The Fake Van Gogh

We don't know

2011-11-20T10:53:00.000-08:00

Today I woke up and I was thinking, "I don't know how my life is supposed to go. I can't predict it and maybe I shouldn't try." The thing is that although I really want to know and I really want to think I know I have to face the fact that I don't. I am aware that other people try to predict their lives... and a lot of people who do this granted, fail miserably. I'm thinking of the stories I've heard of 90% of science majors entering university confident that they will get into medical school and this doesn't happen for most. Maybe I'm wise in my hesitancy and sense of not knowing. I never thought about it like this before. I started thinking this because I was thinking about how to deal with the large amount of anger I've been feeling at some things not going the way I wanted.

The thing is over the past few years while I felt I was failing at living my life right, the idea has been occurring to me that even of the people who are succeeding and doing really well, no one really knows what the best way to live your life is. There are so infinitely many things you can do and it's just anyone's guess which is the best. I was really resisting this idea because... I guess I was so used to thinking in my box, I didn't want to open my mind more.

Today thinking about the idea that, "I don't know how my life is supposed to go" and sort letting go of expectations about that, I'm reminded of zen ideas. I was reading part of this "Zen of Alice (in wonderland)" book over this summer. I did not really get the book, I don't know if it was the author's wording or communication of his idea. I felt like he was trying to say that everything is good the way it is, that if someone dies in a car accident and you're unhappy about it, you should just radically readjust your reality in your head to see that it should be this way with the person dead and not cry over something that is the way it should be. I also went to this zen retreat this summer and I felt like participants were specifically pushed off balance but it felt like there was this intense focus on not feeling and not being upset. This could be my own bias. There was this sense of just don't be upset, stay calm no matter what and that didn't really reconcile with me. Thinking of it this idea of losing expectations again this morning I am thinking of it differently. I am thinking of it more like, "I'm not dictating what should happen, I'll just take what I get and then some things will be sad and some will be happy." There was not this idea of being "ok" with everything, there was more a sense of not claiming to understand everything or have everything figured out. I don't know if or how this might reconcile with the idea in the zen of Alice book.

What's funny is that it seems like a lot of the bright people I know have this sentiment, this sense of not knowing what things "should" be or how they "should" go. When something bad happens they don't seem to get that angry, rather it seems there is this idea that they're sad but they're accepting and they don't say, "It should have been like this." I guess there is a sense of openendedness and humility about things, a strong sense of the limitations of their knowledge. They quite don't radiate this sense that they "should" feel happy or sad about how this are going or that they should not feel happy or sad about how things are going either. I think this is wise, I think this is wisdom as far as I can see.

I guess I would have to say that it makes a big difference to me the tone of voice/facial expressions or even language with which people talk about these ideas. If the language or tone of voice of the speaker seems very driven and very certain that they know these ideas about uncertainty are right, that makes it very hard for me to believe those ideas, because it seems like they are contradicting themselves. If it is presented in a more openended way it comes across very differently.

On fire something solid to wrap my mind around...

2011-11-07T22:07:00.000-08:00

I was listening to this song "On Fire" today and I could really identify with the words.

But everything inside you knows
Says more than what you’ve heard
So much more than empty conversations
Filled with empty words

This struck me as a lot how I felt before I got to university. I had a sense that there was something more out there than what I was seeing, everything seemed so empty and I was grasping at a knowledge I could not see but felt that was missing.

And you’re on fire
When he’s near you
You’re on fire
When he speaks
You’re on fire
Burning at these mysteries

This is how I feel today, even though I haven't felt this way for a long time. This morning I woke up with a gnawing in my stomach to learn something. I just felt hollow and like I wanted something solid to wrap my mind around. I felt like my mind was going nuts for lack of being exhausted by hard work, not because the work I have to do isn't challenging enough but because I've been quite discouraged about doing it. Today I realized it really doesn't benefit me to not work hard, it makes me feel bad.

Poem

2011-10-07T13:23:00.001-07:00

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream -- and not make dreams your master;
If you can think -- and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings -- nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run --
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And -- which is more -- you'll be a Man, my son!

~ Rudyard Kipling

(not) Avoiding people's feelings

2011-07-21T21:53:00.000-07:00

I was talking to an acquaintance today and she was pretty upset. I kept trying to fix it and make her feel better but I couldn't. I could spend a page writing about me trying to help make her feel better and failing but I'm just going to save me and you the trouble and say it in my fourth line. I was upset because seeing her upset made me sad and I didn't want to deal with that. I didn't want to feel sad. There was nothing wrong with how she was feeling, it was harmful, obviously it wasn't good that she was feeling upset but there was nothing wrong or bad or evil about it either. It wasn't necessary to avoid it.

In general it's also very easy for me to start feeling afraid of feeling sad and ashamed of my feelings, especially if I'm around people that are trying to avoid their feelings as well. I've been thinking about this for a while and wondering how to deal with people who can't seem to handle my intensity. Tonight I am thinking that maybe by my having confidence to be myself scared or sad or whatever I am that they are so afraid of being, I am contributing something because they might also be afraid of that aspect of themselves as well.

Casey Anthony

2011-07-10T08:23:00.000-07:00

I couple of people on my friends list have posted links or status updates on Facebook saying that Casey Anthony should be going to jail. I know Casey Anthony seems incredibly guilty but, given that logically in light of the evidence we don't know for sure she is, and given that human beings often feel certain of things they don't know for sure and succumb to doing things that seem so "logical" at the time, like the mob mentality, but later are shown to be wrong, I think perhaps we should rethink our certainty about her guilt. If there's a lack of evidence then not only should she not be found guilty in the official court but she also shouldn't be found guilty in the court of our minds.

I happened to find this article about how she is but shouldn't be the "most hated person in America" which she apparently is (either that or she's quite high up there on the unofficial unscientifically verified list), because many people have done things that are much worse. I agree.

Vilifying Casey Anthony I suppose, is also an excuse for the system and culture of the lack of support given to parents, not to change. If Casey was a crazy stressed out mother then making her into a bad apple implies that it's not the system and society that doesn't support mothers that's (mostly) wrong but that it's her and the other moms who can't take it. It's not that I am sympathetic with child abuse in any way. I've been the person so many times telling people, "Don't hit your kid, you're just going to make him/her more angry. Your kid may be frustrating but they're just really sensitive and they need you." Sometimes I think it's amazing the brute mentality that passes for "civilization" in this day and age, given how cruel apparently civilized people can be to children and think nothing of it.

I feel strongly about this Casey Anthony is the worst person issue, partly because it really unnerves me to see anyone hated or called bad.

Uncertainty as an adult and the fear of facing mistakes

2011-07-04T19:29:00.000-07:00

Could you let down your hair

And be transparent for a while
Just a little while
See if you're human after all
Honesty is a hard attribute to find
When we all want to seem like we've got it all figured out
Let me be the first to say that I don't have a clue
Don't have all the answers
Ain't gonna pretend like I do, just
Trying to find my way
Trying to find my way the best that I know how

Lifehouse-Trying

In the vein of my last post, I once made the comment to someone that, "When I was a teenager I used to wonder why adults had to pretend to know everything and act like they had it together even when they didn't. But now being a little older I see how much pressure there is to get it together and have it figured out when you pass a certain age."

I felt less pressure as a teenager to have my life together. Now I feel more pressure, sometimes I feel like, "Oh my goodness I'm acting so immature. I should have it sorted out by now! Why am I making these silly mistakes in the way I deal with things ?" I feel scared of admitting I don't have it together at all. When you're a teenager it seems people expect you to not have it together, to some extent, and it's considered forgivable to not know what you're doing and hence it's easier to admit it when you don't have it together.

I think the thing about having a perspective like that is that may not necessarily make you less likely to make mistakes but it makes it harder for you to recognize and correct your mistakes when you do make them. It makes making and admitting mistakes seem shameful or immoral and it makes taking risks or at least taking a risk and acknowledging that you could be wrong seem unacceptable. You have to play it safe and getting it wrong seems like such a great tragedy that you don't even want to imagine it.

I live to some extent with the legacy of people who chose to live in a box and deny all uncertainty about God, religion and the afterlife. Their beliefs and my beliefs weren't supposed to be subject to change if we got more information, we had to get it right, know the right answers and make the right decisions, on the threat of hell in the afterlife.

I used to have this sign I had on my desk that said, "The perfect is the enemy of the good." Maybe I should pull out that sign again.

I could be doing the wrong thing (taking risks and tolerating uncertainty)

2011-07-03T11:43:00.000-07:00

This week I've been thinking about uncertainty a bit. Life for me has had a lot of uncertainty for a long time. I have often felt nervous and doubtful of my ability to do things and have been told I shouldn't feel that way, that I'm wrong, I have enough information to be certain. After trying for so long to change my feelings and be certain of things I'm not certain of, maybe I'm finally seeing (maybe I can just accept it once and for all in my life) that as much as I would like it to, I don't think my tendency to feel uncertain is going to change.

This uncertainty plays out in school, work, relationships. I'm never sure how it's going to go. So far it seems the only way for me to work with my uncertainty (and sometimes well placed uncertainty too) has been for me to accept it. I've studied for so many exams (um like all of them!) I've taken with the understanding that I just have to work really hard and it may or may not pay off but working really hard is the only hope that I have of passing and the best I can do for myself is to just keep trying until I get it. I haven't always done badly, which has actually made me feel even more weird for my feelings of uncertainty. Many people I know have not had to do this because they apparently don't feel the same uncertainty. I have to say I have often envied those people. It's funny because if I mention how I have to work with my uncertainty and do things with the the understanding that, "This may or may not pay off but I have to take this risk and just work hard anyway" some people cannot understand it or find it quite uncomfortable and feel the need to quickly add, "Oh but it will probably pay off" or "It will work" which I suppose is their feelings of certainty but that's definitely not how I feel. Some people just look at me kind of blankly if I mention taking that perspective towards an exam or interview you are nervous about as if to say, "Huh work hard and not know if it will pay off ? That sounds crazy and really sad, like the kind of thing for a person in a really awful situation to do. No no no I'm better off than that."

I've also tried denying my uncertainty, so many times. That does not work well at all for me, at all! The denial has mostly led me to avoid engaging in wise preparation, because every time I tried to prepare or work hard I would feel my fear and uncertainty of the outcome and try desperately to avoid feeling the uncertainty. Most times my only way to stay in denial and avoid the feeling would be to avoid working hard and avoiding preparation. I've left a few 'projects' till the night before or the metaphorical night before for that reason, just because I was trying so hard to avoid the feelings of uncertainty working on them brought up. It seems an incredibly silly thing to do in retrospect but I guess I didn't see how my efforts at denial were preventing me from working hard, to the point where it was almost like a muscle injury for an athlete who never wanted to use that muscle again until it was completely healed and didn't hurt anymore. Denial seems to effectively paralyze me. I'm not very good at it or perhaps it's just because I have so much emotion in general that denying it takes ALL my energy and focus and I have none left for anything else.

This topic of the necessity of taking risks and accepting uncertainty reminds me of something I learned from my best friend. She is always trying out new food places and actually she is just always trying out things in life in general, new people, new clubs and hobbies, new ideas, new possible solutions to problems. The sentiment that I get from this is that she's willing to take risks and also she isn't going to blame herself if things go less than well. She doesn't act as perfectionistic with herself as I do. My often held sentiment of, "I have to know for certain that this is going to work in order to try it. I need to live my life perfectly." Conversely she has a certain amount of acceptance of herself getting things wrong. She doesn't have to know that it's going to turn out right before hand in order to try things and she doesn't have to know that she's doing "the right" thing (not in the sense of morally right, but in the sense of most effective) in order to try things out.

I've been wondering if I can do this lately. I know I have sometimes done it with school and other things. I've said, "I don't know if I'm doing the right thing by doing this. I could be getting it quite wrong" and I've taken risks. I'd like to do this again. I think for a long time I have felt very very perfectionistic with myself (in particular after I failed at something) and pressured to get things right. I felt guilty about taking risks after this. Ironically my perfectionism has led me to avoid taking risks to a silly degree (the degree of doing almost nothing... and not investing in anything) because I have felt so pressured to get everything right and do everything perfectly. So I'm resolving (hopefully I can keep this resolution) that I can take risks, I'm the kind of person who can accept doing something and not knowing if it's going to pay off or not knowing if I'm doing the right thing. I don't always have to feel that I am getting it right. I can tolerate the uncertainty and sadness of knowing that I may very well be getting it wrong but I just have to work hard anyway.

2011-06-30T22:29:00.000-07:00

I reworded the verses in my last post below. I put it in the first person (it was originally written from me to me and to other people too) to see how that would work. I think I like it better in first person.

I am the one
still laughing, still crying,
still happy
long after the sun has come up

I can scale the hill just faster
than you can dream
and you can just only dream to keep up with me

I am the new billion dollar
fighter jet
0 to 500 in half a second
sensitive to the slightest touch

I will glide higher
turn around faster
My rate of change
of rate of change
of rate of change
jerks the fabric of life

I am the new superconducting
magnetic levitating train
my electric emotion
my laughter keeps running
and running long after they all run out

all my pairs of bits
are in harmony
every pair both in synchrony
as one

I am always a little bit more
just a little bit superfluid
just a little spilling over the top
just a little bit still swirling
when everything else stops

I am below the temperature of ice
but I am not frozen yet
superfluid
You'll have to dream me
and use your imagination
see me before you see me
boiling sub zero over the top
long before I show you

I am right here next to you
just as solid as you
but half of me is always
quasi-really something you can only dream
You always have to see with your mind
a person that must be believed
to be seen
I am just softer
than you can imagine
just smoother than you can see
You have to be just gentler than gentle

dream dream
just the faintest glow in the dark
there is a reason
there is a truth
just one that I can't see
yet

I am a deep well
You always diving into
You always pulling me to the surface
here with you
I am not too deep
I always make sense
your heart is always here with me

I am not wrong
I am not too far gone
I am right here
You are right here too
I think I am in the dark
but I am not lost
You know where we are
we are close to home
I am not that far gone

they think I am lost
but I am not lost
they just don't have long enough arms
they just don't have sharp enough eyes

2011-06-30T17:01:00.000-07:00

This is my cheesy physics poem from a few weeks ago... (Ironically it's not generally referring to any physicists although it does include a lot of physics.) When I first wrote it, I didn't like it, now I think it sounds a bit hopeful, saying that some super emotional people, although they can get themselves pretty tangled up and in a lot of trouble, are good people.

you are the one
still laughing, still crying,
still happy
long after the sun has come up

you can scale the hill just faster
than I can dream
and I can just only dream to keep up with you

you are the new billion dollar
fighter jet
0 to 500 in half a second
sensitive to the slightest touch

you will glide higher
turn around faster
your rate of change
of rate of change
of rate of change
jerks the fabric of life

you are the new superconducting
magnetic levitating train
your electric emotion
your laughter keeps running
and running long after we all run out

all your pairs of bits
are in harmony
every pair both in synchrony
as one

you are always a little bit more
just a little bit superfluid
just a little spilling over the top
just a little bit still swirling
when everything else stops

you're below the temperature of ice
but you're not frozen yet
superfluid
I'll have to dream you
and use my imagination
see you before I see you
boiling sub zero over the top
long before you show me

you are right here next to me
just as solid as me
but half of you is always
quasi-really something I can only dream
I always have to see with my mind
a person that must be believed
to be seen
you are just softer
than I can imagine
just smoother than I can see
I have to be just gentler than gentle

dream dream
just the faintest glow in the dark
there is a reason
there is a truth
just one that you can't see
yet

you are a deep well
I am always diving into
I am always pulling you to the surface
here with me
you are not too deep
you always make sense
my heart is always here with you

you are not wrong
you are not too far gone
you are right here
I am right here too
you think you are in the dark
but you are not lost
I know where we are
we are close to home
you're not that far gone

they think you are lost
but you are not lost
they just don't have long enough arms
they just don't have sharp enough eyes

Emotional fallout of school

2011-06-28T21:26:00.000-07:00

I remember when I first learned that we were made of atoms and that most of us was actually space, I was disconcerted. I was troubled learning that I was mostly space. As I'm writing this I realize that I should by now have realized something even more troubling, that given quantum mechanics, I'm not even made of mostly space and particles but I'm actually made of a huge bunch of wave-functions. (Oh my goodness I think I've potentially just given myself nightmares and daymares for a month right there.) This is without even mentioning that the space I'm made of is not really space because as was pointed out to me by my favourite physicist, "There are no vacuums in space because of quantum mechanics."

But ok what I'm trying to say is that I find it a bit emotionally draining sometimes to learn all this stuff. It seems a bit weird to get emotionally disconcerted about academic things just from courses in school, especially when you're talking about Math and Physics, supposedly some of the most abstract stuff.

And yes not only Physics but also Math is disconcerting. I may just have been exceptionally stressed and sleep deprived when I was taking multivariable and vector calculus but the curve parametization thing made me think of how everything imaginable could possibly be parametized and thought of differently and that was somehow unnerving.

Sometimes I feel that apart from the difficulty of learning everything and managing to wrap my mind around things, if I can do that, it's a bit scary to be learning so many new things, kind of like getting hit with a brick in the head and just trying to recover for a few days. One of my first semesters of Physics was like that (not just from the Physics... someone else was blowing my mind too). My brain was full, I had so much to think about. I think that I felt vulnerable. I couldn't envelope myself in my usual cloud of rumination and thoughtlessness to protect myself from the world. I had been pulled to the surface. I was constantly being re-awoken. Life was so intense and ideas were hitting me from so many directions. I'm not sure if people like to be told things that blow their minds much or new things. I'm not sure if people like life to be that intense. Maybe this is why people choose denial, they prefer the 'calmness' and the security of burying their heads in the sand ? And at the same time I really like that sensation, in a way.

I love getting hit in the head with an idea that's like a brick. I feel alive and awake. And it's scary. Some days I've said, "Never mind I'm going back to my box... where everyone tells me the same ole same ole." But my best friend who has ever heard me sulk about my box while I was in it, knows I can't do that. I was going to die of the people who wanted to chat about the weather and Tuesday night laundry. At the same time if I had to put up with them I would :p My brain would certainly protest to hear of more interesting mind blowing stuff and that might hurt but I would accept it I guess.

I was told a few years ago after I complained to a friend of mine that someone was always being a few steps ahead of me and hitting me in the head with over the top ideas, they suggested that I perhaps hit people in the head with a brick. Now I see that I have done that a LOT in my life. Not because I'm particularly ahead of anyone but I have the lack of presence of mind to mention things/concepts that I've spent months thinking up and acclimating to, to someone who gets to hear about it all in five minutes. To them I think it's a bit disconcerting (unless they've been thinking up the same things) and confusing. I think I do this often indadvertedly, because in some respects I'm not being empathetic enough. I can be extremely wrapped up in my own world and my own ideas. I wish I was more empathetic and on the same page with people not necessarily in the sense of thinking the same as them but in the sense of seeing where they are coming from too.

When it looks like I have failed...

2011-06-26T22:29:00.000-07:00

This is not that inventive, but I'm posting it because someone on my email list posted it and it reminds me of the, "The best angle from which to approach any problem is the try-angle" slogan and the "Don't quit" poem that I had hung up on my desk when I was working on some Math that was very difficult for me a few years ago.

Failure does not mean I'm a failure;
It does mean I have not yet succeeded.

Failure does not mean I have accomplished nothing;
It does mean I have learned something.

Failure does not mean I have been a fool;
It does mean I had enough faith to experiment.

Failure does not mean I've been disgraced;
It does mean I dared to try.

Failure does not mean I don't have it;
It does mean I have to do something in a different way.

Failure does not mean that I am inferior;
It does mean that I am not perfect.

Failure does not mean that I have wasted my life;
It does mean that I have an excuse to start over.

Failure does not mean that I should give up;
It does mean that I must try harder.

Failure does not mean that I will never make it;
It does mean that I need more patience.

The only people who never fail are those who never try.

~ Author unknown

2011-06-26T13:06:00.000-07:00

Strawberry white chocolate
And meditation
And mediation
Trigonometry and lace
Math and cheese

I was waiting for you today
To see the glint in your eyes
To hear the happiness in your voice
Let it wash through me
But some of life hit me
I couldn't duck under the wave fast enough
I got nervous, I got unnerved
I tripped, lost my natural balance on the surf board
Anger kidnapped me for a weekend
And I'm sorry, I was away from my phone I couldn't call

I was waiting for you last week
I wanted to say hello
But I forgot how much I don't know
I forgot a way to see the day with interest and kindness
I got confused and thought I knew it would all turn out badly
That you would turn out badly and turn your back
I got scared
And so I didn't say anything
But my heart screamed volumes inside my chest
Maybe you heard some trace of it

I was afraid you might not understand if I said I was scared
I forgot that you saw the good in me
The picture you painted
Colours overwhelming luminous
Crashing through me
Like I had never seen before
I forgot the colours for a moment
Life, rich and full, quenching, drenching
It seemed the air had glistening colours
When I breathed it through me

Someone re-created a landscape in my mind last week
A field of flowers
Touches of red
Wind swirling at my fingertips
Gentle warmth
A glow of light dispersed the mist
They reminded me again of the story
I am listening intently

Engineers in bikinis

2011-04-21T10:40:00.000-07:00

I signed on to my Facebook a few days ago and saw a friend's link to this picture and article about how the Dean of the University of Waterloo shut down their student car team from competing because one of the students posed beside it in a bikini and this picture was on the internet. The student argued that she was posing for a charity calendar (on closer inspection though this woman would not have made any money off of the picture, apparently only 10% of the proceeds from the calendar go to charity).

I was a little appalled that this woman had done this. (And at the same time, I could identify with the confusion that may have led her to do this). I thought sadly, "Just as soon as people think, "oh wow a woman engineer, women can be engineers!" we are inevitably and quickly corrected that, no, women's primary purpose in life is always tied to sex. At the end of the day regardless of whatever else she does, engineering etc they are all just momentary diversions, the real reason she's around is sex." I probably reacted a bit emotionally but those were my thoughts. I'll explain the reasoning that led to these thoughts.

I was a woman in Engineering (I switched to Science) and I immediately agreed with the Dean's decision when I heard about this. I have no doubts that this student had the best intentions, and I am empathetic to what must be a bitter disappointment for the team since they will not be able to compete. I hope this woman won't be blamed by her classmates for this incident however I think that she was not thinking clearly in taking those pictures.

My first reason is because I think the pictures were simply unprofessional. It would have been condemned just as strongly if a guy had taken pictures next to the car in a speedo for a calendar! Everyone would think, "Why is that guy taking his clothes off ? What's wrong with him ? Thus is crazy."

Secondly I do think the pictures were objectifying to women simply because of the society we live in. Generally women were traditionally perceived to be good for only two things; sex and babies. Women have had to struggle and are still struggling to be respected and seen for their diverse abilities (including intelligence and the ability to be a good engineer). At the moment, women get paid 77c to the dollar that men make, why ? because on some level people perceive women's ability to do anything but provide sex/raise children as less than men's.

I was disappointed when I heard about this woman's photo shoot. I thought, just as soon as people are beginning to look at a woman and think, "She might be a highly gifted Engineer," we are corrected by a picture of her in a bikini, and instructed that the primary purpose of a woman of which we must always be reminded is, "sex and babies." She may be in engineering, but let's not make the mistake of viewing her as an engineer, that's just a momentary diversion from her main purpose, "sex and babies."

Finally I'm aware that what I'm writing might come across as somewhat repressive of women's natural sexuality. That's not my intention. Girls will be girls, *wink wink.* In terms of women being proud of their bodies, sexuality and femininity however, it's my understanding that women have gained more ownership of their bodies and respect for their femininity primarily as a result of finding economic independence and respect for their diverse abilities (ironically their diverse abilities other than being able to provide sex and children), rather than as a result of simply protesting that we should be allowed to wear a bikini. If you want women to be less repressed, they need a little more economic independence and respect for all their abilities. I also don't want to deny the fact that women have achieved independence and been treated more kindly simply because some moral people have noticed inequality and followed their consciences.

Today I was happy to read this blog by a student in support of the Dean. I was beginning to wonder if no one else shared my viewpoint.

More Kendall Payne (gee this reminds me of my compulsive Lifehouse references on my old blog :p)

2011-04-17T20:55:00.000-07:00

This a line from Kendall's song, "One More Try"

Since You’ve been gone, I can’t fight it I can’t fight it
I’ve tried for too long I can’t hide it I can’t hide it anymore

This another bit of Kendall's album that just sticks in my head.
I was listening to it the other day when I was upset about something and it was quite soothing.

block... hmm

2010-12-02T23:21:00.000-08:00

I am volunteering for this event to try to attract women to study Physics. I was asked to write an intro for the website for the event which happens in January.

After reading all the other intros which were in 3rd person. Here is what I wrote after some contemplation...

Marisa is a third year Physics/Philosophy major who started out at studying Philosphy in Arts. She liked reading Physics books so she decided to take Physics 100 just for fun and was delighted that she could manage the problems. She loves going to the Physics colloquia and always thinks she's especially lucky to have Physicists chat about research with her. In Physics, she has met the kindest and most inspiring classmates and profs, many of whom went out of their way to help her. She often wonders about the Higgs field, inertia and telling spooky stories entirely in Math. In her spare time she likes cooking stir frys, taking pictures of the mountains and trees and going swing dancing.

I highlighted that line in small letters because when I read over what I wrote and compared it to the other intros I had been given I noticed something. I was a little startled. From reading what I wrote it seems like I don't consider myself a Physicist. Well I do but... (At least I thought I did before noticing this). But now it's obvious that I have some amount of me and them thing going on.

It's funny because I thought what I wrote was entirely cute and sweet (maybe even demure...) until I looked back at the other intros and they were all talking about, "I'm doing this, and researching this," and then I looked back at mine which says, "I'm so lucky to hear about what they're researching and what they're doing."

I'm not doing any research so I can't lie in my intro and say that but it appears that I have a mental block. The thing is I remember I was helping someone with their research once and I was thinking, "they'll like this and they'll like that. They will like to see this and they will like to see that, that'll make sense to them." It was as if I was attempting to speak a language and speak it well but I didn't consider it my own. I've kind of noticed that I've had this block for a while (not in quite this specific a way), profs will say something, and I'll think, "oh they mean that for the really smart people, not for me." I have written off and ruled so much out this way it saddens me suddenly.

Sad

2010-11-30T13:48:00.000-08:00

Right now I feel sad. It's because there was someone I thought cared about me and now I'm not sure if they did. I'm not sure if they were trying to use me for their own purposes or hurt me which is what I feared initially. For sure they were the person that seemed to understand me the most in my life. I don't know how much (if at all) someone understanding you is equivalent with them caring about you. It's not that hard to fool someone into thinking you understand them either. I wish I could have this person back with the way that they seemed to understand me about two years ago.

reaching for...

2010-11-27T16:40:00.000-08:00

This week (and maybe this past year) I've been thinking about the unattained and what most people say and think is unattainable. Basically I'm thinking about how people thought attaining a 4 minute mile was impossible until someone did it and then shortly afterwards a few other people did it, proving that it was not only possible but quite easily attainable. I'm thinking about this because I think I'm a dreamer, I can see things. I'm often discontented with the way things are and I don't agree with the picture that most people around me have been seeing, the stereotypes, the bragging, the sexism, the need to feel superior to others or else feel that one isn't good enough. When I was a child I often wondered why I could not see the world the way everyone around me said they saw it, I couldn't agree with the cliches, I wished to fix my brain in order to fit in. As a child, I could not find someone to blow my mind, as a teenager that was pretty hard too. (I should add that to some extent I was confined by my own and my parents mental box and being in their small community of friends and religious acquaintances, who really did see the world that one way.)

In everyone around me it seemed I noticed the same insecurities that I was struggling with. I could not find someone that had gone beyond them to look up to even though my mind told me it was doable. To some extent I would feel a little guilty for having the 'arrogance' to hope that I could be 'better' than everyone else. I was very intimidated. I still am. I find I am usually willing to do things if one other person around me does them, I curiously don't question myself in that case. It's funny but I was asking myself today the equivalent of, "So if everyone still believed slavery was ok, and you didn't think it was, you would be afraid you were wrong and bad in thinking what you thought and acting on it because no one else thought so ?"

Perhaps I could have done some of the things I was dreaming of but I didn't want to do it alone. I really thought I couldn't be the only person seeing things the way I saw them and be 'right'. I've read some things that seem to imply that is is what separates very very bright people from the rest of the crowd, they have the confidence or strength of mind to do things that no one else is doing, it seems they have the confidence to do things even if it looks like that they are the only person in the world doing it. They apparently have a very rare kind of stubbornness, that separates them from even the very bright who are also stubborn but have more of a need or ability to fit in. I don't think I have this confidence. I seem to crumble if I think of myself at the only person in the world doing something. I find it hard to believe that I can accomplish or deserve to accomplish something no one else can. But I see the possibilities in my mind and they taunt me endlessly... when I do find someone that has managed to make those possibilities a reality or sees them too, I mentally hug them! I'm thinking, "I always KNEW this could be done! Thank you for validating what I've been seeing and nobody else would see. Yes I'm thinking that too."

Physics...

2010-09-30T22:15:00.000-07:00

Today I went to the Physics colloquium, and I hung out with a room full of cool mostly guys or geniuses (well that includes the women too) take your pick. I got to see my favourite physicist.

I got talked to by a couple of physicists, well more than a couple if you count the undergrad people, and that just sort of made my day.

I think I am partly in an incredible amount of disbelief that there are such nice people in Physics. My first Physics teacher in high school was after all not very nice, she got very angry at me once for not using the heat equation but just organizing the numbers in a way that made sense, or the other Physics teacher who was trying to read the textbook to me. I found Physics interesting for no reason that I can logically explain, apart from saying that it gives me a feeling of union with the universe. I don't mean that in a poetic or romantic sense. I mean that I feel an empathy with other matter. Light, heat hits "us" all the same way. I feel an empathy for falling objects, spinning objects, it seems like something that would happen to me too, the mirror neurons in my brain fire. Maybe I missed that stage of development in childhood when you learn to disidentify with inanimate objects and learn that throwing a brick doesn't actually hurt it. My brain is after all quite strange.

But really I can't believe that there are so many people with similar personalities to me, who also like this subject that I like. It seems like such a coincidence. I feel exceptionally lucky the the people who are experts in this subject I like actually are nice too. The fact that they seem to feel deeply and think like me in a lot of ways is another slightly mindblowing bonus. Maybe... I'll put this on the list of best things in life that I never prayed for.

radical self acceptance

2010-09-26T19:03:00.000-07:00

Today I'm thinking that I want to radically accept myself, no matter what, without condition. I want to be radically accepting.

I want to have this measure of calm in my life.

I want to focus fully on what I'm doing because this is a way of accepting myself as good, and not saying anything is wrong with me that needs changing so I can't concentrate.

The dilemma for high achieving girls

2010-09-12T09:50:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I happened to randomly be reading an article on child prodigies and I read that this I think Indian girl in England who had gone to Oxford at something like 14 and who once she got there said that she wanted to take things slower because her father had kept the house crazily cold because he thought her brain would work better was later found working on the street as a prostitute. I felt really sad.
This was a piece of information that came quite close to the news that a young woman in my high school had hung herself.

I was not surprised about the young woman at my high school who killed herself. It was an emotionally bleak place when I was there. No one seemed to think on any level of emotional complexity nor anything near to what was needed to address problems such as these, i.e. depression/sexism... nor was there a depth of feeling or emotional intelligence I found. I was seeing and hitting up against all sorts of brick walls that I felt no one else was the slightest bit aware of. I found people denying everything I was seeing at every step, at least in my group of people.

I am perhaps more saddened though by the woman who made it to Oxford and failed to get the help that she needed there. I would like to hope that there would be some greater level of understanding and intelligence there. I know that intellectual intelligence in general doesn't translate to emotional intelligence, but it's disappointing to think that no one there could have gotten through to her, or perhaps more disappointing is the idea that people there may not have cared to try hard enough. I can't help but wonder if she encountered sexism and racism there. The situation is largely and sadly such for women that when a girl has a gift, especially an intellectual one people will often be jealous of her, they find it hard to accept a girl being smarter than them and racism just adds more of the same. Add to this the fact that to some extent this woman seemed to be in quite a "privileged" position, she was at Oxford at such a young age, she would graduate younger than almost all if not all, of her professors. It makes me think of the novel "the Moonstone," and how "the jewel" is stolen from this young girl.

When people even think that you have more than them and not just that they deserve to have the same amount, but that you don't deserve to have more than them, they'll sometimes try to 'right' that inequality.

After you recognize and are disappointed by situations like this, what can you do but accept them.

strangeness

2010-08-02T13:32:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago someone told me "It's not magic, reality is stranger than you thought." They were referring to the interpretation of a quantum mechanics physics experiment. The double slit experiment, which gives some very counterintuitive results.

I was left pondering, in particular the, "reality is stranger than you thought" part. I think they were at least partly referring to the very unexpected strange results of this experiment. But I couldn't help thinking about life in general, and how it often turns out in ways you never expected. You plan so carefully for one path in life, do everything you can so that when such and such happens, you can be the perfect mother or doctor or christian or whatever (all of which I once half expected to be). And then you end up on a different road with a whole new set of circumstances, and none of your planning and thought applies at all to this new situation. It's like that part in Barbara Kingsolver's "The Poisonwood Bible" when the family takes their American tools and seeds and boxed cakes to Africa, and suddenly none of it works anymore, they had planned so well but it was all the wrong planning.

I've been thinking about this in a bit more of a psychological emotional sense though. I mean when you're little or at least when I was little, you fall into this role, you're the pretty one or the black sheep or the brain in the family, or the favourite. And you expect life to turn out this way, as it's been going. You have fears and you limit your hopes or give up on your hopes and well personally I cut out a box for myself. I wanted some things to be different, I wanted some of my relationships to be better, but I had been convinced that they never could be and they were so far beyond my horizons that I couldn't even dream of them anymore.

A couple of years ago, someone blew my mind a little not in an intellectual sense but I finally got what I was wanting with my relationships for a little while, and my it was strange. The was a factor of shock to it. There was a sense of looking at it and saying, "this is unbelievable... really ? really ? this is so strange!..." I guess even after things change, your mind doesn't reconcile immediately and you keep expecting life as it was before the change and every time your expectations don't reconcile with reality you're surprised yet again, and like all surprises it's strange.

The funny thing is that perhaps, I think I could have been blind to it, had I still been inside the box. I could have sort of molded it to be inside my box and denied that it was something new and strange and different. Being able to acknowledge that something is strange, the ability and willingness to be surprised I think is something that goes against denial and goes with growth I'm imagining. Anyway I was thinking about that today...that reality is strange... believe me it's really strange.

2010-08-01T18:48:00.001-07:00

Where's my fishbowl ? ...

2010-08-01T18:11:00.000-07:00

I just finished my Math course yesterday and now I feel very structureless and scared. I'm not at all sure what I'm going to do with my August. I didn't make any plans.

I feel like a fish that's left its fishbowl. I need a job or something to do, something structured.

I did my groceries yesterday and cleaned this morning, did my recycling which had been piling up since the beginning of May and put away my laundry (I actually need to do more laundry :) since that laundry was from 2 weeks ago :) I cannot find the sides of two of my pairs of socks, which is sad! I don't understand how I could have lost them since I always double check the washers and dryers for socks and left behind clothing. Now it's two weeks after I've done laundry so I'm pretty sure the cleaning people will have thrown them out by now.

I am wondering why I have such an intense need for structure. I think I feel like if someone else knows that I've done something, if there's a box for someone to put it into then I feel validated. I feel like my work is worth something if someone else can see it and acknowledge it. I know this need for acknowledgement is kind of scary.

As I'm typing this I'm wondering what this deep need for outside structure and validation is doing to my thinking. I must really be thinking inside the box if this is how I am...

There's a part of me I think that is afraid to see outside of the box, or I'll do it but I don't want to do it alone, I'll do it if someone else is doing it with me, like the Physicists... (or Physics majors :)

I've been thinking lately about my intense fondness for the Physicists and very smart people in general. I don't know why I feel this way. Someone said that you love other people for what you love best in yourself. All I know is that something about very bright people reminds me a lot of myself when I was little (not that I was super smart), when sometimes as I was hanging out with other kids I felt alone knowing that they could not see things I could see. I didn't realize but I felt quite strongly about the fact that I could see things they couldn't and the fact that I saw the world in a different way, and it is also quite a vivid memory in my mind. I remember one day when I was about 6 this little girl and I were playing that game where you hid a rubber band in one of your hands and the other person had to guess which and I was anticipating every single one of her guesses and hiding it in the other hand. It sounds quite funny now and quite unlikely that I would be able to do that... But I remember doing it. I remember that every one of her guesses was wrong. I can't do that now see beyond people that way. I'm thinking it was quite painful to be alone in that way. It was exhilarating but painful I think.

I guess if you think outside of the box that other people think in, there's something of a painful cognitive dissonance you have to live with. You have to tolerate the dissonance of everyone else saying something different from what your mind says, or the dissonance of your mind saying something that goes against the popular stereotypes and cliches and the "box" that the majority of the world thinks in about whatever particular object. In at least that instance you have to forgo the happiness of being in the crowd and having people agree with you and agreeing with them, which is a very nice feeling. Add to that that it's a double misstep for a woman to be contrary :) As a child I was confused and very troubled that I couldn't see the world the way everyone around me did, it troubled me that I didn't think the people in prison were all that "bad" and that the people that claimed to represent God at church weren't all that good, not to mention the goody-two shoes type kids (which I felt very guilty about never being able to join in with) who managed to pretend to be praying without ever being quite moral. That troubled me a lot because it didn't make sense to me, and no one else ever expressed to me that they distrusted the popular wisdom too so I felt very alone and very "wrong" for seeing things the way I saw them.

My views seemed to be inclined to 'cause trouble, like a small bomb exploding the box and suddenly everything was scattered everywhere and the world with the stereotypes shattered being terrifying to per into far less navigate, so I quickly stuffed as much as I could back into the box and the views that I couldn't, I felt very wrong and ashamed about having. I felt very ashamed that I thought and saw things differently. I guess because I was absolutely convinced I was wrong. I think everyone feels this way to some extent, if no one else sees things the way you do you wish you could be the same and not different, even if it's just to have some company! And the likelihood seems a LOT higher that there's something wrong with one in a hundred people's brains than that there's something wrong with 99 out of a hundred people's brains.

I'm generalizing, and it's more complicated than that but as a kid, that's how I remember seeing it.

I think as a girl sometimes it's even more difficult to disagree with people. It's kind of considered a little bit of a feminine trait to agreeable, and if a little girl disagrees, it's harder for most people to deal with than a disagreeing little boy. In my experience, not every little girl's but in mine, it got to the point where I didn't even have to disagree out loud, i felt guilty about even just disagreeing in my mind. There were lots of reasons I think why I personally felt this way, a lot of them unique to me and my circumstances, but I think that I can generalize just a little and say that girls aren't encouraged as much to follow their own paths and they get a bit more disapproval and negativity directed at them for not fitting into the box and for saying something that makes people squirm.

Sometimes I feel like I have a knack for saying things that make people squirm, all the while being completely unaware of the reaction or feelings in them I'm going to provoke. When people squirm I'm the most shocked person at what's happened, even thought it's something I've caused! I've almost wondered if I have Aspergers sometimes. I suppose everyone does this on occasion but I usually feel quite stunned when it happens, because I've provoked a reaction unintentionally without having had the conscious choice or control over whether or not to do it. But thinking outside of the box, have a bit extra opposition to women doing it.

Generally a lot of people have the expectation that women will take up as little space as possible (btw an excellent way to do this is to fold up yourself into a box!) and cause as little trouble as possible and they really don't like it if you explode their boxes, cause that makes a mess. And women after all are neat and tidy and they don't make messes. Yes I'm poking fun at stereotypes. I think it is possible to do, to shatter the boxes a bit, but it certainly takes extra social skill to know how to do it without aggravating people, and it takes a lot of confidence and self assurance and self love to know that what you're doing is ok. I've seen girls that are not quite so self assured, who hadn't gotten the encouragement that they're ok and what they're doing is the right thing, try to do it even though they're scared and they've done it, but they've done it without calmness and with fear of attacked and unfortunately since they were expecting attacks they naturally come across as aggressive (you might if you felt you were venturing into territory where people were going to be hostile towards you), and unfortunately aggressive is almost the worst label to get as a woman.

So I like to take apart boxes, I really like people that take apart boxes, because lots of times I'm too scared to do it, but vicariously watching other people do it, and living through them, is really fun.

Fifteen and bitter..or not... hmmm

2010-06-04T00:28:00.000-07:00

Today I was listening to a Taylor Swift song called "Fifteen." It's a pretty cute song in some ways, it sort of reminds me of how mindblowing I didn't know life could be (in maybe good and bad ways ? :( :) when I was 15... life was so flat in some ways... and completely not flat. Anyway the reason that I'm posting on here is that there's a crazy line in the song that irritates me because it's not true. It says, "Abigail gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind," and while I'm not condoning people having sex before they've thought it through and think it's most likely beneficial... I'm listening to this lyric thinking "huh?"

"Everything she had ?" So the great purpose of women in life is sex. (Mind you being here for the purpose of being loved is not a bad purpose... but hopefully that's a more general thing not specific to women...) And all we have to contribute to the world is our virginity, sex and the ability to have children ? (yeah once someone invents an artificial womb or a way for guys to have kids our purpose will be OVER...:(

profoundly... confused

2010-04-14T17:56:00.000-07:00

I'm potentially switching my major. (Equally 'potentially' is staying in my major, it takes a decision and somehow convincing the program director of Engineering Physics to stay). In the past it seems I’ve always been able to figure out fairly clearly what I wanted. Not so lately. I feel profoundly confused. (How’s that for the use of profoundly (usually when I think of the word “profoundly”, I think of term/conceptual definition ‘profoundly gifted.’) Ahh well maybe I am secretly intending to flatter myself and my confusion!

I do have a sign over my desk that says "Hey, Genius." (: It's actually from Microsoft Recruiting... but I thought it was kind of applicable so I hung it there.
I'm a dreamer and in my dreams I'm a genius so being a dreamer who lives in my dreams a great part... And my nickname in grade 1 was "Macguyver" (which was self given, when another girl asked me, "who are you ?") Nothing like the audacity of a 6 year old!

There are a lot of people I know that I think the title of genius fits better. I might actually be the most inclined of anyone I know to walk down the street encounter any one of them and say "Hey, Genius" with a lot of fondness and complete sincerity.

But this post wasn't meant to be a discussion of geniuses I know... it's meant to say that I'm incredibly confused! I think really I'm scared of making the wrong decision, I'm thinking that I'm going to be angry and blaming of myself if I make the wrong decision (pick an impractical, either because I end up having to go back to school in 10 or 15 years, or because I was thousands of dollars and energy and emotional well being hurting myself in a program/profession I'm not cut out for), so I'm putting off making a decision. But I won't be angry at myself, or at least I'll work very hard not to be.

That's the work, somehow managing to not be angry with yourself...

Happy New Year

2010-01-12T09:35:00.000-08:00

I just read this wonderful post on an email list friend's website at the end of last year and I wanted to include it here, because it so kind of sums up my feelings about last year.

"I am so very glad that this year is coming to a close. It's been a far more difficult than I had anticipated. I was adequately prepared for some bumps in the road. I was not prepared for a long drive through the mountains...but I did manage to avoid the bumps on the way through."

I too had a difficult year last year.. I thought this was such a positive way of putting it though..

"Anyway, I wanted to convey thanks to my friends and family. Their never-ending encouragement and advice was what got me through this year and kept me from derailing entirely. I am hoping for more smooth sailing this year...or at least managing to avoid the swirling vortexes of death. :-)"
I can identify so much with that above bit as well. I am deeply deeply grateful to all the friends and profs, and strangers and acquaintances that helped me so much. From the friendly people at the gym and starbucks, to the upper year eng phys people, to my friends Ruth, and Carol and Mike, Alex and the people on my extian email list.. to the people at the unitarian church who nicknames me "the spode lady" (after I bought spode china from them :)

To quote Cherish again.. (cause I love her post) "May the coming year be wonderful for all of you!"

Agghh and I just can't end this post without saying I got really happy when I read some stuff about Fourier transforms today on Cherish's same blog!!! I was like Math omg!!! Math!! (I am partly excited to learn about fourier transforms because my Math prof last semester was telling me about them when I asked what field her work was in.. She said "oh you'll learn about that next year" and I was a bit frustrated and very curious because I didn't know enough to understand what she was working on! Do you remember that feeling as a kid ?!)

My brain is ready for Math again.. I thought I had lost all love of learning after one disaster of a semester of Eng Phys. One month later it's like "omg.. I.. need Math.. going to die here .. someone give me some Math!"

ordinary love

2009-12-24T10:22:00.000-08:00

Today I was thinking about how I used to read Cosmopolitan when I was younger, when I first deconverted. It was weird, while I was Christian I thought non Christians were totally sexually liberated. I had a shocking surprise! I had no clue how repressive it still was toward women.

Today I realized I still had a link to Cosmopolitan in my internet browser. Cosmopolitan taught me nothing about love, or that much about sex. I was disappointed in them when I read an article saying, "oh if sleeping around too much makes you feel bad/guilty/ashamed you shouldn't do it." To some people I suppose this sounds like Cosmopolitan is telling women to respect themselves, I felt like subtly it was assenting to the idea that these women should feel ashamed. Which is society's idea.. not really the women's and not something in my opinion that should be given more approval. That said it seems no self respecting woman would subject herself to society's disapproval but that doesn't mean that what she is avoiding is in any way shameful.

I am finding that for me, love and romance has everything to do with sex and yet isn't dependent on it in any way. The greatest surprise is that to me it has little to do with tingly mountain top euphoric experiences like I always thought it would. (I have enough of those on my own I think to not need them in this department.. thank you Mathematics and other things for the surreal spiritual euphoria and the nerve tearing pain!) It has less than nothing to do with glamour and showing off or how it looks to people. It has little do with picking a person who has something to "offer" me. It is at it's core about friendliness and togetherness and ordinary humaness. I was shocked to discover it's amazingly ordinary. It is about being ordinary which is sadly something I've been denied all my life i think.

ENFP relationships..

2009-12-21T11:24:00.000-08:00

ENFPs as Friends

ENFPs are warm and sociable people who are keenly in tune with other people's feelings and perspectives. They are energetic and fun to be with. They are very affirming, and get great satisfaction from supporting and lifting up others. They are idealists who seek authenticity in their personal relationships. ENFPs are valued by their peers and confidantes as warm, supportive, giving people.
In the workplace or other casual relationship environments, the ENFP is likely to get along well with almost all other types of people. ENFPs are genuinely interested in people, and are highly perceptive about them, to the point where they're able to understand and relate to all of the personality types with relative ease. They like to see the best in others, and are likely to bring out the best in others. While they are generally accepting of most all people, ENFPs with strong Feeling preferences may have a difficult time understanding people with very strong Thinking preferences who do not respond to the ENFP's enthusiastic warmth. The ENFP will stay open-minded about what they consider a "rejection" by the Thinker, until the situation has repeated itself a few times, in which case the ENFP may shut themselves entirely against the Thinker.
ENFPs may also feel threatened by individuals with strong Judging preferences. With a tendency to take any criticism personally, the ENFP may find themselves irritated or emotional when the Judger expresses a negative opinion, believing somehow that the Judger is expressing disapproval or disappointment in the ENFP.
For close friendships, ENFPs are especially drawn to other iNtuitive Feeling types, and to other Extraverts who are also enthusiastic about life. Like the other iNtuitive Feeling types, the ENFP needs authenticity and depth in their close relationships. They're likely to have friends from all walks of life who they feel close to and care about, but will have only a few very close friends with similar ideals to their own. The ENFP also tends to value the company of iNtuitive Thinkers.

ENFP

2009-12-21T11:19:00.000-08:00

I just found this.. I think this sounds a lot like me.. for the first time one of these Myers Briggs things seems to fit..

Portrait of an ENFP - Extraverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving
(Extraverted Intuition with Introverted Feeling)

The Inspirer

As an ENFP, your primary mode of living is focused externally, where you take things in primarily via your intuition. Your secondary mode is internal, where you deal with things according to how you feel about them, or how they fit in with your personal value system.
ENFPs are warm, enthusiastic people, typically very bright and full of potential. They live in the world of possibilities, and can become very passionate and excited about things. Their enthusiasm lends them the ability to inspire and motivate others, more so than we see in other types. They can talk their way in or out of anything. They love life, seeing it as a special gift, and strive to make the most out of it.
ENFPs have an unusually broad range of skills and talents. They are good at most things which interest them. Project-oriented, they may go through several different careers during their lifetime. To onlookers, the ENFP may seem directionless and without purpose, but ENFPs are actually quite consistent, in that they have a strong sense of values which they live with throughout their lives. Everything that they do must be in line with their values. An ENFP needs to feel that they are living their lives as their true Self, walking in step with what they believe is right. They see meaning in everything, and are on a continuous quest to adapt their lives and values to achieve inner peace. They're constantly aware and somewhat fearful of losing touch with themselves. Since emotional excitement is usually an important part of the ENFP's life, and because they are focused on keeping "centered", the ENFP is usually an intense individual, with highly evolved values.
An ENFP needs to focus on following through with their projects. This can be a problem area for some of these individuals. Unlike other Extraverted types, ENFPs need time alone to center themselves, and make sure they are moving in a direction which is in sync with their values. ENFPs who remain centered will usually be quite successful at their endeavors. Others may fall into the habit of dropping a project when they become excited about a new possibility, and thus they never achieve the great accomplishments which they are capable of achieving.
Most ENFPs have great people skills. They are genuinely warm and interested in people, and place great importance on their inter-personal relationships. ENFPs almost always have a strong need to be liked. Sometimes, especially at a younger age, an ENFP will tend to be "gushy" and insincere, and generally "overdo" in an effort to win acceptance. However, once an ENFP has learned to balance their need to be true to themselves with their need for acceptance, they excel at bringing out the best in others, and are typically well-liked. They have an exceptional ability to intuitively understand a person after a very short period of time, and use their intuition and flexibility to relate to others on their own level.
Because ENFPs live in the world of exciting possibilities, the details of everyday life are seen as trivial drudgery. They place no importance on detailed, maintenance-type tasks, and will frequently remain oblivous to these types of concerns. When they do have to perform these tasks, they do not enjoy themselves. This is a challenging area of life for most ENFPs, and can be frustrating for ENFP's family members.
An ENFP who has "gone wrong" may be quite manipulative - and very good it. The gift of gab which they are blessed with makes it naturally easy for them to get what they want. Most ENFPs will not abuse their abilities, because that would not jive with their value systems.
ENFPs sometimes make serious errors in judgment. They have an amazing ability to intuitively perceive the truth about a person or situation, but when they apply judgment to their perception, they may jump to the wrong conclusions.
ENFPs who have not learned to follow through may have a difficult time remaining happy in marital relationships. Always seeing the possibilities of what could be, they may become bored with what actually is. The strong sense of values will keep many ENFPs dedicated to their relationships. However, ENFPs like a little excitement in their lives, and are best matched with individuals who are comfortable with change and new experiences.
Having an ENFP parent can be a fun-filled experience, but may be stressful at times for children with strong Sensing or Judging tendancies. Such children may see the ENFP parent as inconsistent and difficult to understand, as the children are pulled along in the whirlwind life of the ENFP. Sometimes the ENFP will want to be their child's best friend, and at other times they will play the parental authoritarian. But ENFPs are always consistent in their value systems, which they will impress on their children above all else, along with a basic joy of living.
ENFPs are basically happy people. They may become unhappy when they are confined to strict schedules or mundane tasks. Consequently, ENFPs work best in situations where they have a lot of flexibility, and where they can work with people and ideas. Many go into business for themselves. They have the ability to be quite productive with little supervision, as long as they are excited about what they're doing.
Because they are so alert and sensitive, constantly scanning their environments, ENFPs often suffer from muscle tension. They have a strong need to be independent, and resist being controlled or labelled. They need to maintain control over themselves, but they do not believe in controlling others. Their dislike of dependence and suppression extends to others as well as to themselves.
ENFPs are charming, ingenuous, risk-taking, sensitive, people-oriented individuals with capabilities ranging across a broad spectrum. They have many gifts which they will use to fulfill themselves and those near them, if they are able to remain centered and master the ability of following through.
Jungian functional preference ordering for ENFP: Dominant: Extraverted Intuition
Auxiliary: Introverted Feeling
Tertiary: Extraverted Thinking
Inferior: Introverted Sensing

2009-12-21T11:18:00.000-08:00

Careers for ENFP Personality Types

Whether you're a young adult trying to find your place in the world, or a not-so-young adult trying to find out if you're moving along the right path, it's important to understand yourself and the personality traits which will impact your likeliness to succeed or fail at various careers. It's equally important to understand what is really important to you. When armed with an understanding of your strengths and weaknesses, and an awareness of what you truly value, you are in an excellent position to pick a career which you will find rewarding.

ENFPs generally have the following traits:

Project-oriented
Bright and capable
Warmly, genuinely interested in people; great people skills
Extremely intuitive and perceptive about people
Able to relate to people on their own level
Service-oriented; likely to put the needs of others above their own
Future-oriented
Dislike performing routine tasks
Need approval and appreciation from others
Cooperative and friendly
Creative and energetic
Well-developed verbal and written communication skills
Natural leaders, but do not like to control people
Resist being controlled by others
Can work logically and rationally - use their intuition to understand the goal and work backwards towards it
Usually able to grasp difficult concepts and theories

ENFPs are lucky in that they're good a quite a lot of different things. An ENFP can generally achieve a good degree of success at anything which has interested them. However, ENFPs get bored rather easily and are not naturally good at following things through to completion. Accordingly, they should avoid jobs which require performing a lot of detailed, routine-oriented tasks. They will do best in professions which allow them to creatively generate new ideas and deal closely with people. They will not be happy in positions which are confining and regimented.

The following list of professions is built on our impressions of careers which would be especially suitable for an ENFP. It is meant to be a starting place, rather than an exhaustive list. There are no guarantees that any or all of the careers listed here would be appropriate for you, or that your best career match is among those listed.

Possible Career Paths for the ENFP:

Consultant
Psychologist
Entrepreneur
Actor
Teacher
Counselor
Politician / Diplomat
Writer / Journalist
Television Reporter
Computer Programmer, Systems Analyst, or Computer Specialist
Scientist
Engineer

Things I did yesterday..

2009-12-21T10:37:00.000-08:00

Meet up with a woman from the gym for coffee.

Learned to take integrals on my very expensive calculator!
(among other things..)

Figured out how to use my tuner and tuned my guitar

Read some more of Super Freakonomics, Infidel and Googled.

Chatted with my friend Ruth about some stuff, encouraged her and was encouraged.

Practised mindful breathing.

Talked to my cousin.

Facebooked about 3 more cousins.

Put away my laundry and started organizing my room.

Went to the gym.

Reconnected with someone from Trinidad and arranged to meet up in January.

Took Chromium.

Figured out how my external hard drive works

To do today:

Learn more about my calculator

Go to the gym 2x

Wash hair :p

Read more of googled

Write down some thoughts on Infidel and what it means to me to be a woman

Install Matlab on my computer

Find guitar tabs and play a song

Build a simple program in C++

Life

2009-11-14T10:43:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I saw the blackness again
It sucked the life out of me when I stared at it
But this time it seemed it was poisoned, infectious
I was terrified it would kill me

Like a black hole it threatened to obliterate me
And everywhere I stared into it
It was like the sky was poisoned
I wanted to sheild myself from the air

It is a dark cut
That I cannot pour salve into
Hope to shine a light into
To ever make it undark
It sucks the life

It will never be what I wanted
This is not what I prayed for
This is the destiny I never asked for
And I can't avoid it
It will hurt more later if it doesn't hurt now

It's different

2009-11-04T16:10:00.001-08:00

When I am up it is like when I am down
Standing I have a long long way to fall
Why are my legs so tall ?
I can feel how deep the cut will be before I hit the ground
Judging from the height.

Everytime I stand you come around
And try to push me over

You insist on being around
Against my will
Whenever I have anything to live
When I have anything you think I can give

And I am enraged the more you try to do it
They forced me to give you what little life I have
Sparkling hopeful fire drained from me
While I was screaming for my life

Somehow you are confused, you think it will be the same now
Because I was drained of life, when you again tried to drink of it
Because my wings were weakened when you tried to steal them for the sparkles
But it's not

orgasmic chocolate elitist antieugenic physics in spherical coordinates

2009-10-30T21:25:00.000-07:00

Today I was thinking about my cat blessmelots and how he used to go nuts when he got a whiff of catnip.. and then I discovered that certain physical pleasures make humans go nuts exactly the same way. It was funny.. my aunts and I used to watch him and never once was sex mentioned.. then again my unmarried aunts were/are supposed to be virgins so.. but even so..
<--- ok that was just a random musing... (btw I'm a virgin too.. I'm probably going to die a virgin.. 'God' knows!)

Today I was thinking that all my feelings are perfect and good.. All the stress I'm feeling right now, all the exhaustion.. and I'm feeling an enormous amount of exhaustion and frustration and disappointment... and sadness.. and there are tinges of that "staring into a black hole" feeling like I was having last year. I think if I was having more of the black hole feeling I'd probably be getting a lot more work done.

Tonight I was just trying to soothe myself. Not try to make the pain go away but just to soothe it and accept it. One boy in my class swears all day long... Personally I feel like doing that too.. but it's not as socially acceptable for a woman to swear like that and also I don't think I'm quite that in touch with my emotions.

I saw one of my physics profs from over the summer today in the lab but I didn't have time to go see him. I wanted to go and talk to him, I was looking to see if his daughter was there with him but she wasn't. I came to really like his daughter after seeing her twice.. she seems sweet.. and she was sad and bored when I saw her, and I wanted to make her not sad or bored. I wish I could offer to babysit for him or something but time... That little girl reminds me a lot of myself and I hope she is happy or I hope she becomes happy.

Yesterday someone told me to email them to set up and appointment to see them on Monday.. and then when I emailled today I got an autoreply from their email saying they would not be checking their email today. Does that not seem plain weird ? It made me feel funny, confused, hurt at least a little. The thought briefly entered my mind that they were being passive aggressive with me (well either that or entirely clueless/absentminded.. but I don't think absentmindedness is really a valid excuse either if it is upsetting someone/hurting their feelings potentially).

Today I was talking to a boy in my math class who gave me chocolate. Always a great conversation starter with a woman! (Mind you I was the one who started the conversation.. and I only was offered the chocolate at the end of it.) "Where did you get chocolate ?"
"the Civil engineering and engineering coop office have halloween chocolate."
"oh really ? I wonder if the science coop office has chocolate too ? So did you just go around and take a bunch of chocolate from all the places that have chocolate ?"
"The Arts office has chocolate too"
"The Arts Coop office ? or Arts Advising..?"
... evidently my mind seemed to be really set on chocolate today!.. ironically he gave me chocolate and I didn't even eat it.. I still have it in my bag.. Basically I figured I'd done enough damage after having some Mcdonalds french fries and hamburger today!

However then we got into a discussion about Engineering Physics and how it's hell and why he didn't do it and chose to do Civil Engineering instead. I was telling him I'm just an ordinary person and it's extremely hard for me, I'm not here because I think I'm something special. Then he told me I shouldn't be doing it. I didn't know what to say then. Was I supposed to try to defend my choice/myself and what I believe in or was I supposed to not say anything because I can't change people's values anyway.. and it wasn't an appropriate time to 'defend' myself ? If I was less exhausted and in a more people friendly mood I think I would have known better what to do. Well this appears to be the confusing part of life, people give you chocolate and then tell you not to study Engineering Physics.. I thought that was a bit elitist of him btw as soon as I said I was an ordinary person.. he said don't study it.. So what about ordinary people don't they deserve to study Engineering Physics then ? Aren't they just as good as the Engineering Physics people ?

Elitism kind of makes me want to throw up. This is the best way to describe it.

At the moment I am a little irritated with 2 groups of people:

1. The group of people that just want to have an 'easy' life.. and look down on the people that work hard "They really need to take a break.. they're nuts for wanting 98%" and who act like someone getting "98%" is somehow less valid if the person studied day and night for it (It's apparently more valid if the person was just naturally highly gifted and only needed to put in a 'normal' amount of work to get it.) All I have to say is that when I need a doctor, I don't care whether she was naturally bright or studied day and night for it, I am just really glad that however she got that knowledge somehow and is here able to help me!

2. The group of people that has the attitude of, "too bad for the weaklings, less intelligent or for whatever reason disabled people who can't work as hard." This honestly reminds me of people that are into Eugenics.. and it reminds me of the survey that was given to US and Chinese doctors a while ago and about 50% said that they would favour Eugenics or something. It is really sad when people have not a great value on human life and humanity.. to me.

Perhaps both groups of people will get the picture eventually.. Maybe these two groups will somehow be able to synthesize their views when they realize that 'working hard' is a very natural human trait and that intelligence is also a human trait (in the same way that propensity to anger/exhaustion is).. and that being intelligent makes you more human and more emotional.. sometimes more prone to disabilities and weaknesses.

Well that's my rant for today. And I learned about triple integration in spherical coordinates today :p!!! Although sadly my substitute Math prof was not quite as happy as me when I was telling him "That was really fun!"
"Oh so it wasn't so bad then ?"
"Oh no it totally was!" Without a doubt Math 217 is horrible..

I've started to cry twice in that class. Perhaps I am coming unhinged.. and I am firmly convinced that I am the only person at UBC or any University for that matter that cries in her classes. I have no clue if my math professor is aware of the fact (I'm not doing it blatantly.. I don't think) or I feel kind of bad.. because if I were any prof.. I'd feel pretty lousy if people were crying over my course in the lecture. I was wondering today if I should share this information with Alex when I talk to him next and what he might feel about it.

All surpassing love

2009-10-30T15:08:00.000-07:00

This is a quote from someone on one of my email lists that I thought was very encouarging:

"Well, what I said to my daughter will make some people cringe. I know parents who would never say to their children what I said to mine. But, I told her straight out: "Well, you've already passed me. And I'm glad that you did. I want you to learn more than I learned and to continue learning. So, your job is to learn as much as you can and then tell me what you learned so that I'll know all about it, too."

The Child

2009-09-16T19:27:00.000-07:00

Purple

A mass of blackish blue

It's the swallowing black hole again

This time there's something numbing between it and I

I don't know if to be grateful

Or to scream louder

The words, the symbols, the book

Everything seems to stick in my throat

And I feel like I am choking on my entire existence

Struggling for a way to breathe and climb this moutain

Wishing for anything to anesthetize the pain and not anesthetize it

It burns

Many colors and stinging

It is not a clean cut

The child

I have been given this burden

The brilliant sickly screaming child

The child in crisis

I sit with her and feel more like a child myself

I have no idea what to do

As I wait for the pain to stop

I stroke the soft brown hair and feel sad, the pain has subsided only because she sleeps

Dream

2009-08-30T20:50:00.000-07:00

I was at the cinema and they were showing some film that was a futuristic film. Yet somehow at the beginning there was a warning that it involved triangles and integration. Anyway in this film it appeared that they had these little girls giving birth (that was who gave birth to the new people, these little girls), having the new babies. These girls looked about 5 or 7 years old. And this one little girl couldn’t give birth easily so the doctor told her “this is not going to be easy, this is going to hurt badly” and he gave her this book and said “read this it will make it easier.” But the way he said it to her there was the sense that, she was going to give birth and then they would have no more use for her and she would die anyway. Somehow I was in the film now and I was able to look through the book at the place where he was referring her, and I saw that the book basically was like a bible and had parts of the bible with maybe a few words changed. I saw the verse he was showing her. It was one that I had found comforting as a Christian. And then so she gave birth and she was bleeding and weak and I knew that they were going to kill her, like all the other little girls right after but now she was somehow a specific little girl that I know now and I had to save her. And so suddenly I was searching for a way to smuggle her out.. and somehow her parents were there but they could not smuggle her and I asked them to get a suitcase to put in her in. And they got one and I hid it.. and tried to find a way to hide while putting her into it.. so no one would know she was in it. And I had to wait for the right time when no one could see and I left her with this boy I was friends with, I told her “stay here” and she listened to me. I told him hide her but then I realized that wouldn’t quite work fully. And I went out to find someone to smuggle her. While I was arranging all of this it seemed years were passing and the child was growing older. And then I found a girl I knew and I brought her back and put the child in the carry on, it seemed a snug fit now that she was older and I almost contemplating getting into the suitcase myself and showing her how to curl up tight to fit in. I gave this girl the carry on and told her to take it with her and keep passing it around. I arranged for it to be given to someone else later. Then later I wanted to check with this girl to make sure everything was alright but I could not call her for fear that the police would find the record and be able to trace her. Now the child was in other hands. I found myself gathering my stuff strewn around my wallet and some other stuff as I was leaving, I remember seeing someone’s programming book that they had left there, one which I had used before and a new one I hadn’t. So then I went to look for a person to call the girl I had given her to because I could not call her myself and she was telling me something about pcos. I was terrified of getting caught for smuggling her or the police finding the child but now she was in other hands.

Arrogance=good...

2009-05-28T10:53:00.000-07:00

My physics prof last semester used to tell the class excitedly.. "if you figure out this physics problem. instant nobel prize!.. or if you can do that instant nobel prize!" kind of made me wonder.. I was also listening to a woman that did make a great medical discovery and she said "I was out to change the world and quite confident that I could do it." I never exactly valued "cockiness" or "believing in yourself" before but I am now beginning to think that it takes a certain degree of well placed cockiness to make these discoveries... this is interesting to me personally.. sometimes I feel I am quite confident.. and being quite confident and bold you often set yourself up for spectacular failure as well (so I often wonder if my boldness was/is misplaced..especially since I have failed spectacularly.. see www.godsromantic.blogspot.com..) but.. perhaps not...

I am beginning to think that beyond intelligence, psychologically it takes a lot of confidence and certain personality traits to sort of be willing to branch out and do things/dream things/think things that no one has ever thought before.. Also the idea that you don't deserve to win a nobel prize/be better than anybody else/guilt over success.. will kill you. You have to be comfortable, happy! and unapologetic about success.. which is something I struggle with.. Trying to stay at the same level as others is not a good idea I am thinking...

a better life

2009-05-24T12:24:00.000-07:00

I don't know if you've ever heard it said about somebody "he needs a lot of structure, does better with a lot of structure.." Usually then people recommend the military for such people.. cause apparently it has a lot of structure.. People telling you what to do and when to do it!

Well I think I have discovered I need a lot of structure too.. I seem to languish where there isn't structure.. like when I'm on vacation.. I tend to get out of bed at noon.. (OVERwell rested.. which actually is the opposite of well rested because then you start feeling "guilty".. and just rather disappointed like "ohh that wasn't that fun.. plus I don't feel like I accomplished anything good either!" For me how I 'feel' is really important.. but there's also a part of me that wants to accomplish things.. rather like shopping.. I don't want to walk around all day and come how empty handed.. with nothing to show for it! Perhaps I want some accomplishment to commemorate each day of my life ?

In any case when there isn't structure, at the end of the day I don't usually end up too happy. In fact I end up very disappointed and frustrated..but mostly disappointed...I feel like I miss the joy of having accomplished something.. I feel like I have a great amount of cognitive dissonance in my mind or at least it seems so in a lot of respects. I am a very emotional person who seeks in some sense to escape pain and hard work even.. I am very sensitive and when I feel joy I feel it intensely.. when I feel pain I feel it intensely.. and so I really don't like to feel pain given that it's that intense/upleasant for me.... and yet... (I believe also because of my emotional intensity) I feel this enormous drive it feels like.... to accomplish something with my life and not waste it....

But yet the thing is that for me it takes a lot of 'pain' or difficult emotions to accomplish things.. and I was brought up with this idea that life should be easy and enjoyable (unless you're starving/poor etc.. which I never was... so hence sadness/pain/disappointment/frustration.. all those emotions were off limits for me) because my life was "good." And so it's like I feel guilty or very uncomfortable with feeling them. I try to avoid them so much (and have tried to all my life) but I feel like I am striving against myself, because there is a part of me that really WANTS to accomplish things and feels so held back by fear of pain/not wanting to do anything painful. It's like if you've ever heard that saying "no pain, no gain" I feel desperate for the gain, but I cannot seem to deal with experiencing pain so I can never get to the gain.

But anyway to get back to the idea of structure.. I've been thinking about how my life was last summer.. I got depressed because I wasn't working or studying and I was wondering why and how to prevent such an experience in the future.. and I came to the conclusion that the reason I got depressed is because I was sort of avoiding pain.. Like I would avoid getting out of bed in the morning thinking "well I don't have to go to school.. I'm on vacation so I shouldn't have to feel this pain/lousiness at getting up in the morning.." but then you know what ? It was like I'd be in MORE pain later because of it. Somehow I just could not connect the dots last year.

This year thinking about it, I have discovered that when I'm in school or in a structured environment.. I seem to derive a certain amount of "validation" for my pain/painful emotions. I'm timid and hesitant to experience pain when I get up in the morning.. but if somebody's "telling" me to get up in the morning and get to class.. I seems I'm less timid to experience that pain. It's like the person is telling me that that pain is ok to feel. It seems somehow for me that in a "structured" environment where I'm being "told" to do things, it's almost like someone is telling me that my pain is "ok," my sadness is "ok," my frustration is "ok" and so I don't feel guilty about feeling those feelings. I don't feel bad about that "part" of myself. And it's funny in an unstructured environment.. where I don't have someone telling me that those feelings are ok.. that I'm ok.. I feel like I try to avoid those feelings, I try to avoid myself and I feel awful.

To add to this.. there is also the fact that.. you know growing up for me I got the message that if you were a doctor or a lawyer or lived in a big house or a rich country life would be EASY. However I have discovered in the past few days that life is never EASY (perhaps it is for the easygoing... but hell if you don't have that temperament tough luck!), in fact it is HARDER sometimes if you are a hard worker and are in a prestigious position, life is HARDER for you. Perhaps we all buy into this "myth" to some extent.. the "happily ever after" myth.. Or perhaps it is not a myth, I am sure being in a "good" position life is better in some ways/you have some advantages, but it is not as perfect as people make it out to be. Mostly life will just be the same I think. I mean if you you think about it.. if you are an extremely hard worker and get up at 5:30am every morning to study and work till 11:30pm every night and basically are very productive, it doesn't matter what position you have or what kind of house you live in, your life is never going to be EASY. In fact it seems a no brainer that someone that has much less than you but isn't that productive..comes home and sits on the porch for a few hours every night is going to have a much easier.. and "better" life. I suppose this use of "better" then, having a "better" life.. I suppose this use of better does not mean "better" generally .. it's just like "better" in a particular way... whatever way you are chosing to define.. ( better comfort ? less pain ? more accomplishments ? more respect from people ? better relationships ? better health ? more easy ?) "Better" in one way does not necessarily mean better in another.... *big realization*

To end with my friend and I were just chatting and we came to the conclusion.. that it's not fair to look at someone's life and say, "their life is easy.." because truly we don't know how life feels for another person...

faith.. what was..

2009-04-30T10:43:00.001-07:00

This morning I was thinking about what I used to call "faith" as a Christian..
I have been thinking for a longer time that it was funny as a Christian you have a funny idea of trust. In a normal relationship you would start out admitting to yourself that you are taking a risk.. and with a sense of vulnerability acknowledging that this person truly might not be "good to you" and might hurt you. This person might not be trustworthy. As they prove themselves and earn the trust little by little, you begin to feel more secure.. or more vulnerable as you feel compelled to share more of yourself. In terms of God however, Christians may say otherwise but in a sense it's like there is truly never any 'risk'.. in the relationship between you and God. Unlike other relationships you assume from the BEGINNING that God is good and trustworthy. Trust is never earned by God.. It is somehow just assumed ? as a gift you're able to magically give God.. and eventually it follows that the "faith" or "trust" consists of denying or feeling guilty about your feelings of vulnerability, your sense of "risk" that God may not be there. Because it is not a usual relationship where you take a leap and know you're taking a risk.. know in your heart that you truly may not be caught and suffer through the risk.. It's a relationship where you tell yourself from the beginning that there is no risk, you start out from a standpoint of denial, you assume there is already this great relationship, you start out with the idea telling yourself that you "know for sure" that this person, God by definition is "good." There is no growth to the relationship.. and any fear that God might not be there, you always suppress immeadiately. It truly seems to be putting the cart before the horse.

sensitivity

2009-04-30T10:20:00.000-07:00

Today I was writing poetry and I was thinking about Marsha Linehan, the woman that invented DBT. The other day I was listening to an interview with her, which was altogether interesting and I was also thinking about myself, I've only been recognizing lately how amazingly emotional I am. I feel extremely empathetic with people, I think sometimes when I'm watching someone go through something I feel so sad, I probably feel nearly as sad as the person themselves. (Which is kind of funny when you think about it... if you have such an empathetic person around you.. I think it's almost like having someone that can literally get into your head and feel exactly your reality.. this person would be so amazingly close to you.) I am realizing lately.. which I could never realize in my native Trinidad, that this is an amazing gift. And I'm very gifted in this way. I've been watching people respond to it, and I've been watching some people notice it too.. The thing is this emotional sensitivity is like a colour you have to have the ability to percieve in a world where some people are born colourblind, it's like a very sensitive scale, you can only truly appreciate a scale that measures micrgrams if you have an understanding of what a milligram or a microgram is. But if you are longing for an artist who gets the particular shade of pink you want or a scale that can measure in micrograms you will be delighted when you find one. I was thinking today that the reason Marsha Linehan could understand borderline people and develop DBT is because she's able to percieve how emotional they are, she's able to see those colours or feel that emotional intensity to some extent herself. No one else could ever sort of make progress in the disorder before because they could not percieve that emotional intensity, it's like they were all colour blind to it perhaps.

It is indescribable.. It feels impossible almost to describe how emotional I am. (Most of the time I try to turn it off, pretend to be less emotional than I am.. because basically I think I am 10x more emotional than I was brought up believing a person could ever be).

softness

2009-04-04T10:33:00.000-07:00

It is so hard to accept myself
To accept the softness
I've been alienated and torn from this person so many times
Told she is an imposter
This is the only way I can pierce the overwhelming swelling tide of emotion
Is to acknowledge you
To accept everything, the overwhelming brilliance and intensity of the world

I have to rebuild it seems
Everything, every part of you
From the bottom up, it was misconstructed the first time
It is very disappointing and sad

Yesterday I saw her
I was about to push her in the mud
Like they've always taught me to do
And I didn't, I pulled her up
I said "you're real, you're true, you're ok"
And I embraced her

2008-11-05T08:13:00.000-08:00

When the day darkens
When the colours brighten
And the leaves take on a lumnious tint
And lighten the space you left behind
The light burns
The light burns badly
I see how long and deep
And jagged is the gapping hole
No hope can ever repair

I tried to anesthetize the pain
I tried to disguise the hole
As something other than a hole
But it was a pit I then feel into
When I thought it was something else

And I try to make the wound on me
Look like something other than a wound
I try to stem the flow of the sadness
But then this river just moves the whole island

And when I don't look out for it
The sadness poisons everything
The happy pictures I try to cover it with

resolution cry

2008-06-29T07:18:00.000-07:00

Today I am thinking of the sunset in Santa Monica. When I got to LA last Saturday and put away my stuff, about the 2nd thing I did was go for a walk and end up sitting on a little bench over looking the beach as the sun set. I remember after months of darkness in Vancouver the sun felt sooo good. I am thinking about California and LA now that I am not there. I am remembering the people and the culture. I am remembering the somewhat laid back attitude towards life.. or maybe the slightly laid back manner.. It's interesting to contemplate the culture there in retrospect. And I can't help remembering the Malibu Vineyard which I visited the next day. That was quite an interesting experience for me. I can't help remembering the people I met there. I remember one guy had a sweet manner, he was telling me, "oh we have a bible study on Monday nights." Actually pretty much everyone was friendly.. I wasn't sure how to take that.. Even though I no longer believe in God, I found the sincerity of several of the people charming and somewhat touching. I was reminded of some of the things that had always attracted me to the Vineyard church and kept me stuck there..how closely our values (like sincerity, humility, vulnerability, honesty) seemed to align. Perhaps I was searching for authenticity..(I don't know), to verify that what I saw and believed in a few years ago really existed, to know that I hadn't been TOTALLY foolish to align myself with the Vineyard. I think I am satisfied because I kind of affirmed that.. and after all the tragedy I have been through in the last few years.. after not being able to get out of bed for a few years and my education being (in the toilet), nearly losing my sight and just the pain of thinking that everything about me was so wrong and so much my fault, I feel like perhaps I found a little piece of myself there.. a little piece that I had lost. And no the Vineyard is not totally right..maybe not even mostly right.. there's a lot of damaging ideas in there too..a lot of hurtful stuff. I observed that too last Sunday. It was rather painful for me to sit in this church and listen. I heard some stuff that I know had tripped me up badly, beliefs that had added to and created to a great extent the mess that my life was in (like "wait for God to work it out.. oh we are sinners"). It's hard to put into a few words what I felt and found there.. I think this song by Lifehouse (who started in that church.. then they were called "Blyss") says it best.

Revolution Cry

When passion takes on our purpose
When searching ones embrace the light
When skeptics find themselves down on their knees
You'll know it's here >>

I guess I would qualify as a skeptic now ;).. I know this song is praying for the "conversion" of people like me and by no means do I plan to convert! but maybe I will find myself on my knees.. in wonder at something one day..

When you hear a sound as loud as thunder
And you hear a cry that shakes the ground beneath you
When you hear a shout that shatters the darkness
You'll know it's here

When the lost find a name worth believing in
And the falling get back onto their feet
And the broken start to dream again
And the sound of hope fills these streets >>

I love the bridge for this song.. when I hear it.. it reminds me of how I used to dream and look at the world, it feels like so much me.. and yet in hearing it.. I remember the total resolution of all the ills and brokenness in the world I used to dream of. I feel good when I dream of the total resolution of brokenness and pain in the world.. but I know now it won't happen. This is one of the things that one has to content oneself with on deconversion.. the fact that there is no resolution. There will never be total resolution.. But at the same time I suppose.. maybe it is still worth working and trying for partial resolution.. I think this is the part I found that was missing..

You'll know it's here

Revolution - can you feel it?
Revolution cry
Revolution - can you hear it?
Revolution cry
And I believe it, and I believe it

How long do we have to wait?
And how long will we stay silent?
When will this weeping generation dance again?
Oh God when will the truth be restored?

When the lost find a name worth believing in
And the falling get back onto their feet
And the broken start to dream again
And the sound of hope fills these streets
You'll know it's here

Revolution - can you feel it?
Revolution cry
Revolution - can you hear it?
Revolution cry

Revolution - can you feel it?
Revolution cry
Revolution - can you hear it?
Revolution cry

You'll know it's here
Can you feel it?
Revolution - can you feel it?
Revolution cry
Revolution - can you hear it?
Revolution cry
And I believe it

the Vineyard Christian Fellowship after 6 years.. it still feels like home .. and not like home..

2008-06-23T17:46:00.002-07:00

Maybe my first act of independence and assuming adult responsibility for my life happened when I was 12. I changed denominations/christian churches from my parents. Probably this doesn't seem like a big deal to most people but for my parents and I, it kind of was (or it came to be). I had developed and dared to assert not only my own theology.. but in doing so my own philosophy on life ( this philosophy translating readily into religious terms, because at that point in my life, living in my parents home God=everything about life basically). For me it was a matter of finding something I could believe that made sense logically. It wasn't such a big change but so much of life at that point in general, but specifically some religious stuff I had been asked to believe, had really assaulted my sense of logic. It didn't make sense. For my parents it was a matter of pride and loss of control! (and perhaps a bit of heaven and hell.. perhaps they thought I was ever so slightly closer to hell, since their system of faith says that if you believe too wrongly you're risking your soul to hell). My parents (and I up until that point) were Pentecostal, and the denomination that I switched to was the Vineyard Christian Fellowships.

Perhaps you're thinking now, "this is completely irrelevant.. you ending up atheist," but I think even apart from an appreciation for the 'process' of life and how one comes to hold one's current beliefs, it was an important milestone. I believe it was my first step towards "logic." For me it was an affirmation of my own thoughts, opinions and observations about the world. To be honest it was also the beginning of a period of madness and black and white, all or nothing thinking, where I couldn't accept contradictions in life (like how people are neither good nor bad.. they have good parts and bad parts.. they hurt you and they help you deeply), the things that don't make sense. Later my decision to change churches proved to be "wrong," the denomination I picked very sadly did not live up to my expectations at all, in spite of much emotional striving and years of denial on my part. (Well I mean evidently it didn't live up to my expectations, I now obviously having left, being an atheist ;). People disappointed me and hurt me a lot and I learned a thing or two about lip service and organizations written descriptions of themselves versus what they ARE in real life. In the process of learning this.. living through this disappointing experience with something I once believed so much in, my life unravelled. I gained 50lbs.. My health appeared to be going to hell. My education came to a complete standstill. I could not get out of bed. I COULD NOT get out of bed literally. All my dreams and with them, the universe and reality itself appeared to unravel. I felt like I had fallen..I had lost my footing and fell.. I felt I could never be sure of my own sense of balance again. I felt I could never be sure when I could just topple over again, when my reality.. and what I saw as the truth.. my perceptions.. would betray me. I lost almost all certainty in myself. I felt like a COMPLETE failure. Of course one of the things that I saw as being a bad decision was switching denominations.. choosing this denomination over that of my parents. So for a while (of course all my logic now being suspect anyway ;) I tried to deny my logic and play along with the denomination of my parents. I tried to "be" something other than I was since it seemed that who I was was completely wrong anyway. Eventually.. (well the truth is the denial NEVER worked.. I could write a long essay on how the truth SCREAMS to be heard.. and will make itself painfully heard if you don't listen to it) I found my way to atheism. So looking back.. on my first decision to switch denominations.. now it may seem like a null issue.. whether switching to this other denomination was a good decision.. given that both it and the denomination of my parents were equally very wrong!

However yesterday I visited a church in this denomination.. for the first time in I think 6 years. It was quite an interesting experience. Very painful at some points.. tempting at others. Rather like meeting an ex..lover..It was interesting after 6 years (basically 2 years not having been to any 'born again' church.. ) to see so much that I remembered.. and loved. It was weird.. picking out the beliefs in this denomination that had validated me.. that I felt lined up so much with what I 'was,' like honesty, authenticity about inner doubts and the general uncertainty of one's knowledge, and self deprecation. It was interesting watching the admonitions that I know now were exactly what I did NOT need to hear.. like "those feelings that we usually ignore we need to go by them more because that's God!" which however unintentionally were really bad advice and hurt me! It was funny seeing all the emphasis on 'sin'.. which I had never seen before. I found many of the people there.. very "cute" and quite lovable.. They seemed sincere and reminded me a lot of myself. Like meeting an ex lover.. I felt my heart skip a beat. I felt a fear that I would fall back madly in love. It was an interesting experience. And potentially quite "resolving" for me, a chance to look back on what I "had" been, and who to a large extent I still am.. just not in the same way.

One of the things (I think) that one learns as a non Christian.. is not to expect resolution in life. In the end.. all the blind people do not see.. all the hurts don't get healed and the tears dried.. not even in your own life. There is no endless source of compassion and love. The world seems very much like a barren place. This is incredibly disappointing to say the least (actually I'll admit.. I'm still not over the disappointment). There is a sense of resolution that you will always miss. I'm sure I'll sound slightly wonky when I say this.. but there is something very freeing about prayer, almost like something that your being "is"..I consider it not so much a thought/ request.. as much as an expression of who one "is." It's an experession of one's desires.. but almost in the sense that those desires reflect who one is (just for clarity I don't mean that I think all one's desires reflect who one is ;). I enjoyed watching these people 'pray'.. even when they didn't do so literally with words.

Perhaps it seems inexplicable why I as an atheist with no intention of reconverting ;) should finally decide to go to church. Well for one thing.. I was in another city.. the city where this once much loved and obsessed over denomination had begun. I had always wanted to visit one of the churches in this city/state. Kind of like meeting the rock band you adored as a teenager ;) (even though you don't adore them now/maybe could care less..) I wondered whether visiting was a good idea or if it would needlessly stir up my emotions.. and if it was an expression of nostalgia for the past, nostalgia and wallowing being things I'm trying to do less of ;) I wondered if I was clinging rather than letting go of a chapter of my life that is over. So far it seems to have been a harmless revisit, apart from the fact that I was forced several times to lie. I couldn't say that I was not a Christian and why I was visiting (to look back on an over chapter in my life).. how I found out about that particular church.. (I had specifically looked it up on the internet) and last but not least (although I hope this is not a lie) to the man who asked me how my spiritual life was going, "it's... good.."

pain..

2008-06-23T17:46:00.001-07:00

Several days ago I typed in "pain" into my search bar inadvertently came upon an article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosphy that I found quite intriguing. I didn't know.. but apparently pain is quite a fascinating subject for philosophers..(and no, not because they're masochists/sadists ;) Part of the reason they find it fascinating is because it's something that is very much in the "body" but also "in the head." Basically you can say you have a pain in your hand and maybe a doctor might find something wrong with your hand.. but if he doesn't.. well your hand still hurts. So is the pain in your head or in your hand ?

Also (and this is what really fascinated me.. and on some level touched me.. although I'm sure that's not what the philosophers were out to do), they call the experience of pain "incorrigible".. that is if you feel pain.. or believe you feel pain.. then it's real. Unlike seeing an apple or hearing voices.. you can't hallucinate and be crazy and feel or "see" pain that isn't real. In short it's impossible to be mistaken in your perception of pain.. perceiving pain=pain.. I suppose that the converse of this idea is that not feeling pain=no pain..whether your body is damaged or not.

Perhaps it seems really silly.. or like a no brainer to most people.. but I found this idea really interesting.. that you can't be mistaken in feeling pain.. and you basically can't ever doubt someone that says they hurt.. if they believe they hurt.. you can't say they don't hurt..

I found this idea really interesting.. I think because I was raised with this idea that it's sort of a virtue to not feel pain.. especially emotional pain.. (but also physical pain too).. People that didn't hurt over things were always seen as "virtuous" and "good".. I guess basically because they were less trouble.

I was often told that I wasn't feeling pain when I was or maybe that other people were feeling just as much pain as me but they were so 'good' they were able to be happy in spite of it.. or I guess deny it and not feel it and thus cause less trouble for the people that might be forced to deal with one's pain/the reasons for one's pain (which might be very inconvinient.. esp if this person functions by denial ;)

On the same day that I found this article.. I also read one (or part of one) on people that are born not able to feel pain. They are not numb.. they just don't feel pain. I suppose if not feeling pain is virtuous.. then these people would be at the top of the 'good' list :) But the thing is especially as children (all the people that survive to adulthood like this.. learn to be very cautious eg about 'prickling'/itching sensations etc in their bodies) these people probably require extra attention and caution from their parents. Sometimes they will wear out their kneecaps or something at a very young age because they lack the means to know when they are damaging them. Perhaps because they lack the means to tell when they are in trouble people congentially unable to feel pain are more "trouble" than other children..

I remember reading this article however.. and kind of marvelling "wow.. a pain free life!!..boy that would be nice.. " Some of these people literally could only remember once or twice in their lives when they felt pain. Then I remembered that the vast majority of us are not like that.. hmm.. so wishing to be like that is kind of a vain wish ;)

As I am writing this I am thinking of doctors. Medical doctors (sorry to all the medical doctors out there) in my experience have always wanted to draw conclusions about my body based on how much pain THEY thought I was in. Like they wanted to judge the level of my 'pain' (including whether I was in pain or not) as well as the relevance of my pain.. "there's nothing wrong with you.. It's all in your head. You shouldn't be feeling this pain and being concerned." As I am thinking and writing on the infallibility of pain perception.. it strikes me that this attitude was incredibly arrogant. I guess many doctors think that they know your body.. and even can say more about your perception of pain than you yourself. When you I think of this in light of the fact that defining the truth/reality of whether or not you are in pain is something that is up to you and you alone.. It strikes me as incredibly arrogant.. They are not only attempting to define whether your body is hurt or not.. but also .. they are almost trying to define reality/the truth.. It is almost like saying, "by my words.. I'm going to decide whether you're in pain or not.. I get to be God and decide if it will be true that you are in pain.. or not." Imagine someone saying that about someone with a bleeding cut.. "I'm going to just decide by my whim.. whether your leg will be bleeding or not.. forget reality.. If I say it's bleeding .. then it is.. if not then it's not." You'd look at such a person and think "how crazy you are... you think you can change reality just by willing it to not be!"

It strikes me (sorry to all the doctors out there) that more doctors need to take some courses in philosophy.. and the history of science. Despite what they think.. they do NOT know everything about the human body. To a certain extent.. (and yes this is a paradox..) in some ways they do know more about your body than you.. but there is so much in medicine.. like in all other fields.. that we don't know. Just think of the 16th century doctors with their leeches.. and bloodletting.. further traumatizing sick people. I don't like to imagine it but I know what in 100 years.. definitely in 500 years (provided the human race survives ;) people will look back on the medicine of today and feel very sorry for a lot of the (probably what will then appear to be useless) procedures/drugs the doctors put us through.. And this is not specifically against the doctors (I once wanted to be one.. I wonder if I may have made a good doctor at all.. among other things. I think one needs a certain amount of arrogance/confidence.. take your pick.. to hold someone's life in your hands..) I am sure for the most part they are quite sincere, just I think we all need to be aware of how much of reality.. we don't know.

some quotes from the stanford encyclopedia:

"Bodily sensations are typically attributed to bodily locations and appear to have features such as volume, intensity, duration, and so on, that are ordinarily attributed to physical objects or quantities. Yet these sensations are often thought to be logically private, subjective, self-intimating, and the source of incorrigible knowledge for those who have them"

"Pains also seem to be subjective in the sense that their existence depends on feeling them. There is an air of paradox when someone talks about unfelt pains. One is naturally tempted to say that if a pain is not being felt by its owner then it does not exist."

"Like other experiences as conscious episodes, pains are thought to be private, subjective, self-intimating, and the source of incorrigible knowledge. These elements can certainly be found in the IASP characterization, which also adds that pain experiences are unpleasant."

"Pains are said to be private to their owners in the strong sense that no one else can epistemically access one's pain in the way one has access to one's own pain, namely by feeling it and coming to know one is feeling it on that basis. "

"Not only people seem to have a special epistemic access to their pains, they seem to have a very special epistemic authority with respect to their pain: they seem to be incorrigible, or even infallible, about their pains and pain reports: necessarily, if I sincerely believe that I am in pain, then I am in pain. Conversely, if I feel pain, then I know that I am in pain. Again this conditional seems necessarily true. This is the self-intimating aspect of pain experiences.

In short, there doesn't seem to be any room for a possible gap between the appearance of pain and being in pain (i.e., no appearance/reality distinction applicable to pain). As Kripke famously put it:

To be in the same epistemic situation that would obtain if one had a pain is to have a pain; to be in the same epistemic situation that would obtain in the absence of pain is not to have a pain…. If any phenomenon is picked out in exactly the same way that we pick out pain, then that phenomenon is pain. (Kripke 1980, pp. 152-53)"

John Mayer: In Repair

2008-04-22T23:54:00.000-07:00

This song says so much how I feel at the moment.
I wish I could be in a relationship so much, I am so lonely but in my heart I know it is just not right now and it is so hard to accept, especially when there's so many cute, intelligent boys around (: and everyone around you is hooking up. *sigh* I feel scared that I will ever not be "in repair."

Too many shadows in my room
too many hours in this midnight
too many corners in my mind
so much to do to set my heart right
oh it's taking so long i could be wrong, i could be ready
oh but if i take my heart's advice
i should assume it's still unsteady
i am in repair, i am in repair

stood on the corner for a while
to wait for the wind to blow down on me
hoping it takes with it my old ways
and brings some brand new look upon me
oh it's taking so long i could be wrong, i could be ready
oh but if i take my heart's advice
i should assume it's still unsteady
i am in repair, i am in repair

and now i'm walking in a park
all of the birds they dance below me
maybe when things turn green again
it will be good to say you know me

oh it's taking so long i could be wrong, i could be ready
oh but if i take my heart's advice
i should assume it's still unready
oh i'm never really ready, i'm never really ready
i'm in repair, i'm not together but i'm getting there
i'm in repair, i'm not together but i'm getting there

sensus

2008-04-18T22:07:00.000-07:00

In the silence
I feel the walls reflect my soul back at me
The silence echoes my voice
My spirit has space to be
It fills the room
In the absence of others
I fill the room
My breath and my spirit
Are not constrained
I find space to be
I expand to my full size
The silence echoes back my soul
In the silence I feel with all the moments of my life
And nothing at all
I am standing in eternity

I need not grip life tightly
When other people threaten to wrench it from my grasp
Standing where I am my weight is perfect
The weight in my grasp balances
The world is stable
No one wrestles me or threatens to sever the tendons
My breath is the entire weight of existence
And nothing at all
My word meets no support and no attack
For support is only another form of attack
Why should your words lend any weight to my own ?
My own words are fine the way they are

hold

2008-04-17T09:51:00.000-07:00

Fight
Punch against the darkness
Wrestle
Don't let it wrestle the world from your grasp
And when you go down
Go down
And no you may never come back up
But hold on
Don't lose the weight in your grasp
The weight of the world
The weight of you
All your spirit in your grasp

Sob like there is no tomorrow
And wrestle your way up
Out of the chaos and out of all the words
Keep the weight in your grasp
Go down but don't let go
Grip
Grip the light

underneath

2008-04-14T00:56:00.000-07:00

You know it occurs to me life is very funny where you end up sometimes or rather the things you see. Last Monday I saw something pretty extraordinary.. or as least it struck me as extraordinary, it surprised me and it broke a few of my preconcieved boxes perhaps..

They say people have moments they remember in their lives.. For me perhaps one of those moments was the street kid I prayed for in Toronto 7 years ago. Perhaps you can tell from my blogging on here.. how much it affected me, perhaps not. The look he had in his eyes when I was done praying for God to bless him and love him and heal the hurts (darn... I know I was incredibly sincere.. but it strikes me in retrospect as an exchristian that those were incredibly bold things to pray over a complete stranger! in any case as a Christian I was unaware of that!)This Christian leader I was a big fan of at the time used to say about people that he talked to and they converted to Christianity as a result of his talking to them.. (apparently he did this with over 600 people in his life) (speaking of which man life really is weird.. what a weird sense I have blogging about the technique in "converting" people to a religion I no longer subscribe to). He used to say, his secret in getting all these people converted was "you can see it in their eyes.."

And it sounds awful to talk about it as a non Christian but I remembered that when I saw this look in this boy's eyes.. I knew what the Christian leader meant when I saw it in this boy's eyes. And at the time I felt guilty because I felt at that moment I should have proposed Christianity to him on the spot.. and somehow I didn't quite have the courage.. But the look in his eyes, he was very touched by my 'prayer' of good wishes for him, stayed with me and I still think about it. As you know it struck me again a couple months ago when I was in Seattle and a street person there was stunned that I'd given him more than he asked for. Again I was very touched, obviously to the extent that I had to blog about it. (And here I'm blogging about it again!) Those two times I was quite surprised.. but I think not surprised quite like I was on Monday when I encountered this look, (I wonder if it is a look of desperation..? No I prefer not to think of it like that)on a very unexpected person's face in a very unexpected situation.

On Monday I saw it in the eyes of my Symbolic Logic teaching assistant/philosophy Phd candidate. I suppose philosophy Phd candidates are missing pieces in their souls just like anyone else. I had been pretty desperate and determined to get some Symbolic Logic help last week and partly I think I got the appointment on account of my extreme graciousness, which I think in an odd way happened to deeply touch this guy because I saw this familiar look again in his eyes. He was looking at me with the same vulnerability and tenderness as the other two people. I was further surprised because unlike the two times before when I saw this look, this time it emerged under significant moral ambiguity. My Symbolic Logic teaching assistant is married and at the same time as he was giving me this look he was flirting with me. The flirting (which I thoroughly disapproved of and felt guilty about having caused) and this look in his eyes were inseparable. This incident with this look, like every other time I saw it, still haunts me.

find..

2008-04-09T19:35:00.000-07:00

I wonder if I will ever find it
Find my way to the top
It's hard not knowing
And it's hard drowning
Under the emotion
I can't swim above

And I wonder
I fear I will never find my way to to the top
Never find the love I so seek
And when I think I glimpse it
I don't know what I'm glimpsing
Not sure if exists
Maybe yes, maybe not for me

And hope falls flat on the floor
Hope falls from so high
What a crash
What pain to lose all over again
What was never really gained

You look at me and I smile
You percieve that I am whole
And you try to come close
I don't know whether to break my heart
Or tell you the truth
That it can't work
And push you away they say

I just need to figure this out
I don't know if I will ever figure this out
And the cost seems so great
And the doubt seems so great

I don't know if you will understand
That this glowing smile
Often falters
And it disappears for long seasons
Like the summer sun
If I try to explain maybe you still won't see that
Though the truth always lives on
Even though I often forget
I trip over it every two hours in my mind

I guess you don't know
You won't know what to do
When the corners of my eyes turn down angrily at the injustice of life
Threaten it seems to scorch you
And I can't turn them up
No matter how hard I try
Not for me, not for you
I wish I could

Sorry I can't quite be everything you think I am
I am sorry
And I am not sorry
For being who I am
This is what I am and all I am
Right here in front of you, the sweetness and the scorching eyes
Everything you see

Whatever the cost
Whatever the loss
Of what was never really bought
I am everything that's right here
And this is all
Even if it is not enough

caffeine and math + pretention

2008-04-03T11:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was hanging out at a Symbolic Logic class other than my own.. and the Prof there started talking about Math and doing these almost Mathematical proofs. Then he told us his undergraduate degree is in Math and well Symbolic Logic is pretty much almost Math (just you get to philosophize about it if you want ;) pretty easily ;)) and I started thinking.. "ohh ok now I see this is why I find Math interesting! Cause it's so close to philosophy!" Like Math is very philosophical in a way if you think about it (ok the actually "doing" it is a different matter!) but learning the concepts (which was always the part I liked) is very much like philosophy, I mean it's all ideas, somewhat deep ideas, and abstract and in an interesting way also focused on the truth.

I don't know what it is with me.. sometimes I wonder if I am just pretentious.. but honestly sometimes it seems like the more I learn.. the more I want to learn.. and I just want to go deeper and deeper and I wonder sometimes if anything will ever sort of "fill" that hunger or desire.. It just it seems I'm always seeking something "heavier"... and then again I wonder.. I hope I'm not being pretentious with people. I worry sometimes that studying things like Latin and Scientific Reasoning will make me more divorced from people.. and make it harder for me to communicate with them.. I'll be excited about Latin.. but I can't tell you about it.. because speaking Latin is percieved (maybe rightly so!) as elitist..

Or maybe all my 'love' for learning.. and deep zeal to always be searching deeper and, is just a pretentious armour I've picked up because I think it's a "good" thing to be intellectual.. or this is all just a result of being overly caffeinated.. as I am at the moment....

Blind

2008-03-29T16:10:00.000-07:00

People on Youtube were posting comments about the lifehouse song Blind (which I think is about Jason's relationship with his father..)Everyone was posting their bits about what the song means to them.. I wanted to post mine.. but I was not sure if all my emotion and thought might be slightly inappropriate for there so I am posting it here! :)

For me this song seems to describe the END of my relationship with God.. I loved him so much and he never loved me back.. I gave up everything for him and in return I was left with nothing. I feel like I will never be able to love again after the pain of that loss/relationship. Now I don't believe in God.. and letting go of him (still not sure I've let go) was the most painful thing ever for me. I feel like an irreparable hole has been wripped out of my heart... I have heard people talk about how when a family member commits suicide,they leave you all alone there with the pain and nothing just this sense of utter abandonment and loss. This is very much how I feel about my 'relationship' with God and how it ended.. Like God committed suicide and it is difficult to even have a person to be angry with anymore.. because that person has even been wrenched from my grasp, out of even existence. Some days (at times I feel it more or less) I am not sure I can make it. I feel so deeply the hole that has been torn out of my heart and so alone and rejected. Sometimes I wonder if I have the capacity to love again.. or love that way again.. I identify pretty deeply with the line "a part of me died when I let you go.."

I feel very alone in this feeling too, I don't know anyone who has been in the same position/gone through something similar so it is very hard. I imagine I must not be alone though. I am sure someone somewhere in the world has felt the same thing that I feel..

Art and uniting the senses with reality.. ??

2008-03-29T15:28:00.000-07:00

I was reading in my Literary Theory book a few days ago that Aesthetics/Art is an attempt to unite the senses with reality (I hope I am remembering this right.. I seem to remember there was something about spirituality in there as well..

This idea has been really percolating and buzzing around in my mind since while not being an "Art" connossieur per say .. I know I love beauty, natural and otherwise (I love beautiful natural scenery.. it touches me on a very deep level or brings me a lot of joy.. I love music, beautiful music and lyrics, words..) I remember when I was a Christian being absolutely captivated when Mike Bickle talked about the "Beauty Realm" where the beauty of God was supposed to be what captivated us... I remember thinking at that point in my life.. when thinking about relevance.. "forget the pain... forget everything else in life... beauty is all that matters.. beauty beauty beauty." Maybe you could say I was absolutely in love at that point in my life... in a way I'm not sure I have the capacity to ever be in again.. But anyway back to 'beauty' and Art.. this idea that Art and Aesthetics, the quest for beauty is an attempt to unite the senses with reality or truth.. a pursuit of truth.. stuck with me..

I started to wonder if perhaps.. Myers Brigg N (or intuitive people who tend to deal with more ideas and concepts.. I guess that's what they see as reality.. that's the greatest part of their world.. rather than facts.. and practical matters..) have a greater need for Art because of this.. because perhaps their senses are often left so 'neglected' by all this focus on ideas.. I know I am an intuitive person and I am pretty captivated by beauty it seems.

I guess it's a bit of Plato's philosophy too, about the world we can access through the senses, which may be undependable, because out senses aren't foolproof.. i.e. a tree not really being a tree.. we could always be decieve... but true reality being concepts like the idea of absolute "beauty" that we are born with, but can never exactly percieve, but only come close to percieving with our senses..

martyrdom and suicide and truth...

2008-03-26T12:50:00.000-07:00

I told someone a couple weeks ago.. that there is a difference between being martyred and committing suicide.. Although some may see them as the same thing. I think if you hold a core value.. someone comes along and decides you must give it up or die.. and you refuse to give up on your value and they kill you. Even though in this situation technically you had an option that would have allowed you not to die, and you rejected it, I find it hard to consider this choice suicide.. I think the opposite, that if you had given up on your core value, and chosen life but to "live" as something other than you were.. that that would in a way be much more suicidal. I was wondering a couple weeks ago if there is some sort of intense self love, in saying to your would be murderer in a situation like this, "fine, kill me.. you can kill me, but I refuse to "kill" myself by changing into something I am not.."

Sometimes I wonder.. I know this is a very black and white portrayal.. I mean technically you could forsake your value for a while to save your life but then find it again when it was safe.. and hey here is you still intact and breathing! You can go back to living out your value and who you are truly and you have survived! Where as in the other option if you refused to give up your value and yourself you would definitely be dead, because you would be physically dead with no chance of "resurrection."

I was thinking this morning this crazy question about martrydom. Having found invalid a faith I once would likely have died for if given the opportunity, I always consider myself lucky that I never was given a choice like that and so I didn't die for something that I now know is untrue/invalid. But all the same because of the fact that as humans we can never know the truth for sure or be certain that what we see as the truth is true, and yet we must be dedicated to truth I think.. even if our dedication is to the truth that there can be no truth or certainty of truth..
And so if you are dedicated to the truth.. and it comes down to a choice of whether to die for it or give it up, what do you do ? knowing you could be wrong, but believing you are right ? Perhaps this is the choice everyone comes to in supporting a "cause" or a "value", they absolutely believe they are right.. and feel compelled to support it.. but at the same time they know (well hopefully they know) that they could be wrong... And so perhaps my question is, is it a good idea to be certain ?.. Is it s good idea to live according to your values knowning you could be wrong ?.. The answer I get when I think about it is that... you must live according to your values and what you see as the truth, you may be wrong and your truth may in the end be a lie but this dedication to unproven truth (or proven as best as we can truth) is as close as we can get to true truth...

And so oddly enough I get the idea that if someone is threatening to kill you for your belief or value and you refuse to give it up and let them kill you, and you die but your belief in fact turns out to be a lie.. I am not sure you were wrong. I think in fact that by dying for a falsehood you may have been right.

Grasp

2008-03-26T12:24:00.000-07:00

Clasp your fingers around life
Tight as a vise
Hold onto your certainty
And don't be afraid to be wrong

Once you let go
The weight in your grasp stolen
When you wondered if you were wrong
Grip life, grip your certainty
Grip you

And at the end you realize
What you grasped
What you let go
Was only in an attempt to catch you

And you realize that
In living
In being absolutely certain
In falling, in risking death
This is the only true way to live

Whether you were right or wrong
True or false your words
It doesn't matter
I am certain and I am willing to risk
But I can be reasoned with otherwise

Seattle, I can't forget Seattle..

2008-03-25T16:57:00.000-07:00

I don't know if you remember that movie from maybe 15 years ago "Sleepless In Seattle".. (ever since then the name seattle sounds like .. something like a lullabye.. or maybe it sounds like "settle" or "rattle".. but it sounds calming to me... somehow..) anyway I am sleepless for Seattle (well not quite!) but...

Since my trip to Seattle a month ago (exactly a month ago today actually) I've kind of been fond of the city. For one thing unlike the more frigid north up here :) a ton of people smiled at me and were very friendly there.. People smiled at me on the street... and were very helpful.. I even got a free ride on the bus (by accident! the bus driver and I both forgot that I had to pay the fare.. because he was busy helping me with directions.. I only found the extra dollar twenty-five in my pocket an hour later as I was waiting in the train station.)

In Seattle I felt cradled by the tall skyscrapers which we don't have in Vancouver.. (like "home" in Toronto).. not so many and so close together(in Seattle every other building is huge.. in Vancouver maybe ever tenth building is taller than three stories). I felt it was cosy.. It feels like a city on the sea just like Vancouver but it does not have that wide open small seaside town feel..

I don't know what this means but in Seattle I started smiling at people on the street.. And I got the idea that people enjoyed my smile and it was something good to give away (which I've actually often doubted so far in my life.. why smile.. if perhaps people don't want me to smile at them ?)I started smiling at people in Vancouver when I came back..

Also when I was in Seattle.. after the lifehouse concert I was walking back to my hostel and there were three homeless guys on the street. The first one was begging me.. he was apart from the other two.. I think he wanted me to give him a dollar.. I had met this rather extraordinary woman on the train that I had a touching conversation with about homeless people and their deeper problems/lack of access/ability to access help..After the lifehouse concert I had just watched Jason (from lifehouse) talking to this fan (she looked about 40 or 50) who seemed to be a little emotional and telling him slightly more than maybe he needed to hear.. I was watching him being patient with her, listening..(i think..)I had thirteen US dollars in my wallet which I wouldn't be able to spend the next day when I arrived back home. Something among the three of these facts inspired me.. I took out my wallet and I took out not one of the one dollar bills but the ten dollar one and gave it to him (as I was giving it to him.. in my mind I had this inner dialogue going on "great now Marisa is just giving away money!!") It was dark so he didn't immediately see that it was a $10 not a $1 bill but as I was walking away he recognized it said something like "thank you lady! wow, you're generous!! you're so kind!" and I looked at him somewhat doubtfully like, "you're just emotional and happy.. let's be real here I'm really not.. I just gave you ten dollars that's all" and he said "you are!" Perhaps his words will stay with me for a long time, but the look in his eyes.. took me back to the look of another homeless guy in Toronto in 2001, 7 years ago.

At that time too I also had doubts about giving money to homeless people the purpose of it. I wouldn't do it at that point because I felt, it is not helping them. Regardless of my commitment to not giving money to homeless people at that point.. I was always deeply touched by their calls for help. I remember this one day in the summer stopping and asking to pray for this boy for God to bless him and show him love(he looked only a few years older than me). I remember the look in his eyes after I prayed for him. He looked extremely touched and like all of him, vulnerable, everything was right there in front of me.. The man in Seattle a month ago I saw something similar in his eyes (I felt I saw surprise.. and I felt I saw vulnerabilty in his eyes)..

Ever since deconverting I have been just wondering what to do with myself.. I felt so much like I lost myself when I deconverted. I felt I lost everything and my reason for caring, not just about myself but about the world but I felt like I found a piece of myself again in Seattle in this man's eyes.. and I realized that who I was, my care for people and sense of being deeply touched by helping them is still here with me in spite of the fact that the Christianity I thought it was based upon is gone..

In that moment I think I found a vulnerability, a willingness to be vulnerable in myself and a willingness to love again.

let it

2008-03-19T13:28:00.000-07:00

Locked inside of a cage
Tight as a scowl
Don't try to hold on tight any longer

Let go like a child
Let the world rip by
Watch it wait
Don't know what will happen

Let it go
Don't need to salve the wounds
Don't need to struggle to fix the chaos
Convince yourself it's not there

Just let it be
Let it go
See what will come
See what will be tomorrow
Don't strive to fix

Leave it let it be
Leave the world let it live
Leave the rain and sun let it fall

The worst nightmare

2008-03-04T07:42:00.000-08:00

Last Monday I attended a concert.. and while I was there. I don't know how exactly but I came upon this realization. The thing that should terrify me most in life is living my life not as me. That is total annihilation, I mean however awful your life may be as you.. whether you get persecuted or abused or thrown into jail for what you honestly see as the truth and being who you are. The greatest tragedy.. even if you are successful and have everything go right is to live your life not as you. I came to the conclusion that even if I have to suffer for being who I am whatever happens, it's ok.. if I get to live my life as me.

As a teenager.. I am not sure whether I truly grappled with this idea because I think to a large extent there were things I was hiding behind.. to try and justify me for being me.. and justify that there was nothing "wrong" with me.. rather than just accepting me for me.

I think as a human this is the thing that should be absolutely terrifying to us. The thing that terrifies me the most is not being me. And yet.. I'm incredibly inclined to forget it and lose my grip on it. I saw it I felt so clearly last Monday and by Sunday I was doubting it. How hard it is to refocus my grip and my sights on it.. and at the same time.. I wonder.. a part of me wonders.. if this is truly what I think.. because I seem so pushed off course.. maybe even though I say I believe this I don't really believe this.. Is it some opposing truth, like when I had doubts as a Christian but I simply chose to deny them and say it doesn't really matter, that I should be really paying attention too ? or maybe a little.. attention even ?.. Or is it just "nameless unreasoning, unjustified terror" as the quote above my desk talks about ? Is there a way to combine the two together.. because I think maybe this is the wisest thing to do, and say I believe "this" 89% and I believe "that" 11%.

giftedness

2008-02-15T13:51:00.000-08:00

A few minutes ago I was standing at the sink washing lettuce and I was thinking and I realized being gifted doesn't matter to me. It's not something that I think is particularly important in life. Not that I despise my giftedness I mean I like who I am, I think I like how my brain works.. But I don't think it's a matter of pride or anything for me.. I don't consider it anything to feel proud of.. that I'm smarter than however many people. It's not really important to me.

Growing up whenever people acknowledged that I was smart I always felt it was a somewhat odd comment. People used to notice out loud and they seemed to all believe it was a good thing but I was never quite so sure, and I am still not so sure.

All I basically wanted as a child was to be accepted for me. I didn't want to be sort of put in a box/judged because of my giftedness as being anything other than me. Which my parents could never do, my parents could never accept my giftedness for what it was.. and they thought giftedness was a "good" thing.

I still feel a little bit awkward about people finding out about my gifteness.. I sometimes wonder if they will get caught up in it like my parents and forget about "me".. sometimes I wonder if they will like it but not like me. Or if most painful of all I will become defined by it, in their eyes.. I'll never get a chance to live or be.. or be observed as the person I AM because this giftedness label will go right over the top and cover up me. They won't see me anymore for what I am but just the label.. which I still am not sure.. it's even a good thing..

the point of falling

2008-02-14T00:20:00.000-08:00

Ok that just made no sense.. I just realized I contradicted myself in the last line...

Well yes when I say "falling" I think of more the hitting the ground part.. rather than the real "falling" the mistake you could say of falling out of a window or whatnot.

I'll explain why.. for me I think the falling was unintentional.. I don't think I could have ever known I was going to fall out of a window( so not sure if you can consider that a mistake.. seeing as it's unintentional.. from that perspective.. it's almost an act of fate.. we don't see some mistakes we're going to make and therefore don't have control over making them or not.. therefore you can't really consider them "mistakes" as much as happenings of fate). The other reason I don't think of the "start of the fall" part as falling is because in my life, specifically for this fall it would be very hard for me to define it.. a 'falling point' ;) It was more like a steep slope.. and I just started going farther and farther down and going faster and faster.. I don't know if at some points I could have stopped and it's hard to define where the slope actually started.

falling..

2008-02-14T00:02:00.002-08:00

I was just thinking.. it's weird the title of my last post/poem "when i fell."
Strikes me as weird because growing up whenever someone was spoken about as "falling" it tended to be used in a figurative sense.. ie "when Jimmy Swaggard fell." I suppose it meant falling from grace or something. To me it was synonymous (not sure if this is how the adults meant it, but for me the two concepts were mentioned so often together they became intertwined) with "falling" in front of everyone ie letting people down that were looking up to you or giving "God" a bad reputation. It was also like in a religious sense a of losing your faith and making a mistake.

The weird thing for me.. I guess what struck me as weird about the title of my last post is that when I fell, (I guess some people from the other perspective would consider it making a mistake, seeing as it did spell the loss of my faith) and collided painfully with the laws of physics I actually don't consider that the mistake.. the hitting the ground. When I refer to falling I refer to the discovery of the mistake.. and I don't altogether consider that a bad thing.

It's weird though how we seem to think of "falling" as being synonymous with hitting the ground ;) In reality though it may take a long time for you to reach the ground!

when i fell

2008-02-14T00:02:00.001-08:00

When I fell so hard that I lost my breath
And I couldn’t breathe
You poured poison in my ear
And the breathe you gave me too was poisoned
I could have prayed to choke on it rather than swallow
But I was grasping for dear life
And I drank the your poison along the way
The wisdom I tasted
The laws of gravity I crashed into on the ground
Was so bitter

I lost my breathe and I lost my sense of up and down in the world
I drank your poison on the way “up”
And everything spun for years and years in my mind
I could not find my balance
I could not feel the earth not rocking beneath my feet
After that even when I was up I was in the underworld living on your poison

And at times I mistook your poison donation
For my own glistening red life
Feared I could not live without it
And so I swallowed again and again
Every time I tried to cough it up

the sun from east or south

2008-01-24T08:51:00.000-08:00

Feel the horizontal sun
And feel the guilt come crashing in
It’s like a poison in your blood that drives you to throw it away
Desperately grab for a knife to poke a hole in the bottom of the life raft
Cause you believe all you deserve is to drown

You can’t imagine you deserve better than to be bobbing in the water
Struggling for life
To you life is always a struggle and struggle is all you have known
Try to rescue you and you fall back in
You believe this is your lot and this is your karma
It’s to live like this between the surface and pain

You push all the rafts away
And the ladder you stop climbing then you let go and slip down again
And on the way up you bang your head
You just can’t get beyond the discontent
Every kiss feels like poison on your lips
You chase them but you run away too, it burns too much

All the words and all the songs
Cut away a place in your heart
And you still wonder deep inside you wonder
Whether you’re ok
After all this time it hurts to feel joy

But you find in your wanderings
The sun from another direction hits you
Suddenly full in the face or maybe the light just shines up on you
From the core, it has suddenly been opened and the light revealed
And you find you are not so alone as you thought, you are here too

The light pierces a path in where the guilt was caged
And you let go, you cut away the seal on the guilt
You see where it no longer belongs
Light shines on that spot in your heart
There in the sunlight and the new life that begins to grow
Guilt loses its habitat

inside a lung

2008-01-24T08:16:00.000-08:00

Inside
I feel bad that I disappointed you
And I tried so many times
It was a hopeless endeavour at the core
To try and please you, try and make you happy

And in spite of all that happened to me
All I had to go through
Perhaps this is the thing that I regret the most
Is not making you happy

Now I am walking further with my feet
But my heart still feels caught in the crossfire
Of your words and my emotions
I try to come back and I still try to fish out all I never could do
And I wish one last time before I die
I could accomplish what I once set out to do
And bring you joy

Now I know your mind was broken
Maybe this is how mine broke too
An unsteady hand holding a fragile vase
Fall to the floor and pray it doesn’t break
And when it fractures too subtly for your eyes
You thank God it didn’t

This I believe is the guilt that keeps me trapped
Under this crushing leaden stone wall
That clamps my lungs shut when I try to breathe
Is a border the life can’t cross to get to me
The fact that I couldn’t make you happy
And this was all I wanted to do and it broke my heart
In more places than you’ll ever imagine
The subtle hairline fractures still linger

But now I see that what you wanted
That what you needed was not me or anyone else
Oh how I regretted that I couldn’t give it to you
I see that you are missing parts of you
That is why you search and look and beg and cannot find
And no one can give what you are missing

In my heart, below the dark cool earth
Miles and miles below under the leaden stone
I find simply a resolve to do the best I can and help the best I can
I finally release you with a blessing to your happiness or your unhappiness
I stop clinging to the lead and the life rushes in

certainty

2008-01-19T14:27:00.000-08:00

When I came back and ceased to breathe
I lay in your arms and my weakened body absorbed all the poison you fed me
I abandoned all my defining characteristics
I let you paint my broken mind the way you wanted to
Carve into the soft glistening flesh a picture other than the truth

And the guilt fell heavy over me like a blanket
A crushing blanket all the words, all the sighs I had always struggled against
I ceased to struggle
The pain of being wrong fell like a rocky breaking judgement over me
The mist covered me in piercing pain till I lost my certainty in the storm
It slipped from my grasp or I let go in an attempt to find the side
In the fog I forgot what I knew, I forgot that I knew anything at all
I let go in my bid to find the end, in my bid to find the way through the maze
For nothing, for everything, I let go of everything

And when I look into your eyes
You and everyone I still feel all the pain of being wrong
Even when I wasn’t, I can’t seem to sort out when I was wrong from when I wasn’t
What haunts me, what haunts me most of all
Is whether I could have ever made it go any different
This is what fills my days and nights is this uncertainty

And I seem to see it in everyone’s eyes
Every person I meet I feel this uncertainty
The tenuous grasp on the earth between my feet and
The tipping over the edge into the abyss
My grasp on certainty
I wonder if I'll fall again or if I did fall at all

breathe

2008-01-19T14:26:00.000-08:00

Take a breath
Breathe
Look into their eyes
And see that you don’t see the future
See the humanness
And only the humanness

The truth is not there
And perhaps it is only a little

Take a breath
Speak
Say what’s in your heart and in your head
Let it pour out
Now feel your heart not so full and empty

Act like a skate on ice
Totally unaware of yourself
Skate and skate to your own music
And the music of the city

guilt

2008-01-19T14:25:00.000-08:00

Guilt creeps across me like a wet blanket
I try to say I don’t want it but the dampness inevitably seeps into my bones
And like a deadly pathogen in my blood it threatens to threaten my life
I feel its grasp heavy on my chest when I try to breathe

And I can’t find my way out.. try as I might
I just find myself entangled in this guilt
And I try to find a way out.. hit the wall feel like I’ve come back down again
But I find a way, I stop struggling against the python

I inflict its own poison on it
And I watch it strangle itself
As I stand back
And look at me whole and sure of myself

knowing

2008-01-15T07:23:00.000-08:00

Uncertainty what we hide from the most is really what we chase
We long to just say “I don’t know”
We long to acknowledge the truth
But because no one will understand we keep it buried away
And we wonder why we can’t be uncertain

Uncertainty the shades of grey
We long to acknowledge the picture and live out loud
But scared instead of criticism and painful judgment
We whitewash the sky, till the blue is gone away and it is a lifeless white
Still and dead and without wonder
Simply a canvas for all the fickle judgments of the world

The white that you cover up uncertainty with
Blocks you from finding the truth
The false hope and denial that masquerades as positivity
Keeps you from finding the answers you can’t bear to live without
You will never find your perceptions right
Because you never took the chance to find them wrong

And you wear your judgment like an armor
You’re still trying to live up to their expectations
Shield yourself from the world’s criticism of all that is uncertain
World’s criticism of all the non white or black
The world’s criticism of all that is true
In your hubris and your race to predict the future
You forgot the present that you knew
You forgot to dream and imagine anything you might not be able to certify
And when you do dream now you find it’s only in the black and white of your drafted plans
Things you tell yourself are or are not possible forget the colors of reality.

You avoid uncertainty like the plague
You avoid life and you cling unwittingly to death
Because it seems that in the denial of death
In the denial of messy life
There is an escape from the real death that you are dying

You have forgotten your wish to know the future
Wishes and dreams and the imaginary in imaginary friends and worlds
The messiness all vanishes when you whitewash it with unreality
And perhaps you find in the white a refuge from all the pain of life
However you miss the whisperings of all the souls all the seekers that came before
And found and lost and died and lived

certainty

2007-12-23T22:30:00.000-08:00

We say we'll give our lives for truth
We spend our lives searching for peace
But I wonder certainty, isn't that really all we're after ?

And forget the dead bodies on the floor
Forget the contradictions
It never really matters to us

All that matters is damn stillness of mind
Staunch the flow of thoughts
Staunch the clarity of mind
That the pain seeps in through

We'll do anything for the stillness
The deathly stillness
Drive the stickiness of life away

sticky clarity

2007-12-23T22:19:00.000-08:00

Sometimes when the wind blows
The sun pierces the mist
And you suddenly see the green and grey
As if from another country
The colors all change greener or redder
And you see for the picture finally for the first time in your life

Matt I couldn’t see the pain through my own eyes
But I saw the darkness through yours
Through your notes
I felt the sad sad melody move me
And I moved to find my broken body
On the floor beside yours
And I lived the moments over
A thousand times between when you are cut
And when the pain first hits you
The inner screaming
The disbelief at the site of blood
The bleeding of the truth.. until there is no more truth

And again and again I see the blood
This was a bloody murder
Every surface in the house
Every place I touch
The sticky sickly pain accosts me
It clings and I can’t let go
And again I see the walls and they’re covered in your own blood
And it seems my own

The words you say make me cry
I can’t face my own pain
I cannot perceive my own blood
But you weeping weeping on the floor
Catches up to me
Washes away my reserve
And all I can do is sob for you and sob for me
In your pain I find myself
The little pieces that I threw away

I find the sobs have caught in my throat again
Threatening to choke me
And I cannot dislodge them for you or me
May your soul find peace Matthew

When I run my hands over the piano keys
The hollow notes seem my own
And I didn’t mean to remember
But I remember all of who I am
And all the little bits that I’ve thrown away

You show me your blood stained bible
And I remember mine and all the prayers to death I prayed
And in this bloodstained house
Somehow I understand now the disarray and the blood never clotting
Why the pages always stick together
In the sticky sickliness there is a clarity I could have never perceived in the bright sunshine
All the little pieces that I lost
Come back together

not a happy camper

2007-12-23T20:36:00.000-08:00

So I am wondering how I am going to salvage this vacation/if I can salvage this vacation.. and what I will do if I can't. I have been putting a lot of pressure on myself to make it a great vacation..

Perhaps I just need to accept whatever it turns out as.. even if it's harmful.. I suppose the bottom line is I will accept it.. whatever it is.. whatever happens..

I just I am really frustrated at the moment.. I feel almost.. "THIS is why I should take vacations..!!!"

I feel like I am losing my mind..!! No I am SERIOUS I feel like HALF of my brain is missing.. I have NO idea WHAT to do with myself. I feel like so FRUSTRATED!!!!!!!! I want something to do! And my aunts are doing everything for me (including irritating me did I mention ?!!) And I feel like I am losing my sense of self and self agency!! I feel like "ok there is no need for me to cook... or clean.. or do laundry or groceries.. or study.. hmm is there a need for me to BE ?!!! These guys seem to have it all under control!!" Seriously.. I think these guys are amazing.. if I could take them for one day in the middle of the semester!! (Talk about a good break.. this is better than the hospital people ;) (for all those that fanticize about getting so sick that you end up in the hospital.. and don't even need to lift a finger, not to mention no assignments to hand in or profs to deal with ;) but at the moment they are making me lose my mind! Oh did I mention, they cook 2 of everything and then expect me to eat it ?!!! Imagine trying to swallow two of whatever it is that you want!! *sigh*

I feel like I'm losing my mind.. slowly but surely.. this is the sure story when you abandon your "MASTERY" and you lose the balance of enough demands in your life! I feel worse that helpless.. I feel.. kind of incapable.. almost incapable of "being"... And at the moment.. I have no idea even how to get it back.. Well tomorrow I plan to head back to the library though..that is my first step.. I also brought some Latin with me.. and some other work to do.. I may head for a coffee shop with that (oh love of god.. away from all the food at home..).. The thing that I HATE.. is the whole "spending money" when you go out of the house thing.. This is the thing I hate.. I resent spending money at coffee shops etc when I go out.. I really resent it.. I feel like it's all wasted.

FFFRustrated

2007-12-23T20:04:00.000-08:00

Today I went out with my friend for almost the whole day.. and it was lousy.. (actually frustrating with a capital F is a better word..) actually FRUSTRATING could describe my whole last week!!.. but err that feels bad to say.. so perhaps I should not say that..

My Christmas vacation is turning out to be much more frustrating than I expected. MUCH more frustrating.. about ten times a day I feel the urge to scream.. and keep screaming *sigh that feels incredibly good just to write here!*

Today I went to the library to get two books that I wanted to read.. I had done a lot of research on the internet looking for books and then I had had to search for where these books would be AT.. and what libraries would even be open on Sunday.. and then I got my butt up and out the door (*sigh* you have NOOO idea how much energy that took.. I am very depressed here with my aunts..to be honest I am fighting the urge, I feel like just staying in bed all day long...). Then it took a great amount of energy to get to the bus stop.. seeing as the lights weren't working and after watching one bus go by, I was frustrated trying to figure out the right light to cross the street on.. and in the end I kid you not, I nearly killed myself! I crossed a busy street on a green light! (No I know.. believe me I am glad to still be in the land of the living.. and I swore to myself.. bus or no bus.. I will let a thousand buses pass before I ever cross without a cross light again!)

So then I did all that to get to the library and when I finally got to the library.. it was closed.. I was SOOOOOOO frustrated! Seriously I wanted to get down on the floor like a three year old and have a temper tantrum.. (ok maybe not.. but in retrospect I am thinking maybe it would have done me good.. to get some frustration out of my system..)I really should have come home or something at this point.. but since my friend was there waiting for me and I had promised to go to the greenhouse with her.. I felt the need to stuff my emotions into a bag and hurry along (just a note here.. stuffing stuff.. esp emotions into a bag is never a good idea).. so hence.. commenced a very frustrating day *sigh*

And what can I say at the end of it ? Honestly I have NO clue.. except I KNOW I should have done something different at the point when the library was closed.

I am actually a bit beyond frustrated at the moment.. because ever since coming to Toronto.. I have no idea if it is my state of mind... and my approach to people but it seems EVERY time I have gotten together with someone it has gone lousy.. I am just about to call off the idea of getting together with anyone. I am sick of it.. and very frustrated... Am I just losing it I wonder ?!

to life

2007-12-18T21:21:00.000-08:00

Matthew everytime I look through my eyes
I see yours behind the blue
I look on your words
And I see my own voice

And I'm falling apart
Like your words
All near the end
Breaking off
When you told us your solution

And I know we couldn't explain
We couldn't dream to get into your shoes
And try to find our way
Reorient the map from there

When I hear the sad sad notes of the song
I hear the shots ringing out
In your own head
When I touch mine to yours

to life

2007-12-18T21:11:00.000-08:00

Matthew if you look hard enough
You will find that there is no resolution
In the past
The only answer is to build a life of your own
Not to prove them wrong but to prove yourself

There is never any resolution
Never any way to say "you were wrong"
Only a way to say "I am me"

Matthew if you look hard enough
You will find that there is peace in the storm
There is calm in finding yourself
In spite of all they have thrown at you
And delight in being who you are
In spite of all the pain you struggle through

They will never understand
And they will never come over to your side
And that's ok
It's ok for you to live and prove
Prove yourself without them, live your life
Don't live, don't die to negate theirs

There is no resolution
The pain is still there and it still screams
It will scream all your life
And you will quiet the screams
Not with a gun but with your own quiet voice

You will find who you are
In living with the pain
In living through the pain you will find joy
And freedom to be
You will fulfill the prophecy and you will fulfill your own prophecy with your life

answers to a survey on a msgboard

2007-12-17T18:27:00.000-08:00

How long have you been out (months, years)?
Well I mentally left pentecostalism when I was 12.. for the vineyard... I was delighted to find a "charismatic" system with more logic in it.. and at least some suitable explanation/admission for the fact that some people even though they believe really "hard" don't get healed... As for charismatic stuff as a whole I held onto that in one form or another (even through my evangelical Anglican phase) until I pretty much left the faith in Jan 2006 (2 years then.. i guess is the short answer (:

What have you learned?
I feel like my brain can finally "breathe." I felt like that circular logic was killing me. you have no idea how good it feels to finally be able to work within a logical system..

How much better are you?
I am happier, kinder, less judgemental.. MUCH less scared (as a pentecostal I used to live in constant horrible fear of losing my salvation.. I used to be terrified that I would accidentally sin in my dreams.. and God forbid I should die then before I had a chance to awake and repent.) I used to constantly wonder whether I would slip up and end up spending eternity in hell.

What was the first event(s) that triggered your change?
I don't know exactly.. seeing the circular logic in things like "believing for healing/name it and claim it" as a child was definitely the first one I could identify. finding that a place like the vineyard existed with different theology gave me some confidence to say, "Wow I didn't know there was a way to believe differently." The vineyard is technically charismatic/might be considered equivalent to pentecostal on here.. so as for leaving charismaticism as a whole I'd have to say that basically happened only when I left the church.. 2 years ago in 2006

How long did it take to find peace?
I feel quite peaceful now.. with regard to God etc...
I am still angry over the things that I was put through as a child though.. I suffered a lot of emotional abuse that I believe was connected to my parents' faith and because of it I have an emotional disorder that I have to deal with every day now..

Do you still have relationships with Pentecostals?
I do.. Despite the tremendous harm done, a lot of pentecostals were very kind to me a few years ago.. and I don't see this as reason to end the friendship..I feel they are kind people who I value as friends. They don't know I've left the faith/even pentecostalism for that matter though.. I suppose I should tell them at some point.

How much better are your relationships with non-Pentecostals since you have been out?
A LOT better (I think....) during highschool the whole "no non christian movies/non christian music" thing absolutely prevented me from connecting with the kids in high school..(except the christian ones.. of similar persuasions)

How have your politics changed?
Yes definitely. I'm now Liberal.. not republican/conservative anymore

Do you have moments of anger and rage?
Yes!! I experienced a LOT of emotion this week as I came on here and read MM's posts.. I wanted to cry loudly when I read some of them.. I have felt the same Matthew.. I have felt the same..

Do you miss some aspects of Pentecostalism that you cannot find elsewhere?

I miss the closeness and the almost automatic membership in a community. Pentecostals seem to be to a large extent very "sweet" and generally kind, 'warm hearted' people..I miss that feeling of connection that you are not on your own in this journey of life.. other people are walking through it with you too..And the sense of validation.. from having a bunch of people believe the same way of you and verbalize/act it out every week...

What are your religious leanings now?
I'm agnostic. Basically all my reasons to believe were built on having "felt" /pente experiences etc.. I had never done any research.. when I finally found that that didn't "prove" anything 2 or 3 years ago.. I just lost all my reasons to believe.. so I stopped believing. At the moment I don't have any reason either to believe or not believe.. hence the agnosticism... (I really don't think there is a God though)..

What generation are you ?
Gen Y (1984 baby!)

Have you had success after you left? What kind of success?
hmmm.. Leaving pentecostalism helped me to confront and challenge the abuse I suffered as a child. It has allowed me to acknowledge reality.

What do you think are your prospects for the future?
Is it finally ok to say "I don't know!!" ? ;)
As a pente I could never say that .. I always had to have "faith" and "trust" that God was going to work it out great.

What do you think are the prospects for Pentecostalism?
unfortunately yes.. it has gone on for this long.. I don't think it is going to go away overnight.. perhaps if more of the world becomes more westernized/secularized and more educated.. less people in Latin America etc will be easy prey for pentecostalism (simply because they can't reason/haven't been brought up with a rational mindset!) however I think either way it will still continue to some extent.. God knows it if educated Phd's in the west are still falling for it.. it might NEVER end..

How has your system of morality changed?

I feel very good about loving me and taking care of me.. I see other humans as more "good" creatures.. rather than evil ones.. Leaving pentecostalism (and christianity as a whole) has allowed me to live more in line with MY OWN morals.. I can now just be non judgemental, and see not constantly see people as bad/guilty.

2007-12-15T13:11:00.001-08:00

Don't pray for the pain not to hit you
As you try to bend your steady logic to their will
Don't cry as the blood hits the wall
Squirts from your tender brain

It won't work

clarity

2007-12-15T12:53:00.000-08:00

In the past couple days, partly, in the aftermath of what happened to Matthew (I say
"what happened to Matthew" not because I don't ascribe any personal responsibility to him but because I believe that 98% of what he did to be something that happened to him, I believe he had a severe mental if not personality disorder) and in discussing these events with other people, I have had a sense of sudden clarity about certain things in my life.

For one thing I feel like I have finally been able to understand the point of view that my parents were working from all these years. I feel that I suddenly understand myself a lot better too. I am wary of sudden and intense feelings, as sometimes merely sentiments rather than signals of any sort of true intuition and truth. I feel I have come to understand the point of view that my parents work from. I mean I feel I have come to see it like I never saw it before. As a child growing up I obviously was familiar with my parents' viewpoint, intimately familiar.. but I never viewed it from an unbiased perspective and truly just observed it for what it was.

I was watching CNN a couple nights ago in light of the Matthew story host of one of the programs was interviewing a psychologist. She mentioned that there were problems with the pentecostal/charismatic faith and the interviewer asked her what problems.. she highlighted three that struck me..

circular logic
people being told that their feelings are wrong
and people being blamed when religion fails to "work" for them

I don't know if it was the clarity and detachment of being away at University or what but... I have been able to somewhat think of the events in my life and look at them from a different perspective that I was never able to reach before... When she mentioned "circular logic" it's hard for me to express what I was thinking... I was thinking, "you got it right on target lady.. you couldn't have hit any closer to the bullseye." I felt very validated. And I was also thinking "THIS is what I have been struggling against all my life." I have ALWAYS been trying to reason with my parents and believing that they operated on a system of logic!! And finally I understand that they DON'T!!! This is a somewhat interesting discovery.. but so is the fact that I mean I have/had been living with these people for 21 years and I am trying to reason all through that time and it has been like banging not my head but the bare tender flesh of my brain against a wall. I cannot express the frustration of trying to use logic (I just plain did not know any better.. forgive me logic is a part of who I am.. and I just assumed that everybody operated by it!) with people that by choice or for whatever reason, live by a system of illogic (and yet claim they don't... don't get me started.. this is a just a whole other story.. dealing with someone that denies their own illogic). I cannot begin to explain the frustration of living in a religious nuthouse. It has hit me with a piercing clarity that I have been watching the blood squirt from my brain for a long time.. I have been using my logic (because it is a part of who I am) and yet at the same time I watch myself.. I watch the name I call myself "whyicantbelieve".. I watch myself, I observe my life and watch how I have asked why, and denied and prayed not to been me. I have prayed many many times in my life to abandon my logic. And I have prayed that my brain would NOT work the way it does, that I would not see the contradictions or see things with such a piercing clarity. I have prayed so many times in my life to see things differently, and for reality, (not the outside reality primarily but) the reality that is me and my perception to be different. If I have a problem holding my own opinion or logic, it has hit me with piercing clarity that on many many occassions I have "prayed" to not have my opinion. I have PRAYED to change my logic and morals at will. I have prayed so many times to not be me but to be whatever suited the situation. Many times in my life I have prayed that I could change my opinion and my logic to line up with that of other people and to line up with crazy facts that did not fit. If I find it easy to forget my opinion and forget what I think.. perhaps this is why. I have tried very hard to do this. I have prayed so many times to not have logic. If I could have cut out my brain I honestly think at certain point in my life I would have.

When I was growing up it was very important to think as other people thought. Thinking for yourself (which I found it by my nature impossible to do)and by extension thinking, was punished severely. When I was a teenager.. I thought I just wanted/needed to find one person that would stand with me to hold my opinion, then I could just choose what to think. Now I realize that I don't need anyone, I just need the freedom to have my own opinion and think whatever I want and not have people tell me I am wrong.

I also realized that for a long time I have also been trying to FEEL differently. I have been trying to be MORE emotional for a long time rather than accepting myself, calm the way I am. Many times in my life I have felt pressure to be more emotional. I have been trying to have emotions that I can sort of like manipulate.. rather than just accept. I have sought to change me.. to the very core of what I am... I think I have to accept me as less emotional than some people. This is hard to accept.. but it is a revelation that I tried to be this way. I never realized that I had actively tried to make myself emotional, and less logical and liable to lose control emotionally.

I was deeply affected by Matthew's death because I felt that so many events and circumstances in his life mirrored my own. It has made me think about my own life..\

I have been thinking how greatful I am to have been given a good education (believe me my education was NOT without flaws..)but maybe I should say a chance at a good education. I had the outside imput of a lot of people besides my parents. And I learnt a lot in high school about the value of working hard, and thinking. I am immensely grateful that I was not put in a homeschool system where everything was dumbed down (and believe me if I had I would have dumbed myself down as well). My brain wasn't caged completely, especially in the intellectual sense.

I realize now.. I think that my parents antipathy for teenagers likely would have emerged regardless of whether I got into my prestigious high school or not. Likely my parents did feel some religious antiintellectual antagonism towards me when I got into this school (as well as no doubt some of their own jealousy of my abilities). I understand now why my emotional needs were put on the backburner.. while my parents told me to "forgive" for the benefit of their church.

The other thing I've realized is that I've been unable to progess socially because of my parents own lacking social skills. Watching how my parents were, when I thought they were God invalidated my own developing social skills, really a lot. I remember lots of occassions when I thought "what is their big problem with this person.. they are making too big a deal out of this.. " and I later abandoned my own perceptions for theirs.

I watch how my parents cling to people and act needy with them and encourage me to act needy, and perpetuate the sense of their own incompleteness and neediness. I have been watching how my parents look for approval in other people with Phd's or money and find their worth in having these people's approval. I have watched myself do it as well.. and seen that although it feels good and 'right' it is very damaging to my sense of self. This is very difficult to accept because I really want to do it (I want to cling to people).. it is so comfortable.. and it seems so right. and it feels SOOO good... not just on an 'enjoyable' level but it also feels 'right' too.. perhaps this "feeling right" deal is precisely where the trap is..

This is not my own opinion though (my own opinion seems so boring and .. a less happy way to live life though.. ) It is hard figuring out that your parents are wrong.

I feel I have been struck suddenly with clarity into my parents and my relationship and why they treat me the way they do. Talking to people this week online since Matthew's death I have come to understand why my parents deal with me and life the way they do, it is part of the religion they belong to. The religion dictates that it's a virtuous thing to beat your children, the religion dictates that it's a virtuous thing to avoid getting mental health help for your children, the religion dictates that too much learning is bad, that it's a virtuous.. and in fact the thing to do to tell people "I'm having trouble with my teenager.. please pray." It's the virtuous.. and just a cultural thing to do to tell your friends that the devil is attacking your daughter.. I was talking to someone this week and they said "Well they WOULD do that!" It struck me that this person was not at all surprised and considered their behaviour predictable and practically a product of the movement. However I never imagined my parents as being immersed in a culture and influenced by it.. I always thought that they honestly willed these decisions or actions themselves.. now I realized.. a lot of the things they did were really products of the movement..

I realize now why my parents still think they are doing it ALL right.. They did things by their book.. I realize why it is impossible for me to explain the error of their ways to them.

Something I realized this week is that I have always had severe doubts about my logic.. I have always suspected and been suspicious of my logic. I always felt that my parents were working on a system of logic and when what I saw didn't line up with what they were saying I felt that somehow somewhere along the way I must have reasoned wrong. I felt a perpetual doubt of my logic because of this and lived (and live to a large extent) doubting my logic.. I always felt that there was some thing that my brain wasn't big enough to percieve.. that I was somehow missing it in some way.. I never before wrapped my mind around the idea that they were operating in illogic, that their system of looking at the universe was not logical.. It has been an enormous relief to realize that MY LOGIC IS NOT WRONG!! I always thought that my parents circular logic was a much higher logic that I couldn't grasp.. that it was so far beyond me..

I watched how this illogic and cognitive dissonance killed Matthew, in fact (I believe) it is what drove him to do the things he did. I watched this boy in all this pain, and let me tell you the pain was splayed all over the message board. This boy was loudly crying out and complaining of all the pain he was in. Whoever said angry people that kill don't talk.. they are calm.. and controlled.. did not meet Matthew.. this boy talked and complained.. and his pain was scattered everywhere.. And he revealed too the cognitive dissoance... He KNEW what his family was telling him was wrong and he KNEW it would not work, I have reason to believe he tried hard to make it work.. but he still doubted himself.. He was terrified that his parents would be proven right.. that he would end up believing as they did again and invalidating all of his pain.. and all the things he KNEW were true. His parents constantly invalidated him. His mother had the narcissm to tell him even after he left the church that he was a prophet and this was why he was leaving, the devil was attacking him because he was going to be such a great man of God. I believe Matthew felt that he could not escape this, he was not strong enough to hold on to his opinion and stick with what he knew that what his mother was believing and saying were lies.. he doubted himself to the extent that.. he felt he could only validate himself and his own truth.. with his own death.. And he even felt the need to validate his disagreement with her "man of God prophecy" and attempt at writing his life, by being the opposite of a man of God.. a murderer.. Matthew's acts to me speak emphatically to me of the depth of pain that he was in.. and the depth of emotional abuse that he suffered at the hands of his mother and the church. I believe it was cognitive dissonance and invalidation that killed Matthew Murray AND those other people.

sick and sad

2007-12-12T21:03:00.000-08:00

Matt I feel sick when I think what you've done
ohh Matt what did you go and do ?!
This was you
And it wasn't you

Now it's all over far too soon
And there is no other side
For better or for worse
You'll never find a resolution
In death
I wish you had been whole enough to listen
I wish they had listened when you cried
I feel sick when I think you're dead
I feel sick when I hear they're dead
Matt what did you go and do ?
Matt I am sorry that your soul was so dark
I don't know who made it that way
You or them or both
I am sorry that no light was able to pierce the mist
The pain and the abuse
And still we prayed for you to be okay

I don't know who is to blame
I am so sorry and so so angry
Why did you have to end it this way ?
And leave us all with this sick sick feeling
Matt what were you thinking ?

Matt I don't know how they drove you to this point
I still feel all the pain inside
Of where you and I have been
The screaming berating parents
Controlling demeaning parents
I am so sorry for all you went through
I lived your life too
And now this is all
Just this pain
There is nothing more
Nothing pray to right the wrongs

I wanted there to be more to your life so badly
You didn't deserve this, this end
And I'm sick over what you did
I'm sick over how this all ended

Matt you found the wrong words and the wrong music
I don't know how you feel into this trap
Before any of us could help you out
The pit was too deep for us to reach
Any ladder that could get you out
I'm sorry
I'm sorry for all they've done to you
And now it's driven you this far
I am so sorry now that it's over

And I wish you had known
There is nothing on the other side
I wish you had had the strength to leave and leave for good
Money wouldn't have mattered
How did you just let go of who you were
Lying there dead on the carpet

Why did you end it like this
I am so sorry that the hope was driven from your soul
By the leaden raindrops of a mother's words
Certainty crushing certainty of the untruth
I am so sorry you couldn't find someone to listen

And I lived there too in that cage
I was so trapped in the nuthouse
Blood pouring from a delicate brain
When you bang it against the wall
Over and over and over again
And you can't even find your logic
Anymore, far less your breathe or your voice

Bright lights and banging on doors
Loud words and no sleep
Will mould you logic to theirs

oh Matt why did you do this ?
Why did you end it this way ?
Was the hope so driven from your soul ?
Matt why couldn't we help you ?
Matt I am so sorry we couldn't help you
I wish we had known
I wish someone had known what they were doing

Matt your brain was so hurt
So crushed you never found out there was no other side
I wish you had known
And I wish you had stayed here
I wish the pain wasn't so great that you had to leave
You deserved a chance to hope
You deserved a chance at life
I don't know who to blame, you or them
I am so sorry you had to go
I am so sorry you found the wrong way out

broken

2007-12-12T13:37:00.000-08:00

Matthew I am sorry you are dead. I feel awful about what has happened. I wish you were still alive. I am so sad over what has happened to you. I feel like a part of me has died too. I can’t get what happened out of my mind. What you did and the fact that you are dead now. I am so sorry that your life had to end this way I wish it didn’t. I wish you had gotten some help. I wanted someone, I wished the whole world would hear your cries for help. You cried many many times I know but no one listened. I am so so so sorry that you were beyond help. I wish we could have fixed that we could have un-fixed what they had done.. I could have been you in another life.. I am so sorry you found this way out.. I am so sad that they hurt you like this... I am so sad that no one understands how much pain you were in and how much they hurt you.

I feel awful about the way your parents treated you.. and the church..

WHY did they have to treat you this way ?
WHY did it have to end this way ?
WHY did they have to hurt you like this..

I wish you hadn't died.. you never got a chance at the life you deserved.

Matthew

The broken clock is a comfort
It helps me sleep tonight
Maybe it can stop tomorrow
From stealing all my time

And I am here still waiting
Though I still have my doubts
I am damaged at best
Like you've already figured out

I'm falling apart
I'm barely breathing
With a broken heart
That's still beating
In the pain
There is healing
In your name
I find meaning
So I'm holding on
I'm holding on
I'm holding on
I'm barely holding on to you

The broken locks were a warning
You got inside my head
I tried my best to be guarded
I'm an open book instead
And I still see your reflection
Inside of my eyes
That are looking for purpose
They're still looking for life

I'm falling apart
I'm barely breathing
With a broken heart
That's still beating
In the pain
Is *there* healing
In your name
I find meaning
So I'm holding on
I'm holding on
I'm holding on
I'm holding on
I'm barely holding on to you

dont pray

2007-12-11T10:29:00.000-08:00

don't breathe
don't widen your eyes and ask why
don't say you don't understand

you know very well you understand.
you understand better than anybody
why things are the way they are
you constructed it with your own destructive hands and words

over and over like a damp piercing rain
on a small child's angel fluff
you showed no remorse
you knew so much and you didn't know
because you chose not to know

don't ask why
you know your own screams
and angry words inside your head
you know the things you said
when a small child is listening

don't say you don't remember
you are only deluding yourself
don't pray unless you're going to pray for forgiveness
for what you've done
you know you forever find refuge in your prayers like crocodile tears

for Matthew

2007-12-11T10:05:00.000-08:00

I am so sad for you. I am so sad your life has ended this way, when we all hoped for so much better for you.

I am sorry no one took the time, while there was still time, a time when you were listening, to listen. I am sorry you couldn't find the words to say to make your parents listen. I am sorry you didn't get the help you needed.. Caged in a religious nuthouse all your life, you got all the wrong kinds of help. I am sorry you never found the right help. I am sorry you found the all wrong words and the wrong voice.

I am so sad for what has happened to you now. Now I feel like a part of me has died with you. I could have been you.. they almost killed me too. I am so broken, I wanted resolution to what they did too. I wanted the people that treated you wrongly to know that they were wrong. I wanted you to live and prove them wrong..

I am sorry you found hope and resolution in all the wrong places and I'm so sorry for the abuse that made you vulnerable to that. I am sorry there is no healing now except to go on and live like I wished you would have, to find hope and resolution not in others destruction but in ourselves, the thing they tried to destroy. I'll live and I'll try to build something for what you couldn't.

yesterday

2007-12-11T09:16:00.000-08:00

I spent yesterday very confused... and very emotional. I couldn't think straight at all yesterday it seemed. It started on Sunday I think when my dad was telling me he was going to invite a friend of ours over and then call me.. It was stressful talking to him.. and then I started worrying about people liking me..

It just all seemed to go downhill from there.. I just started feeling like I needed people.. and sort of guilty that I was not doing it right with them.. and that really upset with myself and feeling like I ought to be struggling/striving more.. and that prevented me from accepting things just as they were and studying Latin.

Then yesterday I just got so emotional when I heard about Matt Murray and read the stuff on ex pente.. I started remembering all these things from when I was a teenager like the way my parents treated me and the atmosphere of entrapment and judgement for my personality etc. I felt pretty awful about the shootings since I couldn't help but identify so much with Murray.. he was 23 the same age as me and he wrote over and over that he felt his life was going nowhere and he felt trapped..I cannot help but identify with that "life is going nowhere" and trapped sentiment to such a degree. I just felt horrible and angry for the things that had been done to him, obviously by his parents and other people and I was very very upset that his life had ended this way. I identified to the point where I felt that almost a small part of me had ended that way and I felt very very sad. I felt almost like this was so easily how MY life could have gone.. I mean I am a girl and girls are much less prone to act out and do violent things that boys but I often fear that if I were a boy I might have developed some more antisocial or agressive traits. I was so angry, so angry at the people that hurt him. I was so so angry, I wanted them to hurt. I wanted everone to know how deeply they'd hurt him..

I was most of all really sad I think for his life ending in such an awful way. I wanted resolution. I wanted the wrongs to be righted. I wanted him to find a way out and prove to those people that he was good enough, just as good as they were.. I wanted the people to know that they'd done very wrong.

I didn't want him to be a villian. I didn't want his life to end like that.

emotional about shooter from my message board

2007-12-10T14:42:00.000-08:00

I am trying to study today but it is quite hard since I am quite emotional. This morning I recieved a note that someone from one of the message boards I frequent may have been involved in a shooting yesterday in Colorado... then I found out that he actually was involved.. he was the shooter.. he came onto the message board and posted in between the two shootings..

I feel so sad. I feel sad for this boy. He was the same age as me 23.. and much of his frustration at least what was expressed on the board stemmed from his attending a church mission training program a couple years ago..and feeling rejected because apparently they criticized him for asking too many questions and being too introverted (this brings back strong memories of being criticized and rejected for both of those things growing up.. )He also mentioned the widespread hypocrisy and blatant popularity contest that goes on in church/church youth groups.. which I have experienced. Also this hits very close to home because at one point in my life, I actually I applied for a program very similar to the one where he had the bad experiences.. I applied to go to a progam at the International House Of Prayer program in Kansas City in 2003..)

I can't help but ask questions like "where were his damn parents ?!" and "didn't they see that he was struggling! why didn't they try to help him ?!"

I am sorry... I wanted to say this 8 years ago when Columbine happened.. no I'm not going to say the politically correct thing and say he was wrong.. I suppose he was wrong (God knows I could have been one of those people in that church.. God knows the girls.. they could have been going through just as hard a time with their parents and doubt)..but I don't actually feel sorry for the victims.. I empathize only with the shooter.. I feel very very bad for him.. I am sorry to say I hope that the YWAM pople learn some sort of lesson from this..

despairing of finding love..

2007-12-01T07:46:00.001-08:00

Today I am despairing about whether I will ever find love. Actually I have been seriously despairing for a long time (since perhaps early 2003 actually), I just never realized it..

Ever since I figured out that it didn't quite "work" the way that all the good people at church said it should work with respect to finding the right guy.. I have been seriously and hopelessly dispairing, in the real sense of turning your back on God too..

I have also been "resisting" reality.. that was my way of despairing.. To sort of struggle against and deny reality..

But you know the thing with me is that it seems any sort of romantic relationship that is going to start just fizzles.. Which is VERY disappointing and VERY frustrating..And then I think I have a mental block towards the idea that something might happen without me knowing..I guy might like me and come to like me a lot without me knowing. (Perhaps this has something to do with my need to control poeple..) I think I also have a fear that if I get into a relationship with someone that guy is going to try to control me.. Or someone that I don't like will try to "convince" me and invalidate me/my feelings and change my mind.. I HATE the idea of someone changing my mind! or thinking that they can change my mind.

But I was thinking yesterday.. I think a lot of this is my parents' programming and hearsay.. None of the guys I know try to control me.. Alex and Mike.. and Chris and other people.. none of them have tried to control me.. or tried to invalidate me. I also was remembering the story of someone who's present love, apparently loved them while they were involved with another guy.. and only when she and this guy broke up did her present love come in and sort of communicate his feelings. Perhaps it is not such a scary thing to be surprised by someone liking you. It just scares me though.. a LOT..

I don't know perhaps I will never find love.. Lately I feel so left out though.. Perhaps I will go back to Trinidad and my safe little box (: where I don't need to find love...

Actually the truth is.. I DON'T KNOW whether I will ever find love.. Maybe it is ok not to know that.. and to just live in the uncertainty..

"making" people

2007-11-30T20:44:00.000-08:00

Today I've been thinking a lot of things.. Tonight I did my 8th Logic test and it went somewhat ok..I got 77.8% which is not stellar but possibly not too shabby either.. considering it was my best...with everything else I had to do. One thing while I was taking the test I kind of told myself, "it doesn't matter what I get on this test because no matter what happens I will accept it either way and also the main thing is that I'm alive and I'm here and I'm breathing." I also was sure that I was doing my best and that I was doing the right thing taking the test right then. It was weird because I kind of felt as happy about getting 78% as I did about getting 100% in my last Logic test.. weird eh ?

A line from a lifehouse song is touching me today, "I found out how to make momma proud.. be real quite don't talk to loud. I tried, I tried to disappear."

I have tried very hard to disappear too.. I have tried very hard to disappear..

I spent a lot of 2004 and 2005 and 2006 trying to master the art of disappearing..I was partly successful.. or perhaps I only managed to fool myself and people..

Right now I am just feeling a lot of anger towards a lot of people in Trinidad.. I am wishing to be honest that a lot of people who hurt me would go to hell (hahaha from someone that does not believe in hell any longer :)

Lately I've been thinking a lot about my people issues..

1 thing that I realized is that I seem to feel the need to change/fix people.. somehow I don't feel good enough about myself unless I feel like I have "made" them like me.. this has become clear to me through my relationships with a few people.. one of them being a professor.. I've found myself telling my best friend a few times, "I just don't know what to do with her.. What should I do with her ? she's so nice!!" Then I realized it had nothing to do with me, she was/is just being who she is.. I have less than I would like to think :) to do with it.. It's a bit of an odd, and somewhat bewildering feeling...

2 The other thing I realized is that sometimes things will be better with people and sometimes worse... sometimes a LOT better and a lot worse.. and for the most part (apart from seeking professional help to change this perhaps) I can accept just accept this and for the most part just accept people as they are... Try my best to let them be who they are..

I found it was a great relief, one that I almost never feel to quit struggling with the people thing and just go and do my homework... It was a relief to not feel all this guilt that there was something more I needed to be "doing" about it.

The other thing I've realized is that my mother always criticized my interactions with people, she always mirrored her own discontent in her interactions with people onto mine, and wanted to know why I couldn't manipulate people the way some others could, or basically I didn't get the same reaction from others as I might have if my personality was different. In this way she sort of taught me that it was unacceptable to just accept how my relationship with other people was going and that I needed to try to "make" them do something. Perhaps a whole lot of my self worth is tied up with "making" pople do things..

stressed... and still thinking about lh

2007-11-28T15:35:00.001-08:00

Today I feel very stressed. I really want to do well on my courses but I just feel like there isn't enough time to get everything done, with this emotional disorder.. I have less time than I feel I should.. and it is really frustrating!! I am just struggling with the idea that THIS is NOT RIGHT! I should be able to do better than this and have more productive time!! It is so hard to accept that this is the best I can do...

I kind of feel guilty actually accepting that this is my best.. I feel guilty not freaking out and getting mad at myself or frustrated. Because then I am not sure I am doing my best.. It is hard to gauge if I am doing my best. It is really hard for me to tell this. And it is hard for me to movtivate myself to do my best without freaking out etc

I am also getting really uptight about next week and the week after. I am getting really worried about my state of mind then and ability to feel good and prepare for exams with no one around. I am worried that I might start feeling really depressed and that this might compromise my ability to study and that worst of all it will be my fault because I didn't freak out and I let this happen. I am also really struggling with performance anxiety in relation to friends. I am struggling with the sense that whatever I do it is never good enough. I think there were times as a child when I thought that I did my best with people and that who I am was good enough but my mother didn't and she criticized me.

I don't know if I approach friends from the right perspective.. I feel like I am very scared of getting depressed again and of the feeling of emptiness.. and just inability to do anything. I am so scared of that.. but perhaps I need to remind myself that I have already accepted that.. and already accepted that possibility.

I am kind of worried about my Latin too.. I really think I won't be able to do as good a job in the exam as I have been able to in the in class quizes and this really upsets me.. because I feel like I'll be so guilty and it will be so much my fault.. I feel like some people might be really disappointed and that they might judge me and that they will be right in their judgments. But I guess actually this is not true.. only I know the whole story about my guilt or innocence.. Only I know the whole story about how hard it is for me.. no one else can know that or define that.. Their judgment stands or falls to the extent that it fits with my own.

I am quite stressed about physics too. I feel like for sure I don't have enough time to study and I don't know how to motivate myself to study quickly and be effective.. I feel like I am not being effective at the moment. I don't know how. I signed up for this prep 101 thing and I am paying a lot of money for it.. I hope it does some good :)

I am still thinking about lifehouse a little.. the effect.. the shock value or whatever from the concert hasn't quite worn off..

seeing Lifehouse..

2007-11-27T16:19:00.000-08:00

I still feel so emotional after seeing Lifehouse yesterday. Today as I was looking for something to eat for dinner I remembered Jason singing the line from Broken, "I tried my best to be guarded, I'm an open book instead.."

I swear when he was singing Simon I saw him dab a tear, you could argue that it was just sweat but the thing is he didn't dab at sweat again the whole night long...

Jason looked so emotional when he was singing broken.. and they rocked it/he rocked it to the point that.. it was/is really hard to tell if it was just a performance or if he was really doing a tribute to his friend.. Jason looked completely consumed in singing that song.

I am just so stunned to see this huge display of emotion.. and just the fact that nobody said anything.. nobody condemned it

You know what last night I was kind of wondering if it is any different to see them live in comparison to on a video.. I mean I was thinking either way I am not getting to meet them/discuss the songs with them.. but actually it does.. It is really an experience to watch that level of emotional display in real life.. It's quite startling.

When I was done.. I felt almost like I had been to church.. there was a level of almost validation.. and I don't know.. perhaps letting hair down ? and sort of collective sentiment ?

Speaking of church.. I find it's so interesting to note that.. I don't know why but while listening to lifehouse sing.. and watching them.. I was able to completely put out of my mind Jason's whole background.. and the whole vineyard thing, the whole missionary story.. I don't know why but thinking about it.. it's startling to me.. that I was so able to just forget that completely.. it seemed like there was no hint of it..in perhaps an odd way..

So I didn't get to meet Jason and ask him my burning question.. ie did he deconvert ?
but I don't know maybe I got some hints of an answer in the songs.. there was one song that they sang, Better Luck Next Time, that really struck me as saying that... It's a song that.. on hearing in 2005 I never got the meaning of.. perhaps I'm thinking now that since I hadn't deconverted yet the meaning went right over my head.. I'll tell you the parts that struck me.. there were a couple of lines in particular..

Stop tell me where you going
Maybe the one you love isn't there
You're going under
But you're over it all so you don't care about all that I had to see
I'd watch you wait until you come around
Around

Don't close your eyes
You need to see it all
It's no surprise
That they break you down
At least they won't give you up

those couple of lines.. "maybe the one you love isn't there" and "don't close your eyes, you need to see it all," don't tell me anyone who has deconverted isn't familiar with those sentiments in their undulled sharp force.. It is extremely painful to find that the one you love isn't there.. and it has been so tempting, you've practically been in a habit of closing your eyes.. blocking out the cognitive dissonance..

and then there's this song which I happened to see again yesterday and

Tell me all the dreams that you have let slip right through your hands
Do you feel lost inside of someone else's life

And we're not gonna live forever
Can you tell me is it now or never
I'm not gonna make up your mind

I don't wanna live without you
And I don't wanna live a lie
We'll never know till we try
Yeah we'll never know till we try

Failure is the only way to learn till you've come undone
The rest will never find out what they might have been
And we're not gonna live forever
Can you tell me is it now or never
I'm not gonna make up your mind

I don't know but somehow I can't imagine a Christian blatantly saying, "we're not gonna live forever" and I remember that this overwhelming sense of how precious life was and how little and short was one of the things that struck me on my deconversion..

Then there was also the sense of "failure" and.. just not only the disappointment that the God thing was all a sham.. and you would never get what you had so longed for.. but there was this sense of having failed.. you know you feel into a trap and believed a lie.. That sense of failure was hard to get over.."The rest will never find out what they might have been" seems to fit so perfectly with that sentiment.. for me I was always looking back.. sort of enviously at the people who didn't deconvert but managed to keep the faith.. They managed to keep the nice illusion/fairy tale intact.. but it's true they will never find out what they might have been..

The "I don't want to live without you.. and I don't want to live a lie.." sounds almost like he's dealing with a still believing spouse.. Anyway I have no clue.. this could just all be the view from my somewhat egocentric little perception of the world..

Ghost

2007-08-26T21:45:00.000-07:00

Running my hands over the features of a ghost
I still feel the flesh and warm blood
Pulsing beneath my touch

I still feel the warmth of what never really was
It clings to my fingertips
The warmth and icy wind lingers on my heart

I still want to cling to what nearly destroyed me
And I wonder if in different circumstances it could have saved me

I find myself living with a person I'm not sure I ever even bargained for
Turning over the name tag in my fingers and wondering..
Where she came from..

I rise from the ashes
And I feel them pulse through my heart
I wonder again who is this new person I'm living with
I feel all alone and all whole together once more with her

An old friend...
Devoid of the toxic false hopes but the same warm and tender touch
And I wonder if this is me, more or less than before
Than what could have been if all this, all me hadn't happened
Would I have happend more

I've been given a life I didn't bargain for
Much bigger and smaller than the one that I for some time dreamed
For the open space that now surrounds me..it feels emptier..
With just me.. all this space for me to fill

I never thought I'd miss the lines
For me to colour inside.. miss the primary limiting colours..
But now I can't help but remember the old simple picture
Red and green and blue.. no aqua or crimson..
No truth to muddy the landscape the primary colours whitewash so beautifully

pray

2007-08-26T21:42:00.000-07:00

Once again I find myself in the living room of a house I never bargained for
And yet I bargained all the same
This was exactly what I prayed and didn't pray for
The truth

Scary and terrible it is to stand all on my own
I wished so hard I didn't have to

I find myself alone with me
Instead of all the things I tried to hide behind
And its terrible and lonely to be here
And good all the same

I can't believe I can't cancel out the truth
Wish it into something I'd rather prefer
Change it
It seemed to change for a while

Everyone always gave me hope that it could change
That you could wish away and pray away, hope away truth
With just enough determination and ambition I could wish away myself
Wish away my flaws

Well I've come to bottom of this wishing well
And emerged bruised and wounded from a collision with the rocks
The hard and jagged edge of reality and the truth when you try to pretend around it

This isn't at all what I bargained for and this isn't at all what I asked for
But maybe it's what I prayed for all the same
From an even deeper part of me

the truth

2007-08-20T13:02:00.000-07:00

*sigh* I feel pretty tired today. I am struggling a lot with exhaustion lately.. at least emotional exhaustion.. The short of it is that, I am going through a lot with my friends lately. Basically I have no support.. and I feel very alone...

This is a lot for me to struggle with, one of my personal biggest struggles.. for me this is more stressful than taking a tough course.. or moving to a new city/country or struggling with some other practical crisis.. It is exhausting me.. more than any of those things...

I am very scared too.. A lot of people in my life are very mad at me over some decisions I have made.. namely the decision to go to a different city for school. It's funny how other people are able to be so certain they know what's best for you, and what "you" should do with your life.

I wonder sometimes do the people giving advice or judging and saying what someone "should" do.. think they have even half as much information about the situation as the person IN the situation... *sigh* That is the irony of judging.. On the outside we look at people and somehow assume that we know them and their situation so much better than they know themselves.. We assume ourselves so omniscient..

I am just struggling with fear about university (and to be honest I'm angry about it.. I am angry that fear is intruding on this part of my life..). Having all these people disapprove.. puts an enormous amount of pressure on me it feels like.. I know if I fail.. which is a very real possibility they will all take that as proof that they are right....

Funny.. someone falling on their face doesn't prove anyone right/wrong.. a jury deciding something doesn't prove anyone right or wrong or guilty... a jury or success or failure or public opinion does not determine the truth.. but somehow we seeem to believe and "feel" like it does...

Maybe I just have to let go of this feel of pressure.. this fear that if I fail (as I am afraid I will) it will prove them right.. and prove me wrong, to the core of my being. If I fail, I fail, if I fall I fall.. but it does not prove anything..

today as I was walking to work... (you know where this is going ;)

2007-08-13T18:55:00.000-07:00

Yes indeed .. today I was walking to work.. and as usual trying to do one thing at a time and just focus on walking while I was walking (incidentally it occured to me that this whole one mindfulness/doing one thing at a time/putting all your worries aside for the most part, thing is a big part of adulthood.../being a "grown up")...

Anyway.. while I was trying to focus on just walking.. as usual my mind was throwing a million thoughts at me.... and I started thinking about.. what was my first "adult" decision in life. The first time I really had to take responsibility for my life and what became of it. This happened when I was 16 years old and after struggling with depression for 3 and a half years at that point and just knowing that something was very wrong, I decided to go on antidepressants. As practically everyone in my life knows by now that didn't work. The first "adult" decision of my life.. was a major disaster. The further unforunate thing about this state of affairs.. was that I had went against a lot of people to make this decision.. to try antidepressants.. and when they did not "work".. when it proved to be the "wrong" decision.. I faced a horrible backlash. There was an overwhelming sense that "I was wrong" not just about the decision to take antidepressants but there was an enormous sense that "I" was wrong... about everything..

The truth is that in 2003 and when I went home I felt incredibly invalidated. I felt that I had made a mess of my life and I could only make a mess of things.. I felt in short like a horrible wretch of a person..

Anyway I was thinking about all this today (surpising how much you can think of in 20 minutes eh ?.. takes me 20 minutes to walk to work..) and it still hurts. It's an incredible scar on me.. and an incredible source of self doubt that I could have been so sure about something and been so 'wrong.'

It rocks your world to an unimaginable degree when something that you are very certain of crumbles... It makes you frankly.. and deeply question whether you have a right to be certain of anything at all.. It assails and assaults the credibility of your logic and the sanity of your mind..It makes you want to be doubtful of everything and not trust yourself. Which is how I've been living for the last 3 or 4 years.. with a profound sense that "I don't know," a sense of very deep uncertainty about myself and my opinions..

I also feel that while I was wrong in certain senses (that antidepressants were the sole solution..and my way of emotionally handling things such as the idea of getting out of bed) I was not totally wrong. In fact I was right to a significant degree, just I had some details wrong. These were details that I could not possibly have known, even experts often do not know these details.. Furthermore.. I was thinking like the 16 year old that I was at the time. A 16 given the responsibility of making a major life decision will usually make it wrong (this is why we don't generally don't approve of 16 year olds being parents or getting married or being given huge amounts of cash!). At the very least..they run a very high risk of making the wrong decision.

Recently while taking my math course. I got to interact with a lot of 16 year olds. I was stunned a little bit. I mean.. somehow it seems one always remembers oneself as *wise* and always having thought with the complexity with which one now thinks.. however.. that's not so. Talking with and listening to these 16 year olds I was surprised. They have such a simple view of the world. "If you want to be a doctor.. you just get great marks in Math and Science and then just become a doctor.." "Parents should not control their children and tell them what to study because that's just wrong." I was surprised to hear how they thought and I was surprised to recognize my 16 year old self in their statements.. I remember thinking this way.. It's very funny.. how you forget how you used to think..

I was thinking however today that failure.. does not mean that one should stay down. One has to get up and keep going. I have to get up mentally/logically.. in terms of self certainty and keep going. I was not wrong to the extent that I thought I was.

Vanilla Frappuccinos and stellar physiological emotional control

2007-08-13T18:13:00.000-07:00

hmm.. At the moment for some reason.. I have the weirdest craving for a Cafe Vanilla frappuccino (in spite of the fact that I already had one today! and then brought one home for my aunt). I kid you not, I was dreaming about it a few minutes ago! Oh well.. perhaps I can get one at 5:30 tomorrow morning *grin* You know you know something is seriously wrong with your life when you are in a position to be drinking frappuccinos at 5:30 in the morning!!! Perhaps further troubling is when you in fact of few qualms about doing so!

More seriously, I've been thinking a lot over the past couple of days.. I don't know why but my mind seems to go through periods where my thought life is very prolific and I just think of dozens of things it seems. One thing that's been on my mind is something that I read in the DBT skills training manual on Sunday.. the author was saying that some children who have the (author called it "physiological") ability would respond positively to an environment of very strict emotional control. ie "wipe that frown off of your face.. don't be irritated at that." This idea really struck me and for a reason I can't explain I can't get it out of my mind. I guess it's almost like demanding a lot academically of a gifted/very smart child, they can do what you're asking and in fact it's beneficial for them to have a demanding curriculum at school. To give them a more "lenient" curriculum and be less demanding.. would in fact be a disservice to them.. teaching them to be lazy..

However.. I just can't help thinking about it.. in this analogy.. asking a kid who's very emotional to achieve this great level of emotional control.. is similar to demanding that a kid that's not the brightest intellectually take on a very challenging class and getting mad when they can't get stellar grades.

*scratches head and ponders* I just can't help thinking how.. being unfairly demaning seems so socially acceptable in one circumstance and yet it's absolutely unaccepted in the other..

Speaking of ability to manage emotions.. Sometimes I feel frustrated that no one ever helped me with that when I was young/growing up. Like that was my weak area, other kids had weak areas such as school etc and they got extra/remedial help with that and improved.. finally getting closer to the average mark by the time they were older..but I didn't get any help. I feel that's really unfair.. that other people had help for their areas of weakness but I didn't.

wait till you hear what the endocrinologist told me.. self satisfied little grin

2007-08-12T18:33:00.001-07:00

Ok... I am seriously thinking I may have lost my mind.. or at least a little part of it..

I am staring at a stack of 7 thick books over to the right of me (ie the afformentioned books from a few days ago... btw the al gore book turned out the be boringish after all!) (none of which I am even halfway through!) and I just found out that the library is holding 4 more books for me *siiiiiigggghhhh*

Oh I just found out today that a girl from work is also going to University of British Columbia next year... great right ?! errrr...no.. someone that I don't get along with.. yikes! I hope I don't run into her much... though judging from how often I run into people from Starbucks on the street and in the TTC.. I am thinking.. crammed onto the same university campus... fat chance.. oh well who knows.. maybe even if I don't like her it will feel good to see a familiar face whether it's one you like or not ;)!!

Oh.. the other thing that I keep meaning to post here is about my appt with my endocrinologist on Wednesday.. It was.. very interesting.. First of all I was debating whether to invite/take my cousin (who we suspect also has PCOS and is waiting to see an endocrinologist). The thing is I hardly know her and there was recently a big incident between some family members and her about her weight and I did not want her to think that I was in any way making a statement about her weight. In reality I don't care (well I care that it's hurting her and she's quite upset about it), except I damn well care about her health! and insulin resistance is not something to mess around with. In the end since I hardly know her and there was already all this drama about weight and making people feel bad about it. I thought it would be wiser to just never mind.

I had a most interesting time at the endocrinologist in spite of that though.. According to the endocrinologist.. I have pretty much *fixed* my pcos.. I have done "all the right things" *slightly self satisfied little grin* namely exercise, taking metformin, being on a low carb diet. She however thinks I am on a healthy "South Beachish" diet....."Apparently" I lost weight the "healthy" way and avoided the lousy Atkins diet. She was telling me she wants to send me to a dietician to ensure that I have it down for sure (which she's sure I am).. She even gave me this little thing to write down my diet for three days to show to the dietician.. Ohhh looks of horror!!! I did not have the heart to tell her that I do not in fact follow the South Beach diet.. but rather the evil atkins one *grin*.. that although I very strictly (less strictly of late though to be honest.. I have to watch it more!) limit carbs.. unforuntately chocolate and snack foods (not to mention *oh looks of horror* diet coke) play a very integral role in my diet. *grin* Sorry I am having a little fun here.. at someone else's expense.. ;) My aunt was like rolling her eyes when I told her what the doctor said about my obviously eating right.. In any case I am mad because endocrinologist thinks I am doing so good she wants me to come off of metformin or significantly lower the dose. I was too intimidated to tell her "no." Seriously she has no clue! I think perhaps I did not give her some very important information.. I forgot to tell her that I had really just increased the dose in February and since then began to see a lot more positive changes.. even though from then to now my weight is pretty much the same.

To be honest it kind of frustrates me that some doctors and people have this very narrow minded view of weight and insulin resistance and sugar/carbs. I mean seriously I don't believe ANYONE truly understands how AWFUL I feel when I have too many carbs, no matter what my weight.. whether it's whole wheat or table sugar..

ahh well I suppose that is life... people not understanding..

the thousand things I was thinking about while trying not to think

2007-08-12T14:37:00.000-07:00

*sigh* I am sooo tired! I just came home and wiped chai syrup off of my arms.. either that or mocha..

I am feeling kind of stressed because there is a guy at work I am having an altercation with and I think he spread some rumors about me ;( Either that or whatever.. it's not pretty..

I was trying to really focus on my walking (doing one thing at a time rather than worrying about 20) on my way home but I think I was a little too emotional for that.. or tired.. I think I'm tired because I got pulled out of bed this morning. I really wasn't supposed to work today but someone from work called and asked if I could come in. I was happy because I need hours/money badly.. as I haven't worked almost for the past two months and my savings are getting badly depleted right before school... *sigh* but it's rough getting pulled out of bed! especially in order to walk for half an hour to work and then run around for 7 hours! (and then walk back home!)

While I was walking home.. (and trying to focus on only walking.. ;) my mind was thinking of a million things.. among them the fact that, maybe I should get a filing cabinet when I get to school.. ? in order to keep all my papers in order.. and possibly a bookshelf too.. (well I don't need to explain that one ;) I was also thinking that perhaps I should go to bed earlier.... Not just because one has no work and school the next day does it mean it's beneficial to stay up late.. I'm thinking although it's fun.. and a luxury to enjoy (that sucks when you can't have it).. sleeping in late is not necessarily the best thing to do all the time. I guess it's kind of like eating out or dessert.. a luxury that it's too bad you can't afford to have everyday.. even if you can it's not necessarily beneficial....possibly not studying might fall into a similar category ;)

Finally when I came home my mind ran across Tresha.. I was thinking how I learned from her a very efficient way of getting ready in the morning ie take all your clothes and stuff into the shower with you, then shower, get dressed, hang up the towel, wash your face, brush your teeth, brush your hair, do your makeup all at the same time.. It's really quite smart. Saves a lot of thought/remembering and running up and down ;)

Tresha and I have had our differences (tons of them believe me!) but I have to say I really learned a lot from her. I think both of those are a result of the fact that she has an incredibly different temperament/personality from me. Incredibly different... I was thinking about this the other day and I think she's not very touchy feely. She's not anti social or anti people but I think she has a much lighter approach to people and life in general.. I tend to be a lot deeper/moodier and I'm attracted to very deep feeling types.. However one thing I learned from Tresha is to be very efficient, and very effective. She's quite good at thinking efficiently (as evidenced partly by the above time saving "getting ready in the morning" strategy ;) and unlike me she's good at focusing on being "effective" with people and just doing what works, just to get along and make life easier.. not for any deep sort of idealistic reason but just out of practicality. This is something that partly eludes me ;) I have deep issues with 'interpersonal effectiveness' ;)

Logically I understand the idea.. but it just runs so counter to my personality.. I mean I could see getting along with people (or not!) because you love them deeply.. or because you're trying to have "perfect social skills" or accomplish something and be really popular, but the idea of getting along for the sake of simply practicality.. that kind of eludes me..

food/menu..

2007-08-10T10:46:00.000-07:00

*sigh* I feel I have so many things to sort out before University..

food
money
laundry
what to take/what not to take
spending time with friends and relatives..
reading books I have borrowed
sorting out a work study job (what's a cover letter ?)

agghh!! I feel overwhelmed!

I guess I will start with food..

Perhaps the best thing to do is to make a menu and stick to it.. so that I eat healthy.. (a buget is on the list too ;) but that is another matter.. actually I have been saving every single bill since January so I can look at my spending..)

hmmm...

things I can 'cook' (I warn you this is going to be a funny list ;)

salmon salad
caesar salad
curried duck
curried chicken
bacon and tomato sandwiches
bacon and fried eggs
poached eggs
omletes
quiche
egg salad
(notice a common theme here ? ;)
lobster/crab salad

I can also do
cream cheese/peanut butter on toast
yoghurt
atkins bars
chicken wings
chicken nuggets
ready made lasagna

as meals..

hmmm think I need to add more possible meals...

I can also do ..

lamb chops
hamburgers
steak..

although all these taste lousy the way I currently do them, I need to get some spice/mint/ marinade or something for the above...

I think I also need to learn how to make more salads.. perhaps I can content myself with just a plain old salad.. with a thousand isle dressing :(

hmm perhaps I need to look for a good thai/chinese cookbook..

buried under a stack of books...

2007-08-10T10:12:00.000-07:00

Gosh I have borrowed so many books over the past few days. I borrowed four yesterday that I have to return in a week. I am staring at the stack of them here...

Assault On Reason Al Gore (verrrrryyy interesting.. I started it yesterday and could not put it down.. he writes very well.. this one gets very philosophical.. he talks about how TV has made people care less about truth and more about entertainment.)
Imperial Life In The Emerald City
Helpless Barbara Gowdy
How Doctors Think Jerome Groopman

I wonder where to even begin..

I know you'll find this hard to believe.. but I actually have MORE borrowed books than that.. (those are just the ones I have to finish by next Thursday) I also have..

My Life Bill Clinton (this is kind of boring to be honest.. interesting sometimes but boring.. he gives too many details of details..and it feels like wading through something very dense.. it DRAGS..)
The Last Juror John Grisham (this also drags.. which is weird for John Grisham.. who knows maybe it is just me..)

ok you're thinking .. that's an enormous amount of books.. guess what I have more!

Skills Training Manual For Treating Borderline Personality Disorder..
Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy (I cannot explain.. I have been trying to finish this book since I was 17.. actually I almost finished it.. just maybe 2 sevenths in the middle I skipped.. and now I cannot remember where so yet again I am beginning it all over! just 1/7 of the way through at the moment though).

Ok wish me luck ;) I am trying to somewhat triage these books...Figure out what I really want to read...

Anna Karenina
Skills Training Manual
Imperial Life
and Assualt On Reason are somewhere near the top

-1st post

2007-08-10T09:52:00.000-07:00

Ok this is a post from a couple of days ago.. (from Tuesday August 8th, today is Friday ;)

I decided to post it just to get the ball rolling...

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I've had an interesting couple days today and yesterday. Yesterday was interestng for several reasons. First I was just finishing up this book, A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry, that I began back in January but hadn't had a chance to finish due to school. I picked it up from the library last week and have been reading it.

It's about these four people that end up living together in India during a government 'emergency' in the 1970's. They're all very different and it paints vivid pictures of their lives. It gets very interesting and gripping near the end. You get excited and have so many hopes for the characters. However the end is very depressing, the author mutilates three of the characters in shocking detail by the end. It's very sad and very shocking.. difficult to process emotionally.. All I can think of is the line in the delirious song,

India you're too hurt to cry

Oprah had this book on her book club, maybe I will try to read through her reviews and discussion of it and see what she had to say.

Between this book and making a mad (and it turned out failed, someone had already borrowed it)dash to the library to try and retrieve the newest Harry Potter book. I also went to the optometrist. Ask anyone with a -10 perscription (we won't even broach the topic of retinal detachment ok ?!) going to the optometrist is rather depressing.. because you're used to always getting bad news ie "your myopia is getting worse, you need stronger lenses." Well one of my eyes is worse.. but I kind of knew that since this is the eye that I had the retinal detachment in.. but the big news is that I am getting hard contacts. I had been toying with the idea for a long time but yesterday the optometrist actually agreed to it and I told her to order them.

Yesterday I also told a whole bunch of people at work that I am moving to BC.. a little scary because the thought occurs to me, what if there is a snag and I don't move, that will be soo embarassing!

Today the drama continues.. I am set to visit the endocrinologist at 2pm. It's a 'big' day because I had to wait 8 months for this appt though to be honest I don't think she is going to tell me anything new. I think I am doing pretty well on my own with metformin and my low carb diet if I may say so ;)

About the fifth thing that happened yesterday was that I called up another Starbucks store to get shifts and who answers but the same manager who was training at our store last month. I said I'm looking for hours and he was like "I can give you 40 hours a week!" Great right ? err no. It was rather unnerving since this guy was pretty much hitting on me the whole time he was at our store AND he has a wife *rolls eyes* *sigh*

welcome to my new blog :) :)

2007-08-10T09:46:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my new blog :) :)

I put this blog up because I am again moving far away and I thought this was a good way to keep in touch with friends and family and give very regular updates *grin* I hope my friends and family put up blogs too.. so I can stay updated as well.. Blogs are amazing !

*sigh* gosh I've become so practical lately!!

The Fake Van Gogh

We don't know

On fire something solid to wrap my mind around...

Poem

(not) Avoiding people's feelings

Casey Anthony

Uncertainty as an adult and the fear of facing mistakes

I could be doing the wrong thing (taking risks and tolerating uncertainty)

Emotional fallout of school

When it looks like I have failed...

Engineers in bikinis

More Kendall Payne (gee this reminds me of my compulsive Lifehouse references on my old blog :p)

block... hmm

Sad

reaching for...

Physics...

radical self acceptance

The dilemma for high achieving girls

strangeness

Where's my fishbowl ? ...

Fifteen and bitter..or not... hmmm

profoundly... confused

Happy New Year

ordinary love

ENFP relationships..

ENFPs as Friends

ENFP

I just found this.. I think this sounds a lot like me.. for the first time one of these Myers Briggs things seems to fit..

Portrait of an ENFP - Extraverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving(Extraverted Intuition with Introverted Feeling)

The Inspirer

Careers for ENFP Personality Types

Things I did yesterday..

Life

It's different

orgasmic chocolate elitist antieugenic physics in spherical coordinates

All surpassing love

The Child

Dream

Arrogance=good...

a better life

faith.. what was..

sensitivity

softness

resolution cry

the Vineyard Christian Fellowship after 6 years.. it still feels like home .. and not like home..

pain..

John Mayer: In Repair

sensus

hold

underneath

find..

caffeine and math + pretention

Blind

Art and uniting the senses with reality.. ??

martyrdom and suicide and truth...

Grasp

Seattle, I can't forget Seattle..

let it

The worst nightmare

giftedness

the point of falling

falling..

when i fell

the sun from east or south

inside a lung

certainty

breathe

guilt

knowing

certainty

sticky clarity

not a happy camper

FFFRustrated

to life

to life

answers to a survey on a msgboard

clarity

sick and sad

broken

dont pray

Portrait of an ENFP - Extraverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving
(Extraverted Intuition with Introverted Feeling)

wait till you hear what the endocrinologist told me.. self satisfied little grin