TV.

Sometimes I feel like I'm watching my own life as it plays across a television screen. The problem is, someone else has the remote.

Shooting Star.

I remember the first time I learned what a shooting star really was. I guess I always thought it was really a star falling across the sky, something beautiful, something that glowed with the reassuring power to grant my wishes. The way I feel right now is the way I felt the day I realized a shooting star is really just a meteoroid burning through the atmosphere, an ugly boulder falling to its demise.

I tend to be too trusting, inevitably setting myself up for disappointment. I've always had incredible faith in humanity, but little by little this faith has begun to erode. In the past few years, my perception of the world around me has increased in pessimism, but in the past few weeks, I've been losing faith not only in the world but in myself. I've always prided myself on having good morals and always doing the right thing. I think it's become so much a part of who I am that people even expect it from me, but it pains me to think that they might be wrong. I feel like I've been making some bad decisions lately, that these bad decisions will become mistakes, and that these mistakes will define who I am.

"People are gonna disappoint you. I get that, I kind of expect that. But I don't know, what if you get up one day and realize that you're the disappointment?"

Change.

Change is good, I suppose. Sometimes you fall into such a regular pattern that you don't even know what you're doing anymore. Then suddenly you're looking at your life from an aerial view and it's like when you're in an airplane looking out the window and all you see is the blue, blue ocean to the north, west, east, and south.

Look at the seasons, how they're constantly changing. In a single month, the leaves will change into an array of orange, yellow, and brown colors, and then cease to exist at all. The branches will then be covered in thick layers of heavy snow but those feisty little leaves always fight their way back. Before you know it, the gray branches are speckled with little green sprouts and by the time school is out, every tree is covered in a luscious cluster of emerald leaves. It's a cycle of nature.

I guess we're a part of this cycle as well. At times, change is intimidating; sometimes, we crave it. Right now? I need it.

P.S. It's ridiculous how long I spent choosing a new layout for this blog, but I suppose that had to change too.

Character.

So I've come to realize that I'm a pretty bad judge of character. But what I've also come to realize is that my own character has been incorrectly judged as well. I seem to have acquired a reputation as "the nice girl," and for the most part, I suppose that's who I am. But I think people are confusing "nice" with "naive" -- and this bothers me. Can't someone be nice without being a pushover?

Insanity.

So yesterday in Contemporary Issues of Science (I actually really love this class) Ms. Ryan amazed me by saying, "Do you guys realize that you're moving in like five different directions at the same time? The earth is rotating on its axis, and then it's revolving around the sun, which is part of a solar system that is shifting within the galaxy, which is changing position in the Universe, which is doing who knows what..."

Perhaps I can use this as an excuse for why I've been feeling so off center lately.

Runaway Dreams.

I hold most of my dreams within the confines of my heart. There, they beat with a steady rhythm; they pump my blood with a powerful perseverance, a constant force at the core of my body. But every so often these dreams go wild, grabbing my ribs and shaking them like a jail door, threatening to break loose. Then my heart starts beating in some irregular pattern and before I know it my dreams have seeped into my veins, occupied every corner of my body, gained full control of my entire being.

I will confess to you a secret -- at times like these, times when my dreams grow disproportionate with reality, I become afraid, terribly, terribly, afraid. And I begin to fear that if my dreams don't come true, they will leave me through a fountain of tears and there will be nothing left to pump my heart. Nothing left to circulate my blood, nothing left to keep the color in the my cheeks, nothing left to put the skip in my step, nothing left...of me.

Summer.

I heard my parents talking this morning about plans for the summer. They want to go back to Taiwan for a month. Normally, I'd greet such a vacation with irrepressible enthusiasm; but this morning when I heard we'd be going back for so long I felt so sad that I actually surprised myself. Eating out at delicious restaurants every day and shopping at night markets to my heart's content, spending time with relatives and cousins and falling into the habit of speaking fluent Mandarin. When have I ever thought about these experiences with apprehension?

It's only January and the fear of losing my friends (and losing what I see now as "precious" time with them) is already starting to creep up on me. I hear alumni talk about their friends - except now they always differentiate between "high school friends" and "college friends." I don't want to turn my back for a second and suddenly realize that my "friends" have become "high school friends" - as if they were a thing of the past. I know I don't really share this blog with many of my friends but if you are a friend (even one who I'm not close with) I hope you realize how much I value your friendship. I know I'm not the type to throw my feelings out in the open very often, but believe me, I am more attached to the people in my life than they will ever know, and as much as I love Taiwan, I sincerely hope I spend the bulk of my summer right here in East Brunswick with the people I love most.