on parents and adulthood

K: my dad was arrested last week.
C: my dad could have been arrested last week too! why was he?
K: cause he was out drinking ....but he was waiting outside fro my mom to pick him up. and he was drunk. so cops asked him questions i guess... and he didn't cooperate so they arrested him. for drunk in public, resisiting arrest AND threatening to kill an officer. i was like DAD serously
he was like 'i was drunk'
C: my dad could have been arrested because he went to abar on a THURSDAY night.. got so drunk that he called my sister to pick him up, and she found in lying on the ground in the middle of a parking lot
K: you would think. in their adult age. is that going to be us in 25 years

C: i hope not. you'd think we could get a grasp on how to drink responsibly by then. probably not though. i wonder if i will ever procreate.
K: hahahah

i have such small hips

i dont know how i'll get one out

and then raising it

omggg

i can't even raise myself

we're so poor

how would we find enough money

we'd have to put it in a box house

Why we're friends.

I'm sorry I couldn't love you the way you wanted me to.

You were stupid enough to believe the way I felt would change. But you knew better.

I was stupid enough to believe you had the strength to really be my friend. But I knew better.

And so. Here we are.

And at the end of it, I miss you. But that's worth nothing. I know.

Mike: it's killer
Mike: it's draining
Mike: soul-crushing
Mike: and sometimes you look up from the computer screen
Mike: and you feel like this is it
Mike: nothing comes after this
Mike: like you will do [the job], and then you will be homeless, and then you will die
Kim Chi: not unless i die tomorrow
Mike: then you'll skip the homeless part
Mike: we understand each other, right?
Mike: this is not the end!
Mike: many interesting things will happen to you
Mike: before you die
Mike: assuming you don't die tomorrow

blue skies, broken hearts

"Sometimes we expect more from others because we would be willing to do that much for them."

I don't know where this quote originated from, but there are about 30,000 people liking it on Facebook currently.

We were sitting in my room a few weeks ago, having one of those conversations that would either be the end of us or would mend what had been broken. Thankfully, we're on the road toward mending, but she'd spoken of expectations, and how she'd learned not to expect things out of people. That way everything was under your own control, and I guess, you wouldn't blame others or resent others for when things didn't go as you'd thought they would. That way you'd hold yourself accountable. It makes sense.

I've always been a fairly good friend. Despite my faults. I'm the kind of person who'll wake up at 3 a.m. to help a drunk friend in the house, or pick you up from D.C., the kind of friend who'd pick you up from the airport so you wouldn't have to take public transportation, the kind of friend who'll try to bake you cookies even though they suck or listen to you cry over an ex-boyfriend time and time again. And so, I've always expected the same out of the people who I choose to be in my life, the people whom I proudly call my friends. And trust me, I choose them carefully. And I'm aware, we choose our friends, knowing what we're getting into, knowing how they are, what they're capable of, and the kind of friend they're able to be.

But it's still sad sometimes, really sad, when you realize, as much as you love them, you're just no longer okay with that much less than you'd give.

where you are

“Most girls’ plan is to meet a guy, love, have a baby, but I don’t know if I have what it takes for everybody’s regular plan” - How Do You Know

At times I can be jealous, insecure, territorial, selfish. Even when I don't want more, even when I know I will be fine without this, even when I know I will be fine when this won't be the story anymore.

Have confidence, they always say. I love a man with confidence, and I can tell within the first few minutes of meeting him if he's insecure with who he is. Those guys generally don't stand a chance. I'm riddled with insecurities, and as a result, I don't generally fight for what I want when it comes to matters of the heart. If I think he's into someone else, then that's that. I don't know. Maybe I should start fighting though.

This year was riddled with mistakes, mistakes I had to make.

The spring tested a childhood crush. This guy, when I was younger, I adored. I used to mention him in my journal, subtleties, how nice he was, never really saying how I felt because he'd talk to me about some phone conversation he had with some girl he was crazy about. And then he'd write about it on his online journal, which everyone was privy to. We were young, but he was open and honest, and he was seemingly crazy about her. And I forgot all of that. So as an adult, when he said he wasn't the relationship type, even though I knew better, I forgot that he really was capable of adoration when he found the right girl.

The summer found a certain recklessness that should only be had with youth. At this age, I should know better. But I never really went through that stage when I should've, so I had a delayed growth period. Funny how, mistakes are sometimes known as growth periods.

And with autumn, I had to learn how to deal with the mistakes I was making. Mistakes that shouldn't be made at this age, but there they were.

I thought at this age, I'd figure it out. I'd figure out what I wanted in a real love, and I'd commit to a man, and I'd commit to a career, and I'd know what I was going to do with my life. I never would've thought at twenty-six, I couldn't afford to buy my parents a television, I'd still be hurting friends, coin tosses away from breaking hearts. I'm beginning to think, this is life, and I will always make mistakes, sometimes they'll be big, sometimes not so much, but I don't think I'll ever stop fucking up or stop muddling about.

Someone told me, you either pick a job or you pick a city, and I've been choosing the latter. All my life I've worked for the former, running away from this city for weeks and and months at a time. A part of me doesn't want to run away anymore, but I can't seem to make things right, here.

All I wish for in 2011 is some answers, some growing up (a job, a pay check, a 401k?, health insurance!). There were too many mistakes this year, with them lessons, but things just don't feel okay.

On the bright side: at least I'm not getting deported.

On two formers, and nine years later

We'd grow up, test out waters we never got around to, thinking maybe the past had it wrong, but we'd find we were right the first time.

People who still amuse you, even though you haven't spoken for months, years–those are keepers. Note: 10 years later, you're still on my list.

July 18, 2001
"haha so we do know how to get past "hey" =)"

Somewhere along this string we lost our innocence.

another try in growing up and letting go

When I came over to your house a few months back, you'd asked if I'd been there before. And I knew I had before, it was familiar, but I couldn't really recall why that would've been the case. You said, it was probably a family thing. But that didn't seem right to me. So yesterday, in part boredom and in part curiosity, I vaguely recalled writing about you, way back when, but I couldn't really place when or why that would be the case, so I pulled out my old hand-written journals and started looking. Of course, since I wasn't sure what I was looking for aside from your name, I ended up taking an unintentional trip down memory lane....from 1998 to 2003. And it's completely bizarre how I forgot so many things had happened. It's completely correct how easy it is that we forget these little details, these day to day happenings, these entire summers spent hanging out. I just forgot things I didn't think I would've forgotten, but I did. Apparently, you came around when I was 16, and you stayed around that summer, and we spent the rest of that year in sporadic conversation. Honestly, I had no recollection, no recollection. I remember her 16th birthday, and I remember sitting around after everyone had left and just talking, but I never placed you there as well. A year after, when she turned 17, I wrote, after everyone left, we'd been looking through old photos from the previous year, and I'd came upon a negative–vintage, isn't it–and it was of you, Charles, Krystine and I from the same night the year before, when we were just sitting around and talking. And I had no recollection.

This trip down memory lane is completely bizarre, not so much because I catalog every moment for fear that I will forget, but the truth is, we really do forget.


I don't write every moment of my life down like I did those years. The after years haven't held time, space or candor for that. I can't be as open and honest online with the identities of others as I used to be in the tangible.


We used to know each other. I guess we used to be friends, and neither of us mentioned it in the after years. You probably forgot, I forgot.

 __________________________________________________________

Last autumn, you asked me to hang out.  It wasn't an unusual request, we'd been friends for years after all.  Though friend would be a weird word to describe us, we were always kind of off, there was always something kind of there, that we never took care of.

And then we did, and the only thing that came was the clarity that was why it had never worked.

I wrote about you a lot.  Actually, you overshadowed the former to a degree.  You might be the reason why I failed to recall the former.  But from the moment we met, to the after years, I cataloged the things you said, the things that reminded me of you, and then the drama, the disappointments, and the confusion.  I wasn't good to you.  I wasn't good for you.  And fuck, I probably didn't make much sense, since it seems, through most of it, I was never quite sure.  And then, one day I decided we should just be friends.  So I told you that, via AIM.  And then I continued to prattle on, as if it was all okay.  And maybe these moments, are ones you no longer recall, but.

I kinda sucked.  It's been a long time.  None of it matters anymore, but hey, I'm sorry.


It's funny how, all these years pass, and you think not much happens, but then so much does, so much is fit into these minute summers, those winters, falls, homecomings and celebrations.  Nights spent driving out into the middle of nowhere and hanging out in fields, on driveways, talking about nothing – and sometimes, these moments become so vague in my memory that I'm no longer sure if they were real or something I made up or dreamed.

We're having talks before things get too far, before lines get too blurred.  We're defining things, not yet worth defining, to save ourselves from past mistakes.  We're learning from old losts, though I'm not sure it's getting us any further.

We're growing up or something I guess.


Though, I must say, I'm really sick of guys telling me they're not one for relationships.  Because we always know, it's really a backhanded insult.  Whether they mean it or not.  None of us can help it, but the truth is, we're all the relationship type with the one we want to stick around for.


But hell, I've never managed to stick around. Even I don't know what this is all about.

Taking only what you need from it

We were sitting outside this coffee shop in Vienna yesterday. Jammin Java has the best cappuccino I've had since Italy.

But we were nonchalantly talking about death. And Angela and I wondered, what if one of us passed, how would we want our friends to mourn. What would we want out of them. And it was odd because it was just as if we were discussing any other topic because of course, we didn't really think that any one of us would pass any time in the near future. But we've also never really had this conversation before.

We're not old, but we are pretty much grown. As much as we'd hate to admit it, as much as our lives beg to differ from a real grown ups. or the usual definition anyway.

And at this time, mortality starts to get realer.

People die. And I will lose a friend or a parent or a relative one of these days, or I may go. And though we'll never be able to prepare ourselves for it, it's terrifying that this is what real life is about.