Prom Dresses

I hate almost every prom dress that I see. The ones I like are always hundreds of dollars and why would I spend that much money just for one night? I searched for hours and hours trying to find something that I didn’t find ugly. I ordered two dresses to play it safe and it came a couple of days ago. I tried both on, and both are horrible. They fit weirdly and even if I got them hemmed, they would still look ugly. Prom is next week so I had to spend fifteen dollars on shipping to get a dress that would arrive on time. It is the most basic non-looking prom dress I have ever seen but I knew that there was no way that it was going to be ugly. I just don’t understand why so many ugly prom dresses are made. At least brands should make just good basic dresses that fit flattering. Whenever I see a prom dress that I think is cute, when I examine pictures of it more, I always find something awkward or horrific about it. Finding a prom dress for almost every girl is an annoying and frustrating task and I wonder why people can’t make pretty dresses that don’t cost so much.

Gown Dress” by Anna Docking/ CC0 1.0

I am not a risk taker

I am watching a documentary in AP Environmental Science right now about this group of climbers who went to Greenland to climb a never-climbed-before rock face that is 4,000 feet tall. It has literally NEVER been climbed. Also, to make it even scarier, they aren’t using ropes, but buckling themselves up the rock as they go by sticking stake-like things into the cracks of the rock. They are basically there to not only climb but to collect data about climate change for a scientist named Heidi. And guess what? She has never climbed before but she is doing it with them. There is also another man who never climbed before that is going with them. Oh also, before they climbed the 4,000 foot rock face, they had to climb a 1,000 foot rock face which was already terrifying enough. After that they went on skis with their packs dragged behind them over super windy, stormy, and powdery flat snow. All of this is done while being entirely isolated. There is nothing near them and all of these lands have never been explored. They even named the rock faces themselves. There is one specific climber named Alex Honold who is leading the expedition and is just so daring. He has no fears, and seeing these huge mountains just excite him instead of making him nervous. I have not yet finished the documentary so I am excited to see how the rest of it goes. Moral of the story, I will never understand how some humans have the mental and physical strength to do these types of expeditions, and I will most definitely not be doing this anytime soon, if you know what I mean.

pc:https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BOWYxMDg3ZTAtMjExNS00NTRlLWEzMTQtMjI0NGY2MWI4YmEzXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMzUwNDIxMjQ@._V1_.jpg

Silence

You like silence. When you sit in silence, you feel something blossom in your stomach and prickle at the bottom of your feet. It’s the thrilling of waiting on a dark stage for the curtains to rise.

But this is another silence. There is noise all around you, and there is noise all in you, and you can’t bring your seething angers or teeming anxiety beyond your lips. You press them against the roof of your mouth with your tongue, and you swallow them, but they lodge in your throat like a stone.

Maybe you try and think of something pleasing to say, something comfortable and safe. Finding nothing, your face disfigures with the effort, and your eyebrows knit together. You’re wailing with mind and soul, but the body stays silent.

Why can’t you say anything? 

You’re afraid you won’t be heard.

You’re afraid the thoughts on the tip of your tongue will be turned to a black smear across your face.

You’re afraid the things you think, see, and touch are inexplicably illusions.

The irony humbles you. How often did you tell yourself you would speak?

Photo Credit: Jason Rosewell

Nostalgia

When I was younger, just a few years ago, I hated to remember things from when I was younger. If it were a song that I used to listen to, a movie I had watched, a picture of me from years before, or even just a memory – I hated it. I couldn’t stand the thought of it. It gave me this unexplainable icky feeling. Over the past couple of years I’ve grown to miss all of the times that I used to not like thinking about for some reason. I never thought I was a really sentimental person until I started missing all of these things. If you know me, you’d probably pick up on me often saying, “when I was younger…blahblahbla” and I understand that is probably really annoying, and I’m sorry LOL. Maybe it’s because there wasn’t too much I felt like I needed to worry about back then, but I think about what life used to be like every day. I am happy that I can look back on those memories as happy ones now, even though I still don’t understand why I had such negative feelings about what once was.

pc:https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/220318173805-nostalgia-games.jpg?c=16×9&q=h_833,w_1480,c_fill

Things no one knows

My childhood memories vary. I have my core memories of smiling and laughter, and I have my traumatic memories I think about and feel sad for my parents. When I went to live with my grandparents, I smiled with happiness when I got to see one of my parents for the first time in months. I like to remember the happy moments with my parents like when my dad taught me how to ride a bike which by chance we got to capture on video. Or the times I got to spend the whole days and nights with my mom. At different times my parents addictions changed in severity. My dad was doing pretty well until he wasn’t. While my mom was fighting with the pain and resistance she had towards herself she always worked hard to battle her addictions for me in the end. At times my dad was doing bad my mom would be do good and vise versa. I moved in switching with both sets of grandparents at around the age of 5. Yes, I remember the times my mom and I would paint for hours out of the day but I also remember the consistent fighting and arguing of the two young parents trying to navigate through adulthood while trying to raise a child as children. When I catch myself obsessing or being upset about something so small I find myself in reflection to what I have witnessed and felt when I was younger. I normally don’t cry about something really important like death unless I am alone but I catch myself crying over homework loads which is impractical. I think when I moved in with my grandparents I faced a lot of unkept promises. Whether I was told I would get to see my mom and then I wasn’t able to or whether my dad didn’t show up for easter and I was too sad to tell anyone why without tearing up. From the piles of unkept promises and the missing of events important to me I eventually became numb to it and felt happy that other people showed up for me. I don’t by any means resent either of my parents I am mainly proud of my mom for the accomplishments and achievements she has fulfilled for herself and me. And as for my dad I am not very close to him and I feel like both him and I have a part in that. I don’t blame my parents for being young and nieve not knowing what was coming. I don’t hold them against their addictions and confusing lives. I am grateful for my grandparents and the efforts my parents put in for me. The love they have for me and the love I have for them. Whether or not the love is direct or unconditional the love is there. My situation is different from a lot of others I am grateful that through their struggles they kept peace between everyone for me and my well being. I usually hold back when I talk about the situation or write about it just because I don’t want either of them to feel sad or like they did something wrong because if none of that happened I wouldn’t have been shaped into who I am now.

Pc: me

Regrets

It is very easy to regret things you have done in life. It can be really small things, like answering a question incorrectly in class while shouting it out with full confidence. It can also be really big things that just don’t seem to leave your mind. People say live your life with no regrets, but it’s hard not to. Maybe it’s a way you wish you reacted to a situation differently. Would your life turn out different? Maybe it’s something you shouldn’t of ever shared about yourself, and now people know. I do hope the feeling of regret passes. It’s embarrassing, and if you really regret something, the thought can nag at you all the time. There is acceptance though, too, which helps us as humans move on. It’s difficult but I think it comes with time. We’re ever-changing, and mistakes are alright. It’s about learning, and every struggle we have, I think, shapes us into who we are supposed to be.

pc:https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-7051edff6119b3b479fcf43584ab00b4-lq

Moon

The night sky seen from the city of Ojai is very beautiful. The fact that the moon is the same no matter where in the world you look at it is very strange. I think it is mysterious that we share the same thing no matter how far apart we are. I never get tired of looking at the moon, which has a different face every day. Also, the moon that hides behind clouds or lights up the dark streets with faint lights at night is always fascinating to see. In my home country, we use such a moon as an expression for confession. When we express our feelings to others, we sometimes feel embarrassed to say the words directly. Japanese people in the past had such words as well: The moon is beautiful. When Soseki Natsume, a famous writer of the Meiji era , was an English teacher, he was asked how to translate “I love you,” and he replied, “Japanese people don’t say that. You should translate it as ‘The moon is beautiful.” In the past, Japanese men were embarrassed to say “I love you” to the woman they liked, so they said, “The moon is beautiful, isn’t it? Some of those words were, “I want to watch the moon with you.” or “The moon and you are both beautiful.”These are very romantic and can probably only be expressed by referring to the moon.

pc;me

I wish I could…

I wish I could… I wish I could… I wish I could… travel the world. I wish I could find what fumes my random breakdowns. I wish I could read what was going on in someone else’s mind. I wish I could live along the coast with my house on the edge of a cliffside overlooking the water with the mountains on the other side of my home towering over. I wish I could know when I do something wrong. I wish I could be alone. What I wish I could do compared to what I realistically can do is far away from one another. On one hand I can possibly travel the world someday. On the other hand I won’t be able to tell myself why I am upset about nothing or read someone else’s mind. All I can do is hope. I can hope one day I won’t have to question a break down. I can hope one day I can talk to someone directly and they can tell me how they are feeling truly. I wish I could change people’s opinion and outlooks on specific situations but I can’t. I am only human. We wish that we could and sometimes we can but only if we think positively. Forgiveness and forgetness is the key to life in my opinion. If you forgive you might find the answer to your question of why? If you forget you can forgive. I wish I could change time. I wish I could eat a feast without feeling full. I wish I could learn to never make a mistake again rather than continuously making mistakes and learning from them. But none of that is realistic. We live. And we learn. We forgive. And we forget. We have love. And we have loss. I wish I could make everyone believe this.

so upsetting → so exciting

I just realized college is just four more years of school. 

Yes, logically I knew that. There are a lot of things that I think you can understand logically, but emotionally it doesn’t hit you for a while. 

I kept romanticizing college and finishing high school in my head- going somewhere new (a big city!!), meeting new people, living closer to people I know, participating in cool programs at my college… 

But I was just filling in some important dates on my calendar, and when I wrote “First Day of Class” I realized that at the heart of all the shiny new things is the reality that college is still school. I am going to go to wake up and go to class where I will sit and listen to a teacher talk. I will do homework and study and take tests. 

But actually writing this I am changing my mind. Yes, it will be school. But it will also be learning more independently. I can shape my class schedule to my personal schedule and not vice versa. I will be living on my own(ish) and taking classes that interest me (and some that are less interesting). Actually, thinking about that I am really excited. Right now I really do like CompSci and I am excited to take classes on that. Living more independently is very exciting to me.

Picture Credit: Tanner Boriack

3 things I am grateful for #4

I noticed a lot of the things I write about being grateful for are foods. I do not think that is an issue because food is good and often taken for granted, but I am going to try to write about all non-food things today just to diversify things. Although I am eating my greek yogurt right now and it is so good that I started singing about how much I love yogurt.

  1. Graduation. I am very grateful for graduation coming soon, and I am grateful for my education, and also grateful to end one chapter of my life. My cousin has a sign in her room that says something along the lines of “Every beginning starts with an end.” I didn’t get it, and she explained to me that every time something ends, it signifies the beginning of something else. Every time something begins, it came at the cost of something else ending. I liked that a lot, because sometimes I get so excited for the next thing, not realizing it comes at the cost of the first thing ending. To me, it is a reminder to appreciate the things we have when we have them.
  2. Cups. Right now, I am drinking out of a metal cup with nature propaganda on it. I don’t understand what it is talking about but it has REI, North Face, Merrell, Patagonia, and Keen printed on it. I am grateful for it because it is a cute cup. 
  3. Mice. Mice are cute. Today, Rory showed me a poster that had the Mouse Grimace Scale. It is made by people who are trying to reduce animal testing. The poster is supposed be scientific and show different levels of various types of reactions by mice, but the poster looks like it is just a bunch of mouse faces.

Photo Credit: https://www.nc3rs.org.uk/3rs-resources/grimace-scales/grimace-scale-mouse