Life Worth Living

We went over to a family friend’s house today, my mom, my brother, and I. It wasn’t the first time I’d been over, but it was the first time in a while. They have two boys, the elder two years younger than I, the younger two years younger than his brother. My parents went to college with their parents back in China. When I was growing up, my parents would bring me to their house a lot. There are other couples who live in the Bay Area who were also in the same small class in college as my parents, and they would bring their children, and we would have huge get-togethers.

All the other families—about three or four of them—they all had boy children. Some had one boy, some had two. There was one other girl, but when we were all 9 or 10 she was a mere infant, too young to play with us. And so I was the only girl; I was also the oldest child. It never bothered me; I became one of the boys, and little boys are rambunctious. So was I. Although I was too much of a girl to wrestle with them, I ran with them, I played with them, I climbed with them and laughed with them and squealed with them, and we threw things at each other and teased each other like children do. I grew up with them.

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Today after dark JT, Jack Dawson, and I drove to a park that had a decent view of the city lights. We leaned against the gate/fence huddled in the cold and peered down and out over San Jose.

We had spent the day like kids, the three of us, playing Frisbee on the grass after we’d climbed all over the playground and swung in the swings, running like fools to catch the ice cream man and dropping our Popsicle sticks in the trash only to spy him coming around the corner again, and then we cheering and scurrying over to shell out more cash for dollar ice cream bars. We threw poppers and made a mess on the sidewalk and giggled like buffoons when a little boy popped one scootering over it. We went to Chuck-E-Cheese’s and made funny faces in the photo booth for a quarter a pop. We went to the Togos that had been one of our oldest haunts back when we were in high school; we had spent hours in that plaza eating burgers and sandwiches, slurping down cold coffee and smoothies, playing Apples To Apples in the back of an SUV.

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“I love you, Babe,” he’d said to her with his face buried in the hair at the nape of her neck and his arms around her waist, holding her tight, “Don’t ever change.”

“I love you too,” she’d said to him, but just what was a nineteen-year-old girl supposed to say when someone tells her to never change? She wasn’t done growing yet, she’d wanted to shout at him. She wasn’t done changing; she wanted to live, to laugh, to cry, to feel, to make mistakes and hate herself, to turn her life off track so she could turn it back around and to be a bitch so that she could know what a bitch she had been and mend her ways. All of it, she wanted to do, to experience…she didn’t want to be stuck, to never change. It was just selfish of him, she pouted, to ask it of her.

She knew she was making too much of this, that it was a simple expression of love and nothing more, but when you’re young and naive and you know you have so much more to learn and so much more growing to do, it smarts when someone wants to tell you to stop, even if you know they really meant it as a passing thought and nothing more.

She was a little hurt, a little indignant, and more than anything she wanted to go home and change, just so she could prove him wrong—prove just how much better she could become, come back to him a bigger person and demand of him “aren’t you glad I changed?” She’d done so much growing, yet she was still just a stupid little girl, she knew, full of the dreams and wishes of childhood, and she didn’t want to be that person forever. She just wasn’t done living yet.

Inspired by a lyric in a Taylor Swift song (it doesn’t matter which one enough for me to go and search for it) and something that I read in Hilary Duff interview from a very long time ago that I still remember, because it stuck out that much. In most of my ‘stories’, the characters have nothing to do with me, but after I was done writing this, I realised that the girl in this might as well be me. Except that no one has ever told me to never change, for which I am very glad. I guess it’s flattering if someone thinks you’re such a great person that you should always keep being that great person…but it really is a hard pill to swallow, at nineteen.

That no matter how much I moan and groan and lament and whine about how much I miss it–and I’m not lying, I really, truly do–there are other times, like today, when I realise that I’m just not that girl anymore, the one that drives to school in her well-worn Camry while it’s still a little dark outside: up the hill, proudly past the mothers and fathers dropping their kids off, and into the parking lot. I’m not that girl who can go to class and learn with teenagers at all levels–God forbid I say it, but I’m used to this fast-paced, advanced Berkeley schooling–then go sit with my friends at lunch, my French book under my arm. I’m not that girl that can bid my friends goodbye when the bell rings for 6th period and skip down the hill and drive away.

I was thinking about it today while I drove past the high school, and I imagined myself doing all of this. Nothing has changed; everything has changed. It’s odd. It’s just the oddest thing. Because I’m still that girl, and somehow, I’m not. It’s probably just a function of time. I’ve probably just grown up. And to add to the oddity, I feel both happy and sad about that. Because I alternately miss it with all my heart and revel in how childishly mature I am now.

It’s…I dont even know what to say next. It’s the funniest, funniest thing.

I miss my senior year. The year I met and really got to know the people I consider now to be my best friends. I miss going from class to class in anticipation of Friday, the day the four of us would clamber into the Passat and go driving. It never mattered where we drove, or if we drove miles just to end up at our starting point again. I miss when it was all of us on the same side, when we couldn’t yet peer under each other’s skin to see the imperfections within. When everything was easy. Anberlin and Mae and Boys Like Girls blasting through the stereo as the wind blasted through our hair as the car wound its way down a dark twisted forest trail. The shimmering yellow lights of San Jose below us and the twinkling white points of the stars above us as we stood on a hill overlooking the city, the bay, and the world. The endless flash of the digital camera that recorded evidence of our frolics. At school, the way we would all converge from all ends of campus to that little nook. The way we carried the same textbooks every day. Backpacks thrown down for lunchtime. The bell that would ring signaling the end of break, and we would run off in separate directions knowing that we would only have to wait until lunchtime to see each other again. I miss when we all lived within 10 minutes of each other. I miss that we were all awkward and unsure and growing into ourselves and groping along holding on to each other as we made our way into the world. Those were days lost in time forever, existent now only in memory and a neglected online photo album.

When I go past the high school now, I crane my head to see, but all I can see is the tennis courts, the soccer fields, the high rise of the stadium lights of the football field. I look, and I know that I can remember and remember, and I can dream and dream, and that I and my friends can go past those fields and those lights into campus and sit on the same steps we sat on every day at lunch. And we can see the library across from us and the lawns where we once watched the antics of the lower-class-men and the grounds where we’d watch the other students, some that we recognized, some we didn’t, go past. We can go, and we can see, and we can pretend, but it will never be highschool again, and it will never be the same again.

Not to get all poetic here, because god knows sometimes I can’t stand poetry, but life pitches balls at you. Sometimes they’re slow and easy to figure out, sometimes they’re hard and fast, sometimes they’re low, sometimes they’re high, and sometimes it’s a curveball. You can choose to hit them or to not hit them, and then you can choose how hard you want to hit them, and where you want to hit them, and sometimes it’s not an easy choice.

Abandoning the metaphor here, because I think I’ve drawn it out longer than made sense. The point is, there are choices, and sometimes it’s clear which is the right decision.

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Edit 3.19.09: This is the moving post.  This is the point after which my wordpress blog was born.

Recently I’ve been increasingly feeling that Livejournal just doesn’t have the kind of options I want in a blog. Maybe I’m just using it wrong, but it seems like WordPress is becoming the place-to-be for online blogging. So I’m packing it up and moving.

I could probably just import/export all my blog entries, but I want to go another way with this. I’m manually copy + pasting each blog entry by hand. I’m reading them over and editing (only grammar and nomenclature, not actual sentiment/words) and categorizing. I’m trying to unprivate more posts in my general effort to be a less closed, more trusting person. My hope is that when I’m done (which will be in a while, it’s a pretty big effort) I will have a streamlined, neat blog that I can perhaps begin to feel comfortable sharing with the online community, whoever is interested.

Going through my old blogs is like a journey. They date back to two years: sporadic entries in 2007, then growing in number since the advent of No. 1. I remember old emotions, and feel all the nostalgia. I think about how much (or how little) I’ve grown. I delve deeper into myself and I walk tear my eyes away from old entries to see my present self just a little bit older and a little bit wiser sitting here. In summary: it’s embarrassing, it’s enlightening, and it’s great.

I will be continuing to write new entries in Livejournal until I’ve moved all entries to WordPress. At that point I will most likely be abandoning this blog completely and switching entirely to WordPress. Here’s to change.

I get bored sometimes (all the time, actually). Last night was one of those sometimes, so last night, I reablogs. I started from my old friend T.’s blog. She makes some interesting points, but sometimes I feel like she’s plumb stuck in that angsty complain-y holier-than-thou teenage phase, coupled with that I’m-going-to-stick-some-big-words-in-here-to-sound-smart-and-it-looks-forced-even-if-I’m-actually-really-using-all-the-words-correctly thing. Yet: some interesting points. But I digress. She has a sidebar linking to other blogs, and although I know none of the people, I click on a few of them. Somehow, I found myself on Mr. N’s blog. Hmm. I think. I didn’t know he had a blog.

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I guess I wasn’t done after all. I wasn’t done with nostalgia (that sweet bitch) and I wasn’t done pining. But I plan to finish, and finish now, because I want to go back tomorrow smiling and ready for the world, not looking back and wishing.

I have a mere few hours of summer left to enjoy now. Tonight it really ends. Here ends endless days of sun and fun, of laughter, of iced coffee and greasy double cheeseburgers chowed down with best friends. Here ends sleepy evenings, eyes fixated on the TV screen, praying for an US gold sometimes in vain, and othertimes not. Here ends curling up in bed with a book, reading into the wee hours. Here ends waking up at two in the afternoon and crawling out of bed to scrounge up something to eat, then staying wide-eyed-awake until four in the evening, doing things unspeakable. Here ends noontime “I’ll be by in 10 minutes” texts and two minute phone calls to plan tomorrow. Here ends being eighteen, and forsaking laws by downing shots of rum and whiskey like only a stupid teenager can. In the end, it’s all memories. Here ends summer.

Yet at the same time, a beginning comes creeping. Silently, determinedly, and steadily. And here begins a new year. Here begins the end of hearing nothing but the sound of my own breathing at night. Here begins new classes with new things to be learned, new friends to be made, new things to be discovered. Here begins new hopes, new dreams, and inevitably, new heartbreak. Here begins a new attempt at being responsible, being independent. Here begins a determination that I didn’t have before. Here, college begins again, and the world starts to turn again for me.

I can’t dwell on what ends, I have to focus on what lies ahead. To borrow from Daenerys Targaryen, If I look back I am lost. I am ready, I am. I can do this.

Just like that, summer ends. I don’t know that it went out with a bang, and I don’t know that it just kind of tapered away. I’m just sitting here at my computer, thinking…where the heck did summer go? And I knew this would happen. I knew, and I knew this would happen. In May I sat in front of my laptop thinking about how I didn’t want to leave school yet knew that in three months I wouldn’t want to leave home.

It just…to borrow a cliche, went by so fast. Like–BAM–and then it’s over. Laughing with friends at the park while the world went by, bouncing from store to store with smiles on our faces. Fuck, I don’t even remember what we did that first month off school. And then, oh and then Hawaii. The sand and the surf and the sky. It was so beautiful, so calm, so relaxed. The one place I’ve been to that could make me think less of my native California. Hawaii–it was amazing, beyond belief. And then Hong Kong, China. Less amazing, but eye opening. Or at least, heart-opening, if that makes sense. Japan was hot but no less splendid. And then–BAM–I find myself back in the US, with two weeks to go. Two weeks? That’s not enough. How can I conquer the world in two weeks? How can I make those memories I need to carry me through the year in two meager weeks? I can’t. It’s just not enough time.

And then–BAM, a third time–and here I stand, on my last day of summer and I’m so excited for a new year and new friends and a new roommate because I haven’t forgotten how wonderful Berkeley was to me and I love it, I love it! I’m so excited to go back to that little town on a hill, cradling, comforting. It’s home in an entirely different way than San Jose. Different, I said. Not better, and not worse. Just…an altogether separate dimension, it seems at times. Oh, I love that place, I do. Just…it’s amazing. But at the same time, I love this place too. Maybe without the same heart-squeezing love I have for Berkeley, but it’s no less love. It’s mellower, softer, gentler. The kind of love you have for a place that you dont know you had until you leave it. Fuck I’m going to cry. I’m at the point that if I tried to cry, I could.

I’m never ready to leave, never ready to say goodbye. I’m excited, but I’m sad. I’m so ready, and yet so not ready. Summer–oh, you are a wonderful thing, a thing of magic and beauty. But I have a life, a future that I must needs attend to. But you were so beautiful, so wonderful, and I didn’t know it until now, as you brush me on the way out the door.

It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m moving foward, and there are more summer’s in my future. I’ll see you again. There’s more heartbreak in the furture again, and who knows what I’ll look like come next June, but at least there’ll always be summer. And, oh, Berkeley. At least that’s where I’m going. I love it. Am I still drunk?