nine months!!!

November 25, 2009

my bf and i have been going out for nine months! second longest relationship of my life, the first being my first relationship which lasted few years b/c my ex kept bringing us together after we broke up. it’s weird to have gone out with someone for nine months! it went by fast. time went by fast in general. in some ways, however, i feel like i don’t know my bf a lot better, i mean, not as much as one would think you would get to know someone in nine months. what i have learned though, is that he speaks love in action. he’ll hang out with me, help me do errands, listen patiently over IM and give me advice, all of which takes time. but gosh, i could count the number of times he told me how me feels about me (in person) with one hand! i would say past couple weeks have been pretty rough. i wondered a lot about where the relationship is headed and whether it would make more sense to just throw in the towel. it’s hard to decide not to be with someone because you’re uncertain about the future when you want to be with the person. my head says yellow or red light, but the heart says green light. in all fairness, my head says proceed with caution. and my heart says stay on course. guess there might be some middle ground? hmmm not sure about that.

one of the things my bf said when i asked whether he sees a future with me was that he is uncertain about the future because i’m not as stable emotionally as he would like his significant other to be. i understand. and i don’t understand. i am who i am, you know? i want to be with someone who loves me as i am now, how i got here, and where i’m headed. and on some days i’m going to be perfectly stable and happy. on some days i’m not. i don’t blame him for wanting to be in a relationship with someone who is stable most of the time. only, how long will it take for me to get there? i’m recovering and slipping back into the most aggressive depression i’ve ever had. it’s brutal. i’m down and i’m being kicked in my guts. i’m trying to get up and pushed down to fall again. 2009 has been a good year for my recovery. i am much much more stable than i have been since 2002. but still, i’ve had set backs. maybe it’s true what they say. it’s not how many times you fall that matters. but it is whether you get up after your fall that matters.

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complexity

November 18, 2009

i forgot that relationships are complicated! of course in the beginning it’s just about do i like him or do i not like him? does he like me does he not like me? but then later the question becomes, move to the next level or not move to the next level? and tons of other questions! why can’t relationships provide answers instead of posing questions! i guess sometimes you just know in your heart what the answer is. but even then, it’s not like you can just make reality match what is in your heart. all if not most of decisions are made by two people and take in to account two people’s hearts instead of one heart. and man, oh man, when you start caring about someone, really caring about someone, things get complex! anyone out there know how to simplify relationships? other than keeping one’s heart safely locked up in a safe to avoid getting hurt then becoming more alienated than one would ever want to! (C. S. Lewis said something to that effect – the only way to ensure absolute prevention of the heart being broken is to lock it up and not take any chances of getting one’s heart broken; but then the result isn’t any better. the heart is alone in isolation and the heart grows harder and colder.)

on a “happier” note, back in boston today and really enjoying my time here. i did miss boston! love this town!!!

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the other shoe

November 11, 2009

i’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak. i’ve been going out with my bf for about 8 months now. and things are fine, more or less. i’m doing a lot better over all. successfully moved and starting to settle into new place in nyc. don’t really miss boston too much. but then was i waiting for something bad to happen? for a while everything was perfect, well almost perfect. then i started crying on consecutive days and not due to my reproductive cycle, thank you very much. and couldn’t stop crying even when my bf was with me.

so all that to say, is happiness really only a phantom of the imagination? maybe it’s something disney and hallmark and the marketing people at various places conjured up so they could sell movies, cards, chocolates, flowers, etc.

i was always unhappy. i was depressed. totally utterly in despair. that i can deal with. well, except when things got really worse then i couldn’t cope anymore. so then when i started feeling better after 5-6 years of really bad depression, i was skeptical at first. many changes took place that could explain why i was feeling better. i stopped working with the therapist i had for about 5 + years without miraculous improvement or anything. doctors on my treatment team tweaked with my medication. i started dating my current bf. i hadn’t dated anyone in over ten years before i started dating him. i mean, i dated. but i didn’t have a boyfriend for i don’t even know how long actually.

spring of 2002 to end of 2008 (my second depression episode) utterly sucked. only thing that was going to make it worse was to be treated with ECT (eletro convulsive therapy). my old psychiatrist recommended that and was banking that ECT was my only hope of coming out of deep deep depression. well, i wasn’t going to have my brain fried. so i fired her. moved on to a new therapist, new psycho-pharmacologist, and continued on with DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy). well, for about a good 8 months i had consecutive days of non-suicidal ideation or urges which had never happened before since the depression of 2002 started.

lately, however, after months and months of not wanting to die anymore, i can smell it in the air. the muse which beckons me to death, to take matters into my own hands, it is slowly but surely making her move on me. past couple weeks, i cried, overdosed mildly couple of times, drank, and thought about whether there is really a point to my life after all. yes. the question that i could not get out of my head for about 6 years, not even for a single day, it came back to me. and i started wondering, what’s the point? why work so hard at recovery? why try so hard to feel better? it’s not going to last anyway. life sucks, right? and being depressed and feeling pain and suffering in life sucks even more!

so today i told my psycho-pharmacologist that i’ve been thinking about what’s the point of my life. i told her i had been dancing with suicidal thoughts. maybe for now it’s enough just to admit that i’m unhappy. being happy for the 8 months or so, well, maybe absence of utter despair is like happiness. but now as i’m feeling better, it isn’t good enough just not to feel pain. i want to have a meaningful life. yes, i want to have a life worth living. a life worth staying alive for. not sure i’m there yet. or that i’ll ever get there.

is it time to give up again? i’m not sure. all i know for sure is that while in the past i was happy just to see my bf, now i cry even when he is there. i cry because i want more. i don’t just want to hang out, i want some kind of certainty that things mean something. i’m not happy just to read some articles here and there, or to just send applications out even on slim chance that someone might look at my resume. i want a job. i want to go back to school.

but wanting things, that’s what leads to disappointment and pain. so i decided i think, subconsciously, not to want any of it anymore. so again i am where i was before this bit of relief found me after years of stormy darkness. i don’t want to be here anymore if being here means i’ll be unhappy and if it means i live to testify to the happiness i don’t have.

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Atomic Bean Cafe (Cambridge, MA)

October 28, 2009

i wrote oh too many reviews for YELP so i thought i’d just write a review of a coffee place on my blog.

so this coffee shop, Atomic Bean Cafe that i am sitting in, sheltered from wet wet rain and wind that seems to have no end, has free wireless, plenty of power outlets, food, and atmosphere you really want when you want some peace and quiet to study or to just write blogs or surf the internet. there are two people working here. they play good mellow selection of music that is interesting yet not too attention seeking. and about 10-15 people are here by themselves to study. i mean, i think only one person here doesn’t have a laptop. rest of the people are maximizing the free electricity, free fairly good speed Internet, and great access to food and use of restroom without having to ask for a key.

i worked as a student assistant librarian at one of the grad school libraries at one of the universities in cambridge. and that library had good lights, good seating and electricity and wifi. only draw back was that you couldn’t eat or drink in there (except for water or coffee contained in mugs with lids). well, here i find an atmosphere like the library i used to work at. everyone leaves you alone. except for an occasional cell phone chatter (people who are so inconsiderate, by that i mean people like me) this place is really a cafe for productive work of all kinds! i just noticed that one man is knitting or sewing or something. so anyway, for whatever you want to do, if you want a comfortable place to be to get some good work done, check out Atomic Bean Cafe. as for me, i love it love it love it. studying here is much better than being in a library craving some caffeine or sweets and being too lazy to go out for a walk to get it by which time you may not want to go back to the library to study again. and if you are an extrovert like me, and thrive in environment where there are a lot of other people around, this place is perfect.

now all i have to do is figure out how to start studying for the GRE. i think i’ll start by finishing up this blog and shutting up on line for awhile! ;P

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GV – what’s the big deal

October 28, 2009

i had to ask two people for GV, i.e., google voice mail. but what’s the big deal? i have an iphone already. i already get as much info out of voicemail as i need to, namely who called at what time and how long the message is. i haven’t gotten a voicemail yet since i activated my GV so i am not sure how the transcription of voicemail works. what will GV do with my mom’s voicemail? my mom leaves messages in korean. don’t think GV transcribes voicemail left in korean?

so i’m wondering, is the big idea of GV not so much replacing some function on iphone, but rather eliminating the need for a skype account? so far that’s the only think i think i can gain from having a GV. i’m not going to renew my skype online number if this GV works well. and oh yes, international calls. right now, GV has good rates to korea landline and cell phone. and it has good landline rates to germany, but horrendous mobile phone rates to germany. i only call korea or germany. so i have not put the rest of the international rates to other countries. so anyway, so long as i’m not calling a cell phone number in germany (but who has landline anyway that they use more than their cell phone now adays anyhow?), GV might be better than skype. and on those occasions i need to call mobile phone in germany, i might still have to call using my skype account.

another triumphant moment! i signed up to pay about 3 or 4 dollars on my ATT account to get better international rates. well, forget that! no need for using my iphone att account to make international calls paying extra 3-4 dollars a month to get better rates. i will just use GV or skype to make international calls.

and as for my calling card? well, i wish my calling card would just die on its own without my having to call them up and cancel the account. come on. hmmm i was going to say calling access number before dialing the number you are calling is a pain in the butt. but same applies for GV without Google phone number. so maybe phone card is worth keeping.

oh and lastly, one thing GV is definitely better than skype for making international calls (except when you call mobile numbers in germany!)!! when you pre-pay for your phone calls, your credit card company won’t charge you some kind of fee for converting international currency. hello, folks at skype – it’s really a pain to see extra charge appearing on my credit card bill only because you don’t take us dollar without converting it to currency rest of the world might care about. don’t you know? things may look, feel, taste different in the rest of the world outside good old united states of america. but if you live in this country, the thought that when you use your credit card to pay for something and that the money has to be converted to another currency and you have to pay extra for conversion fee, well, that just doesn’t go down so well.

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