Passion

I used to have a lot of dreams. I guess I still do. I wanted to become an author, an artist, a doctor. I wanted to be beautiful. I wanted to have a family with a successful, loving husband and lots of wonderful kids. I wanted to be rich. I wanted to be famous. When I was a kid, I used to have so much passion for life. Now I have goals. I've become a cynical realist. I still dream, but when I come back to reality I merely scoff at myself and move on. I don't have any grand expectations for my life. I no longer expect to suddenly find my soul mate, get the job of my dreams, or have the body I so desperately crave. Yet I still dream about it because I'm desperately grabbing at anything that will tie me down to this pathetic life in the hopes that somewhere I will find the will to live again. To find that passion again. Yet, I know it's hopeless.

Family

People say that you automatically love your family. No matter what they do, it won't matter because you'll still love them in the end. Why? "Because they're family".

Well, that's a load of bull. At least for me.

I can classify my family members into three distinct categories: members that I truly love, members that I love only because I feel complied to, and members that I couldn't love even if I tried.

This goes for family members that are bonded to me through blood and marriage.

I've come to realize that there are only two members of my family that I can say that I truly love. I suppose a part of the reason is because I feel as if I've placed them through such hell, that it would be wrong for me not to love them honestly. Another part is that they've shown me parts of themselves that they haven't masked to make themselves or me feel better about a situation.

Of course one of the two is my mother. Despite the fact that I for several years of my childhood I lived without ever seeing her or talking to her due to circumstances out of my control, living with her last year really cemented our relationship. I don't know how I went so long without her. Sometimes I wonder what if would have been like to live and grow up with my mother and how I would have turned out. Would I have turned out better? Would I not have grown up to be so fucking cynical and angry? Perhaps. Hell, I know she has her faults, but I can get past that because I truly love her.

The second person is my aunt. Anyone who knows me really well knows the kind of pain I put her through during my adolescences. During that time I thought she deserved all the hate I placed upon her because I felt like she hated me right back. I felt as if she resented the fact that she had to raise me even though she wasn't my mother. I think a part of her did, and in fact, I think a part of her still does, but I don't blame her for it. I would resent myself too. But we've both grown and I've grown to appreciate everything she's done for me and even though I can still tell that at times she doesn't trust me and she still looks at me the same way that she did when I was thirteen, I understand and I still love her. And I hope in the future, the new me, the responsible me, will overshadow the horrendous child I was to her in the past.

Then there is the second group of people who I can say that I love, but when I think about it, I don't really think I love them as much as I should. I love them because I feel as if I have to. I love them because I've told myself for so long that I love them. I mean sure, a part of me probably does love them honestly, but for the most part, I feel as if I love them because I have to. This part is made up of most of my family members. Some of them I probably love more honestly than others, like my father and my siblings, but I can't bring myself to love them entirely because they infuriate me. There's a barrier of understanding that I can't seem to overcome, no matter how much I try to empathize.

And in the last group lies one single person. One person in my family that I could never love. One person that I vehemently detest. I'm sure a few of you know who this person is and a few of you know why. Every day of my life I wish I could scream at the top of my lungs the wrongs he has committed, but I can't, because if I did then it would negatively impact everyone in my life and hurt the people that I actually do care about. So to keep them happy and to keep their lives intact, I try and bury my hate as far down as I can. Because I figure I can endure more suffering than they can; I know I can. Sometimes I wish he would just die, but even then I realize that his death would bring pain onto others.

But I think the part that hurts the most, is that some of the people I care about know why I hate him, but their resigned to keep silent because they want to keep the image of the perfect family. So I think they tell themselves that "Oh, Jea will be fine." or they tell me "Jea, just don't say anything, okay? If you say something, everything will be ruined." What am I supposed to say? Am I supposed to say no? Wouldn't that just make me selfish?

Would it be too selfish of me to ask for some recognition of the sacrifices I've made and am making? I just want a thank you. A thank you for the silence I have kept. Maybe it's because you haven't said anything that I resent you for it and can't bring myself to love you fully.

Far Far Away

I've always had this fantasy of going far away on a complete whim. You know, like just spontaneously pack up my bags and leave everything behind. It'd be an adventure. I'd go off to Europe or something. I wouldn't worry about school or bills or whatnot, I'd simply wander around for days, weeks, or months until I felt like it was time to go back. But I can't afford to be so carefree with my life. I have expectations to fulfill. Most, are not my own, I admit. They are the expectations my family and friends and even strangers have laid out for me. I'm supposed to graduate college with good grades. I'm supposed to get a good job. I'm supposed to get married, have kids, and then send my own kids to college. I'm supposed to be monetarily stable so that I can take care of my parents and brother. I'm supposed to do and be a lot of things. I don't mind some of them. I do want to be successful and I want to take care of my family, but sometimes I'm afraid that I'll never have the time to do the things I want. What if I never get to go to backpack through Europe? What if I never get to travel across Asia? I want to be more than what I am right now.

The Rate of Maturity

I've always believed that I matured faster than most of the people I know. Maybe it's because from a young age I was forced to think beyond myself and deal with certain things that most children do not have to go through. I think a part of the reason why I grew up so fast was because I also felt guilty. There was a certain stage in my life where I can fully admit that I was a horrid child and because of that, I felt as if I had to make up for it and be a responsible young adult. Guilt continues to fuel me at times. So when people tell me that at eighteen, I have yet to experience the world and don't know much about life, I tend to disagree. Not out loud, because that would be rude, but inside my head, I'm questioning what great worldly experience they have that allows them to tell me such things. Granted, I understand that they've had more work experience, love experience and such, but that doesn't mean they know more about life than I do. I'm sure I know more about some aspects of life than they do.

In any case, I'm just wondering when my fellow young adults will realize that the world goes beyond just themselves. There's more to life than trying to feel cool by underage drinking to impress boys and fellow shallow girlfriends. There's more to life than buying the latest handbag or camera and trying to find only the comfort in life. One day reality is going to hit them in the face and it won't be pretty. There's also a point in life where you have to stop depending on everyone around you. I'm not saying that you shouldn't ever depend on people, because I do think people need people, but in the case of parents, they're not always going to be there. So stop running to them every time you need money. Stop running to them every time you have the slightest problem and deal with it yourself. It's not that hard. Can't afford something? First of all, think about if you really need it. Most times than not, you probably don't. Second, instead of whining about not having the money and just waiting until your parents give you your allowance, why don't you work for it?

I'm just so sick of people acting like children when they should be adults. They're of age now. They're in college. Isn't this the time for independence? I'm just so sick of living amongst children.

Long Nights

I have currently been awake for 36 hours now, roughly. I don't usually pull all-nighters, but due to the blizzard, classes were canceled on Wednesday and so I ended up doing no homework and instead built a snow sculpture. Of course when I looked out my window this morning someone had destroyed it. After having my legs go numb and my hands become frozen, I was pretty pissed, but I got over it. Anyway, the point is that I actually pulled an all-nighter. It's my first one of the school year. I managed to always be able to sleep last term but not this time. I know I have time management issues and by procrastinating, I only make my situation worse for myself. Still, there are just so many distractions in life that I can't seem to get rid of. These distractions are necessarily bad ones though. It's not like I spend my nights underage drinking in an alcohol-free dorm, unlike some other people I could mention. Sure it's fun the first time, but why is it necessary to do it every weekend?

What do people see in it? Is having a hangover some amazing experience that I just have to go through? I don't think so. I'm perfectly fine not drinking and wasting my time doing dumbass things.

I envy people who have the drive to get things done. You know, those people who come straight back from class and can get straight to homework and can continuously work on it until dinner or bedtime. The moment I get back to the room, I hope on the computer to release the frustration and stress from classes that day and then I slowly get to homework sometime during the night. It's not exactly a great way to spend my time, but somehow I always manage to get things done. I admit that sometimes the work I produce seems half-assed and at first I didn't mind, but now I do. I don't want to be that girl who half-asses works when she could do so much better because she has a procrastination problem. I just need proper drive. I need incentive. What better incentive is there than the fear of letting people down? The frustration of knowing that other people are doing better than me when I know I can do better. It makes me want to scream and claw at them, even though I know its fault.

Funny thing is, I'm saying this and yet I know it's not as if I'll wake up tomorrow morning and stop procrastinating. It's not like I'll fix my horrible habits by tomorrow. Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever be able to fix them. I'm just not a patient enough person to wait and therefore I tend to give up even before I properly begin.

BBC Book List

1) Bold those you have read.
2) Star the ones you loved.*
3) Italicize partially read/currently reading.
4) The rest I obviously plan on reading.

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen *
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte *
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling *
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte *
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman *
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa May Alcott *
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy *
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien *
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald *
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll *
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis *
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis *
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
47 Far From the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding *
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

23/100

Is this the last goodbye?

Yesterday I left Washington after a month long Winter break. I spent the time mostly alone with my dogs and with my mother on the weekends when she was off from work. The time was rather short if you thought about it and I spent majority of it doing nothing. As I left I wondered if it was going to be the last time I was going to say goodbye to the place, to my mother, stepfather, my dogs. It's not as if I can afford to keep going back every break and eventually I'll be too busy with work to even take vacations. If that's the case, then should I have used my time better? How could I have? I spent every moment I could with my mother and there was rarely a moment I wasn't playing with my dogs. I don't regret anything. If I had done something spectacular with my time then it would've been a forced memory. It wouldn't have been quite me and wouldn't have been enjoyable.

Auburn was never really a town I got to know. The people I lived next to were nothing more than sounds I heard from within my own room. The school was nothing more than a place I just happened to graduate from. Do I regret coming to Auburn? A bit I admit. I regret spending my last year of high school in a place where I knew no one and had to quickly scrounge of friends and memories quickly. Friends and memories that were worth nothing and would fade quickly. I don't regret my reasons for coming though. If I hadn't come to Auburn, I would've never experienced living with my mother. I would've never had the time to properly apply to schools. I probably would've never been accepted to Parsons and be living the New York like I am now. I think living in partial isolation for a year was worth it all. It's not as if I was completely without friends. Those back in Kansas City were only a text away. Long distance friendships are what keeps me going still.

Amongst the rain and the busy, self-absorbed people, I sit and wonder if this same time next year I will be saying goodbye once again to a city I never knew.