I loved him. He needed time to think and that was ok- he was worth waiting for… and waiting for… and waiting for. Finally I realized I had waited away my life for an answer he had already given me: Had he loved me back, I would not have had to wait.

The weight of it all rests on my shoulders.

And I rest my head on his shoulders.

Sometimes I find myself being dissatisfied with the smallest detail. I take a step back and realize nothing is out of place…it’s just me, losing my stranglehold on the control in my emotions.  There’s so much at stake. There’s so much going wrong. So much that I just need that one thing in my life that is going well to be…PERFECT.

But the weight of it all could break us.

The weight of that need shouldn’t be his to bear.

He never need be perfect.

Yet I need him to be perfect.

The weight of it all…

I’m so lost in my life right now. My career isn’t on track, my personal growth seems stunted, even my learning curve isn’t what it used to be anymore.

I’m just hanging on so tight now…I’m so scared I’m going to fall.

Sometimes, he’ll throw nerdy facts my way. Did you know that the Emerald Buddha isn’t actually made of Emerald? Do you know what happened to the Donner Party for which Donner Pass was named after? Tweakers do exist.

Sometimes, he’ll say, “Those on the counter, they’re for you,” and I’d look and there’d be a vase of flowers.

Sometimes, he threatens to throw me over his shoulder and carry me in an undignified manner if I complain one more time that my feet hurt. Then he’ll sit on a bench with me at 1 am for an hour and just talk about nothing and everything all at once.

Sometimes, he’ll piss me off with his conservative, Republican ideas (that some I secretly agree with, but shhh!) then smile, kiss me on the forehead and say, “Goodnight, sweetheart. Let’s finish arguing tomorrow.” At which point, I know he knows I absolutely won’t pick it up for another go of rage over politics until the next hot button issue hits the news while we’re watching it together.

Sometimes, he’ll just ask me if I have plans for the next weekend…if I say no, then he’ll get that look. “I’ve got something up my sleeve for you.”

And everyday, I have something to look forward to and something to smile about. How’d I get so lucky?

Almost exactly two years ago, I was about to post this video. I know that because this has been sitting on my “Saved Drafts” since October 2009.

I listened to this song again today, and realized it didn’t mean the same thing it did two years ago. It didn’t hurt. It didn’t make me feel numb inside. I waited with bated breath for the shattering of my heart as I flinched against painful memories that were sure to bombard me. Instead, the entire song went by and I was perfectly fine. In fact, I played it over. I scrambled to find some kind of meaning to the song. But I felt…nothing. Maybe a little bit of pity for the girl that I had been when I had my heart broken. Maybe a little bit of cynicism for what the words used to mean to me. But I didn’t feel any pain or sorrow or anger.

I smiled at that realization, because it means that I have truly grown.

Sure, maybe it took about two years. And sure, he’s still in there occasionally popping back into my life (and pissing me off).

But I have moved on.

Time really does heal all things. I didn’t believe it back when I first started this blog, its html codes bursting with angst and pain, when everyone told me that “this too shall pass.” It didn’t feel like it EVER would. I kept waking up day after day with that sharp stab of pain in a part of me that seemed so empty and hollow. How could it hurt when I no longer had a heart? But those were the days when the hurt was fresh.

Time has done its work. It has patched up a wound that I didn’t think would ever stop bleeding. Sure, time didn’t necessarily take away the scars. I am far more cautious and a lot more cynical about falling head over heels in love, but I don’t hurt anymore. I’m not even angry anymore. I’m simply…done.

I look back at those memories and cherish them for the good times and learn from the terrible times.

I feel like I’ve really accomplished something in healing. I feel like I’m free.

The song is right, everything changes. Thank God things change for the better, too.

Given the chance to turn back time and change things, I don’t think I would take it. I think I’m a much happier person on my own now and I don’t need the kind of blindness that I once had. I was so innocent and naive back then. I really did believe that if you loved someone hard enough, it would solve everything. I believed that if I could become what he wished I were, I could make him love me. I tore myself to pieces trying to figure out who he wanted me to be. In the end, I lost myself.

In the last couple of years, I have learned so much, grown so much into my own that I don’t think I would ever give that up…not even for a chance to save what was. I think because in the back of my mind, in the darkest echoes in my heart, I know I couldn’t save anything. The mistakes were made too early in that relationship that it defined the relationship. If that was what that relationship meant…it couldn’t, shouldn’t, be saved. It would have destroyed us both.

But I loved him. That is the only thing I was ever certain of in that relationship. I loved him with that blinding rush of feeling that completely takes over and changes you. I don’t know if I will ever feel that again, and I don’t know if I ever want to feel that again. I will always remember it, though. It will forever be the feeling I will measure everything against. Just as the level of despair I felt at that time will also be the measure I use to see how far I have fallen.

I played the song again.

Everything changes. And that’s a good thing.

I’ve been depressed. REALLY depressed.

Like flinch at mirrors, eat everything in sight, sit on the couch and NOT SHOWER FOR THREE DAYS kind of depressed. Yes, it’s very, very bad. I’ve been radiating so much sadness that every time my dog looked at me, he made whimpering noises.

I mean, yes, the economy has taken its toll on me. The lying to my mother about not having a boyfriend is taking its toll on me (oh, yeah, that’s a whole other story that hurts my stomach just thinking about). The student loans looming over me is taking its toll on me. The fact that I live in a house that just breeds pressure and stress is taking its toll on me. Negotiating, re-negotiating, re-re-negotiating family debts with debt collectors is taking its toll on me. Knowing that I’m the single member of my family not contributing to anything is taking its toll on me.

Any time anything financial comes up, I get these surreptitious little glances from my brothers and my mom. They’re calculating how much money we can send to the Philippines so that my aunt who is recovering from the coma can have a nurse watch over her…they’re throwing out numbers and they know and I know that they’re going to have to carry my share of the burden.

I never purport to choose restaurants or dinner options because I can’t pay for it. If they ask me what I want, I can’t even voice it because I don’t feel like I’m worthy of wanting anything. And if I say something, I don’t want them to think I’m taking advantage of them.

I can’t ask my mom for money, and when she hands me that check to pay my bills, I can’t even look her in the eye.

How is it that I, the one with the fancy advanced degree I turned a blind eye to hundreds of thousands of dollars for, is sitting on the couch watching reruns of Melissa and Joey at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, not showered, and munching on stale popcorn?

I can’t even pretend to run away from my situation. Every day, when everyone gets home from work, they ask me, “Hey, have you found a job yet?”

The answer is no.

No, I haven’t. I want to storm out. I want to be indignant. I want to blame the economy.

But then I look into my mom’s eyes and I can’t. I can only blame myself.

She was right, y’know. She told me I should have sacrificed those three years in law school. I shouldn’t have gone on vacations, shouldn’t have partied, shouldn’t have lived in the nice little apartments I lived in…She warned me that I shouldn’t have spent so much time on a boyfriend (goes back to that old stomach -churning issue of how I can’t tell her that her currently good-for-nothing-directionless-unemployed daughter is dating once again), or spent so much time agonizing and crying over the boyfriend that became the ex-boyfriend that I almost failed school…She told me I should have stuck it out in the library, got better grades, worked harder (because, let’s face it, we all know I didn’t try very hard)…and I wouldn’t be where I am now.

But that’s all moot, isn’t it?

Can’t do anything about the past now.

Instead, I sit in front of my computer sending e-mails, applying to jobs, writing cover letters, hoping interviewers don’t ask me if I had done something worthwhile in the time I was in school besides drink and dance. I look at my paltry little resume and sigh. Someone had mentioned that I had a resume of a doer not that of an achiever. Well, what do you know…maybe because I never really achieved anything.

Sure, I could tout that I was in Regionals in Speech and Debate in high school. I could say I have a 2nd degree black belt. I could even claim that I got a bunch of plaques and awards from doing all sorts of achievement-type things in the past.  However, none of those really matter, because none of those were anything I did while in graduate school.

So now, when I’m looking at myself on paper, I don’t stand out in any way at all. My mom was right: all I would be reduced to when I grew up was paper: resumes, credit reports, transcripts, writing samples, letters of recommendations…just paper. I was supposed to protect my paper trail, and I took for granted that I had a personality. Oh, guess that never really mattered. And even now, my personality’s not so stellar. Depression and bitterness tend to leave a mark.

So, when I’m disappointed I didn’t get a job, I can’t turn to anyone to say, “I’m disappointed. I’m sad.”

Everyone will just look at me like I failed. Again. and Again. A constant reminder of what I should have done.

Sometimes, those who still have marginal faith in me, just shrug it off and say, “Just be patient…it will come.”

I don’t know what to say to that. I have never known what to say to people who tell me to be patient. To me, patience was for people who had time. I don’t have the luxury of patience, you see.

How much longer am I supposed to sit here and feel like the Stupid One in the family. How much longer do I have to shake at the thought of paying back my student loans? How much longer do I have to stay awake at night wondering how I’m going to pay the bills? How much longer do I have to feel like this and not want to simply end it all?

I don’t have the luxury of patience.

I have a family that looks at me every day like I am a burden. I have all these regrets chained around my neck weighing me down even more as if facing them everyday wasn’t enough.  I have all this self-loathing I don’t know what to do with.

And I have people that I want so badly to keep in my life, but don’t want to poison with the person that I am becoming now.

How much longer do I get to be selfish and hang on to the best guy who’s ever held my hand?

I once cried on his shoulder and whispered, “I don’t think it’s fair. I don’t have anything to offer. It’s just me…and I’m broken.”

He held me in his arms and said, “Hey, I can be patient.”

Ironic, isn’t it? What if I can’t?

There’s been a lot of being thrown under the bus lately by people who are far too keen on saving their own asses.

Sometimes it’s friends purporting to have found you a position, only to turn around and take it for themselves. Sometimes, it’s bosses saying that they’re “fighting for you” only to find the truth that they have blamed you for their own incompetence to cover their asses. Sometimes, it’s done jokingly by friends and sometimes maliciously by others who look at you as competition.

My brother was right. This economy will cause the viciousness in people to come out. No one can afford to be kind anymore.

We will all descend into cruelty, malice and despair.

And maybe it’s time for me to stop being so fucking nice and forgiving and just walk all over others, too.

Between my boyfriend and my brother, many pranks and psychological torture were applied on me in the Snakes and Lizards exhibit. There is apparently a lizard that can leap from boulder to boulder and run at 16 mph. My brother whispers, “You can’t outrun that…” Then Boyfriend tossed a rubber lizard at me which resulted in a strangled scream which resulted in a lot of people looking at me which had my brother asking in a LOUD VOICE, “Was that scream you?”

I don’t care. I’ll scream if I want to.

After that ordeal, the rest of the day went easy peasy. We went to the Aquarium where we touched starfish and sea urchins, we napped in the Planetarium where Jodi Foster’s throaty voice lulled us into a dream filled with nuclei and mitochondria, we went to the Living Roof (my first time in over 5 visits) and froze our butts off in the freezing San Francisco summer wind, we played with the toys in the gift shop and overall had a great time!

on the Living Roof overlooking the De Young Museum

well, a slice of the Philippine Reef was behind us.

mmm...Moray Eel

Hey, fishy, fishy...

It's a piece of rolled up carpet...Oh, actually it's a snake.

Sssslytherin's in the House

...and finally, this guy always makes me smile by planning little trips to make me happy!

Here’s the caveat: The California Academy of Sciences is a whopping $34.99! This hurts because the Smithsonian in Washington DC is FREE! And even the one in Los Angeles is only $12!

So, unless you really value the rainforest attraction and the planetarium, the living roof, the albino alligator, and the sustainable design of the CAS, then it’s recommended that you really plan your visit for that day instead of just randomly dropping in for 3 hours. If that was the case, then I’d say hop on Thursday nights Nightlife: 3 hours, NO CHILDREN RUNNING AMOK, wine, beer and hors d’oeuvres served — all for $12. STEAL.

Below are a few shots from Nightlife from my birthday in January:

Glow in the Dark

Nightlife Crew

Hey, Lil' Guy...

When there aren't little kids running around, you actually get to learn stuff.