Broken;
Yet I made myself that way
and my attempts aren’t aimed at solving the problem,
they’re meant to make me feel more whole
but it’s breaking me apart even more.
Confused;
I aim to please these people and have them accept me,
but the person I need to be in order to get their approval
just isn’t who I am.
How much should I sacrifice for acceptance?
Fading;
Losing myself and a grasp of who I am,
how much time do I have
before there’s no more of me left?
White pillowy clouds and pink petals on the warm brick as the sun beats down is her back drop, As she rattles on about the corrupt world filled with a dark persistence. / / /
Its been seventeen days, four-hundred and eight hours in this house and its been miserable.
The anger, the loneliness, and the disconnect are empty feelings that course through my veins on a loop as I try to navigate life.
I miss them. I miss their laughter and smiles. I miss their clothes. I miss their smell.
My tears burned my cheeks at 11pm. It was the first time I cried. It was the first time I felt completely unsafe and scared.
My body aches for human contact.
/ / /
As a daughter, I go through moments of my life where I don’t see eye to eye with my mother. And I thinks that’s true for most mother-daughter relationships.
The passive comments, the snarky looks, the aggressive sighs; They never fail me when I’m in the middle of a petty argument with her.
I find myself picking on her, never giving her a break, and trying to erase her imperfections like the comfort she finds in rubbing my ears or clenching her jaw when she is stressed.
But earlier today, I found myself rubbing my own ears and snuggling into her neck when I felt alone. I find myself having her mannerisms and saying the things that when she says them, it irritates me. We come from the same branch at the end of the day.
Her and I, We come from the same branch at the end of the day.
/ / /
I was staring at my wall today, full of photos from the past four years. The color from Utah, The smiles from my girls who know me best, To the heat of a concert and The breeze from the beach. I felt warm inside looking at the Blue and Orange hues Only to realize the cold reality.
in the foggy distance lies sheets coming loose from their moorings
stationed in a cloud
a battalion awaits above me
frogs in my ears
when i loosed the volley
not gunshots did i hear
but rampant ringing and footsteps piercing through the air
and then through the violent undertow a message did come here
fast among the waking brittle now
in deft shoes i kept going
but as my heart begins to give out
i can’t help but slowing
and shaking i go down
doing nothing less than knowing
that through the foolhardy sludge the river will keep flowing
so to the honor that will stay unsung
to the violent skies and the rains shall they come
with the silent fleeting screams a river will run dry
Can I complain about the pathetic life that I’m living in recently?
If you don’t mind, keep reading.
[1]
I saw the news today: “SAFER AT HOME” ORDER IS ISSUED FOR L.A. COUNTY
Are they actually gonna shut down the city?
I couldn’t believe it, I was totally shocked and thought it was pretty ridiculous when Wuhan city closed off.
Now I felt the same.
[2]
An extremely optimistic person, that’s what my friends say about me. I will always stay positive no matter what happens, that’s what I thought.
But… I have to say this now, I just can’t hold it back anymore. MY LIFE IS SO MISERABLE at the current situation.
I thought it would have been a minor thing and stoped in China, and that was it.
But now the WHOLE FUCKING WORLD IS SHUTTING DOWN.
[3]
Since the moment I landed in Shanghai, I was surrounded by full-body protective suits. I filled out lots of forms, they took my temperature many times, and other health checks.
It took me six hours to go through all these AFTER TWENTY HOURS FLIGHT.
After I exited from the airport, the government from my hometown Zhejiang Province provided transportation from Shanghai to Zhejiang.
Then my city government picked me up from where the province bus dropped me.
And the local government from my home district drove me to the hotel, where I received more health checks and quarantine.
14 days long quarantine. Alone, in a hotel room. Something I haven’t done before. I even can’t stand the feeling of eating alone.
I expected everything will be fine as soon as I get back home.
But I’m literally trapped here. I didn’t even get a chance to see my mom closely. All I did was wave at her through the metal bars on the windows from the fifth floor.
[4]
I was gonna do my homework today. I opened my laptop, went on safari, tried moodle, AP classroom, and Khan Academy.
Then… all showed up on my screen was “Safari Can’t Open the Page.”
For distance learning, we literally use google everything: google docs for editing words, google meet for the virtual class, google drive for sharing videos or slides, Gmail for communication……
However… GOOGLE IS BANNED IN CHINA.
I didn’t realize how serious the problem is until now.
[5]
Before all this shit happened, I was on the non-sugar diet with my friends. But now, I have to stop the diet. I really need sugar to paralyze my nerves and slow down the mental break down.
Even before last Friday, my plan was taking SAT on Saturday morning, ice-skating in the evening, brunch and shopping mall on Sunday.
Boom, everything just happened too fast. I hate when I have to say goodbye to the people I loved. I told myself that we will see each other again for sure, but I am not sure when. Maybe in a few weeks, maybe a couple of months, maybe several years, or maybe never.
[6]
I woke up at three this morning, got out of bed at six.
I took a shower, got dressed up, did makeup. When I was going to put on my shoes, I suddenly realized that I am going nowhere, I am staying here for the next eleven days. No matter how good the weather is outside, I told myself while looking through the metal bars window.
Not even able to open the door of my room on my own.
Am I really a living bioweapon?
[7]
What was also in the news I saw: one positive thing.
The air pollution is going down in China.
On a train away we sailed,
slowly but at the speed of light,
we jumped into the cage called freedom.
oblivious but fully aware,
we jumped off of the cliff
and landed in a field of feathers.
soft and warm were the feathers
that were plucked off of the once flying birds.
and then came a hand,
and a voice
“come with me to The Good Place,” it said
so we took its hand and followed through the land on fire.
demons greeted us with open arms,
and we drank a sweet, red liquid.
“This doesn’t look like Heaven,” we said
A man with red horns smiled and replied
“oh trust me child, this is heaven for people like us.”
Humans are weak. We’re not born to be the fastest runners, the strongest lifters, nor the most adaptive creatures. An infection could kill us, or a virus, even a fall that happen to hit your head. It’s weak to be human.
I had this toothache for three days last week. It was the infamous wisdom-teeth that everyone has. As soon as I mention it to someone, they gave me the deepest condolences. Everyone would likely have the wisdom-toothache at some point in their lives. Humans share the same weaknesses.
Pain medicine kept me alive. In those three days, the toothache took away my nice sleep, my patience, and my pride to be human. Advil, Tylenol, Advil, Tylenol again… Every 4 to 6 hours, I had to sedate myself to keep the pain in an unreachable box somewhere in my head while it is ready to burst out of the box at any second.
Fortunately, my surgery was moved up by the dentists as my teachers negotiated with them, begging for them to treat me earlier. The wait might take 5 or 6 days before the time change. Knowing that I couldn’t overcome a little toothache, that my survival depended on luck and sympathy, I felt so weak, and so rotten.
Three hours before the surgery, I wasn’t allowed to eat or drink anything. “Not even Advil?” The mere thought astounded me. The wait was painful. Without using the pain reliever, trying the hardest to distract myself, with a swollen face…
On the way to the surgery, I wondered what people did to their wisdom-teeth before, you know, before all this technological madness. Did they just suffer? Did they die because of a toothache?
Humans are weak.
from somewhere i find myself
lost in the feel
in the feeling
somewhere between the self righteous feeling of being able to do what i want
and doing what i need to do
im trapped between wishing i could do stuff i can
and actually doing it
at twelve when i click links to feelings
to emotions
to things i don’t fully understand
my fingers twitch my head rolls
and wonderful splinters of crashing ideas come careening into my consciousness
but through some utter desire some distinctive and instinctive yearning
i shake my passion heavy head
and utter for those graces of life that so move me
oceanfuls of life
that pour into me
flooding my conscious with desire and hunger for whats next
for everything that i could do
but i seem to turn around with ever increasing brevity
to the next seemingly endless desire
and now more than the time before i wonder if this thing will stick
and will it?
will i ever do anything i want if i cant decide as to what i should do
maybe i should just run off and do what i cant
but that wouldn’t be me
and I couldn’t give myself up for what would be simply easy for me to do
i just run into these walls that shape just before i reach them
they are ever increasing in grandeur
and i have no idea if anything i do will amount to anything at all
but i feel like i have some innate desire and initiative to keep thinking about it all
and wondering if there will ever be anything for me
My mother is the best asian parent ever.
She always wanted me to be good at everything, and if not, good at something in particular.
Ever since my childhood, she had been pushing me to be great.
Therefore, under her influence, I signed up for the concert band and the ping-pong ball team of my elementary school. I started doing all these things, and then I just stuck to it for years.
My childhood was filled with practicing tenor horn and table tennis, and I did that for the whole six years of my elementary school life.
Not to brag, but I was placed the third in a city-wide table tennis competition, and after 9 times of examination and evaluation of the China Conservatory of Music, I was considered to be on the highest level of performing tenor horn.
Now that I think of it, I’m very impressed by the old me. It’s amazing what my mother pushed me to do. Now that I think of it, she gave my old life so much more colors than an ordinary kid’s. Looking back, I just think of so much more my mother has taught me, how she would buy bundles of English or math test materials, then make me take them and go through and answers together. I remember her putting a big question mark on the side when there is a question wrong, because I always argued against the answer key. I remember how she made me recite ancient books of poems and passages that the recitation of it to a teacher would have given me a recognition. It meant reciting multiple books of poems and recite them in a single time. She tested me, gazed at me every time when I struggled to find the right words — it was so painful. It was like she knew I had some kind of talent and wouldn’t have been like that to me if it weren’t for that gift I had. Now that I think of how much heart my mother has put in me, I never want to disappoint her again.
Oh, how I love my mother. But now I cannot ever go back, she isn’t always going to tuck me in at night.
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My feeling towards track season is ambivalent.
I’m hyped and concerned about the track season at the same time.
I’m happy that I get to contribute with the skill that I’m familiar with, however, infamous track practice in my school is my only concern.
From my prior experience of football and wrestling, I believe that I’ve been through quite intense training, so joining track wasn’t my biggest concern. However, when my friends explained how excruciating the training is, I frankly got scared.
Despite these concerns, I still decided to join the track team because I know it’s going to be really fun.
The more effort you put in the better result you would get.
I hope this track season would help me get in better shape and push my limit mentally and physically for self-improvement.,
OVS Journalism Blog 
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