Magnum Opus

If there was anything in life I’d wish for, it’d be to have a magnum opus. So far, I have yet to get an idea for one, but when the time comes, I hope it’ll certainly be great.

It’s no secret that I (at least I think) that I want to write when I get older. Probably not in journalism, but it’d be next to be the next Bernstein and Woodward, though. Specifically, I’d like to write books. I already have some ideas in my head already, specifically around two that I’d like to seriously consider writing and finishing one day.

If all goes well, I’d like to write a fun commercial series that people will hate/love, some just-okay novels, some average novels, and then the magnum opus. It probably wouldn’t be on the scale of The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, or Catcher in the Rye, but I’d like it to be like Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, if possible.

If I did become famous for one of the works I do (hopefully a good book), I’d probably not do much for the popularity I’d receive. I know, it’s probably quite an overstretch to think something I might write become famous (I’m not shooting for Harry Potter famous, but famous in the way that more than one person would buy it!) but I’m optimistic. I’m supposed to become a doctor when I grow older and attend medical school and I shouldn’t really be considering being an “writer because it can’t financially support me” and all that crud, but I’m hopeful.

And, if it’s not too conceited, I’d like to write a memoir about my life.

*laughs*

#weirdpostout

In the Eve of Bitterness and Resentment

I love my little sister, honest to God, I really do.

She’s adorable and cute and the fact that we have a huge age difference probably makes up for it. I notice siblings tend to get along better (at least, in my opinion) when a huge age gap separates them. My little sister and I have seven years separating us. We don’t get into many heated arguments. My older sister and I have two years of age difference. We argue all the time and she probably hates me as much as I do with her.

Anyways, I’ve never been that sibling in those TV shows or movies that suddenly felt resentment and jealousy over the fact that they were going to have a new sibling and thus realizing all their attention was gone from them and they’d be overshadowed. Never once did I feel these kind of feelings strongly, and if I did, I probably didn’t recognize them.

Everybody loves my little sister more than they do with me or my older sister. It’s fine by me, she’s my favorite person in my family anyway. She’s the favorite sibling, something that me and my sister acknowledge. She’s the #1 sister.

But yesterday night, I felt that bitterness and resentment.

It was her school talent show and she was performing in it. She played the violin and wore a cute shirt and skirt for her outfit. Her skirt was a shade of bright, neon pink. She smiled brightly and played her little heart out and stopped playing once (because she skipped some notes) but smiled brightly after her saying “OOPS!” cutely and adorably and continued to play again.

As a cellist and overly concerned sister, I winced at her playing at times, because with years of musical training under my belt, I recognized that most of the notes were off-tune and sounded funny. But she was adorable and you know, seven years old, so that could be excused. Besides, her cute face made up for it. (Biased older sister coming here, obviously.)

But this is where the bitterness and resentment comes in. Once she came down from the stage, my parents congratulated her and gave her a pat on the back and talked about how good she did and how great she was for many minutes.

I didn’t feel resentment for that, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m not that obnoxious to get bitter over that.

It wasn’t because my little sister made many mistakes (because goddamn did I do the same thing after showering her with praise), but since it brought back bitter memories of a piano  recital I did of when I was 7 years old.

I remember the moment clearly now.

I was nervous and jittery and my palms felt sweaty and my heart raced for miles on end. My name was one of the first to perform because of my young age and I played a song that I had practiced for days on end.

When it was my turn to play, I bleeping sucked. The nervousness came in and my childhood shyness kicked in and halfway through my moderate performance, my mind suddenly went blank. My fingers stopped playing as my mind turned empty. Hours of practicing were basically wasted. I stopped playing for what seemed like hours (the audience even let out a little gasp and started whispering to themselves and I could hear their voices clearly and understood what they were saying, which made my mood turn even worse) but was really thirty seconds. Then, the piano teacher, urged me to continue playing and I found my footing again. I played until the very end and did another song.

The audience clapped for me pityingly and I bowed and smiled stiffly, the fake grin frozen on my face. The realization had repeated in my mind over and over; I had made a terrible mistake.

My parents didn’t receive me as charmingly as they did to my little sister yesterday night. Instead of showering of praises and reassurances that I didn’t suck that bad, my father got made at me and started berating me over and over. Why did you have to mess up? Didn’t you practice for days? Practice longer when you get home, I’m disappointed in you. 

No one hugged me or told me everything was going to be fine. Year after year, that accursed recital performance still stuck with me and my parents would always go back to it after every one. Everytime I’d make a mistake during a recital, my parents would always point it out and I’d feel like shit. Maybe that’s why I stopped piano last year and why I’m so reluctant to even touch the keys since.

It would have been nice if my parents had done that for me. You know, the whole you-did-great-even-though-you-didn’t-really. But they didn’t and watching them do it for my sister (which I’m glad they did because I didn’t want her to go through what I did) hurt, a lot.

Writing this is actually really painful now. I hate being an overdramatic teen and finding this a big deal, but I’m me and I’m dramatic. I was so happy playing the piano before and their reaction to that performance made me feel like shit.

So, during the car ride home, (my dad took a separate car because he had just came from work to go to my little sister’s performance) I brought up my first recital to my mom so I’d stop feeling butthurt about my little sister’s performance.

I pressed her with questions and skirted the topic around (why, all of a sudden, did you two suddenly decide of all times now praise the performance when you basically broke my heart after my first recital? both of us sucked the same during our first performance, why did the both of you shower her with praise and ignore her mistakes when you basically wouldn’t stop criticizing?), but my mom dodged the conversation and changed the topic to my grades.

Man, why couldn’t you guys at least praise me once during my first performance?

It wouldn’t hurt if you guys tried, even if it was a lie. Or if you apologized to me last night.

But you didn’t so now I’m really bitter and writing this blog post.

**

Believe it or not, there is another reason as to why I’m butthurt. Yes, I am continuing the blog post that shouldn’t be continued and should have ended a sentence before, but whatevs. This is my blog and this is my bitter blog post. The applause. So juvenile and lame of me to be bitter, I know, I know. But there’s a story to this, actually. (Like always!)

But the reason why I’m really bitter about who was applauding is because the applause my sister got meant she’s really popular in school. Because it was different from all the other applause the people before my sister had, so I kind of knew.

My older sister and I had very illustrious backgrounds in our Catholic school. I was never popular in school and I got bullied a lot. When I was the same age my little sister was now, no one ever wanted to play with me at recess. I spent basically 3/4 of my time in first and second grade alone and friendless and I used myself as entertainment for recess. The first friend I made moved away to the Philippines, my whole class turned against me because I liked a guy (who turned out to be really mean to me after the incident), and the second friend I made ditched me for better opportunities. (She said I was too weird and my parents and older sister told me she treated me as a servant, so it was fine that she ditched me, apparently.)

I tried making friends, I really did. I tried by getting myself involved with my classmates in dodgeball or tag or other games, but nobody wanted to play with me. They always did it in front of the teacher because my teacher made them or the older kids made the boys play with me because it was obvious I was alone and friendless, but they always ditched me in the end because I was too weird and that I had to leave them alone, stat.

So needless to say, I became friendless and a lonely kid. I had bad fashion sense because while all the girls in class wore things that were considered in-style (I’m not sure how that’s possible in the first and second grade, but it was there) I was dorky and nerdy because my parents dressed me up funny. I wore capris with knee-high socks. You get the picture. LOL.

Like I’m really glad my sister didn’t have to experience the neglect I did in my first 2 years of school (and god I hope she never experienced the bullying I did during the middle-school years of Catholic school, I cried all the time because of that). But it really bothered me to see how people started turning all nice and appreciative and supportive of her when nobody did that for me. Like I was basically the exact same girl my little sister is now, we looked the same too (the haircuts make us almost carbon copies, giggles) but I never experienced the same thing because nobody in class liked me.

I was known as the smart kid as my sister is now, but nobody ever treated me the same. Nobody cheered for me or clapped for me the same way my little sister did the day before. My parents didn’t even offer me help for any of the projects I did in school and berated me for the grade I’d get after, whereas now my mom basically does them for my little sister.

Just… meh.

#bittersisterout

Best Friends

I miss you when I think of third grade and the things we did together, like going to the movies and having to go to Michael’s all the time. I miss you because no one does ugly looking projects with me anymore. I miss you for your weirdness and the inside jokes. Now we’re both pessimistic grapes, but I think our lives are mostly okay.

It should be pretty illegal for best friends to live in different time zones because I get no sleep because of this chick.

So, I’ll start from the beginning.

When I was in third grade, my soon-to-be best friend moved into my grade. She had her bangs in her face and had a perpetual scowl on her face. She radiated a sort of coldness around her and she wore the wrong uniform for my Catholic school. It was the required jumper, sure, but the jumper was cut out into a long rectangle at the sides instead of cutting out into an oval for the arm sleeves.

While she was Filipino like practically what the other majority was in my school besides Hispanic (except for me and my sister and another Vietnamese kid in my class), she was different. In the coming future, she’d turn out to be not so different like everybody else, but that’s another story for later.

The girls in my grade (I believe there were 32 kids in my grade and about 15 of them were girls) stood in our required lines and gossiped about her in hush tone and gave her long stares.

“Who is she?”

“She’s wearing the wrong uniform!”

“Is that girl in our class?”

I was oblivious to all of this, the fact that I was the smart outsider of my class, and was bursting at the seams from happiness. I was determined to not spend 90% of my 3rd grade alone playing at recess like I did last year and I was going to get a new playing buddy. I sought my eyes on her and I was determined for my plan to come to fruition.

It did happen. The two girls that were required to show her around ditched her for the other, prettier new girl in our grade. (A nice, pretty girl named Kathleen who moved after 4th grade.)

So during recess, when the ball rang, I waited for the new girl with her hair being stuck in her face like Sadako from The Ring that wore the wrong uniform to come where I was at recess.

She was by herself and was just skipping around. With all the courage I could muster, making friends was such an easy thing back then, I went up to her and introduced myself.

“Your name’s ****, right?”

It was a lame introduction. I knew her name already, had it memorized in the corners of my mind, but it was the perfect way at the time, to introduce myself.

But anyways, she said yes. We started to talk. And that, was the start of a beautiful friendship. It turned out we shared many, many things in common. We both had an obsession with Pokemon and had an account on Neopets. Her favorite neopet was a Xweetok. Mine was a Kacheek.

We became best friends immediately. We memorized each other’s phone numbers. (Except she only remembered my house phone…) We went over each other’s house all the time. I had my first sleepover at her house. She came over to swim every weekend for summer.

We got into anime together. Books. Music. TV shows.

That didn’t mean the friendship was 100% perfect.  But I guess that’s how best friends are.

She was a storm at times. There were times where her teasing went over the line and I’d look at her and I’d be filled with conflicting emotions of rage and resentment. My best friend could be really, really mean. Mean to the point where I’d get so angry that I’d see red.

There was a period in time where I completely resented her because best friends weren’t supposed to make one of them feel completely shitty all the time and ruin their day and honestly I figured that calling off the friendship would be the best. I promised myself that I’d give her a long-ass monologue the end of 8th grade about how much I used to hate her.

But then she started getting better. She became nicer. We added more friends into our little circle. My future other best friends.

Then in 7th grade, she announced to me that she’d be moving to the Philippines. I didn’t even cry when she told me, but I knew it was for the inevitable and that no wishing could change it. I knew that she’d be gone and that we wouldn’t see each other in a long, long time. Minus webcamming, pictures, and phone calls, that is.

I remember the last day I saw her. I visited her house and we spent our last time together and she promised to come visit during her summer vacation. (Didn’t happen, her mom moved to New Jersey) We gave each other lame hugs and I sat on her couch most of the time I was there. Her things were already packed. She’d be leaving in 2 days.

I never cried after. Not even once. No sad, lonely little teardrop or my voice cracking and getting caught in my throat. Maybe it was because I was bitter or something, but I never actually did cry. She didn’t either, she wasn’t sentimental. But I did get really narcotic when she didn’t get online for a month after her leave. I remember spamming her with messages and waiting for her response that would come later than I’d like.

Anyways, distance helped improved the bad part of our friendship. I let go of the feelings of hatred I had. Of course, there were times I was still bitter and I’d do regrettable things, but LET BYGONES BE BYGONES.

And that was that. We are still best friends. I still miss her and not calling her phone number or visiting her house is pretty weird. Her absence in my life is pretty noticeable. I message her all the time. I endured eighth grade without her, but I was okay.

Life would be okay.

A Necessity

It should be said that I should be sleeping. I already have my alarm set. By the time that I’m posting this, it’s pass midnight. It’s been over a year since I’ve written in this, time has certainly passed. Over a year! I’ve certainly grown too, the last time I posted was February 2 and I was thirteen. Now I’m fifteen (but a few weeks ago I was fourteen) and things have changed quite considerably.

I’m in high school now. The in-between period of thirteen and fourteen was a hazy one. I barely read anything during that period, quite the shocker. And I only bought one book during that year! Can you believe it? I remember two years ago I’d be begging my mom to take me to the store and my bookshelves would be spilling all over the place with new books to read. But times have changed. And so have I.

It’s a bit depressing, thinking about how much I’ve changed. High school is a weird place. I’m not sure what to say about this blog post. Or the purpose of it, really.

I don’t think I’ll be reviewing again, on this place. I have a GoodReads so I guess I’ll just review there, huh? But this blog space that I used as a confidant for a very long time, I wonder about it. Honestly. I stopped playing piano a long time ago and I told myself I’d start playing again. There is a lot of private history as  to why I don’t play, but sometimes I’d pass by the piano in the living room and I get sad. Just like writing this blog post and gazing over at the Categories section and seeing the old categories I used to mark things in.

I miss writing on this blog, considerably so. I do wish to write again. But it won’t be the same thing. What I write will definitely not get any views. Who wants to read some boring life blogs from a four- (excuse me, I mean fifteen)-year-old that sounds like a wannabe narrator of Perks?

Anyways, I’ll think about what I’ll do on this. Maybe I’ll even get a new blog layout.

Fun stuff.

I’m back!

Woah, has it been a while since I’ve been on here.

And as you can see, I’ve deleted almost all my posts. (I still have them though, but I deleted them because I wanted to start over.)

I was kind of unhappy about the way I ran my blog. I didn’t like the way I write posts so then I went away a while to go think about what I wanted to do. Eventually, it became a day, then a week, then months, and now finally I’m back.

I’m not sure if things’ll be the same again.

Instead I’ll be doing weird doodle things and posting them about as blog posts. Sort of a not-review thing.

But I’m back.

I’m glad I’m back though. So it’s good.

My birthday’s coming up soon. That’s kind of strange.

Book things

My first blog post.

Hello world!

- edited since 2013 (because my ’09 self thought weirdly.)

The purpose of this blog now is just for me to write this as a memoir of sorts. I guess. Pretty lame because I’m only 15. But I like memories and recounting them, so yeah.