non-fiction reasons why

omg this article: Why Doesn’t Ancient Fiction Talk About Feelings?

honestly, i should OMGWTFBBQ this article spoke that much to me. you know that in the last couple years i've had more than a couple people tell me that i'm a robot. yes, they're joking. yes, i compute that. but still. it's true. i'm less emotional than before. not that that really bothers me (obviously). but *why* have i become less emotional?

i thought it was from some of the relationship stuff i went thru. protecting myself. and sure, that may still well be the case. but i totally think that me now exclusively reading non-fiction has totally contributed to me being more emotionally flat.

up thru high school, i read exclusively fiction. in college sometime i started discovered memoirs, notably katherine graham's personal history and queen noor al-hussein's leap of faith: memoirs of an unexpected life. after that i got into travel memoirs (bill bryson played a huge roll in that) and found the best american series by houghton mifflin harcourt, which turned me onto science reading.

about 5 years ago i switched to reading exclusively non-fiction. the last work of fiction i read was in september 2014 when i re-read the giver, because i had watched the movie and wanted to compare the two. before that it was august 2012 when i finished dave eggars' a heartbreaking work of a staggering genius, and started reading david foster wallace's infinite jest, which i never finished.

i don't feel like ive gone thru a transformation. and maybe it's not as dramatic as i make it sound. i dunno. i'll have to remember to ask rip one of these days. but anyway. recently i was thinking i should go back to reading fiction. not exclusively, but adding it in. the language in fiction writing strikes a chord in me non-fiction does not. reader, you'll have to let me know if you notice a difference. :)

parenting

What Living In The U.S.S.R. As A Kid Taught Me About Parenting

"It certainly taught me that parenting is not only about protecting and sheltering, but also about teaching children how to take risks, how to trust themselves, and how embracing a moment of discomfort can lead to a wonderful experience, or at least to a hell of a good story."

reminds me of erikson's second stage of development: autonomy vs shame.

rewards

what i really like about hinduism/buddhism is that you don't have to believe in it for it to happen anyway. like, you'll be reincarnated even if you don't believe you will. that's super fair and somehow, to me, that makes it seem more factual. like, you don't have to believe in a round planet, but it's spherical anyway. you don't have to believe in global warming, but weather/climate is gonna get whack anyway. basically, facts are facts. regardless of your belief. tho, i guess no matter if you believe in it or, you're going to hell anyway (assuming you don't accept christ and all that).

plus

1. you can't command belief. you either believe something or you don't. you can't *make* yourself believe. and therefore, there's no reward (the way christianity has) for belief. 

2. belief in the religion isn't the point. the point is that you should be a good person doing good things and you'll be rewarded with a higher level of reincarnation. christianity rewards you for belief and nothing else really. that's unfair as fuck. especially since you can't make yourself believe anything anyway!

happiness

found the following "hidden" in my drafts folder. not sure when i wrote it, but it's still completely and utterly true.

of the free and nonessential things in life, I've come to realize that what I love best is blue skies. a few days without a blue sky and I get a bit depressed. it's like the people who need sunlight I guess. ...thinking about it now, I wonder if it's the sun I need, but no, I think it's the color. a second favorite is crisp air. like the kind in winter, or in the mountains.

my happy place is atop an imaginary hill, with the blue sky above me, the sun on my skin, and a wind my face. I've always wanted to go on a windmill tour. I imagine they'd let you to the top of one, who knows. 

maybe someday I can ride an old airplane. the kind where you're strapped in and there is basically no windshield. biplanes is maybe what they're called? in any case. how spectacular would that be? high in the sky, cold as fuck. with nothing but sky, clouds, and sun. well... plane too, but I think I could die happy there. 

bra collection drive

what i posted on FB

collection drive a little late this year but i'm collecting thru the end of the year! Donate Your Bra for a Cause accepts new and used bras, lingerie, swim suits in addition to breast cancer survivor items. PM me for more details or for pick up. thanks ladies! :)

reflections

Reepal and I broke up two months ago. we went thru a two week break last year in October. at the time it was because I was unhappy and didn't think things would change. we didn't do much. I would go over and we would watch netflix. we would go out and watch a movie. that was basically it. I wanted some excitement. I didn't want our next 50 years to be Netflix.

we were supposed to not have contact for a month but I caved and after two weeks I contacted him. I spent a lot of those two weeks thinking and I had some realizations about who I was and how rip and I were different. around the same time I was getting a lot of pressure from my mom about marriage, etc. I had never wanted to get married and I wasn't feeling particularly differently but I felt that I could marry rip and be happy enough. I was probably just too afraid, but that once I decided I would be happy with my decision. satisficers vs maximizes, you know? I had asked rip if he had any epiphanies and, well, not so much. but for a while things were better. I tried to get into a different mindset, and we did do more. we went to vegas with his family, we went rock climbing, we went to museums, we ate at new restaurants.

I started working again in march, and rip became really busy too with his work. so things kind of went back to as they used to be. calling him to see if he would wake up, getting off work early, seeing him for a little bit meant going to get food and watching Netflix. it was okay. it was a routine but we had made vague plans of moving out, getting married, progressing.

around summer I started thinking again. about our future. and it scared me. I didn't want to get married. I didn't think I could be happy. I didn't think things would be that different if we did get married. Rip felt differently, of course. not that he thought marriage would fix things, but that he was so busy with work right now, and I was so stressed from dragon boat... things would be different, better, I just needed to give it a half year.

I couldn't wait tho. not when I knew so clearly that things would not be different. that I would not be happy. but how strange it was that reepal felt so strongly the exact opposite thing. we just could not agree tho it was our future together we were thinking about. at one point he said to me that if it didn't work out we could always get divorced. that broke my heart. he's never wanted to sign even a pre-nup, thinking that when you get married you shouldn't plan for a divorce. and here he was offering me an out.

two months later and I still feel this was the right thing. I could have waited, but what if things weren't different? how could we have broken up then? this was hard enough. but rip felt his same way too. that I was making a mistake. but I felt that if it was the right thing for me then it must be the right thing for us. I asked him if he was any different in the two months and he said no. that made me sad. i knew then that we would never change enough for me.

last night he gave up on me. he's going to move on. which I know I should be happy about and yet... this is what I wanted, right? but I think I wanted to be proven wrong. I wanted to be able to find my way back to him. except that now he won't be there anymore. so I'll be on that huge subway platform alone with him speeding off and transferring trains, completely unfollowable to me. I can only hope that I haven't made this huge mistake. that I won't be a hobo in the station, but that I'll be heading off somewhere too. annie g and ting are going thru similar breakups, in the sense that no one really wants to break up but we're all doing it because we think it's the best thing. that in the long term, we'll each be happier apart. which, at present, none of us fully believes.

last month Mike said something like "he wasn't motivating you enough to want to get married. and now he's not motivating you enough to want to get back together with him." which is true. rip disagrees with me, but he, I guess, respects my descision enough to just wait for me to change my mind or come to the realization that he's right. I don't know. really, that's a bit insulting. in any case, I also feel like you're *telling* me things are going to be different but you're not *showing* me that it will be. it's compounded by the fact that part of the reason I'm unhappy is because I feel that we don't DO enough. and here you are still not doing anything still.

rip said to me that I never really opened up to him. which I think became true. I internalize my hurt too much. I force myself to move on and get over it. but I'm permanently bruised all over. over the summer I asked for a few things. I asked for reassurance, and he put me down instead. I asked for a compromise of sorts, which he ignored. they were little things but they meant a lot to me. I don't come up for air very often, I said, so when I finally do... it's terrible how we test people. and worse still how readily we recall the hurt, but not the happy instances.

in the last few years we've both been traveling. him for work, me for db mostly. he's been traveling a lot this half year. gone most weekends, actually. i had mentioned that it was hard on me, him being gone so much. he seemed incredulous. it's hard in other ways too. i love traveling. exploring new places makes me happy. and rip, well, he likes traveling for other reasons. but i see the pictures, read the posts, hear the stories, and think about how much fun we're having. seperately. how many of our favorite momements were spent apart. i feel so terribly about that.

I've had a few people tell me in the last year that I'm so strong. I don't believe that's true. I think I just have a harder and thicker shell than most. I've always prided myself on my independence, but I feel that I've learned self reliance in dating rip. there have been a few times over the years where I've thought, very clearly, during a conversation with him that "it's just me. I have no one but me." the worst kind of loneliness is whe you're alone with someone else. and I've come to realize that that's why I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't stand to feel that crushing loneliness my whole life.

in the end all you can really hope for is that you don't have too many regrets, that you learn from your mistakes, and that you actually improve upon yourself. I'm still trying in all three.