cynosure

The first couple of days of 2009 are bittersweet; I leave home for an ersatz one that brings me to tears every eyelid open to close until March. I build furniture and meticulously do my own decorating for the first time, yet both despise and spend all my time staying there, not leaving. I binge on Filipino baked goods and watch Meg Ryan romantic comedies I end up not enjoying and forget how to speak above a whisper. Losing your voice is easy when you have no one to talk to. For the first time in my life, I cry on the phone and beg my mother to let me return to the place I spent all my previous days trying to escape.

I fly home and spend a magnificent longer-than-usual weekend piecing back together everything I miss. I drive six hours back to school with a French-Canadian girl from Montreal who spends her days after college hitching rides and bartending. I start learning how to love myself, though it is through mostly forcing myself to believe it. I read Keats and finish a notebook; I ask a friend in the middle of the night to accompany me to eat steak. I finally seem to know how to live, or at least survive, completely on my own, when I go home again.

Coming back is harder than ever, and I go clubbing, I eat myself sick afterward, and I drive 4 hours north to see my brother for a few hours and drive back just in time for practice for a couples dance I do not end up participating in. I practice with fellow dance teammates until 5 in the morning; the next day, I wake up at 5 in the morning to start creating the most popular hip-hop competition on the West Coast. The morning after, the woman who raised me for half of my childhood leaves.

A friend asks me to slow dance with him on a street corner and he turns out to be the best thing that happens to me.

The graph of life starts to inch towards the positive. Great bands live in concert; impossibility turns out to be reality; I go from home to here and feel no difference.

I drive a 17-foot truck by myself and move out of my meticulously decorated room. I drive 8 hours to see my brother graduate high school; I drive 6 hours to Los Angeles. I go to Disneyland; to the Top of the World; I bid farewell for a month.

I spend another moon full of loneliness with my closest all marooned on a continent across the sea. I attend JAC 86 and regain my sanity. I play with a stray cat and walk somenights with my neighbor. I prepare to go home to another land.

I take a train and a bus to regain my heart. I realize that a place I adored so much once upon a time is an environment where selfishness thrives and inconsiderateness rewarded. I spend beautiful days with beautiful people, and commemorate a strong woman’s life.

I return and drive south once again. I visit my brother who is now 20 minutes away. I start cooking more and eating out never; I stop shopping. I start seriously considering my career prospects; I believe in myself more and more. I become more and more sustainability-conscious and minimalistic every day. I fall a little ill; I dress up as Minnie Mouse and trick-or-treat on Halloween.

I actually do my work on time and attend as many classes as possible for the first time in my academic career. I open up about the eating disorder from my past life to the world. I close three domains I’ve had for 7 years and spin even bigger dreams for the one left. I go to the Wild Animal Park and take photos of giraffes. I spend Thanksgiving with another family but don’t go back north; I fulfill another one of my dreams myself; plans are broken and new ones forged in their place; my sister and brother(-in-law) come to stay for the holidays. We go to Las Vegas for 4 days, two of which are spent driving there and back. I realize family really will always be there for me, despite my countless doubts in the past.

Amazingly, I fulfilled all my resolutions: Eat better (along the lines of Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food); Maintain health; Love yourself.

In 2009, I learned to live and love. I became more open to spending time with different people, more confident, more determined, more assiduous, more healthy, more driven, more conscious of how my choices from food to fashion support certain values. I became less materialistic and less wasteful.

Oh, and I learned Latin Accomplishment of the year.

Most importantly, I began to love myself and experience true happiness– the kind that isn’t loud or doesn’t promise to always be exciting, but is a happiness that doesn’t depend on anything but myself.

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tags: 2009

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 30th, 2009 at 13:03 and is filed under everything. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.