sWiRvE

So my Dad decided to sit me down and lecture me on a few things. It took almost an hour and this is what I summed up.

tldr;

we are embarrassed and disappointed in you, but we don’t want to come out and say it
wake up earlier
finishing school early is worth the extra few thousand dollars
i’m a terrible son for being independent
my dad consider’s driving 2 times a week to a factory and vacuuming the house everyday to be the hardest job on the face of the earth

oh, and white people are racist and won’t ever hire asians

truthfully, there were a few useful nuggets of information in the lecture. but in reality, they were a little too late. I could have used that advice 4 years ago.

Reality is a tough thing to deal with it seems. My dad has to live with his failed business that rocked our family in the new millennium. My mom has a deadbeat dad that should be putting his ego aside and finding an easy minimum wage job to help out the family, and she ends up working 10x more than my dad every single godamn day.

Of course for me I have to deal with the harsh realities of my own personal life. My dad and mom are old. They want retirement. They probably won’t be around in 20 years or longer. That makes me sad. Maybe there are things I should have said when I was younger. i always believed that my parents had a terrible budgeting system, and that they should have saved more. I had gotten use to the lifestyle where all they did was save (our bankruptcy days), and we spent little or no money on anything. If we had continued that trend, instead of all the ridiculous purchases and investments we made in the past, we could have actually had enough for their retirement. But alas, I don’t know too much about what they do with their money and it’s not my place to say anything.

It’s just funny how life is. You start as a child, wide eyed thinking you can become anything in the world. And then slowly but surely reality seeps in and you start seeing doors be closed. You can’t do this, you can’t do that. It’s not feasible or logical to get into this or go do that. You don’t have requirements to do this, or the funding to do that. Your choices start to become limited and all the bullshit in the world about unlimited potential and choices start to fade. And then you realize your family has been bankrupt for the better half of their life, and that you really have no money saved up. You’re drowning in debt from university and you don’t know what the future holds.

That’s the fucking truth, and that’s life. I have many regrets in life, but I truly believe that there’s nothing I could have done about it.

So what is there left to do? Enjoy a sub-par mediocre lifestyle and never think about the dreams and riches that you had as a child. Life is what it is.

Things have been troubling the past few weeks. My grandfather has a serious case of Alzheimer’s disease and from what I have seen, he is a blank slate. When I went to visit him the one weekend during new years (happy new years by the way), he wasn’t there at all mentally. He didn’t do anything but sit down, stand up, and shuffle around.

I don’t know too much about my grandparents or the history of my family. The main reason why I took a Korean class at University was for one simple fact. I wanted to ask my grandfather about his life, and give him a few questions he could answer in Korean. I wanted to know where he came from and what life was like. From what I’ve heard, he was an important man. I believe somewhere in the backlog of posts, there’s a mention of me taking Korean class for just this reason. It pains me to say that I am all but too late. There is nothing more for him to do. He now lives alone in a small apartment with his wife, who takes care of him alone. And they live far away from all other relatives, including us.

It is really sad. So this is my tribute to my father’s dad. I am going to write about what I know and fill in the blanks so that at least I’ll look back one day and remember my grandfather. But alas, University starts tomorrow and I am too tired to start it. I have a basic idea of what I want to write and I’ll be churning it out any time I have free time. That might not be too likely this month since I have a lot of work to do.

To me, my grandfather is already gone. So I say, farewell. I am proud to carry on the Yoo name.

So here I am. It’s November 13 and it’s 5:47am. I guess it’s been a while since I’ve been up writing about something. This time it isn’t insomnia. It isn’t even a rant either. Well maybe a little  bit of a rant.

I honestly though I’d never be here again. Life was fine, and I was content. I’m easily content..ed. Hand me a kitten and I’m happy for the entire week. Give me sugar and I’ll be your best friend. So I was happy for the longest time I could remember. I actually had a smile on my face for a really long time. Not the fake mask smile that everyone used to see day to day, but a real smile. The genuine smile that I thought had faded many years ago. (Oh memories of my old old nickname, smiley)

So I guess the question is, what happened? What changed? Ironically enough nothing really changed. That’s what is getting me down. This house, this room, this life is killing me. It is absolutely draining every piece of my soul and it is just horribly depressing. It’s hard to explain why. I don’t even know why. You know, when I come to write (or at least used to) I usually don’t have a clue of what I’m going to talk about. It usually unfolds later as I process why I’m up so fucking late at night. Some times during the day I’ll think of something clever and then plan to write it down here. But for the most part it’s just things I never really thought out.

As I was typing all of that above I decided to do some investigation. Maybe we’ll find out the real reason why.

Let’s start off with the bad things first.

The alarm that goes off in the middle of the night. Am I seriously the only one in this family that hears this fucking alarm late at night? I actually had to stop in the middle of the writing of THIS paragraph to turn it off. My dad always for some retarded reason sets his stupid fucking alarm at 5:55 am. He doesn’t wake up 100% of the time. So after the 20th time I had to wake up in the middle of the night to walk to my dad’s little korean drama room to unplug it I decided it was time to change things. Instead of suffering alone, I decided to turn on the light in my parent’s bedroom and just leave. The light would eventually wake them and then hear the alarm and go turn that shit off. Interestingly enough, after doing this about 4 times my mom yelled at me saying “WHY DONT YOU JUST TURN IT OFF YOURSELF?”. I responded calmly enough saying “So I have to turn it off every night for the rest of my life? Because dad can’t seem to stop setting the alarm at FIVE FIFTY FIVE AM? SO ITS MY RESPONSIBILITY TO TURN OFF THE ALARM EVERY NIGHT BECAUSE YOU CANT BE BOTHERED TO? THE ONE WHO SET IT IN THE FIRST PLACE?” So making them suffer in my place worked for a while. No retarded alarms early in the morning.

And now it begins again. And I’m just tired.

My mom bothering me and thinking there’s something wrong with me. Or something wrong with her. I have no freaking clue. She always acts like there’s something wrong with me, an incurable disease and always tiptoes around me. I’m surprised living with her for 21 years hasn’t enlightened her that I am what I am. I don’t show too much emotion and I like to do things on my own. I don’t even want to get any more into this. It’s just a retarded subject that gives me a headache. In fact, I think sometimes my mom to be a little mentally unstable. But that’s just me. I love her, but sometimes I wish I didn’t live in this house. What a cliche, everyone says that.

My brother’s girlfriend. I really have nothing against her personally. We have nothing in common and she sometimes annoys me. I know her to be somewhat of a good person. I think her and my brother go well together. To say why here would mean certain death, so I’ll avoid it. But you know why. It’s also not my brother. I have no qualms against him whatsoever. We get along just fine. He even gives me candy (read above to see what happens when you give me sugar). What troubles me is that I know his girlfriend. She used to be a friend of mine. Now this isn’t really that weird as most people might think. We had a falling out and I really couldn’t care less if she dated my brother, as mentioned above I think it’s a good match. I repeat this because people have been asking me or saying “is it weird? I bet it’s weird.” If I was close to her whatsoever it might be weird. But I’m not. I actually don’t think I could ever be close friends with her. We’re just different that way. Anyways, so if it isn’t my brother, and it isn’t her, why is this bothering me? It’s what  comes with the package. I think of my home as a sanctuary. After a while you get used to things. You get used to walking around in your underwear. You get used to shouting profanities at your brother and being for the most part not being bothered. Interestingly enough most of the time she’s in my brother’s room with the door closed. I’m glad that they’re trying and that really does help. But add to the fact that my house is full of workers in the bottom two floors, I have no floor of my own.

My parents own a wedding dress line of some sort and they hire workers. As agreed upon by my mother and I, I am not allowed loud guests during the day. I am not allowed to go downstairs and disturb the workers and so forth. Bottom two floors off limits for the most part. I can’t wander down there and use the living room couch. I can use the kitchen but with all doors closed and the tv down to a minimum. I can live with that from 9-5. After that is when my day really gets started anyways so I don’t mind. But add to the fact that my brother’s girlfriend is coming over  constantly, I feel a little trapped.

This leads me to my next point of discontent.  Me being at home all the time. This is a really long subject but I’m just going to churn out the coles notes for you. All my close friends are pretty far away. I have not obtained close friends of that caliber since. I am an outsider in most of my groups of friends. Not to say that they reject me or don’t invite me to things, it’s just I don’t want to be there or go. Why? I don’t really like them THAT much. I’m not giving them a fair chance I know, I’m just accustomed to being alone/at home. These groups of friends lead different lives from me. They have different goals and are in different places in life. They do different things and are really different from me. They’re still my friends and we still have fun. We just don’t connect. I am an outsider, I just observe. Let’s not even talk about relationships, I don’t see a reason to have one or to pursue one at this moment. So this leaves me to my current situation.

Alone.

I don’t like it so much anymore. I’ve been going solo for the longest time, I don’t even know what it’s like anymore to not be so alone. I don’t mean physically, but… the other touchy feely way. I wrote a long time ago that I dealt with loneliness. Every once in a while after being alone for so long you get hit by an overwhelming sensation of drowning. This is loneliness. You deal with that feeling for the day and it goes away for a while. The more you do this, the longer the period between bouts of horrible loneliness. The last time I felt so utterly alone was.. I don’t even remember. I think I got too good at being alone. But here is the feeling again and it sucks. My mom being on my case all the time, having no privacy and no sanctuary, and being alone just adds up. Normally these 3 things wouldn’t be too much of a thing to handle. But it’s been a long time.. and it’s added up over this time.

So here I am. It’s now 6:21am and I’m not sleeping because of these issues. Pretty good investigation if I do say so myself. I never thought I would come to this conclusion. Pretty good investigation if I do say so myself.

There are more pressing, deeper issues I’d like to touch upon.

Change.
I need it. I need to get out there, meet new people and do what I do best. I need to connect, I need to make new friends and I need to get myself out of this rut. I escape into the computer way too much. Even though I’m usually always talking to someone, the social component isn’t the same as meeting someone in person. There are no commitments online. You get your social fix and be on your way. I can’t do that anymore. I need real human contact. I need to move from this room, this house, and this fixation of stagnation.

I believe Albania to be a step in the right direction. I’ve thought of this before and I can’t put it off forever. I don’t know if I can do it this summer. But it is definitely something I’m going to keep on my plate for the months/years to come. I need to remember that I’m at my best when I’m with people. Being alone is killing the one part of me that has value. People who knew me in the past who read this now are probably not understanding any of this. This doesn’t sound like me at all.

And the root of all this is of course fear. Fear of change. Fear of leaving the comfort of my bubble. My computer, my games, my internet, my tv shows, my escape. I cannot escape reality any longer. I must depart from this horrible room and into the real world. I need to stop fearing what the next step is. I need to be a man and do my thing. No more excuses, no more putting things off. I need to end the school year with a bang. I need to get those grades that make myself smile. Something I can be satisfied with.

This is my life. I am taking it back. I love you all.

Holy fuck it’s september 16th 2009.

So, I was on the cusp of sleeping when a powerful demon came over me telling me to write. I don’t get these often, but when it comes I have to let it out. Sleep can wait, even though I have a stupid tutorial tomorrow.

I even forgot how the format of my blog went. Pardon my writing and my style, it’s gotten pretty sloppy since my inactivity.

Oh right, stay on topic. Yes yes, this post will be about nostalgia and my past.

I had a group of close friends. Then we graduated from highschool. I haven’t spoken to a majority of them since. I had actually forgotten about a few of them and hadn’t really thought about it at all. So my friend tells me there might be a reunion.

Something surprising happened. I really didn’t care. No feelings of nostalgia swept over me, and I wasn’t really excited at all. I didn’t rush to talk to everyone or even imagine it happening. For those of you who know me well, you’d know that this is totally unlike me. I had fond memories of my friends, but for some reason there weren’t any sparks or a need to see them again. Totally weird.

And then I realized I was almost someone else entirely. Three years ago, I would have scoffed at the notion of our little group ever becoming parted, or me losing track of my friends. Three years ago, I would have laughed in the face of those who would say we’d never be friends forever. And now I sit here with my guard up, wondering what had happened. Three years is a long time, especially when you’re at University with a bunch of different people doing a bunch of different things at the same time. Things change. People change.

So in my state of shock and dismay at my feelings of neutrality towards my old friends, I decided to dig up old memories from an even older blog I used to maintain.

And there it was. The waterfall of old emotions, sights, sounds, and memories. I was almost tempted to fire up the old slideshow of our little group, but I knew that would hurt my heart more with beatings of nostalgia. Oh how I hate nostalgia.

It’s amazing to me how these friendships developed and how they waned and almost ended. I don’t want to say that it’s over. Not yet. I know for a few of you, I’ll still maintain close contact. The rest… maybe not so much so. But it’s been one hell of a ride, and I’m raring to go a second round.

My friends, oh my lovely friends. Ones who made me laugh, cry and sing. Ones who helped me through tough times, and the ones who were just always there. How close we were and how connected we were. Every event was special and it was amazing. Even though there were times of trouble and unrest, I loved it all. I grew and matured from all those experiences. I’ve made life long friends with a few. I am happy.

Of course I feel a bit sad that I’ve grown apart from so many, but that won’t tarnish the memories I have. For ever and ever, I will cherish and remember. You’re only young once.

MINE, ALL MINE!
Yes folks, I got an ipod.
It is however a handmedown from my brother, but I am not one to complain. I’ve gotten second hand goods for a large portion of my childhood and that isn’t going to stop me from enjoying this. 8 gigs of music space, and it’s tiny enough to not poke my junk when i walk around with it.  

So, now comes the question to ask. Why? Why would I get this from my brother?
Would it be from the kindness of his souless heart? (just kidding)
I have formulated two theories  about this, but will go into too much detail why. 

I actually have a zillion mini topics to talk about and instead of making a zillion mini posts I’ll make one large one with everything. Sadly, I only seem to get ideas on topics when I’m not near a computer, so onhand I don’t have much to remember. Next time I remember something, I’ll write it down on paper or on notepad wherever I may be.

Oh and I failed trying to find a way to type Korean text in here. I do not have admin, so I don’t think I’m able to install any addons or plugins. Well I’ll try again this weekend and see what I can do.

<PERSONAL REMINDER>
Right now I’m trying to get a few questions written down in Korean so I can give it to my grandfather. He’s pretty much the only one I’m interested in getting historical information since he seems to have led an interesting life. Once I stop procrastinating and get past my school hurdles, I’ll try to get it out. 
<PERSONAL REMINDER>

Eugh, I’ve been aslo having alot of dreams about love. EUGH. LOVE? WTF
YEAH I KNO RITE? AMG WTF IS THAT SHIT
Seriously though, it blows. What does this mean? It probably means that I’ve seen too many movies and the social factor of not wanting serious relationships or any relationships is starting to get to me. As my friend blatantly pointed out, “You’re using it as an excuse because you suck and can’t get anyone and is afraid.”
Probably true. Perhaps my standards are too high and I should stick to someone my level.
=( that would suck since my level blows. Maybe I should start running again.

I was actually going to write another lengthy rant post, but I decided against that. I’m in a better place in regards to my family right now. I’m horribly lonely, but happiness still lingers here. It’s been so long since I’ve actually felt lonely, that it actually caught me off guard today. In the past I’ve powered through lonliness and I wondered why it had hit me so hard today. 

I was reviewing old photos and letters I had recieved from really old close friends when I realized something sad. I had changed. Not a little, but a lot. My values, my lifestyle, and my personality had changed so much.  Looking back these couple years, I can truthfully say that nothing was really memorable. That’s when the feelings of lonliness hit me. It didn’t help that I also lost something precious to me this weekend. The tiny thing held a lot of sentimental value and losing it was devastating. It was part of the past I so desperately had tried to cling on to.

I love you, I trust you.
Waiting for your love, always by your side.
You’re the one that I love.
You’re the one that I trust.
You’re the only one.
I love you, I trust you. 

It is time to start a new chapter.

I am Resilent. I will survive. Do not worry about me, I can go through much worse. My mental endurance is pretty strong and it’ll take alot more than family disfunction to bring me down. I’ll write a lengthier post this week, I’ve just been busy with school.