Happiness, that elusive bastard

I suspect I'm not quite well. But then, nobody is really happy, right? I mean, whatever "problems" I might have, or fancy I have, well! That's just small potatoes! There's people around me getting kicked out of their homes, and people who are scared to come out of the closet because their family is freaky religious, and people who have depression, and eating disorders, and are living in a strange city and feel like they don't fit in, and people whose dad died out of nowhere. I mean, I didn't just make those all up.

But just now I've realized that I've been... I don't know. I'd repeat the previous paragraph to myself every time I felt bad, small, insignificant, uninteresting and lonely. I haven't felt too happy since my last year of high school. In fact, I don't remember all that much of my last year of high school, except that I felt miserable a lot. They made us take like 5 different psychological tests (those horrible ones that take hours to complete and are hundreds of questions long) and the psychologist called me in to discuss my results because I came out unhappy.

I'm wondering if I plan to publish this post. I meant to at first, but now it's getting a bit embarrassing. I have a whole bunch of private-ish posts that sit unpublished.

Anyway, she held up the results of one test that evaluated... I forget, but there were five or six things, and one of them was sociality. I still remember that she held up my chart and said, "Look! Your social bar isn't there! It's a zero!". We talked for about an hour (well, she talked and asked questions and I went through her Kleenex), and she said she'd like me to go back but I never did.

My self-esteem remained pretty low until... Well, let's see. There was a little spike where I felt a bit better around December before last, while I was on a trip with a group of students. We were in Europe, and I could let loose a bit there. We were in sort of forced cohabitation, so it was easy to hang out with other people, get to know each other, and so on. Then the trip ended and I don't remember anything much after that, except that I became really irritable. Like, I though everyone else was being annoying and stupid. And then I realized it was me (and started crying in the library. Luckily my friends are not asses like I am, and patted me).

I'm just going to briefly mention again that I feel really stupid writing this. Wait for the end.

Anyway, I finished high school feeling sick of everyone (and feeling guilty and mean for it). Oh, and I felt fat because I'd gained like 5 kilos during the last year and especially in Europe, where they force-fed us pasta, pizza and fast food. My jeans did not fit. Also I had a brief stint with a dude who was an ass (he wasn't mean to me or anything, he was just dumb and had some weird sort of god complex. I mostly hung out with him because we hadn't known each other very long. Then I got sick of him, too, and sort of stopped talking to him).

Then I got into university. Yay! I was determined not to fuck this one up! I wanted to make friends! Be proactive! Hurray!

So I sort of sat by myself until one very talkative girl in my class spoke to me one day and I got very slowly sucked into her social circle. It took me ages to actually be comfortable talking to the other people. Like, months. Like, pretty much the whole semester. Even now I still don't know what they're talking about half the time because I'm out of the loop so much. But! I'm there. And the talkative girl is basically my best friend at university.

Then what? Oh, yes, holidays after my first semester. We all hung out once, just as the semester was ending, and then I lost contact with everyone. I stopped charging my cell phone because nobody was texting or calling anyway. I mostly hung out by myself and didn't do much.

Don't get me wrong, every now and then I'd do something with my cousins or my sisters (one came to visit. We sat on the couch and talked a bit). But mostly everyone was busy and I, um, wasn't.

Then I started my second semester at university. Oh gosh. My second semester. Well. I wasn't in any of the same classes as my crowd from first semester (except for one girl whose name I barely knew –I told you I was out of the loop– and whom I've since gotten to know much better). Luckily after a few weeks we realized that a lot of us (the crowd, I mean) finished our classes at roughly the same time several days a week, and we'd meet up at the end. I got rides home with my friend, and eventually befriended another guy in my Biochemistry lab team who'd give me rides home when my other friend couldn't.

That guy is awesome. My friends were all disappointed because he's both gay and good-looking ("But why?! Are you sure he's gay??"). He's just one of those people who you sort of click with, even if you're quite different, sappy as that may sound. I've come to associate the feeling of being in a cigarette smoke-impregnated car full of garbage with being in some sort of safe little cocoon. And when I had a bit of an eensy panic attack once and was hyperventilating manically into a corner, he showed up out of nowhere and hugged me and suddenly I felt so much better. I mean, that won't work coming from just anyone.

I'm going to take another moment to remind you that this is really embarrassing for me to write.

Anyway, meeting my friends at night and riding home with my friends were about the only decent times I had for a good chunk of the semester. The rest of the time I felt like a piece of shit, pardon my french. I couldn't concentrate in class, no matter how hard I tried. I walked around aimlessly in my free time with nobody to talk to and nothing to do. I'd randomly burst into tears (in the library, in the lab, sitting on the grass, in class...). I lost my appetite (and, thus, some weight!). For the field trip for Algae class we went to the beach. Everyone else ran around all happy in the sand and went swimming an, you know, had fun. I was just sort of on automatic. The only pictures I have of me are the ones I took on the last day because I realized I wouldn't have any to show my parents, otherwise.

It got worse, until I wasn't just feeling crappy at school. I was feeling crappy at home, too. And then I started to feel crappy at home and not care much if my parents saw me feeling crappy. And then I started to feel crappy at the gym. The gym! The gym is where I was always happy! My mom said I'd get over it, and my dad –oddly enough– sat down with me and we talked a bit. Also he bought me stuff.

It sounds awful, but that made me start to feel somewhat better.

For the first four or so months of the semester I didn't want to go see the faculty's psychologists because I was afraid of making them bored. I was convinced that if I showed up and said that I wasn't feeling well, they'd think "Oh, geez, another bored, whiny kid who thinks they've got problems." When I finally decided to go for at least one appointment, I figured it wasn't worth it anymore, because I was able to concentrate in class and was feeling pretty much okay.

So why was I feeling so bad in the first place? I have no idea. I know that way back in high school it was because I felt that there were so many things that I couldn't control, first and foremost that trip to Europe. It was done on the terms of some egomaniac bossy ladies. The psychologist I mentioned figured that one out, that I felt bad because I couldn't control any of it. And then, built on that, I felt so, so, SO stupid and guilty, because come on!!! I'm unhappy because I'm going on a fucking trip to another continent? Um, hello, how many people would love to have that, on whatever terms? And that's sort of a theme throughout the last two years. I felt stupid and guilty for feeling sad. But I have so many things going for me! My family is complete, we've got money, I'm in university studying something I love, my grades are okay. Or what's more, there's clothes on my back, food in my stomach and a roof over my head.

How could I be so selfish? Why on earth would anyone feel unhappy, having all that? God, I don't know. This is all messed up. Anyway, on to the epilogue.

I made conscious decisions to be more open, to talk to people more, to adress things that bugged me. I learned corny, useful things, one of which I remind myself about often: Happiness is not a destination, but a journey. As in, you don't wake up and say "Finally! I'm happy!". It's a process. And I'm working on it.

Oh god oh god oh god, am I going to publish this? Aaagh. Okay, must not chicken out. Nobody reads this blog anyway, it'll be like saying it out loud... to my pillow.

Summer Holidays, Book 25

My summer vacations started about a month ago, and there's still another month to go. That's actually a lot of vacation time, a fact that my Biochemistry teacher quickly noted and whined about. He likes to complain about the school administration, not without reason. Anyway, the weeks scheduled for final exams were free time for me, since I only wrote one final (and did okay).

My grades this semester were the best I've had since middle school, and while I'm not really sure how I managed to scrap a 9 in Algae & Protists, I'm not questioning it. I'm terrible at algae (nasty, slimy, stinky things) but am just fine with protists as it turned out. Anyway, my overall average is like 8.6 or 8.7 now, which is not mediocre. Hurray!

***

I spent the first few weeks of my holidays socializing, but then stopped answering text messages, e-mail and Facebook inbox thingies. See, I like other people and all, but get tired of them very quickly. And then I get all sad because I'm all alone (yeah, I know, it's my fault. Whatevs).

Some friends from my first semester and I held a Lord of the Rings movie marathon. We tried to do one last semester, too, but ended up watching Disney movies because half of the attendees strongly objected to reading subtitles. Instead of watching Aladdin with the others, I helped the host cook dinner by repeatedly flinging pasta onto his ceiling until it stuck there and I had to ask him to unstick it (this guy is really tall). See, I don't care for kids' movies*.

Anyway, we planned a LotR marathon with the extended DVDs, but decided that this time non-subtitle-lovers would remain uninformed of the event so as to avoid Disney-hijacking. So it was just me, two friends, a guy that tagged along because he had a crush on me (let's call him Crush Dude for now), the host and his girlfriend who came over later in the day.

Funny side story, Crush Dude poked me awake in the wee hours of the morning before leaving and asked if I wanted to go out later.

Crush Dude: So... you want to go out later today?

Me, bleary-eyed and wanting to go back to sleep: No.

[Pause]

Crush Dude: Oh. You sure?

Me: Yes.

[Crush Dude stands there for several seconds. Goes away.]

I mean, who thinks it's acceptable to poke people awake unless it's necessary? That's rude, right? Blah.

Back to the movie marathon, though: history repeated itself, and we ended up watching only the special features for the second movie and Disney's UP. I don't mind UP because I like the dog and the kid. And the bird.

I'm not sure I'm being totally coherent here. I think I'm just skipping around subjects randomly. I just hope that when I read this in 40 years I'll be able to know what I meant at the time.

The next morning it was just me, the host and one of the aforementioned friends, because everyone else jumped ship. So the three of us had breakfast (well, I had tea and they had Corn Pops with crushed Oreos mixed in. I'm not sure if any of that is a real breakfast) and then vegged out playing video games. I managed not to lose all of the time– I was competent! Even when we were joined by the hosts 15-year-old brother I managed to mostly not lose. I consider my video game abilities to have reached their peak.

* About kids' movies: They bore me and I don't like the humour (it's all crass and slapstick-y). The exception is Brother Bear, with the commentary by the comedian dudes who did the moose's voices. I watch that... every two or three years.

Book time! Yay!

Book 25 was Bill Richardson's Bachelor Brothers' Bed & Breakfast

Lovely book. It went perfectly with this summer, which is RAINY AND MISERABLE. I don't mean to say that the book is miserable –it's really good–, but rather that it made me go on walks out in the rain and appreciate the crap weather instead of staying in bed and being mopey.

Seriously though, what up with the weather? It's s'posed to be SUMMER, for f*ck's sake!

Books 20, 21, 22, 23, 24

Okay, I've been very lazy about blogging. If I don't get it over with now, I'll forget what I did this summer and spiral down into desperation, filled with regret for wasting my life.

Which is only half-true, so let's start with the books.

Book 20: The Princess Bride, by William Goldman

Well, this was excellent, OBVIOUSLY. The introduction was a bit boring, but perhaps necessary. Anyway, our copy has a cover picture of Buttercup (in a white dress and wreath of flowers) and Westley (in sexy pirate-clothes) with their arms around each other and gazing bravely off into the horizon. I was reading this as the semester ended to help me not go mental, and everybody just had to remark on the cover. They said it looked like some sort of swash-buckling, corset-ripping romance novel. I tried to explain it was a comedy, but I could see in their eyes (and great, big smirk) that nobody really believed me. Gah.

Book 21: Airborn, by Kenneth Oppel

I re-read this because the third book in the series was delivered a few weeks ago, and I wanted to refresh my memory before digging in. I remembered basically nothing from Airborn except that I really, really liked it when I first read it.

See, the thing is I guess I was 14 or so when I read it the first time, which fits into the target audience for the book. I'm 18 now and the story was cool, but the narration wasn't stellar and the main characters annoyed me because they were immature (which is to be expected, seeing as they're 15). The redeeming bit is that it has PIRATES! in it, but I don't think I'll finish the series for now.

Book 22: The Opposite of Invisible, by Liz Gallagher

It's one of those girl-enters-adolescence novels (that sounds gross, sorry. It's not). It was predictable, and the characters were typical, and overall it was pretty similar to the other books of this genre. This was on the better end of the spectrum, though.

Book 23: Peeps, by Scott Westerfeld

This was really, really, REALLY good! It's well-written, well-researched, has vampires and has parasites! It talks about the biology of several parasites and now I want to be a parasitologist (predictably).

Book 24: Good In Bed, by Jennifer Weiner

This started out as a nice, normal chick-lit book and progressed rather in the usual fashion until the end, at which point it got weird. Very weird. But it was still good.

I got a medal, anyway

When I was in my first year of high school a few years ago (SHUT UP that makes me sound so old!), I had a Math teacher who doled out extra points to help his students pass the subject. He'd give you +1 if you built a kite and entered a contest. +1 if you participated in the class ofrenda. +1 on your birthday. +1 if you ran in a certain race.

I ended up with a grade of 11 out of 10 that year.

That's not the point of my story, though. I entered the race, a 10K run, with my fitness-nut sister. We started out jogging together at an easy pace, which my sister kept for the rest of the race**. I, however, wheezed out after two minutes that she should go ahead, and then I walked the rest of the race. I might add that at one point, a bastard man on the street called out sarcastically after me "Oh, yeah, you're running justgreat."

So that was my entire experience with races. But at the end of last year I started jogging/running and really, really liked it. Also it wasn't very hard anymore because I've been doing exercise regularly for about three years now. And since I liked it so much, I'd been meaning to enter a race, except that involves actually going somewhere and handing over money and doing stuff. Lazy people like me don't like to do stuff. No, I'm kidding, I did look up a few races but they were expensive or not at a good time or place for me (yeah, I'm not really hardcore about this). And THEN! The Science Faculty's yearly 7K race rolled around and I registered as soon as I found the sports office (which took me three days because it's tucked away at the bottom of some steps, next to the taco stands behind the parking lot).

On Friday I remembered that it was the last day I could pick up my race number. I also remembered I'd forgotten my proof of payment, but that was okay because they didn't make me beg for it or anything at the sports office, they just SIGHED at me. Phew! Only then today I woke up late (actually my dad woke me up with a charming "Are you going or not?!?". I hate it when he does that. He could just say, "Hey, it's a bit late" instead). Never fear, though, I got there on time anyway.

What is it with people that run races? They were all wearing baggy shorts and drab t-shirts. I almost felt out of place in my bright pink shirt and little purple shorts. But that was actually a good thing, because during the race I just picked out the people ahead of me that were wearing the same colour as me and concentrated on passing them. And I only passed three pink shirts, so that should tell you how slow I am how few people were not wearing boring clothes.

Oh, oh, and there was this one guy in a green shirt and black leggings (yes, I know) whom I passed around the second kilometer, only he was one of those people who don't like it when you pass them, so he sped up and passed me. Only then I passed him again, and the cycle repeated a few times until I was a few meters behind him about 1 kilometer from the end... at which point I ran past him very quietly while he looked the other way. He saw me– I felt the indignation aimed at me– but he didn't try to catch up. I beat him by... I don't know, a minute or so. We did smile at each other when he crossed the finish line, though, so it as all friendly and sportsmanship-like.

I'm not gloating, I'm just telling you about a specific thing. 'Cause if I just say, "I ran a 7K!! There were lots of hills! Lots of hills!!! LOTS of HIIILLS!!!", well, that's not fun to read.

Something like this, the guy's leggings. Now imagine them with a baggy green shirt and a human inside, and there you go! That's the guy I'm talking about. (Photo from www.sportsshoes.com)

And now I have a baggy race T-shirt and a medal (the kind that they give everyone at the end. I didn't win, obviously). As for my time, I'm not sure, but I asked a girl what time it was after I'd been hanging around the finish line for a little while, and she said it was 9:42, so I'm guessing I did about 40 minutes. The absolute winner finished in 24 min., 40-something seconds OHMYGODCRAZY.

**Little anecdote about my sister here; she thought it was a 5K race and concluded that she wasn't as fit as she had previously thought, because it was taking her longer than anticipated. Then she crossed the finish line, and was all "Oooooh..." DUH. These people are all muscle and no brain! (Just kidding, Reenie. I love you, smartie).

Bad science, book #19

I baked some big chocolate-chocolate-chocolate cookies last night (or technically, early this morning). They're cake-y, with two types of chocolate chip (or three, I don't remember. I made the dough earlier this month and froze it, so I'm not really sure what I put in anymore). They're huge, because I made them to celebrate the fact that I fixed a giant ice cream scoop we have. Because, you know, I'm so handy and all. And I used the scoop to portion out the dough.

Huge!

It's exam season! Final exams! Departmental tests!! Aaaah!

Litle story about my Algae team: we lost our results (shhhh!!) from the field work we did in Veracruz, so we're just flying with what we can remember (pH in the pond was like... 6?**) and whatever is in samples we brought back, which means mostly diatoms. And there's about four species of diatoms, so they don't even look that cool what with the lack of variety.

I just spent about ten minutes trying to remember what book I read last week. "Not science fiction, not chick lit, not popular science... Oh, yeah!"

Book #19: The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

I'm a fan of post-apocalyptic fiction, except the books I've read aren't quite so bleak and depressing as this one is. It was really good; I kept waiting for something to happen, thinking "Eh, it'll get better when it picks up a bit", except then I was halfway through and I figured out that the whole book was like that; sort of slow, dare I say lethargic? I don't know. That makes it sound boring, but it wasn't boring. It was good. Especially the ending, which I thought might be disappointing, but it was totally cool.

The only thing that annoyed me was the selective use of apostrophes. This Cormac guy doesn't use apostrophes in his dialogs most of the time, which is fine, except that while he has no problem saying youre, dont and cant, he does leave the apostrophe in I'm. WHAT'S UP WITH THAT??

**Im kidding here, obviously. We're not going to guess the pH, that's just bad science. I mean, so is losing your results... but, uh.... huh.

Pissed. Off.

I feel pissed off for some reason (hormones? lack of sleep?). Grrrawrrr. Not at anything specific, but silly things are irritating me way more than they should. I'm annoyed that the housekeeper covered my desk with clothes and then disappeared, when I was planning to do my homework. I'm pissed off at myself for being too lazy to wash the blender properly after my sister used it, and instead just giving it a thorough rinse; it leaked gross metallic water into my food (I keep forgetting it does that if it's not completely dry).

I mean, what kind of loser gets mad because of things like that? They're not important. Nothing to hold grudges over.

Ugh.

Today I registered and got my photo taken for my voter's I.D. (finally). I'd made an appointment for 10:30 a.m., but for some reason I didn't show up on the appointment list ("Oh, that happens sometimes, just print out your confirmation email"), nor was I sent a confirmation email ("Huh! Well, you'd best take a number and sit down... the wait won't be too long, two hours at most"). So I got a slip of paper that said my turn would be at 12:20. They saw me at 1:40 p.m.

Oh, the whole time there was this fucking kid playing a game on her mom's Blackberry, with loud, annoying music after every level.

I did take a bit of a walk. I bought a box of chocolates for my Systematics class. This is because I forgot to put my phone on silent mode during class, and my Mom sent me a text message. If your phone interrupts the class, you bring everyone a chocolate. Dumb rule, since everyone is too cheap to bring nice chocolate, and bring crappy stuff instead (actually, I've still got my shares sitting around. I should throw them out or give them away or something).

I still feel pissed off. Mostly at myself, for letting myself feel pissed off for no reason.

Oh, yeah, I made cupcakes last night. Vanilla, with amaretto icing.

Grr.

Oooh, I know! I'll watch British T.V.! That always cheers me up.

Train of thought (& books 17, 18)

Aah! Another month of my life whizzed by and I didn't blog. Like, at all.

So books #17 and #18 are done and over with.

I read another book, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. Yes, more chick lit. It was okay for the first half, and the second half was awesome (it picked up quite a bit when she went to Thailand. that was hilarious).

I also read Northanger Abbey-- YES!!! I'VE READ SOMETHING BY JANE AUSTEN!!! Actually, I haven't actually finished it, because I misplaced it about a week ago. But I'm only a chapter short, and I'll just lug The Complete Works of Jane Austen off the shelf and read it from there. I saw a girl reading Sense and Sensibility on the bus once from an Austen compilation. It looked, um, inconvenient. I breezed past with my 150-gram copy of N. Abbey and felt smug.

Har.

I've been on a baking kick. Within the last week, I've made three batches of cookies (double chocolate chip, white chip chocolate, and vanilla pudding with peanut butter chips) as well as chocolate marbled banana bread (which is really more like cake, but "banana bread" has a nicer ring to it. And "banana loaf" sounds even better, because it rhymes with "oaf"!) and marinated tofu from Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant. Oh, I made granola, too. With cinnamon and applesauce. And nutmeg.

Mmm, chocolate. I've nearly polished off an entire bar of 85% Lindt chocolate. But everybody knows that dark chocolate is somewhat good for you, which means that I can eat as much as I want. Hurrah!

Although I do try to eat no more than two pieces of fruit a day, or they crowd veggies out. And fruit is just sugary veggies.

Speaking of granola, why do people think granola is so healthy? It's bits of oats and seeds stuck together with sugar and oil. Honey, too. People think honey is magical or something... it's sugar syrup (I mean, it's got trace amounts of minerals, too, but that doesn't give one license to smother stuff in honey).

What else? Oatmeal cookies. They're cookies with a few oats mixed in. Oh, and All-Bran: wheat bran stuck together with corn syrup. Seriously! I bought some plain toasted wheat bran the other day, and it's WAY cheaper and tastier (and without the stupid stick shape. Why is All-bran shaped like sticks? They could make it into little rings, like Cheerios!).

I'm way off topic. Well, there was no topic to begin with, but I'm still way off. Now I'm just ranting about stupid things nobody cares about. People can eat oatmeal cookies if they so wish. Cookies!

Perhaps I need a nap. I feel a bit woozy.

It rained today. Unfortunately, it was extremely sunny while I was jogging in the morning and now I'm all caramelized.

I took Reyna, one of our dogs, for a really long walk on Friday. I met a man who told me that I shouldn't let her lead me around, and that I should be the one telling her where we would go. I lied and told him that I lead her for the first half of our walks, and then let her sniff around at will. He nodded and we talked about our dogs for about ten minutes. Reyna tugged around at her leash and got scared of things (like the mans' dogs), and eventually flopped down in the dust, while his dogs sat next to him nicely and payed attention when he spoke to them. They nuzzled his hand and all.

I wonder if this is how mothers with fussy toddlers feel when they see other children who are well-behaved, and their own kids are screaming for candy?

Anyway, I took the guy's advice (his dogs really were lovely... cute bastards) and spoke to Reyna the whole way home. She seemed to be pulling less at the leash, but I think it might be because we had been out for a long time and she was tired. I won't let her pull next time, though. And I can put a bandana on her when we go out so she looks endearingly klutzy instead of fluff-brained.