five leagues beneath the wisteria tree
Apr. 22nd, 2009 05:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chu_totoroIs this what it means to grow up? Is this what it means to leave your childhood behind? I realized today how little, how truly little sometimes there is that you can do, and that is the bitterest of all. No, not bitter. Sad. Melancholy. Wistful. Wistful. I am wistful today. There are so many people out in the world, around me, beside me, near me, far from me, millions of people brushing by and leaving specks of themselves behind, but in the end the only person you have utter and complete control over is you. You are responsible for yourself, only yourself; no one else can take that responsibility from you, just as you can never truly shoulder that responsibility for anyone else. And that is the loneliest thing of all. To know that sometimes there is nothing you can do, nothing you can say, that sometimes saying nothing is better than saying something, to acknowledge it, truly, truly acknowledge it, to know that sometimes what you have to offer is not enough and never will be, but also to know that there is nothing more you can do, and to accept the emptiness, the ache it leaves behind because, because, what else can you do?
We are only human, all of us, and subject to human desires and human limitations. Yesterday Jennifer Tien joined us on the quad steps and I chatted with her because I knew the others wouldn't, they are all nice people but they wouldn't, they wouldn't notice her and if they did they wouldn't try and they wouldn't listen, at least not for long. If she pestered them to see something or to repeat something maybe they would (and maybe they wouldn't; I've seen that too often), but they'd shift the attention onto her for a brief moment and then go back and she wouldn't, not really, be included. Has her whole life been like that? Subtly excluded, subtly shunned, only some people (like me, like Connie) will talk to her and oftentimes when they do they are too nice, fakely nice, they treat her like she's retarded or something and how many people, when it comes down to it, really just treat her like another friend?
Yesterday she was squatting curled on the quad steps, chin on her knees, fiddling with her calculator on the ground. The day was warm, sunny, relaxed. I wanted to say to her, "Look up! Look around you. Look at the people. Stretch out, enjoy the sun," but when I did she couldn't get comfortable with it, she had gotten so used to diverting her life away at a small screen in the dark. And it doesn't have to be like that. The rest of her life doesn't, doesn't, doesn't have to be like that, just because she stutters and talks too fast and has trouble communicating. I wanted to tell her to just slow down, relax, talk louder - it's not really so hard as it seems to be - but we met and brushed by so quickly; she's going to Santa Cruz while I'm off to CAL, and in the end all I can do is treat her honestly and focus on my path in life...
What brought this on? A combination of reading 瓊瑤 and life today. I've lost the essence of what I wanted to say with the Jennifer tangent - but it isn't so much any one aspect in particular as much as sitting back and watching things run their course (as they do in 瓊瑤's novel), the paths crisscrossing and each individual character's feelings, and the great wistfulness that comes with knowing what can and cannot be changed, the inevitable.
We are only human, all of us, and subject to human desires and human limitations. Yesterday Jennifer Tien joined us on the quad steps and I chatted with her because I knew the others wouldn't, they are all nice people but they wouldn't, they wouldn't notice her and if they did they wouldn't try and they wouldn't listen, at least not for long. If she pestered them to see something or to repeat something maybe they would (and maybe they wouldn't; I've seen that too often), but they'd shift the attention onto her for a brief moment and then go back and she wouldn't, not really, be included. Has her whole life been like that? Subtly excluded, subtly shunned, only some people (like me, like Connie) will talk to her and oftentimes when they do they are too nice, fakely nice, they treat her like she's retarded or something and how many people, when it comes down to it, really just treat her like another friend?
Yesterday she was squatting curled on the quad steps, chin on her knees, fiddling with her calculator on the ground. The day was warm, sunny, relaxed. I wanted to say to her, "Look up! Look around you. Look at the people. Stretch out, enjoy the sun," but when I did she couldn't get comfortable with it, she had gotten so used to diverting her life away at a small screen in the dark. And it doesn't have to be like that. The rest of her life doesn't, doesn't, doesn't have to be like that, just because she stutters and talks too fast and has trouble communicating. I wanted to tell her to just slow down, relax, talk louder - it's not really so hard as it seems to be - but we met and brushed by so quickly; she's going to Santa Cruz while I'm off to CAL, and in the end all I can do is treat her honestly and focus on my path in life...
What brought this on? A combination of reading 瓊瑤 and life today. I've lost the essence of what I wanted to say with the Jennifer tangent - but it isn't so much any one aspect in particular as much as sitting back and watching things run their course (as they do in 瓊瑤's novel), the paths crisscrossing and each individual character's feelings, and the great wistfulness that comes with knowing what can and cannot be changed, the inevitable.
