a slow death

You say that you want to spend less together, that you need the space – and no, not the space to be yourself, to be with others – to be with books. Books. I’m replaced by sleepless nights of poring over Economics notes, by workout sessions with the bboys, by the fact that you’d much rather get a A than lie in bed on lazy Sunday morning, tracing the beauty marks on our bodies.

No, it doesn’t bother me. It doesn’t bother me like it doesn’t bother me that I’m less significant than a perfect problem set, that I’m less cool than a successful windmill followed by a sick 90, that a wild weekend in NYC pales in comparison to a studious weekend in Philly.

I’m a passive aggressive bitch, but I’m tired of my own mind games. Big D always said to never ask questions to which you didn’t want to know the answer. Somehow, I still love to play the games in which you always come out on top.

So what’re you up tonight? Going to bed early?

At some point, you will notice that I have willed myself to stop caring. By then, it’ll probably be too late. We’d already be far too gone.

gradesgradesgrades

I got a B+ in Java Programming, ranked 90th out of 194 students.

B+ isn’t a bad grade, really. It means that I”m ahead of the curve, and at a place like Columbia (where I sometimes lose sleep over the intellect of others) it’s something that I can realistically hope for. B+  is a good job, a pat on the back, a semester well spent learning something that I’ve more or less mastered.

The problem is, I can’t help but cringe at a B+. Not only because I actually had a dream that I was ranked 70th and that the first 71 students in the class got an A, but because I worked damn hard on all those problem sets. The success I felt every time my programs compiled was greater than whatever sense of accomplishment I could get from a B+.

A B+ is a mediocre grade, and I refuse to be mediocre. I guess if you looked at my entire transcript this semester, a B+ isn’t bad in light of the fact that I took 27 credits. But the truth of the matter is, I bombed that final exam. I spent the time gossiping about things like Azia Kim and G. Michael Guy instead of going over static methods. And maybe it was poor judgment that got me this mediocrity, but maybe I was just stretched too thin.

It’s hard to realize when my limits are, mostly because I’m pretty awesome, but also because I refuse to settle for less than my best. The grades I got this semester weren’t awful, but they weren’t stellar either. I’m not sure how I’d present it to my parents, my Academic Advisor (who really told me to stop taking so many classes), myself. And how am I going to learn from this when I’m still signed up for 23 credits next semester?

blast from the past 2.0

In an incomprehensible and bold move, I dashed into my mother’s closet and took back my box of Big D things. It was stupid, perhaps, especially if she notices. But it was… necessary? It was strange to have two years of my love life sitting at the bottom of her closet, underneath her pantyhose and leather handbags.

I think it will be necessary, also, for me to actually get rid of all these stuff sometime in the future. Like, throw it away, or bury it… (burning it would be too angry…!) Do I need to get rid of what remains of us in order to move on? (or rather, did he get rid of his box of my things?)

As I was organizing the contents of the box, I couldn’t help but remember specific things we did. I still had such a photographic memory of what he gave me over the two years: a business card holder when I got my first summer desk job, a tile from Mexico with our number on it, a t-shirt that read “I <3 my physics geek”. We kept a notebook throughout much of our relationship, kind of like a diary to one another, because we didn’t see each other as nearly often as we wanted to. He wrote things like “I hope you don’t cheat on me in Taiwan…” and “I can’t until we live together; learning from a hot girl is a lot better than learning from a sheet of paper.”

I couldn’t help but ask stupid, instinctive questions to myself like, “How could something like that turn into something that it is now?” Big D and I haven’t written to each other in weeks, haven’t spoken in months, much less seen each other. I know that he has lost the desire to stay in touch, much less spend some time to travel to see me.

It always takes two people to start a relationship, but only one to end it.

knowledge == sexy

I was out in Chinatown today, hanging with S, D, and Emo-tastic A while enjoying some very good L2 bubble tea. Suddenly, we started talking about… sex? porn? Nip/Tuck? And S chimed in a with “Hey, didn’t you once tell me that you thought people with knowledge were sexy?”

It was interesting because I hadn’t seen S in nearly 2 or 3 years. He is 2 years younger than me, someone who I’d met through band, back in the day. We have a comfortable sister/brother relationship and I totally love hanging out with him. It’s interesting because maybe I haven’t changed very much after all. It’s true that I find knowledge very sexy, and that kind of comment isn’t really far from the recent discovery that raw talent is equally sexy.

type

So maybe I’m looking for him again, same personality, same hobbies, same tastes, but just in an Asian body. THAT IS NOT TOO MUCH TO ASK. The problem is, finding someone just like him is only going to be second rate (compared to him) and would hardly help me in the moving on process….

Sometimes, though, I wonder. Do guys not-him like girls who are me? Maybe the only type of guys who have me as their type is… him.

i just can’t handle that shit

Big D’s brother-in-law just left his sister, and Big D’s going through this really hard time with it. It’s tough on me too, because I know that to him, they were almost the epitome of romance. They met in high school or something, and got married at 20, had a couple of cute kids… moved into a great house. I think he’s lost his faith in love, somewhat, since his parents and his sister are now essentially divorced. In a strange way, this makes me breathe a sigh of relief… we would have probably ended up dysfunctional too.

What I can’t handle, however, is the fact that I just can’t fucking get over him. It’s come to a point where I don’t even want to get back together… but.. yeah. He can not e-mail me or call me for an entire month, and I’d be perfectly fine and bam. One short e-mail is enough to begin the cycle again. I can’t help but read them (twice. and then once again.) and write him back because I have this incredible weakness.

I’ve thought about not ever getting over him. Fuck that shit.

EDIT: Turns out, he probably only e-mailed me because he had a hard time going through the whole divorce/separation thing… It gets to me every time when he e-mails me frequently and suddenly stops.

breakthrough

There is no such thing as love or hate; there is only passion.

I think I’ve come to terms with not ever getting over Big D… I had a dream about him last night, but the funny thing is, my mind created a person just like him, who wasn’t actually him. Throughout the dream, I kept telling the mystery character that he reminded me of Big D.

So without being able to ever get over him completely, I think what we’re doing now (ie. no contact whatsoever) might just be the way it’ll have to be. I don’t want to entertain the idea of getting back together, but the truth is, I can’t help but wonder how good it will be. Even as I bounce between love and hate, passion and apathy, I can’t help but wonder if I like him, or the idea of him. I worry that I get too caught up in the ideals of what we were and what we could’ve been and that I lose sight of the people we actually are. At the end of it all, does that even make a difference? If I am obsessed with the idea of us more than his actual person, then, so be it. Wouldn’t I be just as happy?

Maybe there is no breakthrough after all. Maybe this is what it is, what it has been, and what it will continue to be. Fuck.

The One, by Vanessa Carlton

Holiday and I come home
I hope to see this boy I know
I can’t wait for us to be alone
Flipping through the radio
We sing along to the indie show
The songs they play mean more than I can say

And the tape I made you,
Hope you think of me when it plays through
I’m kinda sad now that it’s done
You think my time is for free
In all the ways you say to me,
Sweet versions of let’s wait and see

You’re always a golden boy
And I’m the girl that you enjoy
My parents say isn’t he a gifted son
Time is always passing
By but still I have to wonder why
You can’t come to tell me I’m the one

Summer goes and we have grown
We have our friends,
Live on our own
Still I’m not the girl you want me to be
Say gravity can bend the time,
Funny, I always liked your mind
But this whole thing is crushing me

But you’re always a golden boy
And this girl’s heart that you destroy
You smile at me and then you have your fun
Time is always passing,
Still, I give you another try
And hope that you will see that I’m the one

You say you’re scared to get too close
Come let’s see how it goes
I see you now at the show,
The 7th in,
The 7th row
Now you look at me
And see what I’ve known for so long
Sad that you could be so lovely and so wrong

Came to say that I moved,
I see your face you don’t approve
Guess you could say that I’m already gone

But you’ll always be my golden boy
And I’m the summer girl that you enjoy
Some melodies are best left undone

I feel the time pass away
But in my songs you will always stay
I don’t need you to tell me I’m the one
You’ll never know that I was the one

tragic endings and new beginnings

So there’s been a void in my life as of late… and to be slightly clichéd, I’ve tried filling it in with bad television and decent masturbation, but none of it seems to be helping enough. So, having exhausted my current methods of coping, the creation of this blog is throwback to my teenage angst years… a bad sign? In any case, this time around, I’ve exercised all the necessary precautions to remain anonymous and write with a message.

In a messed-up kind of way, The Geek Tragedy is inspired by Big D; the guy who’s had the ability to shred my heart twice (so far?). Yesterday was Big D’s birthday. He and I have always been… slightly awkward with gifts, and now that we weren’t together anymore, the situation hasn’t gotten any better. He loves crepes, and so I managed to find a rake (ie. crepe spreader) in Santa Monica, lugged it back to NYC and sent it to him in bubble wrap. The sad part is, I think I was a lot more excited to find the gift than he was at receiving it. After 2 emo-tinged e-mails, I thought it only right to call him (it was his birthday after all …!) and told myself that I was just popping in to for well-wishes before leaving him to birthday celebrations.

I am really good at lying to myself.

What I actually wanted was a lot more. I wanted a 1-hour, 2-hour, 3-hour long conversation where we caught up on what was going on in our lives, and where he would continue to give me hope (intentionally or unintentionally) of him thinking of me, missing me and of us getting back together. What I got instead was fuzzy mobile reception, “I’ll talk to you some other time” and him eating candy (most likely with someone else). The night ended with me imagining all kinds of relationship scenarios he would have with “Candy Girl”, telling myself that I do this every time, and eventually crying myself to sleep.

Oh, and we did break up over 7 months ago. Yeah.

So if life is about learning, and learning comes through trial and error, I might actually need a few more errors before I learn my lesson about Big D. And so begins another trial… welcome to The Geek Tragedy.