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May. 30th, 2009 08:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chu_totoroI don't know what I'm trying to do. I don't know what I'm trying to achieve.
I realized today how easy it would be to just run away from home and never come back. Take my wallet, my phone, a couple personal belongings, small blanket, get out and just walk. Walk. Go as far as possible, find some place or the other to curl up for the night - I'm good at that, always have been - wake up, and just keep walking. I wonder how far I can go.
I don't hate this place. I don't find it a hellhole or any such. In fact, to a certain extent I love my home. I just find that I'm growing further and further apart from my parents, and, at the same time, further and further apart from everyone else.
It's not pressure, but in a way it is. I have a recital and a performance (piano accompaniment) this weekend, and a concert the day right after that; I have practise on Tuesday w/the performers for the accompaniment and I'm not ready at all and the worst worst worst part about it is that I can't bring myself to care. Not really care. I mean I do care, I care right now, but it's like I care because I know I should care, not because I actually care. And in fact the state I'm in right now it's more like I care because I know I should know that I should care except I don't... and when I practise like this it's just so much slower and so much worse because I'm not really trying, not trying with that edge of desperation and not even trying that hard normally as well, I'm just pushing myself to do what I should do and know I can do (because I've done it before, but what the fuck, I did stuff like that when I was desperate and pushing myself to the edge and can I really do it three times removed like this the way I am now) and I don't even know.
Part of it might just be lack of sleep and lack of food. But it's not all. I don't know. I was near (inner) hysteria during my piano lesson on Friday and I was just so, so frustrated because I couldn't do it, I couldn't, I just couldn't but it's not that I can't, see, because I CAN do it, I can do it in the lesson when she plays for me and shows me how but when I go home and practise I lose it, I just can't get it anymore can't figure it out because in the lesson I wasn't really listening, not really, I was just half-copying her and because I have a good ear I pull it off but if I don't listen to my sound and don't try I'm never going to get it and I know that but knowing isn't the same thing as doing and she was repeating the same things in the lesson that she's repeated for the past 3 weeks and I wanted to scream at her I get it, I get it, I get it but I don't get it, what are you going to do about that?! I wanted to tell her that I could do it in the lesson but not at home, but I didn't because I know exactly what she'd say - that I'm not listening hard enough, that I'm not really paying attention to the sound, and it's true - I mean I know exactly what my problem is, I just can't bring myself to fix it and whose fault is that?
It's so easy to be calm on the outside. It's so easy to be pleasant on the outside. In fact it's so easy that I don't know how to do the opposite anymore. The past two days I've had these gigantic mood swings up and down and up and down and you'd think I'm nearing hysteria except I know I'm not, I can get ahold of myself if I really tried because I've been through worse and survived.
What if sometimes you just don't want to get ahold of yourself? What if sometimes you just want to be a little kid and throw your temper tantrum again and slam the door and leave? What if sometimes you just want someone you can tell these things to, someone who has no expectations of you whatsoever, someone who would listen, really, really care enough to listen and not judge?
This is NOT the I can't live up to my expectations helplessness. It's the I CAN live up to my expectations, I know I can, they know I can, I know they know I can and they know I know I can but what the fuck, what if I don't want to live up to my expectations. I'm tired - or rather not tired, bored and sick - this is becoming rote work, and the ironic part is music is not rote work, if you practise by rote without your mind the acc. might still be OK (except not because I don't know half the pieces and the rehearsal's on Tuesday, honestly) but the Brahms is just. hopeless. So in the end it turns out I may not be able to live up to my expectations after all. How ironic.
Honestly, though. Is that so wrong? It's my last week, it's the last bloody week of high school, it's the last week of my senior year, is it wrong to want peace?
I worked myself into righteous anger about someone before piano class yesterday, and during lesson it channeled into desperation, futility, and and urge to kill/slam the piano because I couldn't, couldn't, couldn't do it, I was doing it but not really doing it and I wanted so badly to tell my teacher that but I couldn't, and trust me having that urge doesn't help your playing one bit. I - srsly when I left I was so angry at the piano and at myself that I was on the verge of tears, but I didn't let my teacher see.
After piano was the concert, and I cannot tell you how depressed it made me. Not the fact that we're graduating and it's the last concert, but the fact that I couldn't bring myself to feel any excitement about it. Any. And I remembered back when I loved this orchestra and thought it was the best thing in the world and was so proud and happy to be a part of it and now I'm sitting where I wanted to sit four years ago and honestly I could care less. And there was the skit, and the audience was very amused but I could not laugh without it ringing hollow because that's what it was, hollow, life felt like a hollow echo of 2006 and deja vu except 2006 was gone, gone, gone and what am I still doing here.
When I got out and found out that my parents didn't come at all, it reinforced the feeling. I was wearing my black concert dress with the flower pinned on the right and the graduation medallion thing hanging from my neck and it was the last concert of the year and they weren't even there. My dad's detoxing right now - they took out his morphine pump (after a DECADE) and when I called that's what my mom said: Dad's detoxing, he's tired, I'm tired too so I stayed at home to keep him company. They missed the skit, they missed the words, they missed the gifts, they missed the last concert of the year that I would have liked to chat with them about afterwards and I felt like an invisible wall just sprang up between me and them and just what, what, what was I doing here.
I went to Jake's not because I was excited for it and for the fun, but because I realized that if I went home to my parents in their room and me in mine, I didn't think I could face the loneliness. I would depress myself beyond words. So I went to surround myself with an at least somewhat cheerful atmosphere.
I must admit, Jake's was fun. I genuinely enjoyed myself (I did mention radical mood swings earlier didn't I?) but at the same time some objective third-party observer part of me remembered for the first time the fun and the games and WHY I had loved orchestra and these excursions so much when I was younger and I tried to start a game but it just doesn't work. The people aren't the same, everything's just... not the same. And for a while last night at least it didn't matter, but it was still there. I still saw it, I still noticed it.
This morning I was nearing paranoia/hysteria, I was so high strung. I put off practise and then worked on photoshop for awhile but too much computery and no food gets to you and then when my mom came by I was just. ugh. She started to say something about my room and I was like *TWITCH* YEAH I KNOW I'LL CLEAN IT (because it's a horror right now, completely degenerated during my battle with Boitz's senior gift) and she just wanted to ask if the cleaning ladies had respected my wishes and not come inside and I think she was genuinely well-meaning but even that felt oppressive because I KNEW my room was messy and KNEW I should clean it and the well-meaning inquiry felt like a barb set into my skin. And then she was asking me about the accompanist pieces and had I practised and I need to practise and can I memorize them I need to practise them a LOT and know them really, really well because we're not rehearsing much at all and I just wanted her to shut up, shut and go away, I wanted to scream SHUT UP I KNOW all this and I also know exactly how unready I am and how ready I need to be and LET ME TAKE CARE OF THIS IN MY OWN TIME, PLEASE please please...
There was food but I didn't really feel like eating any (didn't eat at Jake's either), I took about two bites and left it. I was thinking about last night's concert and this week's practise and how my parents didn't go and how pointless everything was and it all came to a head when I was practising cello and I started crying because I was practising Kabalevsky and thinking about Brahms and Kabalevsky wasn't ready either and Mrs. Kim expected me to pass it today and how the hell was I going to do that. It got better after a while because it wasn't as bad as I thought and then Mrs. Kim called to move the lesson and sometime in between all of this was when my mom informed me that I had rehearsal on Tuesday and on Friday (which I nearly snapped again at hearing - it's the last day of school - but I'm over it now) & I felt better.
And my mom promptly killed it by accidentally deleting all the pictures on the camera. Hers AND mine. I almost snapped again, and then calmed down and attempted to help her retrieve the pictures, which after a while I figured out was impossible to do w/o a memory card reader, so I told her to save the card and not to take any more pictures and next time let someone who can actually USE the computer, you know, use the computer.
This was around 3 o'clock. I was really starting to feel horribly edgy and uncomfortable at home and I practised piano a little bit but stopped because I felt as though my mom was judging me which is a completely stupid, paranoid, and irrational thing to think, but there you have it. And I hadn't eaten since I woke up.
I - seriously though. I hate eating at home when Peggy ahyi is around because she's so nice and polite and Chinese and when I'm looking through things she's constantly offering stuff like "the white rice is here!" "want some soup?" "want some noodles?" "your food is here!" etc etc and it makes me uncomfortable all over and I just wish she'd leave me alone and let me find what I want to eat myself. So around then I was really starting to get hungry so I got myself a bowl of stuff and my mom's real cranky and high strung lately too, I guess, because she was just irritable and said in this very disagreeable tone, "Stop being so loud!" and that in turn annoyed me more than it ever should've, but I swallowed it and took the food back to my room to eat because I didn't feel like I could eat outside next to her. (She and Peggy ahyi were practising Chinese calligraphy on the dining table.)
After that was when I finally left. I'd been toying with the idea in my head for a long while and around then I finally just grabbed a leash, took Rice, and walked out. Long walks usually help me think.
I had some idea of walking to school, calling up the one person I felt like I could talk to at least a little bit, and then - I don't know, venting. But then he was busy and honestly, the whole time I was walking all of these miserable thoughts were running through my head and I just couldn't stop thinking about everything, but once I jumped the fence to my happy place and sat for awhile it all just bubbled down and vanished. My head was blissfully clear. So I stayed there with my dog for about two hours, half-sleeping for a lot of the time, chasing Rice around for a short while (he tires easily XD), making clover flower chains and occasionally pondering what to do next, because I was afraid to go home. See, all the thoughts had gone just like that, but I was afraid that once I left the sun and the sky and the wind and the grass, they would all come piling back, esp. if I walked my dog all the way home (the way here had seemed short because my head was so stuffed full of thoughts, but now that my head was clear it seemed a long way back) and I would become the hysterical person I was again in the morning.
Eventually it got colder so I left and walked downtown to get some food (+ water for Rice) and figure out what to do next.
Called Boy again and he actually came this time but when he did I felt that I couldn't talk to him anymore because 1. I was a lot calmer and didn't have much to say anyway... well OK that's a lie but I was def. much calmer and in control of myself, but I don't know, I guess I was like that the whole time because all the turmoil was internal, it was perfectly easy to be happy and civil and wonderful to the passerby old woman who asked me for directions and 2. I think I innately sensed that he'd be uncomfortable if I talked about stuff like that too much because, sadly, 3. Boy cares more about himself than anyone else besides which 3. he wouldn't know how to deal with it and this is basically the same reason I can't really talk to anyone else because my troubles are MY troubles and it's not fair to pile them on someone else besides which who would want to listen and even if you find someone who might listen it's still not fair.
I don't know what I was looking for. I think I just wanted someone... like me, actually. Someone who would sense instantly that something was wrong or that I wanted to talk, and then pry, and pry, and pry until everything was out in the open, and listen, and give suggestions and try my hardest to help because I do that for everyone who turns to me (whether they do so wittingly or unwittingly), it's almost instinct but then, but then... in the end who's left for me, but me? Why should anyone go out of their way to help someone else, particularly if it's someone that doesn't even really need help, because I know and other people know too that if I tried hard enough I could take care of myself?
Part of this is the way I lead my life. I've been a floater for the past 4 years, and I'm sad to say this, but I think that's almost set in stone now, how I live. I make sure I have free access to all sorts of people, all sorts of places, all sorts of groups, and I also make sure I am removable. My loss is never a true loss because I am a come-and-go. I make sure I have no strings attached. In fact I become uncomfortable when others become too attached to me (if I am not v. attached to them - which is usu. the case) and try to shake them off.
Unless they are broken or need help. As mentioned before, I have this helping-people mentality, whether it be for cello or personal woes or simple advice, and when people need me I tend to gravitate to them. I like to think I don't try too hard the way I used to, but I know it's a definite inclination of mine and we can probably make some circular philosophical argument about how that leads back to selfishness and whether selfish or selfless or whatever the fuck it is, as an analytical observer analyzing myself it is there and that's that.
So in the end, who do I really have to complain to, but me? I am the cause of all my own problems. Aren't we all?
I am hurt and broken and I am patching myself up because I have to. This will probably be a pattern throughout the rest of my life. But I swear to god I will always do it and never do what 三毛 did.
About the wandering outside the house - I was out for approx. 5-6 hours, from 3 to 8-9ish? It really helped to settle me, I'll say that much. Though now I am that much more behind on the thorny worldly affairs I have to get back to doing. Ah well.
For those of you that did not bother to read this monster of a post, I am fine now. So go back to doing whatever you were doing.
I realized today how easy it would be to just run away from home and never come back. Take my wallet, my phone, a couple personal belongings, small blanket, get out and just walk. Walk. Go as far as possible, find some place or the other to curl up for the night - I'm good at that, always have been - wake up, and just keep walking. I wonder how far I can go.
I don't hate this place. I don't find it a hellhole or any such. In fact, to a certain extent I love my home. I just find that I'm growing further and further apart from my parents, and, at the same time, further and further apart from everyone else.
It's not pressure, but in a way it is. I have a recital and a performance (piano accompaniment) this weekend, and a concert the day right after that; I have practise on Tuesday w/the performers for the accompaniment and I'm not ready at all and the worst worst worst part about it is that I can't bring myself to care. Not really care. I mean I do care, I care right now, but it's like I care because I know I should care, not because I actually care. And in fact the state I'm in right now it's more like I care because I know I should know that I should care except I don't... and when I practise like this it's just so much slower and so much worse because I'm not really trying, not trying with that edge of desperation and not even trying that hard normally as well, I'm just pushing myself to do what I should do and know I can do (because I've done it before, but what the fuck, I did stuff like that when I was desperate and pushing myself to the edge and can I really do it three times removed like this the way I am now) and I don't even know.
Part of it might just be lack of sleep and lack of food. But it's not all. I don't know. I was near (inner) hysteria during my piano lesson on Friday and I was just so, so frustrated because I couldn't do it, I couldn't, I just couldn't but it's not that I can't, see, because I CAN do it, I can do it in the lesson when she plays for me and shows me how but when I go home and practise I lose it, I just can't get it anymore can't figure it out because in the lesson I wasn't really listening, not really, I was just half-copying her and because I have a good ear I pull it off but if I don't listen to my sound and don't try I'm never going to get it and I know that but knowing isn't the same thing as doing and she was repeating the same things in the lesson that she's repeated for the past 3 weeks and I wanted to scream at her I get it, I get it, I get it but I don't get it, what are you going to do about that?! I wanted to tell her that I could do it in the lesson but not at home, but I didn't because I know exactly what she'd say - that I'm not listening hard enough, that I'm not really paying attention to the sound, and it's true - I mean I know exactly what my problem is, I just can't bring myself to fix it and whose fault is that?
It's so easy to be calm on the outside. It's so easy to be pleasant on the outside. In fact it's so easy that I don't know how to do the opposite anymore. The past two days I've had these gigantic mood swings up and down and up and down and you'd think I'm nearing hysteria except I know I'm not, I can get ahold of myself if I really tried because I've been through worse and survived.
What if sometimes you just don't want to get ahold of yourself? What if sometimes you just want to be a little kid and throw your temper tantrum again and slam the door and leave? What if sometimes you just want someone you can tell these things to, someone who has no expectations of you whatsoever, someone who would listen, really, really care enough to listen and not judge?
This is NOT the I can't live up to my expectations helplessness. It's the I CAN live up to my expectations, I know I can, they know I can, I know they know I can and they know I know I can but what the fuck, what if I don't want to live up to my expectations. I'm tired - or rather not tired, bored and sick - this is becoming rote work, and the ironic part is music is not rote work, if you practise by rote without your mind the acc. might still be OK (except not because I don't know half the pieces and the rehearsal's on Tuesday, honestly) but the Brahms is just. hopeless. So in the end it turns out I may not be able to live up to my expectations after all. How ironic.
Honestly, though. Is that so wrong? It's my last week, it's the last bloody week of high school, it's the last week of my senior year, is it wrong to want peace?
I worked myself into righteous anger about someone before piano class yesterday, and during lesson it channeled into desperation, futility, and and urge to kill/slam the piano because I couldn't, couldn't, couldn't do it, I was doing it but not really doing it and I wanted so badly to tell my teacher that but I couldn't, and trust me having that urge doesn't help your playing one bit. I - srsly when I left I was so angry at the piano and at myself that I was on the verge of tears, but I didn't let my teacher see.
After piano was the concert, and I cannot tell you how depressed it made me. Not the fact that we're graduating and it's the last concert, but the fact that I couldn't bring myself to feel any excitement about it. Any. And I remembered back when I loved this orchestra and thought it was the best thing in the world and was so proud and happy to be a part of it and now I'm sitting where I wanted to sit four years ago and honestly I could care less. And there was the skit, and the audience was very amused but I could not laugh without it ringing hollow because that's what it was, hollow, life felt like a hollow echo of 2006 and deja vu except 2006 was gone, gone, gone and what am I still doing here.
When I got out and found out that my parents didn't come at all, it reinforced the feeling. I was wearing my black concert dress with the flower pinned on the right and the graduation medallion thing hanging from my neck and it was the last concert of the year and they weren't even there. My dad's detoxing right now - they took out his morphine pump (after a DECADE) and when I called that's what my mom said: Dad's detoxing, he's tired, I'm tired too so I stayed at home to keep him company. They missed the skit, they missed the words, they missed the gifts, they missed the last concert of the year that I would have liked to chat with them about afterwards and I felt like an invisible wall just sprang up between me and them and just what, what, what was I doing here.
I went to Jake's not because I was excited for it and for the fun, but because I realized that if I went home to my parents in their room and me in mine, I didn't think I could face the loneliness. I would depress myself beyond words. So I went to surround myself with an at least somewhat cheerful atmosphere.
I must admit, Jake's was fun. I genuinely enjoyed myself (I did mention radical mood swings earlier didn't I?) but at the same time some objective third-party observer part of me remembered for the first time the fun and the games and WHY I had loved orchestra and these excursions so much when I was younger and I tried to start a game but it just doesn't work. The people aren't the same, everything's just... not the same. And for a while last night at least it didn't matter, but it was still there. I still saw it, I still noticed it.
This morning I was nearing paranoia/hysteria, I was so high strung. I put off practise and then worked on photoshop for awhile but too much computery and no food gets to you and then when my mom came by I was just. ugh. She started to say something about my room and I was like *TWITCH* YEAH I KNOW I'LL CLEAN IT (because it's a horror right now, completely degenerated during my battle with Boitz's senior gift) and she just wanted to ask if the cleaning ladies had respected my wishes and not come inside and I think she was genuinely well-meaning but even that felt oppressive because I KNEW my room was messy and KNEW I should clean it and the well-meaning inquiry felt like a barb set into my skin. And then she was asking me about the accompanist pieces and had I practised and I need to practise and can I memorize them I need to practise them a LOT and know them really, really well because we're not rehearsing much at all and I just wanted her to shut up, shut and go away, I wanted to scream SHUT UP I KNOW all this and I also know exactly how unready I am and how ready I need to be and LET ME TAKE CARE OF THIS IN MY OWN TIME, PLEASE please please...
There was food but I didn't really feel like eating any (didn't eat at Jake's either), I took about two bites and left it. I was thinking about last night's concert and this week's practise and how my parents didn't go and how pointless everything was and it all came to a head when I was practising cello and I started crying because I was practising Kabalevsky and thinking about Brahms and Kabalevsky wasn't ready either and Mrs. Kim expected me to pass it today and how the hell was I going to do that. It got better after a while because it wasn't as bad as I thought and then Mrs. Kim called to move the lesson and sometime in between all of this was when my mom informed me that I had rehearsal on Tuesday and on Friday (which I nearly snapped again at hearing - it's the last day of school - but I'm over it now) & I felt better.
And my mom promptly killed it by accidentally deleting all the pictures on the camera. Hers AND mine. I almost snapped again, and then calmed down and attempted to help her retrieve the pictures, which after a while I figured out was impossible to do w/o a memory card reader, so I told her to save the card and not to take any more pictures and next time let someone who can actually USE the computer, you know, use the computer.
This was around 3 o'clock. I was really starting to feel horribly edgy and uncomfortable at home and I practised piano a little bit but stopped because I felt as though my mom was judging me which is a completely stupid, paranoid, and irrational thing to think, but there you have it. And I hadn't eaten since I woke up.
I - seriously though. I hate eating at home when Peggy ahyi is around because she's so nice and polite and Chinese and when I'm looking through things she's constantly offering stuff like "the white rice is here!" "want some soup?" "want some noodles?" "your food is here!" etc etc and it makes me uncomfortable all over and I just wish she'd leave me alone and let me find what I want to eat myself. So around then I was really starting to get hungry so I got myself a bowl of stuff and my mom's real cranky and high strung lately too, I guess, because she was just irritable and said in this very disagreeable tone, "Stop being so loud!" and that in turn annoyed me more than it ever should've, but I swallowed it and took the food back to my room to eat because I didn't feel like I could eat outside next to her. (She and Peggy ahyi were practising Chinese calligraphy on the dining table.)
After that was when I finally left. I'd been toying with the idea in my head for a long while and around then I finally just grabbed a leash, took Rice, and walked out. Long walks usually help me think.
I had some idea of walking to school, calling up the one person I felt like I could talk to at least a little bit, and then - I don't know, venting. But then he was busy and honestly, the whole time I was walking all of these miserable thoughts were running through my head and I just couldn't stop thinking about everything, but once I jumped the fence to my happy place and sat for awhile it all just bubbled down and vanished. My head was blissfully clear. So I stayed there with my dog for about two hours, half-sleeping for a lot of the time, chasing Rice around for a short while (he tires easily XD), making clover flower chains and occasionally pondering what to do next, because I was afraid to go home. See, all the thoughts had gone just like that, but I was afraid that once I left the sun and the sky and the wind and the grass, they would all come piling back, esp. if I walked my dog all the way home (the way here had seemed short because my head was so stuffed full of thoughts, but now that my head was clear it seemed a long way back) and I would become the hysterical person I was again in the morning.
Eventually it got colder so I left and walked downtown to get some food (+ water for Rice) and figure out what to do next.
Called Boy again and he actually came this time but when he did I felt that I couldn't talk to him anymore because 1. I was a lot calmer and didn't have much to say anyway... well OK that's a lie but I was def. much calmer and in control of myself, but I don't know, I guess I was like that the whole time because all the turmoil was internal, it was perfectly easy to be happy and civil and wonderful to the passerby old woman who asked me for directions and 2. I think I innately sensed that he'd be uncomfortable if I talked about stuff like that too much because, sadly, 3. Boy cares more about himself than anyone else besides which 3. he wouldn't know how to deal with it and this is basically the same reason I can't really talk to anyone else because my troubles are MY troubles and it's not fair to pile them on someone else besides which who would want to listen and even if you find someone who might listen it's still not fair.
I don't know what I was looking for. I think I just wanted someone... like me, actually. Someone who would sense instantly that something was wrong or that I wanted to talk, and then pry, and pry, and pry until everything was out in the open, and listen, and give suggestions and try my hardest to help because I do that for everyone who turns to me (whether they do so wittingly or unwittingly), it's almost instinct but then, but then... in the end who's left for me, but me? Why should anyone go out of their way to help someone else, particularly if it's someone that doesn't even really need help, because I know and other people know too that if I tried hard enough I could take care of myself?
Part of this is the way I lead my life. I've been a floater for the past 4 years, and I'm sad to say this, but I think that's almost set in stone now, how I live. I make sure I have free access to all sorts of people, all sorts of places, all sorts of groups, and I also make sure I am removable. My loss is never a true loss because I am a come-and-go. I make sure I have no strings attached. In fact I become uncomfortable when others become too attached to me (if I am not v. attached to them - which is usu. the case) and try to shake them off.
Unless they are broken or need help. As mentioned before, I have this helping-people mentality, whether it be for cello or personal woes or simple advice, and when people need me I tend to gravitate to them. I like to think I don't try too hard the way I used to, but I know it's a definite inclination of mine and we can probably make some circular philosophical argument about how that leads back to selfishness and whether selfish or selfless or whatever the fuck it is, as an analytical observer analyzing myself it is there and that's that.
So in the end, who do I really have to complain to, but me? I am the cause of all my own problems. Aren't we all?
I am hurt and broken and I am patching myself up because I have to. This will probably be a pattern throughout the rest of my life. But I swear to god I will always do it and never do what 三毛 did.
About the wandering outside the house - I was out for approx. 5-6 hours, from 3 to 8-9ish? It really helped to settle me, I'll say that much. Though now I am that much more behind on the thorny worldly affairs I have to get back to doing. Ah well.
For those of you that did not bother to read this monster of a post, I am fine now. So go back to doing whatever you were doing.
