Ghostly Kisses was canceled. That was an L.

But, I’m still glad I came all the way here. I brought this up with my friend today, but I think it’s quite freaky that my high school friends and I are seniors now. I still remember back in freshman year, when I would promise to visit my friends from other colleges, there would be so much time to do so. There would be so much time in the sense that I would not even need to think about coordinating plans because I knew that there would always be time. But, now, in my last semester of college, that infinity no longer exists. If I don’t visit my friends this semester, then I never will.

I recently read The Death of Ivan Ilych by Tolstoy, and a big theme in the book is the regret that comes from the realization of finality with death. For now, I don’t think I am near dying. But, more and more, I am beginning to truly understand what it means to be temporary. I had a similar sentiment when I wrote an essay titled “Young and Beautiful” in my freshman year, but I don’t think I really knew what I meant back then. If anything, that was an attempt to frame my life in a beautiful way when it really wasn’t the life I wanted. But, now with all of my experiences (or lack thereof) that I have accumulated, I feel like I am truly ready to move on from this harmful attitude.

I’ve had this thought a lot recently: that my undergraduate experience really didn’t pan out in the way that I wanted it to. There was so much I wanted to do and so many people I wanted to meet when I arrived, and I really didn’t live up to the life I envisioned. For a long time, I thought that the only way to redeem my experiences is to engage in some sort of emotional self-flagellation because the possibility of happiness was overwhelming to me, and I subconsciously preferred the certainty of sadness versus the uncertainty of living a life that I wanted. But, here and now, I feel as if I am ready to move on with my life. There is the life that I left behind, and then there is the life I move forward.

Finna carpe diem this shittttt.

jenny_never_loved_forrest.jpg

I feel as if I have embarked on a new era in my life but carried so much baggage from my past with me. I want to be more positive in my life; I no longer want to have the same negative attitudes that have pervaded my thoughts for the last couple of years. Yet, it seems so hard to do so. Lately, I am constantly reminded of how few friends I have. Of course, I have some friends, which I suppose is better than none. It is important for me to acknowledge the people in my life. But, as for how I truly feel, I don’t remember feeling more lonely.

I am into my studies in the sense that I am two weeks ahead of homework. But, if someone were to ask me if I had anything better to do with my life, I probably wouldn’t have an answer. The truth is the seven classes that I am taking this semester just serve as a distraction to how lonely I feel in my life. If I wanted to go to an event, I really don’t know if there’s anyone in my life I could ask. And this is not just another negative attitude in my life. I genuinely don’t know.

I remember, a few days ago, someone asked me if I was excited for Feb Club. That question caused me such profound sadness, and I could not articulate why for such a long time. Why am I so sad at such an innocuous question? I thought about it for quite a bit, and the conclusion I came up with is that the notion of Feb Club just reminds me of how little friends I have to go to events with. In a period of rest, I can distract myself by studying. If anything, being two weeks ahead of homework is proof of that. But, in this time period where I am supposed to be happy… I cannot help but to feel despair at how sad I am about it.

I am trying so hard to have a more positive outlook on life. I am trying so, so hard. I want to be happy. I also wanted to be happy freshman year, and it feels like the same issues are still haunting me. I didn’t feel like I made any friends freshman year, and I don’t feel as if I made any friends as of now.

In Chinese class, we had to ask our partners when we adjusted to Penn. I gave a PG response, of course. But, in terms of how I feel, I don’t think I’ve ever adjusted to Penn. This school never felt like a home to me. Homes are defined by a sense of belonging, which is produced by being with friends, and I don’t think I have ever felt that.

One of my friends once sent me an article titled, “The Opposite of Loneliness”. It was written by this undergraduate at Yale who said how she felt the opposite of loneliness at Yale, and how she was afraid of entering the real world where she had to leave this feeling of togetherness. I told her that I don’t think I’ve ever felt the opposite of loneliness, and she agreed. Despite being almost at the end of my senior year of college, my experiences never added to something I wanted, and it’s not because I developed any unreal expectations of college from consuming media. I just want to feel as if I belong here, and I don’t. If I’m being realistic, I don’t think I’ll ever feel that from now until graduation.

I wish things could be different. There’s this quote attributed to George Eliot that went something along the lines of: “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” Right now, I feel so in touch with what I am not. I am working towards being “what [I] might have been” but the task is so Sisyphian. There is, of course, meaning in still attempting, but it’s just so numbing sometimes. I don’t know how else to put it. I wish things could change. I wish things could have been different. But this is now.

philosophy of friendship

I understand why people watch the show Friends. At least, I think I do. It’s because people are lonely. And they want friends. And it just happens that the show Friends is about having friends.

More than anything, the show Friends represents an aesthetic. It is the aesthetic of having friends and living life together with those friends at a time in your life full of turbulence and uncertainty. Namely, your twenties. It is a principle that I never have understood until now. But, being in my twenties, naturally, illuminates some truths about life in your twenties. Above all, this is a time that requires some degree of certainty when the rest of the world is uncertain. Merely a couple of weeks ago, I had absolutely no idea what type of job I would have for the next couple years of my life. To say that it was anxiety-inducing would be quite an understatement.

But, here I am, emerged at the end of the tunnel, with one less anxiety. But, as per usual, the lack of anxiety in my life reminds me how sad I am, and I become sad again. It is quite a vicious cycle.

Friends, to me, represents an impossibility. The appeal of the show is the claim that there is some part of New York that has a group of friends that hangs out regularly and experiences the turbulence of post-adolescence together. However, this ideal, to me, has always been an ideal. The appeal of the show is a reassurance that such a lifestyle exists, but the more I progress through my twenties, the more I become convinced that such a life does not exist. I would have friends like I do now, I would hope. But, the concept of having a group of friends that continuously spends time together regardless of the uncertainties that plague modern life… that, to me, is an impossibility that people do not want to believe. Just as people do not want to accept the structural problems of the society they live in, they do not want to accept the inevitability of solitude in modern life.

What is life going to look like in my twenties? At least, the twenties that are after my graduation. To be honest, it is a question I haven’t thought about much. Why would I be concerned about the future when I have so much to concern myself with the present, especially in something that I have so little control over? Who stays in my life and who goes? These questions used to concern me so much, but it is quite surprising how some drivers of anxiety in some periods of my life could be so insignificant later on in my life. I wonder what parts of my college life had made me become this way. I know much of the rationale, but what about the parts that I cannot pinpoint? There is so much difference that has followed me, but all I can feel is the indifference that remains.

All of my life, I feel as if I had been searching for this idea of a group of friends that I would be completely comfortable with, that would allow me to thrive with the idea of me that is truly me. But, the longer I age, the more it seems that this idea is an impossibility. There does not exist an idea of me that would be accepted by other people, and it is at this point that I have largely given up the search. This was not a life that is destined for me. Realistically, I have three types of people in my life: two best friends, exes, and two-hour brunch friends. Nowhere in there is the concept of a group of friends, and I don’t expect that I ever will. The only source of consistency I can expect is from my exes.

I have a simple philosophy of friendship: if you have a friend, and if you don’t travel with them or sleep with them, then you pretty much didn’t have a friend at all. It was a realization that came to me while playing this card game version of Truth or Dare at Queen and Rook, except with only truths.

I speak, of course, only for myself. I can only speak for myself, but that summarizes what I have learned about friendship over the past three years as an undergraduate in college. Friends come, friends go. This, I have already established in much of my writing. But, in terms of assigning value to friendship, it seems that I can only assign it in retrospect. It is only once I have lost a friendship can I assign value to it. Naturally, this would mean that I tend to assign value retroactively based on post-humous sentiment. And, in terms of the friendships over the years, it seems that I only remember those that have had a significant traveling or sexual experience.

Sometimes, I don’t know if I’m just being pragmatic or if I’m just being stupid. In terms of my friendships with girls, it usually approaches a point that determines the future of the friendship. After a certain level of intimacy is achieved, either we have sex and form a sexual connection, or the intimacy fades over time into nothingness. That is it; there is no alternative to this paradigm. With guys, I can’t even begin to approach the same level of intimacy as that I share with girls. And so, in terms of my connections that exist somewhere in the middle, I’m not sure if I am even willing to attempt to continue a friendship when there is no possibility of sexual connection.

Is that misogynistic of me? Instinctually, I would say yes. At least, that is the response that I have been conditioned to have. But, I am having trouble actually convincing myself that. If I had been born another sex, I probably would feel something similar. There is just something so real about sexual connection that cannot be replicated through any other medium. And so, when I shy away from those friendships that have had their dynamic established, is there a point in even vying for a future? There is only one source of consistency in my life, and that is my exes. What is the point of accumulating two-hour brunch friends when I can recognize their relative unimportance in my life? There is only one source of certainty.

What point is there to write — and to hope — that this would change? I noticed that I have not written as much recently as I have in the past. There’s a part of me that just no longer believes that there is a point in doing so. On one hand, there is the artistic redemption attitude that would allow me to redeem the tragic experiences of my life by writing about them in this contemporary form of a journal. But then, this past semester has revealed to me that this is impossible and that I should stop attempting to do so. There are so many better ways to use my time, but the main source of conflict is whether I have the will to do so. I have been acquainted with this idea recently that I simply do not have the capabilities to realize the energy behind my motivations.

The other day, when I was sitting in my OIDD lecture, I could not will myself to finish my in-class assignment because I just felt so numb. I was simply staring at the screen, hoping that this will to do anything would return to me, but it never did. It is a feeling that I have felt all my life, but it was only recently that I was able to articulate it. The lack of willingness to do anything. It is convenient that this is the time that I am no longer pre-occupied with work (or perhaps it is the cause itself?). It is also convenient that The Office is still on Netflix. And so, here I am, watching The Office in my bed to the pulsating sounds of “Titanium” by David Guetta playing at a darty outside my house.

My attitudes towards it all have changed quite a bit over the past year. I remember, when I was at a friend’s place outside another darty that had been happening coming into my junior year, there was the pang of envy that had arisen. But now, I no longer feel that envy. There is no intense emotion that arises within me. There is no anger towards the exclusivity or sadness towards my inability to be happy. There is just me, and the time that seems to pass by without regard to me. Between the time of then and now, I have accepted my fate in full, including all of its sadness.

The world had always been indifferent. But, as I reflect on my other years in college, it seems to be a lot more indifferent now than it had been in the past. Is it the universe changing, or is it just me? This cycle of self-flagellation that I always impose on myself.

so clear is the stillness

On my birthday, Halsey released a song titled, “you should be sad”.

How appropriate.

There’s a gnawing emptiness I have felt for so so long. I don’t know how to avoid this emptiness, Contradictorily, it seems to have more presence than anything I feel in my life. Over the past couple of weeks, I have tried to develop healthy relationships in my life. And, it is once again that I am confronted with the futility of my attempt. How could I ever think that I could ever achieve those same healthy relationships my friends have come to know. I’m not sure whether I was naive or stupid to believe that I could do so. How could I ever be destined to share those types of moments?

I tried. I really tried to be healthy. But, it is the emptiness that constantly returns in my life and distances me from all the progress I have made. How could I ever empathize with their life when I have all of this sadness that is kept standing only by the force of stress? This is my life. This is the life that I have come to know so well. How naive I must have been to ever believe that things could be different. Right now, it is just so clear that I was not destined for happiness. In the morning, I will forget this.

One of my friends once said that he does not understand why others don’t have friends, in the context of judging someone else. At the time, I didn’t say much, but, in retrospect, I think why his statement bothered me so much was because it could have easily referred to me. I don’t think I have ever not felt lonely in my life, and I feel that way because sometimes I truly believe that I have no friends. There was another friend who once asked me what the opposite of loneliness felt like, and I really couldn’t tell her.

echoes / time / overflow

Sometimes, I wonder why I feel so little love. Then, I remember that I am unloveable, so I stop worrying about it.

The sky is quite dark nowadays. The nights never seem to hold still anymore. It just is, and I just am. It is the same shadow that I have come to know all throughout my life. I am tired. I still wish that I could be with the night, but it is, and I am. So noisy are the sounds of crickets. The ringing of the screechers. The screams. So beautiful. This past month seemed to have flown by so quickly. I have so little idea where I am now. It passed, and I passed along with it. Where did it go… the time? I wish I could experience it at all.

So often does it feel that the world passes by me. I feel so little change. Freshmen are moving into the Quadrangle now. I pass by them on my way home. It was three years ago when I was moving in. It seemed like three years ago. What has happened since then? I don’t know. I don’t know. The world has changed around me. The people in my life has changed. But, then there is me. I have not changed. I am still the same. I seem to exist with time but not in time. It is the time that has passed, and there my being in time. I can perceive my existence moving through time. Is that time?

I remember, so many years ago, I had considered going to college in Philly to be underrated because it allowed me to see all of my friends whenever they would have a break regardless to whether I had a break or not. It was something I had valued back then. So long ago did I feel that. It seems now that there was so little point in feeling what I did before. The idea of people coming in and out of my life — it is an idea that I have so thoroughly ingrained within my intuition. Each time I come back, I catch up with fewer people than I had a year previously. There is less to talk about. Is this the future?

I used to hang out at General Wayne Park with so many people. Every time there would be a break, I would catch up with all of my high school friends (at least, the individual ones) at General Wayne Park. As such, General Wayne Park seems to exist as a capsule of time, observing the progression of my friends and I through time. It does not have memories attached to it — I never did anything notable in General Wayne Park — at least, not after I graduated high school — but it seems to exist for the sake of existing, regardless to the passage of time. It is timeless. I am not timeless. My friendships are not timeless. All will fade except General Wayne Park.

I listen to different music now than I did a year ago and the year before that. I have stopped listening to pop music. How unfortunate. I used to listen to so much pop music. Now, it seems that pop music does not garner the same appeal that it once did. I listen to a lot of indie music now. How unfortunate. I have become one of those. It is quite sad, really. I did not want to become one of those, but I am one of those now. There is so much in my life that did not go the way that I planned. It is so sad, yet so beautiful. Amor Fati. Amor fatty. So much to change. So much I wished I could live differently. So little to love.

I am listening to this song right now, and all I could think about are the names that no longer roll of my tongue;

My views on love — how quickly have those changed. So optimistic. So sad. So sad. So sad. There was this quote that I head awhile back. It went something along the lines of, “Within every pessimist, there was once a failed optimist.” Right now, I feel that. So much potential. So little. Is it a surprise that the world has become the way that it has become? It was only a couple of years ago that I approached the world with such enthusiasm, hoping that I would be able to reconcile my innate unlovability through some tricks of my personality. It is only now that I realize it was all a futile attempt. I was not destined to be loved. I should stop trying.

I am having trouble sleeping again. How unfortunate. It is one of these moments again. I had trouble sleeping last year too. And the year before that. There were a couple of moments I realized that I had a lot of trouble sleeping. I had a lot of trouble sleeping freshman year. I had a lot of trouble sleeping sophomore year. I got some sleep junior year, for the most part. It does not seem that senior year is off to a great start. What year of college has ever been off to a great start? Actually, junior year was off to a great start. I miss junior year, when the world was more kind, when things were more certain.

Sometimes, I just want to be taken. Perhaps that is the appeal of BDSM. It is not so much the submission that causes excitement. It is not so much the trust that is involved either. Perhaps, it is just the thrill of dying. Hands wrapped around your throat. Grasping for air. The possibility of dying. The ecstasy. The light at the end. It is so close yet so far. The sweetness of death. It is a taste. I miss the taste of death. So close. So far. So permanent. Such is the feeling that waits for me at the end. I wish death would hurry up, so I could taste it once more. Death is the taste of sex.

So quick is death. So timeless is death. So quiet. So kind.