And Who Can Say Why Your Heart Cries

Last week, Dray emailed me for the first time in two years.

Looking back on it, the whole ordeal was ridiculous. I had taken something small and completely blown it out of proportion (and even now, I tend to do that, but perhaps not to such an extent). We still have quite a lot to talk about, even to this day, even after all this time, and perhaps he hasn't changed at all. He is still that hit-on-all-the-girls type of guy. I am.

Well, whatever I am now.

Lately, this blog has been more about my relationships than it has been about anything else. In some ways, it has been inevitable (it's not gossip if no one knows what or who you're talking about). I could write about my university life, but somehow it's less interesting to write about and much more interesting to live it out. I have had so many fun moments (like tonight's outing to see fireworks and have ice cream), but they don't translate to words as well as I thought they would.

My last few stories are all about Nick and Katie, and that is rather morbid to think about.

Katie Scarlett stood on the half-shielded balcony, where the rain touched her bare legs. She looked over the moss-covered steps leading up to the door. A few days ago, she had almost slipped on those steps, and Nick had held out his arm to catch her.

This exact scene I have written about numerous times, but from different time frames. The same steps. The same slippery moss. The same drizzling rain.

The same dead Nick Haverford.

In fact the very title, On the Other Side of Saturday, is the same I have chosen for a variety of stories, albeit not all about Katie and Nick.

Some nights, I lie in my bed and I can hardly believe that Yuma and I were once in a relationship. I think about him and I cringe, although I don't know why. Khajiit and I do not have a perfect relationship, but it is such a wholly different dynamic that I can hardly imagine life now any other way.

It is so unfair, isn't it? I broke such a nice boy's heart and I get to go into another nice boy's arms. If there is one thing I could change in my and Yuma's relationship, it would have to be ending it earlier, before I got to hurt him more.

But that's the past.

Tomorrow evening, Khajiit will be boarding the creepy van to Islandtown. In a month, I will be moving into our shared apartment. Last year, when I had him promise to room with me in the fall, I thought we would just be two good friends sharing an apartment. Things sure have changed a lot.

In my latest version of the story, Joss Ritchell saves Katie from her visions of Nick. Would it be fair to say Khajiit is my Joss? In dealing with our various mental health issues, perhaps that is not too far-fetched.

Joss suddenly stood up, walked over, and pulled one of the gardenias out. He took his pocket knife, slit his thumb, and let the blood drip down onto the petals.

Everyone watched as the blood rolled cleanly off the petals, without leaving a stain.

Or maybe I should just sleep.

Tentative Steps

On CNN, Kirsten Haglund, the winner of the title Miss America in 2008, says, "I remember the first day I decided to throw away my lunch, and I drank a Coke instead. I felt really good. I remember that day and the choice I made. And it was a choice made out of fear, not logic."

Maybe that is why I took out that bottle of diet coke Khajiit got for free from the vending machine. We are chronic Nestea drinkers, and when we are not drinking it we're drinking Lipton tea, or another latte from Tim Hortons. When I took a sip from the bottle, the fizzy drink caught in my throat and burned. But I kept on going. It is addicting, this heady mix of aspartame and carbonated water.

We have our reasons for choosing the drinks we do. Years ago, Trent Hamm at The Simple Dollar wrote, "My wife and I have both been addicted to soda for many years. On an average day, I would drink six cans of soda and my wife would drink four cans, meaning we would go through ten cans a day at our house." General Duck prefers his soda sparingly, but the bottle in his hand has still become a part of his persona.

For me, picking a drink has much to do with the mood I want to convey in my life. Coffee in those ambivalent preteen years when public transit gave us a freedom I haven't tasted until recently (not surprisingly, I have adopted a new caffeine habit lately as well). Bubble tea to soothe a nostalgia that seeps through the edges of my vision so that there is always something there, something in the corner of my eye.

Hot chocolate? Well, because I wanted to roll up the rim. Not that I won anything.

. . .

Islandtown's metro line is asking people to name their new train. One of the names was related to the Greek god of time, Chronos. I told Khajiit that one of my characters was called Chronos. He said, "Everyone has a character called Chronos."

I have tried to read more lately. I checked out Middlemarch from the library, and Khajiit and I read the first chapter (and a very wordy prelude). There is something special about the way a book can make you laugh, but I had never quite experienced it until now. So I think George Eliot is something special, critics of her other life be damned.

On the radio we hear Adele over and over again. They are tragic songs, completely not fit for a coffeehouse with bright red and yellow banners promoting its new jalapeño and asiago cheese bagels. On her YouTube videos people says things like, "She's pretty inside and out," or, "She's not fat, too many celebrities today are too skinny." They remind me of the "compare her to Marilyn Monroe" posters, of the idea that arguing men like women who are not bone-skinny is still objectifying women, because the standard-holders are still men.

When Adele said she wasn't "some blonde, skinny, fake boob, white teeth" girl, there is something sad in that statement. Something that sits uncomfortably in my stomach, even though I am not sure what it is.

A few nights ago, Veronica and Khajiit were working on our web design company (which reminds me, I need to get going on that), when they came across a photo of a group of students posing for what looked like a case competition. Veronica said, "Those girls look more natural, because girls take more photos of themselves."

Little things like that hurt. They hurt on a personal level, so to me they grate on my heart.

. . .

I stood in front of a class of one hundred on Friday. Made a public announcement about the film my environmental club was screening. I have not done something like this for a long while, especially not when I could see every single face and recognize people in the crowd.

The film itself was a success, if not a haunting one. We saw lovely paintings made of aluminum cans stacked on top of each other and baby albatrosses dead, bellies splayed open to reveal all the plastic inside.

Why must it be so sentimental?

I sleep at night panicked, tossing around, half-starting when I am about to fall asleep. There is something about the night, how still it is, that makes me uneasy. My body is failing me, or I am failing it, whichever one explains the aches and pains and dull anxiety.

Yesterday, in a fit of curiosity-laden panic, I looked up whether our house was likely to flood in 2100. The site says that if it does, it will be because of some harbor in the city near our house, or the beach, or the river. On SMBC, Zach Weiner describes a superior race that falls because of its impeccable ethics. I jaywalked across the street bordering my university today, against my usual rules of strictly following the roads.

. . .

In the depths of my blankets and shaking, I am lonely. I don't fully understand it, because I am not alone—I am far from alone—but I am still lonely.

. . .

When I wake up these days, it is usually to realize I have missed another class, or that it is now late afternoon and I have been sleeping all day. Khajiit, woken by my frantic prodding, would say, "We knew this was going to happen," to our promising ourselves the night before that we would wake up early. Then I would roll over and he would wrap his arm around me, and that would be my favorite part of the day.

These days it has been getting warmer in Islandtown. I pulled out my pair of red tights, paired them with the ridiculously high heels I bought from China, and got out a red shirt I had almost forgotten I owned. The lady at the food court eyed my outfit as I stood up next to her to throw away my cup.

Cosmic Gate is playing on my Pandora station. The other day Khajiit showed me how to set up a proxy so I could access Pandora from his server-in-a-closet. I took a jab at it yesterday and wondered if I had done something wrong when a firewall message popped up. Today, after a few changes to the procedure, I bypassed the firewall prompt. I don't know what triggered it though.

I was reading this very, very sad site that made me almost cry.

Somewhat unrelated, I had always thought that being an activist in one group made you much more likely to sympathize with activists in another group. My university, my city, and my province has proven me otherwise.

. . .

Maybe I have just been cooped up inside for too long.

Down The River Valley

It seems so long ago. The other day I painted Khajiit's nails a gorgeous sonic bloom color, although I have no idea what a sonic bloom is (I think it's a type of flower). We brought my rice cooker to the office, along with some canned food, and at the meeting Khajiit pointed to the rice cooker.

"Don't do that," our chair said. "Your nails, when you wave your hands. It's so distracting."

Something about sexism came to mind, sexism against men in this case but also against women, because who is to say nail polish (or anything "feminine") has to be for women? At the very least it is stifling, if not borderline deriding the practice not worthy for men. But I am not as brave in a group as I am alone, so it went unsaid.

Later, Sarah brought her bag of nail products. She plopped down in front of a computer and looked up rental cars. We sat around as she made the calls.

"What's the minimum age for car rentals? —Oh, okay. Yeah, no problem. Thanks. Good bye."

Khajiit started looking up buses. His dad had called earlier. We could have five in our party. There are talks about seeing musicals—"The Book of Mormon," for Sarah, who is Mormon—and buying shoes—Veronica is a shoe addict. We considered contacting the guy behind the sketchy van that left for the city every week.

It is so surreal. Only two weeks ago, I was in another office three doors down listening to a Veronica I barely knew cry about her relationship problems. The next day, Sarah confessed that she was really stressed out because of school troubles. As Khajiit puts it, "We're all failures." That was the day I slept through most of my classes. Somewhere amongst the snarky, angry jabs at ex-boyfriends, we decided to go to Khajiit's house over spring break.

We are a group of teenagers, Veronica included. I once remarked that Khajiit, in the car, suddenly possessed teenage qualities he lacked out of the car. On the streets, or in a room, or when we are sipping lattes at the coffee shop across the road, he is either a middle-schooler or an adult. But in the car, he is a teenager. This impromptu decision on all of our parts make us all reckless to some degree. When I signed up for college I did not think I would be signing up for this.

It's an exhilarating sort of freedom, one that has me up at three in the morning in a sketchy corner of the city where people have been known to be stabbed, drinking white hot chocolate from a mug and eating ranch-flavored potato chips. The buses at Islandtown run all night, one every hour or so, in a grid-like pattern. Khajiit and I took one that snaked through the northern part of the city. We sat in the back seat, munching on rainbow rice krispies and drinking iced lemon tea, and joked about staying at seedy motels because we were so tired.

We are always tired these days, sleep-deprived, because I have my games and Khajiit has his games (to program). Late at night we do crazy things, like walk in sub-freezing temperatures just so we can sleep on a futon instead of a single bed, or go to the coffee shop we always frequent late at night, so often that the night shift cashier greets us with, "Hey, it's you guys again."

The next day is sometimes full of regret. Why did we stay up so late? Why did we go to the apartment half an hour away from campus, when we had another one five minutes away? Khajiit regretted his bright red nails and took them off with acetone, although he painted them again in dark blue. A more "manly" color, he claimed. Some guy we didn't know with access to the office said, "Nice nails."

Capitalism And Outer Space

We were going to go to the Space Center today, and it would definitely have been neat. The last time I went to one, it was in Florida, and I remember looking over my head and pointing out the rusty orange and white rockets. That year I was seven, maybe not even.

Sometimes I think about being a third-generation engineer, and being in a family of engineers. It's like being born in a family of bakers, or cobblers or blacksmiths or tailors, except without a long term of apprenticeships. I was born predisposed to math, to science, born with my parents expecting that I follow their footsteps, if not completely then at least partially, into the scientific world.

My dad is lying on the bed now, snoring. A while after I got off the plane, maybe when we were in the car coming back from the airport, he turned to me and said, "It's still not too late if you want to change your mind and be a doctor." My mom says this sometimes too, in that joking yet all the same serious tone, "Are you sure you don't want to be a doctor?"

I tell them, "Yes, I'm sure. I want to be an engineer."

For people who come from this life they are not satisfied with it. They have worked hard, all their lives, fought against the waves of unfair disadvantages at an age where they should have had things under control and relaxed a little. They see people around them in seemingly easier lives, people who earn more (and money has always been an issue in our house), and they want that life for me, whether directly or vicariously.

. . .

These days, my dad spends a lot more. We went to the mall today, everywhere we go we look at the dazzling new clothes and bags and jewelry. He picks something out of the pile, points at it and asks, "What do you think?"

I shake my head. It is the wrong color, the wrong texture, or something, any excuse. He goes over to the stands of watches, stoops down and try to find the same style as the one on his wrist. That one he bought a few days ago. The strap is still too loose; it hangs low. He smiles when he realizes it is more expensive than the one he bought.

I am happy for him, proud, almost, that he is finally achieving the middle-class lifestyle he always wanted, yet also sad. There is something about the way he walks, shorter than ever before, that scares me. I am afraid that he won't be happy, I am afraid that he might lose this, I am afraid that after all these years of struggles he will look back and think, "What have I done with my life?"

And come up empty. I am afraid for him, even though he himself is not afraid. I am being paranoid again.

He walks up to the cosmetics counter. I watch as he talks with the sales lady, the two of them discussing the new brand of anti-aging cream available. He looks at the price and chuckles, shakes his head. "It's too expensive." And we leave. I wonder if he ever wishes he could afford this, for his wife, if he ever laments his inability to buy everything he wants for his family. I wonder if anyone will, in the future, do the same for me.

. . .

He woke up just now. Held my hand. Earlier today he had said, "The days pass by really quickly." He is going back in less than a week, to the misty southwestern Chinese city, while my mom stays with her parents until after Chinese New Years.

I am not sure what I want. In a few days I will be leaving too, heading back to icy Islandtown by myself. But in a few days I will be a few more days closer until Khajiit comes back. Those last few days, however, will be void of both, and they will be long and torturous.

. . .

In a few days, we will be headed somewhere. To the Gulf, maybe, or to Dallas or Austin, we are not sure yet. I am supposed to be the one planning all of this, but I have been way too distracted. When I wake up in the morning, I add up the hours to see if Khajiit will be awake, then I call him, and we cycle between being awake and being away and all of the other complicatedness of us being in different continents.

For example, right now, it is 8pm here, which means it is 3am over there, and way too early to call him.

He sent me photos of Paris today, and I really liked them, especially the one of the details on the Eiffel Tower, and the one where he is eating smoked salmon. Smoked salmon has other connotations for me, it reminds me of a summer that could have been had there not been other obligations, other obstacles.

They are all of the past now, although I still have the souvenirs. I still have a lot more I need to clean through before all the vestiges are gone, if that is even possible. I took out the wallet photo the other day. I had already changed the lockscreen image on my phone.

There are some clothes that need to be exchanged, photos returned, books taken back. We had really tried to make ourselves part of each other's lives, even though (and maybe even more so because) we could not be involved in person. I look at the calendar I now share with Khajiit, and it is almost empty, and that does not make me wonder because I know he will be with me, and those days he will not be are not for long.

. . .

My dad is considering moving back to the US again. My mom will surely follow him if he does. I may see them more often now. Maybe one day they will even settle, and I will visit them, just as other people visit their parents, without the hassle of trying to remember where they have ended up this time around. Although I will miss seeing new airports. I have seen many airports in my life and I am hoping to see more.

Airplanes Again

Last year, when we were dropping my dad off at the airport, I remember wanting so badly to get off the car and blend into the busy, busy crowds looking to catch their next flights. I have an affinity for the air, half satisfied when my parents and I went on our first ever plane trip to the western half of the US, and half satisfied by my own trip back to China.

This time, Khajiit is going on the plane to go to France, and I will soon be taking one (or two, actually, if not three) to Texas. It is his, what now? Thirtieth time to France? And it is my first, to Texas, although anywhere in the South makes me smile. I am excited to see my dad again, after all this time, and I'm hoping that he'll take me around places during the holidays. I have always wanted to see what Texas was like, and another coastline state (maybe Louisiana too, if we're lucky) to my "been-to" collection is always nice as well.

By the time I get back to Islandtown, Khajiit will be in New York again, so the time zone won't be as much of an issue. I wonder how much I'll miss him though. I'll also get to spend a few days in Islandtown picking my life back together again, especially my schoolwork, and planning for the computer club's green committee events. It will definitely be busy next semester, but exciting too, and hopefully I won't make the same mistakes I made this semester.

Also I don't know if Zephy still reads this but I just remembered how she wants more tags so I'll tag her in here as well. I should email her too, along with Argon, and see how their fall semester went and how their lives are right now.

Weekends

Last weekend (it seems so far away even though it's only Tuesday), I went on a camping trip with a group of fellow engineers (and other people, who were mainly engineers' girlfriends/boyfriends). We left on what must be one of the most awful days to leave for a camping trip: it was rainy and cold. But luckily, we had plenty of firewood (and people bought even more after they got drunk), lots of food, and enough alcohol to put a liquor store to shame (we had plenty of cases of all sorts of beer, and other things people brought like rum and gin and vodka, and our coordinator brought boxes of wine).

I was probably one of the few (if not only) people who did not drink, but the food was really good. Our coordinator made chili, and we roasted spider weenies over the fire (and accidentally dropped what was probably an entire pack of hot dogs into the fire) and made s'mores until we ran out of chocolate and biscuits. Someone even roasted a pepper (and said, "It smells really good!" so everyone took turns smelling it).

I had way too much food for the night (I think maybe 4 or 5 hot dogs plus a ton of marshmallows and a tub of chili), but it was so good I couldn't stop eating. I probably burned all of the excess calories off during the night though, when I was freezing so badly I had a blanket wrapped around me, a down jacket on, and was still shivering through much of the night.

We talked about a bunch of silly things, like previous trips the other people had gone on, air force experience (a lot of people in our group had been in the army in some way), and generally Islandtown and other places. Then people started making up really dirty limericks and singing lewd songs, and cigars got passed around. I didn't like the smoke, plus I had drank too much lemonade, so I joined the bathroom excursion.

We hiked down the road, through many, many puddles (my boots are all disgusting now), and arrived at the bathrooms. When we got out, we saw that there was a playground nearby, so our temporarily appointed VP Acquisitions (we had VPs for almost everything, from VP Fire to VP Innuendo) decided it was a great idea to steal two of the kiddie cars in the playground (apparently the goal of VP Acquisitions was to get a golf cart, but that was too difficult), so two of the girls hauled the cars to our campfire.

I spent the rest of the night warming myself by the fire and stopping myself from eating more food. So obviously when I got up in the morning I went right back to the fire and, as the bacon was the only thing ready, I ate bacon. We had all forgotten to turn off the propane stove the night before, so we only had a little bit of propane left. Someone suggested we cook bacon over the fire, so we did that (in a pan and not on a stick, sadly). There was also instant oatmeal made in such huge batches that it looked almost homemade.

I must have ate 8 strips of bacon. So. Much. Food.

Then the group of girls I shared a tent with (and one of their friends and her boyfriend) decided to take a walk to the lake, and when we got there we wanted to walk around the lake. So we hiked through mountains of trash and sand and long reeds, and got to see the lake from all angles. When we got back, there was spaghetti cooking on the fire (food was definitely one of our themes), and it was delicious too. Too bad we had to leave soon after, but not before we finished the rest of the marshmallows, all of the beer, and someone roasted a banana.

On our way back, we talked about more trips (including a skiing trip that I'd love to go on), deteriorating bridges ("please don't stop under the bridge!"), and people who drank too much beer and needed to go to the bathroom (one guy was almost desperate enough to emulate Mario). If it were any warmer and drier I would have wished it lasted longer. As it were though, I was plenty glad to return to my warm, cozy room and actually sleep on a proper bed.

. . .

Next weekend I am going on another trip, except this time I am going to Beavertown (I had bought the tickets last weekend, and I am so excited). I already have my outfits planned out, because, obviously, this is the most important part. Well, also because Yuma said he would be in charge of planning the events, so that does not leave me with much left to plan for.

I told this to a guy I had met online a couple weeks ago (who knew about my situation with Yuma), and he said, "Bring pepper spray."

I hope I won't ever have to use that.

That aside, I am really, really excited. I'm hoping I will finish all of my homework before Friday, and then maybe skip out of my last class on Friday so I don't need to be at the bus station at 12 in the morning (although that is also a feasible option, if I had to), and then I'll skip my Tuesday tutorial so I can have three and a half days (and four nights!) in Beavertown.

But that means I have to work now, so off I'll be.

Samosa Fridays

During dinner on Friday (at this retro diner-like place mixed in with a convenience store), Denise and I split a vegetarian dish that included stir-fried eggplants and other veggies, chickpea and pasta salad, hummus, and pita bread. I punched in my portion of the cost into my budget manager (the one I rediscovered today while cleaning out apps on my phone) and said, "I'm over my limit for food today already."

"What did you buy?"

"Well," I said. "I bought an omelet in the morning at the café, and it was really expensive, but it had really good Swiss cheese and—uh—what did I have for lunch?"

It took me a good five minutes to remember. "Samosas. I bought samosas. Three for $2. That's what I ate."

I still have over $1000 left in my meal plan for the semester, and I have to use it up or else it will expire. The problem is I don't wake up early enough to eat breakfast (or if I do it's a quick bowl of cereal), and sometimes I would go out to eat. Islandtown makes that really easy, especially since Fish Wings is located downtown and there are so many good restaurants around. The other day Denise and I went to this pub and they served the best jalapeno poppers I have ever had.

And the poutine here is heavenly.

Also I don't really eat on the weekends, because I hold crazy schedules and sleep in the early mornings and wake up at around 5 or 6 in the afternoon. Then I make bacon and onion and eggs and whatever else is really easy to cook.

I think I need to buy a bunch of pre-made meals from one of the cafeterias and stash them away for the weekends.

Also, as I was walking back from the metro, I heard the tell-tale party music of our engineering weekly drinking party. The last time I was there they had this really complicated drinking game involving a map of the world, except with bizarre names for the countries. I wonder if anyone (if there is anyone, that is) who is reading this can tell me what the name of that game is?

My mom called me later that night, and among other things, said, "Why are you eating out? You should eat as much as possible from your meal plan." Which is very logical, and would have been easy to do back home, but when you walk down a street and it's filled with all sorts of restaurants and eateries, and you're really hungry because you haven't ate anything for hours and all you've had was a glass of wine, it's not that easy.

Plus I would have needed to sneak into another dorm's cafeteria, since mine does not have one and the engineering one closes early on Fridays, and I didn't want to go through the extra effort.

So I really need to get the planning for food part down.

My mom also said, "I don't except you to get a 4.0 (she was talking about GPAs), that requires too much effort and it's not worth it, but you should aim for above a 3.9."

Gee, mom, there is such a huge difference between a 4.0 and a 3.95.

Ridiculousness aside, I still miss her. We talked for over an hour over Skype (and was interrupted twice by Yuma trying to video-chat me on gchat), and we probably would have kept going if it weren't so late and my mom was at her parents' place, where internet is limited. I won't be able to see her in person until summer comes around, and if anything does happen to me it will at least take her a couple of days to get here. That is something I still cannot wrap my head around.

I talked with Nora last night and she said she was at Gaussianville, which is around 7 hours away from Islandtown. A lot of my friends back from Lakeside are going to Lakeside University, and they are 6 hours away. Beavertown is 6 hours away.

This distance isn't too far. But it is far enough.

Since I slept most of the day away, I don't have much to say about my day. But Zephy sent me an email a few days ago (or was that yesterday? I can't remember) saying that her tag will be forevermore small because I will never have an  occasion to talk about her. So here I am, mentioning her so her tag might grow a bit.

Yuma will be back in a few minutes. He is such a silly, strange boy. I don't know what he wants anymore, but I'll take his happy days one day at a time.