(no subject)
{three hours and seven pages in microsoft word later...}
oh my stars, there’s so much that i don’t know where to start.
i’ve realized that i perpetuate my loneliness.
when people ask me the question, “so jen, how’s college?”, i give a one word answer (usually with one of those you-know-how-it-is half-smiles): “hard.” there are the people from church who will immediately take that answer and interpret it as to mean, “oh, she must mean that it’s hard to uphold her faith while walking through the influences and pitfalls of an immoral world. and yet look at her! she’s still here at church, serving, singing, praising. how admirable!” then there’s the people from school who will think, “ah, it’s the coursework. what with all those honors classes and that scholars program she’s in, no wonder. but look at her, she’s asian-she must be able to hold up. it’s, like, programmed in her genes. how admirable!” and then there are those who can somehow read my mind. “she’s lonely.”
college. if you take that word, rearrange the letters, take a few out, and then stick a “y” at the end, you get the word “lonely”. (see the logic?)
i remember writing an entry in this journal some time ago about how one of my lightbulb revelations of myself. it had something to do with my social habits. here, i’ll cut&paste:
up until tonight, i've always thought of myself as anti-social. maybe not to the extent of being agoraphobic and staying away from all other human beings, but i like my alone time. i'm outgoing, but i'm not a social butterfly. i spend my saturday nights doing homework and reading books because i like having sundays reserved for the relaxation that it was meant for. a lot of times, i've been invited out-- and a lot of times, i've said no. then i'd mosey my way through the rest of the day thinking to myself that maybe i should've said yes, but knowing in my gut that saying no was the right thing. i like my house; i like the couches, as worn and cracked-leather as they are, and i like that i need only one hand to read-- it makes eating while reading quite the possibility. (unless what i'm eating involves chopsticks and a bowl of rice. then things start getting a little trickier.) i like spending time...alone. hearing the hum of the refrigerator, sometimes being almost scared senseless by strange, ambient noises made by passing cars and things that go bump in the night. people may call me a loner, but it's not even about that. when i feel lonely, i talk with people. it's not so much human contact that bothers me.
it's the human interaction.
i'm not antisocial.
i'm individual-social.
kind of like how two people can be together,
but still be alone. if that makes any sense.
tonight, i was invited to go do something at some park out in mason, which consisted of demonstrating my atrocious tennis skills and some frisbee, then getting a "wowcow" icecream, and then going back to someone's house, where other people in the group left, and it was only me and three other guys, all wrapped up in killing each other via halo. (silly boys.) i think i lasted about a half-hour just watching them get mad at each other and all competitive about who-killed-who, and then i went and roamed the household. i found myself in the downstairs living room, with the comfy sofas, and it struck me that the grr-ness that had been slowly building within me while i was in that halo room was gone when i reached the living room. and i realized that as long as i knew that the other people who were (all three of them) were having a good time, then i was happy in that. but; that didn't mean i had to physically be in the same room as them.
i like being around people, because i'd go stir-crazy without them. it's just when there's a concentration of people conglomerated into one mass-- and it doesn't have to be a group of twenty or forty people. five will suffice to tire my, shall we say, weak social muscle. i don't know...i think the precise reason why i'm not a party sort of person is because of that-- too many people in one place. and it stinks, because i'm the type of kid who likes to wander, and in this society, it is deemed as rude to explore other people's houses, which i understand, and therefore, am shut into the only place there is left-- myself. i like social gathering places, like bookstores, in that there's a bunch of people around, and yet they are all doing quite individual and different tasks. if some friends and i were placed at a bookstore, i'd be such a happy camper. one, there's books, but two, we'd all roam about, but be in the relatively same space. we could find each other if need be, but we could be on our own as well. i like the whole one-on-one aspect of things-- face to face, where i can concentrate on that person without other distractions around. i suppose that's why i like the phone so much.
individual-social.
yup, that's me.
[written 12:15am june 5 2005]
i say it again-i perpetuate my loneliness.
tonight i went to a surprise birthday party shindig that was a little lukewarm on the surprise side but definitely high on the asian-gathering meter in terms of party. and, true to my individual-social self, i spent the majority of my time huddled up either on the stairs or laid out with my feet upon one chair and my bum on another in the dining room reading through amy’s spark magazines. [food for thought: sometimes i think that it’d be so much easier to have an arranged marriage than to go and find “the one”. think on that.] the parents and adults in the kitchen, and the youth in the living room. and me in tandem, occasionally wandering amidst the sea of bodies in the living room, and tiptoeing around the adults. because, in essence, i feel neither in one group or the other. this might have to do with the fact that the guy i (had a crush on sounds so fourth-grade and understates what i went through, but what the heck, i don’t know a better way of saying it) had a crush on is in one group, and the other group consists of so many people who are older and more mature and whom i look up to and respect and am a little anxious around. and i guess it just all boils down to something that has been staring me in the face all along.
there are walls sky-high that cage in my heart. i thought that they had been torn down a long while ago-or, at least, on the path to being dismantled, bulldozed over and through-but i guess not. (who knows, maybe they’re like those hedged-maze walls that spring back up every once in a while in that one computer screensaver.) actually, i do think there was a time when i let my defenses down. it involved that crush, and it was wonderful. it was also misconstrued, blown way out of proportion, and intentionally misdirected. and so, my walls sprouted back up like a weed (the poetic-wannabe in me wants to stick in like a weed choking my spirit, but that’s a little much) and i’ve been a little more heavy-hearted since. it may be true that an elephant never forgets, but it’s even moreso for the heart. but anyhoo. i thought that i was out of the maze and in the clear, but then i took a series of wrong turns, and here i am again. four walls, each guarded like a hawk.
and there i am, the princess with her pink froufy cupcake dress on, waiting expectantly-- desperately-by the window, searching far and wide for the sight of a savior on the horizon. day follows night, night follows day, and with each passing day, it’s as if the walls grow stronger from my insecurities, feeding themselves off of the fact that no one has come. there are walls sky-high around my heart, and these are my standards. these are my HRI’s, my hopelessly-romantic-ideals, where i expect-no, demand-that someone come and climb up my hair and rescue me from the clutches of my own heart, because, after all, the heart is deceitful above all things, and beyond cure. (who can understand it?)
and so, i’m sentenced (self-imposed) to wait there. to wait, in my individual-socialness, for someone to come breaking down the walls. for someone to see that i am so disgustingly lonely that it’s gotten to the point where i no longer seem lonely, if that makes any sense. it’s kind of like when you’re so hungry that you come to a point where your body somehow makes it so that your stomach gets so burned out from rumbling signaling its hunger that you feel full despite the lack of food within you. it’s become a “jen-thing”, as alvin so tactfully pointed out tonight as i was in the dining room: “who is socially awkward and is reading in the dining room? i’ll take jen poon for five hundred.” sure, it’s funny, but it hurts, and the only reason it hurts as much is that it’s true. and then tonight, my mom said something along the lines of, “when so-and-so happened to you, nobody cared.” i know it was said out of frustration and that she didn’t really (completely) mean it, but that didn’t lessen any of the hurt. “nobody cared.” “socially awkward.” such different takes on what i termed myself to be as “individual-social”.
but does anybody really care? the answer, i know, is yes. a big huge resounding yes. i know that the group in the living room and the group in the dining room are full of people who care. but to that wistful little thing inside of me, caring is something different. it’s galloping full-speed-ahead, regardless of the walls. it’s knocking at my door, calling up to my window. it’s breaking in through to my heart. it’s being there to ask me how i am and to demand more than the superficial answer. it’s someone who makes me vulnerable, but then stays to build me back up. i have had plenty of people march in and out and trample around my walls, vulnerable-izing me, staying long enough to watch the walls crack and crumble, then jetting out of there before they could get themselves dirty. it’s called “being nice”; it’s called “taken advantage of”.
i am a girl of many (many) insecurities. it’s gotten to the point where i avoid mentioning myself in conversations and comments at all costs for fear that i will be thought egotistical/narcissistic/trying to steal the limelight. (is there such a ting as an i-complex that, rather than being ego-centered, is anti-narcissistic in characteristic?) which really limits me to what i allow myself to say. not to mention that i’ve stopped instant messaging. the funny thing is, i think people think it’s for lent? but the reason i gave it up was for something completely different-i didn’t even know that the day i decided to stop was ash wednesday.
i suppose you could say that it’s kind of like anorexia of the spirit. i know that once you see the word anorexia, you’re like “whoa”, but let me explain…
hmm. there are some days when i have such a sense of myself and who i am that i feel like i could pose for a statue or something-- such the antithesis of what it is to be insecure. and then there are the days where i feel like that pillbug in the emperor's new groove-- easy to crack open and slurp out. i'm starting to realize that this whole "finding yourself in college" phrase that everyone loved to use actually does have some merit.
this is hard, because i've thought that i knew myself, and yet simultaneously, i recognize that i don't.
i'm taking a class this quarter called the culture of eating disorders, and even though i've only had four classes so far (twice a week for the past two weeks), it's just fascinating. i'm not going to get into some edumacational tirade about anorexia nervosa and all that, mainly because i know so little about it that i'm not even qualified to have an opinion. (although did you know that "anorexia" is an adjective, and that most people who use it in everyday sentences use it wrong? the correct noun term is "anorectic".) as women, we're taught and socialized to hate our bodies. somewhere down the line, women started equating beauty and acceptance with thinness. i never even knew about this until i read it-- clothes used to be made to tailor fit the person. meaning that the scenes in harry potter where madame malkin measures the boys actually used to happen everyday to every person when they went shopping for clothing. *jaw drop* and then companies started figuring out how to make the most money for the least amount of effort (not quite unlike how college students wish to maximize their grades with the minimum amount of work =P) and voila, "ready-to-wear clothing" was introduced. maybe it's just me, but that fact alone spun around in my mind like a dizzy little driedl for a while after i heard it, because here we are, going to department stores and the mall and we see hangers upon hangers hung upon racks upon racks, and there;s not a shopping excursion that hasn't gone by when i haven't overheard some girl bemoaning about how she doesn't fit into those jeans. and it's just revolutionary that long before department stores and fitting rooms with the triple-mirror-threat were around, girls didn't have to "fit into" whatever they wore. it was what they wore that fit them. (astounding, really.)
this class alone has me thinking on about nine different levels all at the same time. and then you add all the other classes that i'm taking this quarter
spring quarter 2006
>> intro to psychology 103 (honors)
>> "having it all" using the law to solve the work/family conflict
>> how life works: from cells to organisms
>> history of jazz&popular music
>> the culture of eating disorders (honors)
>> asl ii
it's like reflection-of-self times a million and a half.
norman once mentioned how whenever i seem to find something new about myself or something that pertained to me, i’d be so quick to jump to the conclusion that that was me and that i’d convince myself absolutely that i had this characteristic or that trait or this problem or that one, even though it wouldn't necessarily be true. it’s kind of like the medical-student-syndrome, where you’d go and read a bunch of symptoms and think that you have that disease. and i don’t know if it’s true for me, or if it something else-maybe i’ve always had this little bug inside of me, bugging around, and it isn’t until i come across that “something new” that i’m able to make that abstract, distant nudge of a feeling into something tangible, defined, able to be remedied. so when i read about the psychology behind anorexia, i recognized that some part of that was truth within me. somehow someway, a sort of spiritual anorexia had gotten a hold of me.
the thing about anorectics is that it isn’t about food. it very rarely is a problem in which the majority of the beef (no pun intended, really) is with consumption of food. there is something within them that tells them that they aren’t perfect, and in such a society as this, as perfection is equated with thinness, not being perfect means that they’re not thin enough. not being perfect means that they’re not in full control. not being perfect means that they don’t have enough willpower, that they aren’t strong enough, that they don’t have enough control and power over their own selves. food intake is about the one thing that you can absolutely control, and so, this mental delusion manifests itself in the only way the human body knows how-through refusing it.
not being perfect for me, is actually a huge deal. i know i’m not perfect-and yet i’ve always struggled with this. the waterfall at retreat was because of this issue; the heart-to-heart in chicago was because of this issue. my struggle right now is because of this. this image of perfection, of what it means to be Christian, of what it means to be perfect in righteousness. you know how i said earlier (much, much earlier =P) that it’s gotten to the point where i try not to mention anything with “i” in it? oh, it’s all fine and dandy to talk about what i’ve learned in my classes or to relay a story i heard or whatnot, but the primary reason why i’m so wary of “i” is because i’m afraid that other people will see me as selfish, egocentric, basically all that i said earlier. i can almost imagine their thoughts, scrolling like a marquee across their minds: “dood jen, i didn’t ask you about you. let me talk about me.” and so, i sit back, and let them talk talk talk, talk me out of existence from my own self. even though the reality of the matter is that that scrolling marquee isn’t in their heads-it’s all only ever in mine.
but stop right there. since when do i let what other people think of me affect me? a lot, actually, a whole lot more than i let on. i once heard that it isn’t what you think of yourself or even what others think of you, but it’s what you think others think of you that gets a person all twisted. it has become clear to me that right now, i’m living for other people. i’m living mostly to see if i can make them laugh; whatever i say, whatever i do, is said and done in the hopes of coaxing a chuckle or full-blown chortle from someone. i convince myself that i’m living like this for God, that i’m getting to people for God through a manner such as this-and i think that’s why the perception of Christianity is so skewed, because it’s so easy to excuse every single action or every single thought as “oh, i’m doing this for God” or “it’s His will”. everything is branded with God-this and God-that that the legitimacy of everything is questioned, and it’s a lot easier to defame. if i were really doing this for God, would i be this heartbroken at the end of the night? this shattered and confused and small? if i were really doing this for God, wouldn’t i be joyful? exultant? wouldn’t i praise Him?
it is here where my sweet little innocent-looking devil’s advocate waltzes in with, “but jen! haven’t you heard the latest casting crowns song on the radio?”
i will praise You in this storm
and i will lift my hands
for You are who You are
no matter where i am
every tear i've cried
You hold in Your hand
You never left my side
and though my heart is torn
i will praise You in this storm
but oh, there is such a different between God placing me in a storm to me creating it of my own volition and putting myself smack-dab in the middle of it.
so do i really know myself? no. but does anyone really? the more important question-do i love and accept what i do know of myself? who i am right now? truthfully, no. not yet. and yet even now, God provides. He knows i’ve been struggling with this, and that whole i-don’t-speak-of-“i” affected even how i prayed. cohesive thoughts and sentences went out the door, instead to be replaced only by a quite palpable yearning of my heart, of my soul and spirit. and comfort came from the most unexpected sources-those who were baptized today. i remember one girl said something along the lines of this during her testimony when she was summing up the four laws of Jesus:
God knows you’ve sinned, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
this sounds long and depressive, but (and i can’t help but laugh out into a grin when i say this) it isn’t. it really truly isn’t. and it’s frustrating and it’s awesome and it’s hairsplitting all at the same time it’s me yelling, “GOD! why the heck am i like this?! why am i who i am and yet have so little grasp and confidence in who i think that i am?” all the while murmuring, “yes, God, i know you’re there-and sometimes, that is all that is holding me up.” there is nothing that i can do. which is an answer that i’ve already had checked off in my life book a few times already-which is what makes this so frustrating and yet so childlishly joyful at the same time. it is so hard to release this self-imposed, self-imprisoning, wall-building guilt and shame and insecurity-but that’s all it takes.
i must die to myself, right? but i've been doing it all oh-so-wrong. i've been dying to the world in a way that was never meant to be if the purpose is to live life to the fullest-- i've been shutting people out. i've stopped aim, i've stopped xanga, and i've contemplated many times of stopping this. (or just up-and-move again, like i did so quickly with the last one of these i had.) but i remember quite well what i've told others. man is not an island. we were not meant to live alone. we were meant to live in and not of, but not alone. and in this whole process of everything...i mean, not having to interact online only helped to fortify my walls. and i guess there's some part of me that thinks that the stronger and taller the walls are, the more spectacular it'll be when someone breaks through, not realizing that maybe it is because the walls are so high and so thick that it's near impossible for anyone to even peek over the ledge.
i don’t know what i was aiming for in writing all of this. it’s just been burrowing around in my heart for quite a while now. but as it's 2am and i have school in seven hours-- if you made it all the way this far, thank you. for reading, and for caring.
(pray for me, will you please?)