Welcome to my Blug! I've never been good with blog-like things. I'm just about the shittiest diary writer, Facebooker, whatever. You name it, I'm terrible at it. Everything resembling a journal I've ever owned has about, uh, zero things written in it. School assignments that require you to do daily entries were 100% bullshitted. I want to at least be able to say that I try, but I can't, cause I don't. Then I found Mizahar! And, lo and behold, I feel all kinds of crazy, fanatical compulsions to write. Write, write, write, all day long, all night long. Write at work, write while I eat, write in the bathroom, write on my phone whilst driving through horrid LA traffic. YEAAHH, WRITING!!! So, because all this writing is still somehow not enough (ohh man, don't even make me think about NaNo), it seemed as good a time as any to start this nonsense. I decided to call it my Blug, since it's sort of like a blog, but blogs make me go "uggghhh." Plus, I'm foreseeing that not everything I talk about will be rainbows and ponies...I think we all know what I mean. Those days--those many, many days--where things kinda feel like brownish, sweating putty. All limp and squishy, with not a shred of goodness in sight. Blug, Blug, Blug. Suddenly, a wild Mizahar appears! Aaaaannnnd here we go! |
So, why in the world am I doing this? I'm going to apologize right now for the length of this post. It'll (probably) never be this long again, I promise. Moving on... I love reading other people's scrapbooks. They're so fascinating, so full of delicious information to absorb! It's freakin' awesome when you come across someone confessing something utterly relatable, or listing books/music that you love too. Sure, our PC's are endlessly intriguing and all, but it's refreshing and insightful learning about the real people behind all this glorious storytelling. From what I've read, it seems a lot of people have a similar story of how they began. I'm no exception, I've realized. So without further ado, it goes a little something like this... Boring. Quiet. Nice. The same, bland words revolved round and round my pimply forehead and perfect ponytail. Same, same, same, always the same. Nothing ever changed. Except, maybe, for my frustrations, which grew only exponentially the older I got. I had the same classmates since 2nd grade. Most were Asian/Indian, in the gifted programs, learned algebra in 6th grade, and were what you would call "over achievers." Actually, that term is an understatement for those academic fiends. They were at the top of everything--top of the class, top of the school, top of the popularity ladder, top of the whole goddamn food chain. And me? I was good at drawing. Oh, and I was nice. No one really got me. Not my teachers, not my peers, and certainly not my parents. They're Chinese. They could care less about fruity tooty things like my inner psyche. My best friends left me year after year. Some to different schools, some to different countries. By the time I entered middle school, I may as well have been the last human left on Earth. I was that lonely. Getting my own computer didn't help. I burrowed so deep into myself that I almost never came out. Chatting, games, forums--those were my creative domains of happiness and freedom. Real life was my prison. I clammed up so tight I forgot how to open up at all, and that only furthered the misconceptions people had of me. Whenever I think about middle school, I cringe. Violently. High school wasn't exactly amazing either, but middle school was on a whole different level of awful. It was hell, and I wouldn't go back if you paid me in invisibility cloaks and every flavored beans. Okay, maybe I would for those things, because that would SO SICK! But it would be damned impossible otherwise  I was depressed, lonely, angry. I mean, it didn't really seem to show in public, since I still got labels like "boring" and "quiet" but at home...god, it was terrible. Shouting matches between me and my parents, my sister, and a whole slew of interchangeable combinations. I was convinced my family hated my guts and wished I didn't exist, that my parents would get a divorce, and if none of those things happened then my mom would finally crack and kill me in cold blood. With a pair of scissors. And this time, my dad wouldn't be there to stop her. I felt ugly. Shunned. Unnoticed. Helpless. Doomed. But, somehow, there remained a teeny, tiny spark. It told me things would get better--had to get better-and that in spite of the never ending stream of shit that came flying my way, I would prevail in the end. It told me that deep down my family did love me, that I did have friends who cared. It told me I had the potential, the will to do great things. So I clung on, doubting myself all along the way but allowing this puny bit of absurdity to live on inside of me. For some reason, even though I was terrified of speaking to people who weren't my best friends, I was good at speeches. I think it may have been because I had OCD, so anytime we had to do a presentation, I would recite my speeches over and over and over again cause my brain wouldn't let me think about anything else. I went over my lines anytime and anywhere that I could--recess, walking home from school, showering, etc. Showers were the best! Total privacy, excellent acoustics. Little did I know that in about ten or so years, I'd find out such obsessive practicing is the key to getting up on a stage, not running for the nearest exit, and pouring my heart out to total strangers. Back track: high school, freshmen year. I was at an all time low. I was seriously considering killing myself. I was addicted to games, had zero interest in reality, and between gaming and school had so little sleep I could barely stand up straight during the day. I think I slept about 3-4 hours a day on average. I only slept 1 or 2 during the summer. Then something in me snapped. It was just a little something, but it was enough to set off a chain reaction. I ditched my old "friends." I chopped off half my hair. I started actually caring somewhat about clothes. I stopped drawing because I was tired of it being the only thing people knew me for. My grandma gave me the fiercest, most loving pep talk I'd ever had. She's a badass lady who outran the Japanese, carrying her baby sister on her back, no shoes. Long story short, it meant a lot. My family also moved to a nice, quiet house in Oceanside. It has a slice of wilderness past our backyard and a lovely, yellow room all to myself with an absolutely fantastic view. And, most importantly, I started writing. It started as a set of grueling, pain in the ass SAT prep classes at some academy thing run by a Korean lady. Ohhhh, how I hated it. 7 hours average, every Saturday. But then, like a miracle sent straight from the heavens, Doctor Francesca walked her lumpy, sassy self into my drab little life. Francesca was the most baller tutor ever. She'd lived in Italy for years, knew ancient Latin, drank her tea piping hot with crooked fingers permanently bent from being mugged once in Rome, and read the same books as me. She made me feel like a star. And, she also worked me like a slave driver. Mind you, I was an absolute travesty when it came to writing. Just awful. Nothing I wrote made any sense. So, this crazy lady sat with me and tore apart every sentence I wrote, then rebuilt it with me, one painstaking word at a time. By the time she was done with me, I was no Orwell or Dickinson, but I could write. And the stuff I wrote wasn't gibberish. After that, I consumed every fantasy book I could get my hands on. My best friend, who was conveniently a genius, had her and her entire family's 10 digit library card codes completely memorized. She also read books like I ate entire bags of hot cheetos--practically one a day, no breaks. When she was done, she'd hand me a huge stack, I'd gobble them up, and we'd proceed to gush. No sissy stuff for us; all hardcore fantasy, with the occasional children's/young adult but even those tended to be dark and gritty. That book list, however, is for another day, another horrifyingly long post. My other best friend suggested we take turns writing a story. So we did, and I was hooked for life. Between school, extracurriculars, games, writing, and books, I don't even know how I slept. By my senior year, I was taking 7am journalism, symphonic orchestra, chinese music lessons, 5 AP courses, Calculus, and still had to figure out how to feed my sister, father, and myself for dinner. Suffice to say, a good chunk of my world became devoted purely to fantasy. Remember the thing about me being OCD? Yeah, put the two together and imagine what you'd get. I mastered the art of walking and reading--it took me half an hour to walk home everyday, and I read every second of those 30 minutes. I took a book everywhere. I even used them as wallets when I traveled, and it was especially effective in China. No sane person there would look in an English booked titled "Abhorsen" or "Assassin's Apprentice" for moola. My dad, ironically, finally decided I might have some sort of disorder. Pfft, if you can call love a disorder. Actually... Well, anyways, after that it was college, a.k.a. SWEET, BEAUTIFUL FREEDOM! It was like I became a whole new person; it only took a bajillion years for me to break free of my old life, but it finally happened. I cut my hair even shorter. I had armies of friends. I laughed all the time. I hardly went on my computer, rode my bike everyday, drank in the sunshine, ate two giant salads a day, and took what ever classes I wanted because I went into freshmen year with 80 AP credits. I rediscovered my passion for art, and I never stopped writing. La di da, skip a few years, and BOOM. My first break up. Then my first time being dumped. Then, spoken word. If there was anything in my life I could say truly freed me from my intellectual, emotional, and creative shackles, it would be spoken word. Before I knew it, I was on a stage shouting things about penises, vibrators, stolen cheese, broken hearts, and ugly secrets--all the things I'd been too afraid to talk about until now. The rawness and fearlessness of spoken word helped me grow the biggest, hairiest pair of balls I'd ever metaphorically possessed. My first class, I broke down with fear. Then I went back and did it all over again. Now, whenever I feel like my life is going stagnant, I break. And then I mend, and my creative/intellectual/emotional muscles grow stronger for it. Perhaps it would be best to end here for today. There is some straight craziness I can't not share, so stay tuned and thanks for reading  |
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