Thursday, 28 May 2009

no title. daily life and an rip

it was my birthday on saturday.
i got this gorgeous little locket from Him that i absolutley love and adore and never take off unless a shower is called for.
the chain is a little too long - it sits at my navel, but that's okay.
went to the UniSA info session on Psychology last night. i liked it, really interested me. almost, almost to swaying me from adelaide uni, but we'll see.
as it currently stands, i'm sick. whoopee. -_-
so, today, i sit here doing what it is that i do, trying to study but failing to do so.


my condolences to all those that knew Jack Klemich
i know it may sound insincere, since i never knew him or his family, but it has hit everyone in some way, that he was our age, a rising star and a good person, and this has happened.
R.I.P Jack

memories of anguish

It is ironic, really.
That I should be missing someone and wishing someone else would stop bothering me.
I see the photos, the name, and a pang of anguish strikes me, and I feel the effects of it long after.
I should just delete the yahoo add and MySpace. Save myself the pain.
But you know when you have unfinished business, and it just won't leave you alone?
Well, this is mine.

I remember he was a possessive jerk.
I remember his songs.
I remember the 'I love you'
And the tears. I remember those too.
I remember his face, 18, and all grown up, but look at him another way and he was still just a naive kid.
It was the naivety that frustrated me, and the ass that hurt me, and they all rolled up together to call me a liar and a cheater.
I remember the anger. Channelled straight at me because somehow I had managed to mess up his future by making him stay in town even though he wanted to get out.
I remember the cold, clinical, 'oh, I did, guess I forgot to block you as well.'
And I remember knowing exactly what I was doing when I made things go pear shaped.
I was looking for a way to ruin things. And excuse to get out.
Because I knew, it wouldn’t last. Either side of the coin would flip to my disadvantage.
A life of waiting is a dumb idea, there's too much to do.
And I know in my heart of hearts that I am better off not having him there saying hi, and getting jealous when I wouldn't talk to him for a few days, despite being online.
But still, .... That face.... haunts me.
I almost see it in the face that holds my hand now. Almost, but not quite.
That hand has a different personality, and saves me from being utterly lonely, which is nice.
I miss the hours we used to spend, talking about things.
But that’s the problem with talking for whole days with the one person.... eventually.... you run out of things to talk about. And then it's all 'oh, what happened? Why don’t we talk like we used to?'
So, a word to the wise out there, don't make the errors I have and muck up a friendship by:
A. introducing relationship-style closeness into it
B. having too much contact too soon.
15 minutes

Thursday, 21 May 2009

future, amongst pressure and other things

I never really thought of myself as one of those kids that clung onto their mother’s legs when faced with something new as a child.
Fact is, I was.

I was going to do ballet once. I did one lesson and absolutely loved it. Next week, I wouldn't leave mama's side. I was too shy, too afraid, to leave her.
I haven't experienced that feeling for a long, long time.

I am the eldest of three children. My siblings are less than three years younger than me, which has pushed the level of sibling rivalry through the roof, especially recently with us all now entering teenagerdom. So, like a group of penguins jumping off the ice into the water, there was never really a chance for me to stop at the edge, peer over, and get scared, before the next one would push past and overtake me, so it’s been go, go, go.
And now, with the arrival of my P's, I feel that feeling. I felt it for the entire day before my first solo drive: 'oh no, what if I’m not ready? What if I crash? I have to have mum or dad there, I can’t do it without them'

I did the drive, and for the record, loved it even despite the rain and fog and cold (really not the best conditions to take that 1st drive in, but ii sure beat taking the freeway and portrush and Magill.

And now, I am looking online and at career info expos about the next 4 years of my life, that will, traditionally, set out the basic course for the rest of my life.
This fact is beginning to sink in, and it scares the bajeebers out of me.
I’ve been looking at Adelaide uni, really, it’s the only place I want to go. UniSA is next, and flinders last. However, I’ve been looking interstate, too. ACU, Deakin, Bond. Looking overseas at places in America. Did you know that Yale has an 8.3% acceptance rating? And Harvard 7.1% ?!
I understand why mama's so strict about security and safety nowadays.
I look at these things, and it makes me wonder what I’m really getting myself into.

It’s like getting cold feet on life, sometimes. That deep-seated fear knowing that, in my family, I am the first.
I am the first because, basically, my immediate family are estranged from all other family members except my grandparents. Not my choice, and it is something that deeply bothers me, to the point of me vowing for my family never to have that. When I have a family of my own, they will know their roots, whether my brother wants to see me every week or not. =P
neither of my parents went to university. Indeed, neither of them finished year 12. My mum dropped out sometime after or during year 10, and my father enlisted in the police academy at age 16. And I think it is this, and the intense pressure particularly from my mum, to finish so well, is partly because they never finished and it’s kind of like me fulfilling her dream as well as my own. I wrote a little speech for English the other week, and sadly, it seems to fit all too well...
"Children have such great expectations placed on them by their parents that their own dreams and desires can become buried in the effort involved in trying to please. We end up the product of our parents dreams, trying to live the life they wanted for themselves."

I don't want to be that. I’m too independent, sometimes to a fault, to do this.
But still, I’m at the point now where, like that penguin, staring over the edge, I’m scared as hell to jump, but I know I have to. I have to set the standard for my brother and sister, who will no doubt surpass my leap if only to keep the parents satisfied.

The irony is that there never was any question about university for me. I was going, tough luck.
As for the other two... well, that’s a different matter. Actually looks as though Fraser will go to tafe, or at least do a course while in school, and imi will do the same, depending on what they decide they want to do.

I notice stress emphasis on certain things, like the necessity of my success. I realised that, well, maybe I should become a psychologist if only for the reason that I’m beginning to diagnose my own faults and stresses. Woot, I am my own therapist. Isn’t that a conflict of interest?
And I realised it, as usual, during the morning commute to school, watching the world fly past at 110kmph. I am so fixed on success because that's how I receive recognition. I’m writing a scholarship application at the moment, and right now, there is a very, very long list of things I could put in there. All the merit certificates, awards, medals, titles, and the current scholarship I have. Not to sound up myself, of course. Modesty, thankfully, makes its logic well known to me: there are those that know their talents, and there are those that have the need for everyone else to know them too. the latter category irritate the f**k outta me because they get truly offended when I try to point out, usually politely, that the world does not need to know about this particular achievement over again, or that my own results are my own business, no one else’s.
But that’s off the point.

Once again, a massive massive tangent, but hey, that’s how I write nowadays. Just a stream of consciousness, despite these probably being all very valid points of debate.

Though I would like to write a little more on this need for success.
I’m in two minds about this. for a while now, I have felt that to do anything less than be revolutionary is to have wasted a life, and yet there is another part that wants to be here, where I am, safe and secure, in a stable family, and a stable job etc. nothing fancy. Totally polar opposites, I think. Typical Gemini.

Ugh.

On that note... my birthday in 2 days XD
17... Finally. Haha. As mama's pointed out, much to my distaste, it’s not like it’s a big deal, so err go no big party allowed. I mean, for goodness sake, people have big parties for no reason whatsoever! Why can't I? Because she said so, as I am sure the argument will boil down to.

I think it’s all about fairness. And about them adapting.
My life and I are changing at an exponential rate.
Despite being sick, which has, rather dramatically, detrimentally affected my existence for the time being, there are a few things in this next 12 months that are HUGE on the 'epic life events' scale. At least for my family. All this year 12, TER, university stuff is all new to us, and its obviously a little daunting, a little scary, to more than just myself. But very, very smart genes must be apparent, despite the lack of degrees? - how else would we have three kids in the same family so adept at languages - there’s no denying it - my brother has the potential to be amazing at German if he has the right teacher, and I feel an unusual swelling of pride in this fact.
He’s the kid I love to hate.

We fought so viciously when we were younger. Now we just exist. He’s getting over the year 9 and 10 jerk-teenage-boy syndrome, eventually, to which I am eternally grateful. It’s civil, and every so often, we talk like actual people, about actual things. It’s a case of 'hey, don't say that about my brother! I know I say it, but he's my brother, only I am allowed to say that.'
And I hope to heaven and hell alike, should they exist, that it’s the same back.

Wow, that's a pretty fair jump from driving to sibling rivalry v love.

I guess that's just how I roll, to make myself sound extra, extra lame on a night such as this.
I guess I'll just have to do what I always do, being the eldest, the unequivocal leader in the field of being me, and having to puch a path through life for my sibs to follow, just, at the very least, to relieve them partially of the pressure I get from said parents about success and getting things perfect.
That pressure's a killer, I swear.
But it's how i've lived my life for the last 16 years and 363 days, and its how I'm always going to live - the leader -I got the role whether I wanted it or not, so that's how I'm going to handle it: jump in, scared s**tless, and hope to god I remember how to swim.

65 minutes - for the record here - theres 1495 words here.
i put the effort into writing it, i congratulate you on having the stamina to READ it!

Sunday, 17 May 2009

the benchmark, the meeting. (memories)

we sat there, in the cafe, watching the rain fall horizontally outside. people react very much in the same way as ants when the rain becomes imminent. however, unlike our ant-friends, we don't react until there is a genuine threat of our carefully-styled-to-look-like-i-just-got-up hair-do getting that horrible wet stuff on it: water.
i don't even know why we were having the conversation. I'm fairly sure i made a comment about his hair - the new cut was giving me serious flashbacks whenever i looked at him. he looked almost the same as when i first remembered.
i have two memories, no, three, of the 'first meeting' partly because they were all at least different times of the year. the first, was walking into homeroom and realising that we had three new additions to our class that were not there at the end of the term before. all three, sitting in the back row, one noticeably tall for the ethnicity, or so i thought, as well as noticeably good looking, and god knows other girls noticed. maybe not many, but i heard some rather amusing whispers from the girls in the year below. the other, as he does now, does little to grasp my attention, partly because we have 0/5 classes together, partly because i have never, not once, heard him speak English. the third, was sitting between them, and all three were talking, in a language i didn't understand, amongst themselves, paying little attention to what was going on around them in terms of notes or bulletins. eyes glanced over the class, though. that i do remember.
so there they sat, for most mornings, in the ow behind me, where i didn't have to notice them, and where they wouldn't have to notice me.

the second, is an aural memory. aural because i was too busy reading my handout of the tutorial he was presenting. he seemed nervous. fair call. we had a big class. mine went for 20 mins by accident cause i kept getting interrupted. he was talking about his hometown. it was hard to hear, but i remember reading his notes along with him, trying to comprehend the sheer number of people.
but then, its a little hard for a person from a country as small in population as Australia to comprehend the 1.1 or so billion people in china. too many zeroes.
he said the name. it was near hong kong.
by now i knew his name. and the nervousness was cute, but not crush inspiring.

year 11 hit, and we had art. and this is where the first really happened. its all well and good to flash the brightest smile possible and a cheery 'hello' at the lockers, but talking bonding are very very different.
i don't think ill ever really forget Jess' menagerie. her paper zoo. the art teacher grabbed a big piece of cartridge paper, screwed it up, then put it in the middle of the table that her, two if the three new additions and myself sat, and said 'draw this'. so we did. we found about 10 animals in her drawing, from the shading and shapes. it is from this that i firmly believe that laughing is one of the strongest forms of bonding. that was the beginning. after that, the painting came along, and i just went 'wow'. complements are a good bonding thing too. but not as good as laughing.
i don't know what it was, but something began to make me think 'yes, this is him. i want this one. how do i get him?'. i know it sounds like a rather clinical, divide-and-conquer way to think about it, but truly, that's how i did. i guess... i wasn't worrying about the things i used to, the happy personality and the smiles back were enough to give me the go ahead to see what i could do. coming back from japan I'd learnt a few things - there were enough boys staring (only cause we were foreign strangers) to boost my confidence and let me get the smile and eye-thing as it's been called, just right.
I'm the paranoid worrier, the drama queen. he's got the worlds best poker face sometimes, and exudes calm, the effects felt just by being in the same room as him.
calm, and focus.
I'm hyperactive and loud and distracted.
total opposites... almost.
it worked, i think, whatever 'it' was. whether it was honesty or the smile or something else entirely, because we'll have been together for three months next week, and I'm frankly amazed that this actually exists, which i told him shyly as we finished up the last of our respective coffees and made our move for the door once the downpour had stopped long enough to get to the bus stop without needing a snorkel and flippers to safely navigate the rain.

i'm done

I have this sense of loathing just sitting here looking at me politely as though asking me why I am looking at it with disgust.
Why do I have such an intense dislike of this nature?
The simple answer is I’m not game to try and find out why because that in itself requires that I be a little nasty myself.
I don't like being nasty if I can avoid it - its bad karma, for one thing.
For another it loses friends and is poor in the political arena when it comes to school politics.
I’m wondering now if it’s poisonous to feel like this.
Probably is.
There’s a saying by Malachy McCourt: 'resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.
I love this saying and, indeed, I really should take heed of it because it seems to be eating away at the other aspects of my life.
Why is it there?
Do I think they’re a threat to me in some way?
Academically, I’m the threat to them not the other way around. Liv the underdog in the academic arena, told to go put her running shoes on and, well, run!
Is it jealousy?
I don't think it’s that. Not really. Maybe a little for something. I don’t know.
The past?
Most likely, though we cannot blame everything on the past, or else we'd solve nothing of the present.
I remember a past year 12 saying to one of my teachers during a stop-by appearance at one of our lessons, that you don't really realise how much of a loner you really are until you leave school. At school, you see everyone like 6 times a week for about 7 hours a day, give or take.
I think I’d be one of those loner kids.
I almost was. No, I lie. Not almost. I WAS one of them. I do wonder now what relationships will still be standing at the 10-year reunion. Who are friends, who married who, and the like.
~~~
it disgusts me.
Repulses me.
I’ve heard a remark about the children.
And I must say it was also the first thing I thought.
But there's potential there, with the right genes.
Recombinant human DNA, anyone?
~~~~
got an ego boost at the most unlikely of times the other day.
You know that fantasy/imaginary cliché where you start talking to someone in the aisle of the supermarket, or some other kind of shop, and you walk out with a date?
Well, kudos to the guy at sports power in mt barker for trying. woulda worked too, if there wasn’t the constant thought of someone else in my mind...... o.O
I’ll be honest I know nothing whatsoever about jazz music - I’m more of a Vivaldi girl myself. That or something with acoustic guitar..... But hey just go with the flow and its allllllll gooooooood
^_^
~~~
I’m going to make a declaration here. And while it may seem stupid at this particular point in time to do so, the fact is I need you all, whoever reads this and kindly comments every now and again, as witnesses.

I am DONE with sugar
enough of the crappy food - chocolate (exception: 80% cocoa - omfg that stuff is amazing and.... healthy---er.....), cake, muffins, biscuits, chips, malteezers (*cry*), food after dinner.
I found out that I only need 850 or so calories per day to function. Include any physical activity and that’s only 1000cal.
as opposed to the ... what? Almost double?
Enough.
Milk? Gone. Where possible.
Wheat? Less of it.
This is my declaration.
With luck, and from past experience, this will be enough to stop me from looking down and wanting to cry.
So... here goes nothing.........


peace out.
30 mins