I had the most vivid, surreal dream last night. And I’m just saying this for the sake of my followers who don’t know me personally: I have not ever taken any sort of mind altering drug/hallucinogenic. That being said.

I had a dream that I had completely lost my identity; that I was trapped in a world that looked almost exactly like ours, but not quite. When I began dreaming, I was waking up from a night’s slumber in the dream. I went about my day like I normally would, but noticed small yet significant changes in my surroundings. For example, all the freckles on my mom’s face had changed in color, size, and location. My dad was shorter than he really was. They weren’t acting like themselves either. My dad was oddly serious and my mom hardly spoke. Even my dog’s behavior was different. He refused to approach me, baring his teeth whenever I came near.

Perplexed, I went upstairs to my room. I thought reading a book would calm me down, but the books on the bookshelf weren’t mine. And when I cracked them open, they had been vandalized. The words were scribbled out with black ink and the pages were torn. I didn’t start to get scared until I tried texting my friends. They all replied back with “who is this?” And when I would tell them, “its Sam!” they all got incredibly angry, asking if this was some sick practical joke since the Sam they had been friends with had been dead for months now. Only one person had saved my number still in their phone, and they called me, crying and asking if I had come back. I said I never left, and all they said was happy birthday.

This was where I got even more confused. My birthday is in September. It was clearly not September. I started looking around my room and house for pictures of myself, anything to reaffirm who I was. But there was nothing. All the photos that would’ve had me in them, I was moving, too fast and too quick for the camera to capture. I had no idea who, or even what, I was. Was I ghost? My friends said I had died. But my parents interacted with me. if I was a ghost, was I even the ghost of myself or somebody else? Or was I real? This wondering drove me to paranoia, and yet the day continued on in my dream. Everything still went on as normal while I was tormenting myself. Night fell, and I was beginning to wonder if this false world was true. And then I woke up.

Even as I’m in full awareness now, I’m still not entirely sure if this is reality or a dream. My dream was so deceptively clear that I had believed it, for a few brief and frightening moments, to be real.

haha, if you could tell me that I haven’t been dead and I’m not writing from the grave, that would be wonderful.

Read More

I’m the owner of a crap car, and I’m proud. Madeline is her name. I love her very, very much. She has character. And by character, I mean flaws. And by flaws, I mean she was obviously dropped on her head during birth and fell through a couple floors. 

I think having a crappy car as your first car is a rite of passage. What’s the fun in having a car that has all four door handles? That can roll down its windows without getting stuck? That brakes and accelerates easily? That doesn’t make questionable noises? That doesn’t make you feel like you’re going to die every time the pavement is wet? Pff, those cars are overrated luxuries that no teenager needs.

Indeed, I’d rather have a hardy, valiant car whose middle console jostles off with the slightest movement. A car whose upper cup holders are no longer accessible.  A car whose gas gauge goes up instead of down. A car who only unlocks when it very well damn pleases, whether it be the customary two clicks of the remote, or the odd thirteen clicks. 

If you haven’t guessed by now, the above traits listed are actually some of the many personality characteristics of my lovely car. She’s quirky. What can you say about your luxury car, hmm? “Well, he/she runs great. And they have leather interior. And I can connect my iPod to it! How nifty!”

Yeah, that’s great. My interior is covered in dog hair and Adrianna’s tears from watching The Avengers and all I listen to are Vietnamese ballads and European techno from the 80’s. Boom. I win. 

Although Madeline frustrates me, I love that hunk of metal. She might be a piece of crap, but she’s my piece of crap. And when I’m old, I’ll be able to tell my children or my grandchildren about the day three guys almost flipped over my car in an attempt to manually pull the stubbornly stuck back windows up with their bare hands. 

In fact, I’m sure their fingerprints are still there. 

We don’t see you in colors and shapes and shadows and texture. We see you in words. Depending on what kind of person you are, maybe we’ll see you in a paragraph. An essay. A novel. Or one word. But it’s you all the same. 

Ask me to paint a picture and I will. But I’m not sure if you’ll be all too happy with the results; not unless you liked honesty. I’ll carve you from a dictionary as best as I can. It’ll be crude and it’ll be rough around the edges. But you’ll find yourself in it. It won’t be obvious like a self portrait of you in macaroni. Maybe you’ll understand immediately; smiling and nodding your head. “Oh yes, I see that.” Maybe it’ll hit you a couple minutes after. Or maybe it won’t hit you at all. “I don’t understand at all.” 

That’s the thing about ink. It’s there; it’s honest. The only color to distract you is the white behind it. If you don’t like what you see, you can shake your head, say, “No, this isn’t me at all.” And others will agree when they grab the paper from your hands; they won’t see a pretty picture of your overbite smiling at them, but words crammed uncomfortably together. It’ll be all too easy to agree that yes, this is nothing like you, because all anyone wants to look at nowadays are pretty pictures. Pretty, pretty, pretty. 

I don’t care for pretty. I don’t care for airbrushed skin and photo-shopped curves and colors that are so bright, they hurt to look at. I care for beauty, for my kind of beauty. I care for words weaving effortlessly together as if they were meant to be written next to each other all their lives. Let me paint your picture. Let me take out the dictionary and thesaurus for you. Let me put pauses and ellipses in replacement for words I simply cannot find because they don’t exist yet.

Hold my ink stained hand when I’m finished. 

It has been the epidemic of the broken heart. In the story of every person, this paragraph will be found in nearly all of them. 

And though she knew the truth, and though she knew better, she smiled. And though it pained her, and though she could feel her insides bruising the very moment her thin arms enclosed around the only man she ever loved, she squeezed. The moment he said goodbye was the moment she knew that she would be doomed to look for his eyes on the faces of strangers in the streets. 

Reader, don’t be afraid to face your heartbreak. I’m here to help you see it.

Let me paint you. 

Tonight, I received this anon: 

Good evening anon. I hope you don’t mind if I answered your ask this way; I just have a lot to say on the subject, and wanted to be able to use that “read more” break as to not accidentally trigger any of my followers. 

Read More

Who am I to try and put a label on life; this life? I’ve lived 18 years on this Earth and what do I possibly know about life that’s worth saying to you? I know that life is contradictory. It is everything at once. Life doesn’t ever make any damn sense. It is chaos. 

I know that I can turn on the news and watch humans kill in the name of peace. I know that it’s far too often an occurrence to be desperately in love with one whose hand is clenched around your heart. And all day, all night, they squeeze. I know that water is vital to our existence and yet, it has wiped out cities, destroyed states, and brought countless ships to rest in a watery grave. I know that for every young couple that whispers sweetly, “I love you,” there is another couple whose I love you’s are spoken in tune with fists. I know Columbine High School must have thanked God when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold took their lives. I know that their mothers must have asked God, “Why?” 

Sometimes I wonder what Osama Bin Laden was like as a child. I wonder if he played kickball at school and painted pictures to bring home to his parents. I wonder if he ran out of the house too fast to go play, and would have to sprint back inside to kiss his mom on the cheek. I wonder at what exact moment in time he saw the world as his enemy. 

It’s the thrill when a meek girl becomes alive only with a blade tangoing close to the lifelines beneath her wrists. It’s the phone call to a man who voted for the war, telling him that his son is dead. It’s a woman who was taught not to tempt rapists, but was raped while wearing sweatpants and a sweater. It’s being brave enough to ask yourself, “Who am I?” and knowing that you have absolutely no clue. It’s absolutely losing yourself before you can find yourself. 

I know that life is hard. But when your eyes are wet and your heart is cracked, throw a couple flower seeds in there. And let it rain. Let it thunder and shriek and pour. Laugh when the first bud blooms. 

My biggest problems in life right now are:

• After an intense three hour discussion of Kingdom Hearts with Carlos, I want to play the entire series, but I can’t because I only have a PS2 (which is in storage, so I can’t even finish KH1 or obtain/start KH2). Quick, is it possible to rent a 3DS and a PSP (and a PS3 for the upcoming KH3 sometime in the future)? Weh. 
• My dad passed his cold on to me. And my mom. We’re all one happy, sick family. 
• Gas prices. Let’s leave it at that. 
• Also, I don’t have a siamese cat named Momo, when I really should. 
• Oh, and dayquil tastes like everything terrible. 

School is stressful, but overall, easy. Family is dysfunctional, but really, whose isn’t? The few friends I have are the greatest. The boy is the grandest. Regular yoga has relaxed my mind and body. Holograms are now a thing of the present. I have cranberry juice in my fridge. My mom finally let me eat junk food last weekend. My baby cousin calls me mommy. The mountains were beautiful this morning. And coffee and tea are good. The company I have is even better

Life is wonderful. Little things are nothing. 

Tears of happiness, of course. 

Since the beginning of my life, the gods of exercise mandated that I would never be able to participate in sports/dance/any recreational fun. While kids my age were learning how to swim, ride bikes, and taking up dance classes or ice skating lessons, I was on a nebulizer at home, reading books and dreaming of going outside to play. My asthma got better, but it fluxed with the weather. I discovered dance and fell in love with it, continuing in it and even excelling in it. But even that was difficult for me sometimes; all it took was a hard rehearsal, a particularly difficult across the floor day, and I would be struggling to catch my breath within minutes. Sports were simply out of the question. Not only would I be on the floor wheezing for mercy after ten seconds, my opponents could easily knock me flat with just a flick of their pinky finger. On a cold day, I can’t even walk for an amount of time without almost passing out. On an extremely hot day, my doctor recommends that I stay inside as much as possible. Arthritis now plagues my joints as well, protesting along with my lungs during extreme weather. 

I always hated that feeling of fragility, of weakness. I hate it. Whenever my asthma would act up, my family and friends would look at me, concern in their eyes, and all I would want to do was scream. But all I could do was scramble pathetically to regain my breath, smile, get up, and try to walk away as if my lungs and throat weren’t absolutely burning. What could I do to prove to myself that I wasn’t the weakling that I always believed myself to be? Was there a niche for me to fit in to?

Yoga. I got my first taste of it a couple years ago at a bridal shower party where the bride hired a private yoga instructor to come in and give a lesson. And no, the instructor was not a stripper in disguise. Naturally flexible, this beginning glimpse into yoga came easy to me. And not only that, but I really enjoyed it. I would not revisit yoga again until this year. I’ve thrown myself into the practice. It soothes me, but at the same time, it challenges me, forcing me to focus and abandon all other thoughts from my mind. The only thing I focus on are my body and my breath. And for once in my life, it is I who control my breath, not my asthma, not my inhaler, not my medication. It is I who control my body, not my arthritis, not my pain, not my swollen joints. Me. Me, me, me. Only me. Just me. I realized this today while I was practicing king pigeon. And the thought was enough to make me stop to smile and cry in pure joy and realization. After years of feeling like delicate porcelain, I have finally found my strength. 

It’s a shame that so many do yoga just for the sake of doing it, or just for the sake of getting “the yoga butt,” or just because it’s currently a trend within California. With an open mind and an open heart, I believe that it can truly be life changing. 

I really miss dancing. And I don’t mean the type of dancing that you can get a quick fix for with a booty shaking in your bedroom or a grinding at the clubs. I mean the-bruises-that-show-up-on-your-spine type dancing. The 5-6-7-8! type dancing. The chaine, unravel, stag leap type dancing. Dance was in my life for a short period of time, but my love for it was just so intense and passionate. 

How can I even begin to describe how much dancing meant to me? How can I describe the feeling of euphoria and accomplishment when you start getting holes in the toes of your jazz shoes? How can I possibly explain to you why callouses on the soles of your feet would be considered an accomplishment? And dancing and ballet are not as easy as the media and everyone has glorified them to be. With each plie and develope, surely I could feel my knees dying. My legs shook at the barre, and they would continue to shake after warmups were long over. With each jete, I would force myself to stay in the air longer than before; I would try to fly. Deepening the arch in my feet seemed almost damn nearly impossible, but I would point those little piggies until they froze in the clamps of a painful toe cramp. The outsides of my knees are fully healed, but they have the appearance of being forever bruised, a consequence of constantly making contact with a hard and unforgiving wooden dance floor. 

I’ve had two moments in dance that I will cherish for forever. The first was gaining rare praise from my instructor, the illustrious Heather Duffer, for my improvisation. The second would be reducing her to tears a year later with my partner and best friend, Michelle Huynh! In my opinion, if you’re not going to put your very heart, soul, blood, sweat, and tears into every rehearsal, every practice, and every run through, don’t dance at all. If you’re going to mark it, just stop; you’re a waste of space, waste of energy, and waste of time. Make room for the people who deserve to be there and get off the stage. Those who are able to dance still with my dance family are lucky. And sometimes, I can’t help but wonder if some of them take it for granted. I love dance so much, that sometimes I don’t even want to go to their dance shows, just because it’ll make me frustrated to see half of them dancing as lazy as they would during rehearsal. 

But I digress. I would give anything for just one last routine. One last celebration of dance and how the human body can turn from something so ordinary and anatomical to living, breathing, jumping, leaping, turning art.     

Read More

First: calm your angst. It has nothing to do about my own personal Valentine’s day, but rather my parents’. Save your eye rolls and “not another simp!” exclamations for the next post on your dashboard por favor. 

Today, my mom had a surgical procedure done. Nothing too serious mind you; just your standard hysteroscopy. I just thought it was such a shame it was done on Valentine’s day. My parents would always go out and eat somewhere nice, and this year would be the first year since forever that they wouldn’t get to do that. But if anything, this was perhaps one of the very few times where my mom and dad’s love for one another was just so obvious, it smacked me in the face.

All three of us, my mom, dad, and I, were eating dinner in my parent’s bedroom so that my mom wouldn’t be alone. I noticed that my dad had bought my mom flowers; a normal thing he does every Valentine’s day. See, my dad always bought the crappy flowers haha. You know, your generic grab and go bouquets full of half dead carnations and purple (but slightly yellowing) daisies. They’re usually the first ones you see when you walk into Vons. Stores also never seem to run out of these odd bouquets. But yes, my father always bought these flowers. And maybe one year, he’d feel extra nice, and he’d get roses. Maybe.

But no, this year on my mom’s bedside was a tall bouquet of orchids; her favorite flower. My dad refused to let me do anything for her; he wanted to do everything, including bringing up her soup on those little in-bed tray doohickies. When she reached for her pain medication, he was there in a second, all ready with a pill and a glass of water in hand. When I was looking into my bowl of bamboo shoot and chicken soup, I overheard him say, “Happy Valentine’s Day, baby.” I couldn’t help it; I had to look up. He patted her softly on the shoulder, before bending down to kiss the top of her head. And my mom, although her skin was pale and her eyes were slightly sunken in with dark bags underneath them…my mom shined. 

At that point, I had to get out of the room. There is just something about witnessing an exchange like that that makes you unable to handle it unless there’s another person in the room to buffer it. When you’re the lone person who’s in a room with two people who are in love, you can’t help but feel so small in comparison to them. And since these precious moments are rare between them, I felt like I was almost intruding on something private and intimate. My parents do not have a perfect relationship. But then they have days like this that really make me wonder.

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone. 

Hear me out. I’m not trying to come off as conceited or pompous or anything. But I’ve been doing a lot of introspection, and I’m really glad with where I am in my life and with what kind of person I am. I’m happy that my parents raised me the way they did; around classical music and books and with compassion and a love for learning. I feel like developing a love for these things has kept me grounded; has reminded me that no matter how much life roughs me up, that something as beautiful as a poem or a score by Yann Tiersan and Dario Marianelli can still move me and make my day better; that sitting in my room and reading a book while listening to Chopin can whisk me to a different time period away from the mundane trivialities of everyday life. 

Oh, maybe it’s awfully idealistic of me to romanticize such things. But I think the arts were made for romanticizing.