A Beautiful Mind

For some reason I can no longer find the inner resolution to actually sit myself down in front of this piece of lenovo machine for hours on end and rant about my life and work as much as I used to. It almost seems like my tolerance for blogging has waned over these three years and I always find myself shooting daggers at these voices in my head with my so-called ‘witticisms’ in response to those pretentiously-stupid self-addressed letters that I often find myself writing these days. On top of my usual habit of waxing lyrical and getting all engrossed in my dark confessional poetry, I really don’t quite seem to have the stamina for getting into anything else like before. I guess it’s become a form of sustenance for me because gastronomical concoctions like food no longer serve their lustre on me and let’s just completely face it here, I can no longer even tell real food from freaking polystyrene. It’s amazingly scary just realising that I am effectively caving in to my fatal short-term memory and these sickeningly wonderful rebound-withdrawal effects and panic disorders aren’t exactly helping me.

It’s so fascinating to see myself drifting through a mock haze as if I’m caught up in some perverse dream that tosses all these unceremoniously beautiful illusions at me. It rouses such an intense aversion in me just reflecting on the extent that I can actually go to dream and fantasize about all these beautiful and unattainable desires, yet I’m not even talking about the fiscal things that drive and empower those with affluence and authority. Yes, it stabs me repeatedly and unrelentingly, like a rapist does when he rips open the accursed woman in violence and I find myself smiling at this newfound masochism that is slowly taking over me. I am twisted beyond redemption. I’m apparently too sedated and ‘dulled’ right now to find myself inflicting worser damage to myself. For the moment, yes, but just wait till my tolerance sets in. Recently I’ve worked myself into these sunken states with all these drugs wondering if they’re making me out to be some freak with chronic hypochondriasis, or if they are indeed siding with me in this internal terrorism that’s effectively and rapidly draining my reserves. They just seem to amplify my intoxication of wanting to kiss death in the face lately and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they have unknowingly accentuated my progressive madness without meaning to. I don’t blame the drugs, they are my friends… I’m certain they are meant to help me really. Well now, how I wish I could cease being tossed about like some amnesic avenge pilot who spends his entire lifetime searching for a grain of terra firma yet sadly, never manages to. Or even some US Navy Veteran who gets thrown off his greenpeace boat and finds himself pathetically returning to a ransacked, famished world, one that isn’t quite the same as before. I should really stop fueling this illusionment of trying to rouse the attention of those hardcore realists that fall far beyond my spiritual spectrum. They aren’t even real… yet why am I so terribly obsessed and infatuated with loving these very people who tear me apart with their knowing, painful glances? Do they even really exist in the first place or are they just figments of my exhausted, overwrought imagination? These men and women who excite such intellectual and emotional admiration in me… are they merely characters off a storybook that I childishly force myself to look up to when I shouldn’t really even bother to? Why do these beautiful living people that I care about sap my feelings without meaning to when my trusty sanguinarian Arnost doesn’t even do that? What on earth is SO FREAKING WRONG with me? I can’t look at these very people without quaking and convulsing like a damsel in distress. I hate it when my inadequacies end up tripping me all over again and these people tell me that they THINK I am amazing and that KILLS me because I’m just a bow-legged freak who’s becoming a full-blown drug addict at the age of nineteen and she’s already on the verge of inflicting absolute grave hurt to herself. She wishes so so badly that they could restrain her before she throws herself into this sunken crevice again… it’s only getting deeper each day like an elongating well and she’s utterly hydrophobic and isn’t gonna survive when she hits rock bottom. If only they could hear her plaintive screams for help and save her before it’s too late.

I have been taking benzodiazepines for three weeks now and they’re making me suicidal. Which is perfectly normal of course, since I’m pretty much cyclothymic and it doesn’t really make a difference when you catch me in my manic episodes or dysthymic moments. I think the best thing that could ever happen to me at this point would be a state of euthymia in which a neutrality of emotions might be the safest thing for me. I get worked up into these convulsive states with my sudden racing of thoughts and an inexplicably strong impulsion of wanting to hurt myself whenever I get these anxiety attacks. Then after that I would take these anxiolytics to ’sedate’ myself and yet I have trouble falling asleep. I resent these recurring nightmares… these beautiful dreams when I see myself in such a perfected state and I absolutely resent being stuck here. So naturally, it goes without saying I would just lie there paralysed in my own turmoil gaping at the ceilings every night, counting these invisible stars that are lightyears away and oh so beyond my reach. And I would fall asleep in the midst of all these inhuman screams that I hear going on unremittingly inside my head and my tears would offer me little dissolution and comfort as I waste away for a few hours in this short-term slumber… gleaning some degree of transient relief from all those fears that plague me during the day. Yet everything would just repeat itself steadily again and cruelly and humbly remind me of my irreparably screwed circadian rhythm and what bitter joy they truly bring me. I wish they would just stop tormenting me this way. I have just been started on a new long-term dosing schedule of anti-depressants so hopefully these stupid drugs shall see me through the end. It wouldn’t be anything short of a miracle if I did find myself institutionalized at the age of nineteen, since it’ll probably happen soon enough at this marvellous rate that I’m going. I just need a catalyst and tomorrow you’ll find me chained up in those psychiatric wards screaming curses and laughing at the nurses and at their heinous attempts of restraining me. I am so utterly shattered I can’t even begin to question if these psychiatric prescriptions are indeed helping me find myself somehow.

So my teachers in school are working to get me a doctor’s referral to a psychotherapist. I am so freaking screwed up there it’s amazing how I can’t even find the wits to write a letter in mandarin anymore without messing up the characters. I can’t believe how much I’ve degenerated both mentally and physically in these few months. It’s so debilitating having to ‘pull yourself together’ and feeling paranoid and neurotic all your life, and having these people you live with rationalizing in their own tongues that this ‘blue funk’ that you’re in isn’t ‘anything major’ and that you’d simply just have to ‘will yourself’ out of this depressed state. They don’t understand that THIS isn’t a mere temporary phase of sadness from which you can easily ‘will’ yourself out of. It’s four freaking years of swinging in pendulum mode from extreme mania to dysthymia and having to quell the insatiably strong urge of wanting to kick the bucket every other day. Let’s put it this way, frankly. If I hadn’t ‘pulled myself together’ all these years, I would have died years ago, oh yes. Such dramatic-erratic episodes would surely come to an end somehow… yet I keep finding myself trapped in that bell jar with no means of escape. I let my emotions take me away on a phantam flight of soul-searching and I get so absolutely engrossed in my reassessment of human love that sometimes I find myself believing so strongly that it will take me further away from the mortal pain of being human, and perhaps, I will discover more about the atrocities of being me by losing myself in this flight of fantasy and escape. I see myself living between each moment as though it really isn’t happening yet I’m plagued with the ravages of severe thirst and I’m thirsting for something that’s immensely bigger and greater than I am. I can’t stop rationalizing and disputing with these voices… about spirituality and of life, about the significance and bitter irony of love… when you see the very people you used to love destroying themselves and you wonder why on earth you are putting up with such prolonged, damaging displays of abuse, hatred and conflict since you were a child, and I can’t bring myself to disregard the fact that melancholy is already so intrinsically integral to who I principally am. I bask in this rich sense of solace and kinship whenever I reminisce of all the brilliant people who died in such unjustified ways… and how they never came to the realisation that they were in fact so truly amazing. I wish I could sit right next to Van Gogh and John Forbes Nash and Sylvia Plath and listen to their life stories, and see beyond the merge of faces of these wonderful people, thinking… if only, oh, if only, they could FEEL the intensity of rage and anguish that’s been building up like spirals of radioactive vapour inside of me all these years. It sucks to realise how demented you already were at five years old… ah and at nineteen you’re pretty much as messed up as a louse on fire with your hopes of salvation all dashed and the light in you all extinguished in an instant. Yes, if only they could see me screaming bloody murder and lashing out viciously like a skrewt at myself and they would be so very afraid… because even I’m afraid of the person that I’m becoming… whoever that is. Yes, if only God could somehow hear my whimpers as I crouch in the dark every night… if only he knew how tiring it actually is just projecting this false state of happiness to people for so many years when an emotional annihilation is in fact going on inside me, if only he could sense my desperation for just a minute and empathise with my craving of catching that first glimpse of morning light every day as I lie in bed suppressing myself from succumbing to a most horrific self-destruction… if only he could resolve my wistful anticipation for each new beautiful day, in which I needn’t have to feel any longer.

Letters of turmoil and anguish

Written on June 22, 2009

I can’t seem to think straight at this point because I’m just so tired and I wish I can fall asleep right now and never have to wake up again to deal with this pointless routine of being alive. Dying would offer the perfect escape from this tiresome penitentiary that I call home. I think death always beckons to me like a crude lover and it seems like the beginning of a long enticing journey that is never seen nor spoken of. Many people always think that those losers who chose to give up on themselves and commit suicide are pure cowards… but it honestly takes an even greater amount of courage to kill yourself and that is something that the average person can never fully understand. It’s amazing how I used to get into these warfares with my mom over my fascination with dying, because as a child I always relished the freedom of being so close to the graves of my loved ones… even at seventeen I was often hanging around these graves waiting like a lost bride… hoping perhaps, as if someone would be there to show me what validation and love really was, and I had whisked myself deeper into this madness, writing epitaphs and composing my own requiem and thinking that it would be a fitting tribute to this beautifully twisted life which I hated so much, yet… the totality and permanent notion of death always gave me an odd, dark sense of peace… one that fascinated me beyond comprehension, which I cannot seem to refuse but to embrace lovingly at this point. It’s so harrowing that for many years I have always felt like I’m just a tortured protagonist of a tragic comedy… it’s like I’m trapped in this dark, deep crevice, like a hostage to my own humanity, self-detained and forced to live in this mess that I’ve made, and I keep throwing myself against these grimy brick walls only to find myself slipping down and further into this crevice of sorrow, and all these grainy sharps slabs of igneous are impaling my broken fingers and causing me to bleed uncontrollably. And it seems so painful watching this toxic blood gushing out in spurts and forming curdled puddles all over my feet, and it makes me laugh just thinking I’m drowning in my own pool of blood. Because it just pales in comparison to being demonized every day in your own home and you find yourself making friends with shadows on the walls and talking to these dolls that scare the very humans who antagonize you. I honestly embrace sorrow as a companion because it never deserts me. It disgusts me why can’t people seem to realise that depression isn’t always necessarily an outward manifestation of sadness… please just look at me, no one would EVER realize I’m in a prolonged depressive state or that I’m experiencing a mental dissolution. I’m always laughing and projecting all this false happiness to these superficial humans and that makes me even more demented because I seem so fake. If only everyone knew that Alison is indeed such a fantastic stage actor who narrates her life in prose and poetry, the usual crap which nobody ever reads or is ever worth reading. No one has ever seen this emotional annihilation that’s inside me… cause I’m already so adept at creating these facades of concealment and deception. They won’t even guess in a MILLION YEARS. And it’s disgusting how all these lengthy portrayals and depictions of humanity and unimpressive letters are often so self-indulgent, like a train-like chugging that can possibly be the very bane of my existence, and yet… they give me so much fulfillment, like the way a starving beggar takes to food, because it is the only outlet in my life; these relentless musings that resonate close to my heart, liberating me from this hardened mask of teenage indifference, a pretence that I have so skilfully crafted; this unrestrained voice that has been stifled inside and yet is actually so much stronger than I’ve ever imagined, only to be inhibited in the presence of humans who never wanted to hear any of your illuminating crap and ideas cause they are nothing but a nonsensical garbled mash of trash; this privilege of letting your inner voice speak without restraint and fear of judgement from people, all written out in its simplicity, a secret which no other human can ever see or read. And that’s because they don’t deserve to. It really makes me wonder why people can be so mean and hypocritical and fake, and then you realize you’re pretty much a hypocrite-loser hybrid in its entire right, and so you end up contradicting yourself about wanting to be part of this same breed of faceless androids who have no identity of their own, wondering if these sad boring people are the ones missing out on life, or you are. And everytime you looked at yourself in the mirror it cracks and you despise that unworthy person staring back at you; those confused, melancholic eyes that fill you with such derision and sadness for her… and you realize that she’s a poster-child of the so-called quarter-life crisis. It hits you right in the gut that you’re alone and you’re already so deep and sucked in to this inner hell that your parents can no longer find you, they have never tried finding you even as a child… you were left traumatized and afraid of human ambition, your crapping potential was just an eyesore to them, and since then, you’ve retreated into that dark, quiet world of prose and poetry, longing for something bigger than this life, despising that sunken life and raw consciousness that exists as a stark contrast to your fantasy of perpetual peace, and unconsciously… you start your maniacal fetish all over again, writing all these self-addressed letters that are almost like a self-pitying pretentious literary load of classic whine. I keep having this alias of mine reason with me that paper has infinitely more patience than people cause they can tolerate one’s emotions when you simply have too much within you already that’s scratching, dangerously at the surface, and brimming with this full ultimately-suppressed hiroshima-cum-krakatoa force, you’re almost like a beautiful, dormant volcano that’s likely to explode anytime soon. And so you write, and then you write, and then write even MORE AGAIN, obsessively, until you fall asleep with the words of Francis William Bourdillon playing out in your mind like a broken stereo, and you allow yourself to be seduced into that dark literary world of Henry David Thoreau and Robert Frost, and then you wake up at 3 am and continue writing in the darkness. Because paper lets your inner voice speak, and you relish the freedom that comes from writing continuously, in that sleepless trance without stopping to breathe, almost like you’re possessed, because that’s how much is really going on inside you which you cannot seem to tell people face-front in case they judged you. It’s even more dangerous than the insane cocaine overdose that killed Freud and the marijuana addictions that send people like Jeff Conaway into celebrity rehab. And all these years of psycho-analyzing yourself and reflecting on your life seemingly helps to obliterate the desperate pain that has already killed you when you were fifteen. It’s like you no longer even SEEM to react to pain anymore because it’s already so deeply ingrained and programmed into you that your capacity to feel has been fully arrested and your brain’s permanently warped and repressed by all these drugs and painkillers and feigned human sympathy. And I keep finding myself stuck in this same cesspit of the subconcious and it scares me to be so alone in this isolation. I don’t see the point of throwing myself out there in the world trying to stake some raving reputation of being the typical latchkey child who gets led astray, smoking and drinking pots and then dragging herself home every night to a penitentiary and eating stale dinners by herself and wondering how it’s ever like having a family meal in which there were real people around her asking her about her day. So instead of wreaking havoc out there drugging myself with opium and running high and loose with mobsters I end up retreating further, inwardly, deeper into this inner dungeon which seems to unravel more doors for me every time I look into myself for comfort and strength. I keep wanting to run, unstoppingly, without having to look back at this pathetic existence which I have, shamefully, come to call my own after years of fighting against it. I think that if I were to direct at least a fraction of these pent-up emotions externally instead of projecting all the anguish inwardly and purging my own soul with these internal ravages of hatred and sorrow, I would have exploded like a dormant volcano and annihilated at least a dozen villages by the age of thirteen. I really hate it that in movies and plays, the woman is always ripped open by violence and then forced to parcel out redemption for the rest of her life. I hate feeling so inadequate and run-down, I feel so ashamed and inferior admitting that I’m such a freaking social recluse who truthfully relates better to human spirits than to actual living people. I hate being such a demon in disguise. I wish I could be in a permanent stupor right now and wake up to find myself already buried six feet under in a coffin and hopefully I’ll just suffocate with these memories cudgeling my brain until my last breath.

A dose of introspection

So another birthday has come and gone, with me barely even realizing it was here. I had a solemnly quiet birthday this year… strangely, it didn’t really seem like a special day to me. Not with this prolonged sadness pervading my mind and spirit, taking hold of every tiny crevice in my body and filling it with its destructivity. I know I’m slowly losing myself in this confusion. Yet, somehow… I like the numbing effect it has on my torpid brain. Sort of makes you oblivious to the external pain that’s killing you, one that gradually sucks the very life force out of you. ***Negative energy field here, readers are advised to heighten their PMA before reading. Otherwise, continuation is strictly left to the readers’ discretion and I am in no way held responsible for any accidental transfer of negative energies.

So my family didn’t quite celebrate the occasion nor got me a cake or anything. At any rate, I guess the small circle of humans who do remember me for all my worth and really made an effort would amount to just a few. Well, Nan made me cake. She’s the one who always makes the most effort, even though I’m not her biological daughter. Makes you kinda wonder why your own parents never make you feel special even on the very day that you were born. Such is the irony of life. She said she’s considering Spain now… I’m not sure if it’s just a whim on her part. Well, anyway I’m really glad I got to speak to Chels. We spoke on the phone for an hour last Thursday. Makes me really touched that she’d go so far as to call me even though it was probably really expensive. I felt really bad, but she told me that I was part of her life and that I was important to her, and so I shouldn’t get all stupid about it. I guess I needed that call, in fact, more so than anything else. More than I’d ever admit. I can’t think for a moment what my life would’ve been like without her constant presence of reassurance in mine. Fabian has been such a sweetheart too. I really love them both so much that it hurts, which is such a sick irony, really, cause they’re such eternal blessings to me. (:

I’ve been so out of sorts and confused since last week. My jumbled array of thoughts and emotions have virtually been at war with each other. It’s like, rationality versus idealism, reality versus fantasy, religion versus science, fear and pain versus anger and confusion. I’ve lost about three pounds in these few days cause I’ve been suffering from inappetance. I don’t know why or what’s exactly wrong with me either… I just don’t seem to FEEL like myself, or hungry. I just no longer FEEL anything. It’s like, I went without food and water for about twenty hours last Saturday, yet I couldn’t even feel anything. The spark in me has suddenly just died. I sort of resent being around people lately. I’ve been such a recluse it’s honestly quite disturbing. It took me so little effort just having to outrun the sister missionaries and going through the pain of avoiding their calls and blowing them off since the whole… how should I put it, satanic overkill. Yes, he probably thinks he has won now, Satan. So I profess I’ve taken a step back in these few days and allowed him to possess me mentally and spiritually, to the extent that I don’t even recognise myself anymore. Oh, so I had a long deep controversial talk with the bishopric stake president after our institute of religion class last friday night. Yes, a long talk. But I seem to have more unanswered questions than I did before… So I didn’t go to the baptism party or sacrament or FHE on Monday. Makes me kinda hate the contradiction that this causes altogether. Yes, I can be such a filthy hypocrite and party pooper. But okay, I’m really trying to preach PMA here now to clear this negative aura. So… I’m supposed to go for a CES fireside this Sunday at the stake center to listen to Elder Hales’ delayed broadcast from Salt Lake City. But I seriously think I’ll go for the aura cleansing instead. I need some faery reinforcement at this point… and I look forward to meeting Ez Torres for our first gig on Friday.

It’s strange how it didn’t even ring a bell to me that it was MY birthday. I couldn’t FEEL anything even though it was supposed to be a very special day for me. It’s funny how I don’t really know what hunger is anymore. But I do know what desensitivity and pain is. They are such bosom companions, they never desert me. They will be with me even till my last breath. How sweet. I know Chelsey would hate it when she hears me speak like this. I feel sorry that she has to see me preach such alarming degrees of self-hatred towards myself all the time, it probably hurts her so much. Well… I seriously need to re-think my outlook in life.

And so… I’m working on my requiem now. It’s La Valse d’Amelie. Such a melancholic and introspective piece, it truly echoes the haunting, burning desire in me. To find myself in this world of chaos, and to find some balance and purpose… but at the risk of losing myself in these troubles and possibly never finding myself again. It reminds me so much of Edvard Munch’s starry night. We spend our entire lives searching frantically for that place of yearning, solace and comfort, one where love never dies or destroys us, one where pain and solitude exists independently of the other, yet… sadly, half of us lose ourselves in that frantic search of yearning and never do find it. But that doesn’t mean neverland doesn’t exist. The stuff that dreams are made of… it doesn’t make your dreams any less real than they already are. It actually lies within you, all that ever resonates within you. Where you hear the audible, steady beating of your heart, the delicate pumping of blood through your thin veins, that quiet, peaceful breath that brings warmth to the morning frost, the changing seasons that the swifts abide by… the very life force that sustains the trees… the comfort that a mother brings to a dying, distressed child. The security that one secretly yearns for so so badly, the lack of it which accentuates that gaping chasm in your life, where love is only just a profoundly beautiful dream that makes people bleed and weep. And so one concludes:

Oh mortal yearning, why hast thou forsaketh me?

In retrospect, my thoughts… well, are just a jumbled mess right now. There’s this series of fleeting images flickering through my head, and I’m really trying to make sense of it now in the most rational sense. No point killing yourself over these mere mortal concerns that don’t really matter much at the end of the day, in the greater scheme of things. Well, I do know things will get better for me somehow. Cause there is polarity in everything in this universe. There will be a balance of both worlds, like the antonym that exists alongside every synonym. And maybe… reading what jinn and tonics had to say really helped me. I need to start building this wall of PMA around me right now. The divine has shown me that one of the ways to create the energy needed to manifest magick is through the chemicals produced in our brains when we are stimulated emotionally. And so, I really need this faith, this emotional healing, this magick, more than anything in my life. And creating improved levels of PMA starts with the very essence of what resonates in your mind. Because your MIND echoes your inner thoughts, which is the voice of your soul, your subconscious being, which reflects the energy that creates your aura. Your thoughts can either make you or break you. They can even kill you. But they can also save you. Because every unspoken negative thought generates enormous amount of manna energy, and this energy builds up around you like a negative aura which drives the lightest of beings away. And this makes you susceptible to dark and negative entities that lurk beyond the veil. So… I’ve made a choice. That I will lighten up a bit, try to get my footing back and ground myself in this stability, loosen up and take a breather, and let that little bit of cheer back into my life (even though it seems nearly impossible at this point), but well… I guess anything is quite possible just so that they can stay. Where they should always be. Now I know what it means when the elders say love conquers everything. I shall take an early morning walk of introspection tomorrow and reflect on my earthly concerns. Just me, my cherubims, and what the unfolding day has to offer. The peace in knowing that they will never forsake me… and if that is not love, then what is? Because they are real enough to live in my reality. That is, really, all it takes to ground me in the here and now. To find that inner peace from within.

I hate you with a passion, darling

I cannot stand you anymore. I honestly hate everything about you, Alison. I can’t even begin to understand who you’re trying to be or what you’re trying to become. I no longer recognise who you really are. Who are you? I honestly don’t feel true to myself and especially to those who matter to me anymore. I feel like cudgeling myself and ripping off every infinitesimal sinew and fibre that’s inside of me, everything that’s perpetuating nothing but misery and torture in me, every conflicting issue in my life that’s tormenting me, and screaming it all out, without stopping, and reducing myself to a grainy, almost-nonexistent form.. like vapour, neither here nor there… just existing, but not having to feel, or care. For once, I just want to EXIST. To live without ambition or drive. Is that so wrong? It’s like I’m going through some excruciatingly exhausting internal theological conflict that’s so vicious that I can’t seem to break out of, I feel so suffocated and tired and confused, for once in my life, I don’t want to have to choose. I want to just stop contradicting myself and everyone, trying to force out something that’s already part of who I am in exchange for maybe a sympathy letter or two. I want something that’s bigger than myself… something more than what my sheer self can ever comprehend. I want real answers, not love. Because love is always biased and selfish. They love you enough to LET you choose, but no, darling, they’re not going to TELL you what happens because if that happens then everyone would be living life on the edge and embracing casualties everyday knowing they won’t die because they’d KNOW exactly what to do to avoid just that. They trust that if I possessed the maturity to choose what I want, then surely, I could live with the consequences of my choices for the rest of my life. Yes, they love me enough to never hurt me to the point of coercion, yet, I cannot make such a huge milestone of a choice without sensing their sadness and disappointment in me, this cruelly distinctive emotion that is just as excruciating as grief, without trusting that I won’t be hurting them again, on top of all the human guilt stemming from every injustice I’ve meted out to them thus far. That’s how much they mean to me. They’re the ones who’ve shown me what love really is, to experience love in every true sense of the word. To know how it feels like to be loved… to know what it actually means. Yet I’ve been so mean to them. I feel so sorry for raining this torture on myself, for letting them see me lose myself in all this madness, it probably hurts them more than anything, but there’s nothing in my life now that necessitates anything more than echoing how I truly feel deep inside me. They need me, and let’s be completely honest here because I NEED them too. I need them more than I would EVER need any human in my life. I really cannot afford to be desensitized at this point… I can no longer keep up. I’m already a walking hypocrite to everyone around me I just can’t keep doing it to myself too. I’m not being fair to myself. I’ve probably been crying so much I no longer feel, my system is nearly void of tears… its already been reduced to a parched, pathetic oasis and you wonder why these atrocious tears don’t ever dry up. These tears are starting to affirm my madness, my paranoia. I want so much to punch myself till I wince in disgusting shock, to puke out everything inside my gut and taste gall and blood and rancid acid. I want so much to just choke on my own vomit and preach hatred, fire and brimstone against myself till I’m too weak to resist, or even feel. I need enlightenment from an unprejudiced hand. I don’t want to hear what the realists or the biased kindred spirits have to say. Alison doesn’t need electroconvulsive therapy, psychotherapy, cognitive behavioural therapy, anti-depressants, counselling, psychological assessment, parish priest intervention, exorcism, no, just NONE of that. It has finally come to a point where I actually AM questioning myself what I really want out of my life, who am I really living to please? Why do I feel a sense of raging sadness knowing that my choices are going to disappoint many people in my life, that either choice I eventually make, at this point, I know it would upset those that I love? And myself, why am I making myself miserable with having to choose now? Why can’t I just listen to my heart and live out everything it tells me to do? Why can’t I just be true to the things that secretly, deeply mean so much to me, even though I can’t say it? Why am I so afraid of humans? It’s disgusting. On the surface yes, everything seems oh so picture perfect, intricately-carved, life is nothing more than just a beautifully twisted experiment, a contradictory exchange of cruel jokes, yet deep down it isn’t, it’s pure, insane living torture for me. Every day, I tell myself, you know what, you freak, I don’t know WHY God made you go through so much hell and torture since you were a kid but guess what, this is all just a spectral existence so get OVER it. You may hate yourself for the rest of your life, but don’t kill others because of that, even if they were the ones inflicting it all upon you. You notice that THESE fake people are only ever nice to you cause they feel sorry for you. Gosh I hate human sympathy. I hate it so much when people patronize me. I almost always know what these people are thinking and that kills me because it makes me out to be such a COMPLETE freak. I can’t even begin to tell my closest friends what all this actually means to me. Why, cause I’m almost not even real to them. I’m probably the next big paranormal thing that can ever exist outside the world of the sideshow freaks in Coney Island. I feel like a freaking twisted psychopath, a phantom in disguise, one who can never reveal who she truly is because life is just an extended, tiresome game of pain, torture and deception. I’m getting pretty experienced in this whole charade. Why can’t I simply live out such an existence without having to fear judgement from the people who actually mean the most to me? I can’t, because my heart isn’t the safe, quiet place I once thought it to be.. it no longer is. Is home really where the heart is? No, because it has become my enemy, an ultimate, beautiful arch nemesis in my life that has turned against me. What a backstabber you are, Alison. Your shattered heart has recoiled to such a wretched, fettered state it can no longer dream or fantasize about what might or might not happen anymore. I no longer know what you want. I can’t even BRING myself to cry anymore. Why doesn’t it offer any dissolution or comfort, why do these tears just keep pouring forth like some raging waterfall from within when I least expect it? Where are all THESE TEARS even coming from anyway? I never knew I was capable of experiencing this extent and measure of pain… why is it doing this to me? Why are YOU doing this to yourself, Alison? What KIND of person are you? I really love you so much, but you are such a freaking bitch at times I just hate you with a ruthless passion. You’re a stupid coward. You over-analyze every freaking core detail to the last minor degree and your micromanagement of everything isn’t really going to affect the world, you know that? You’re a LOSER, a complete loser who’s afraid to face up to what you know is true and important to you. You’re just a freaking escapist cause you just can’t fucking wake up. Just look at what you’ve done to me, you twisted girl. You’ve reduced me to this freaking insane state where I have no choice but to cast my ethics out of the window and resort to doing ALL the things I absolutely abhor. You know I don’t ever use expletives in my life but I SERIOUSLY want to just rant and rave at you even if that’s exceedingly childish and wrong or whatever, but I honestly, absolutely, cannot take this anymore. I cannot stand being you. Please just let me be a normal kid legitimately for once in my life, let me just break down for a bit and drown in this deviant pool of blood for a few days without feeling like the accursed child here. Let me just breathe without having to wince at the sharp stabs of needles piercing me, a demonstrable mockery of my hideously-despised human existence. Reality can be such a cosy bed of pine needles that I’m really better off living outside its vicious, suffocating grasp. Why do you think you’re such an anti-hedonist, dear? It saddens me that you were already contemplating the perils of life at eight. But guess what, Alison? I’m eighteen now and I’ve already had enough of THIS stupid life. I’m way THROUGH with it. I’ve had enough of all this pain and how lonely this agony always makes me FEEL. It hurts me so much that no one can fully empathise or sense how much pain this really causes me, or in fact, how much I’ve lost in all these years of my life. I hate waking up every day feeling like wow, I’m the next biggest freak accident and that I don’t even HAVE a choice in this to begin with. This pain actually draws me away from people more so than it truly helps me understand myself for the better, and it escalates over the years, and only serves to accentuate my disgusting abnormality rather than bridge those blatantly stark differences between me and so many normal people. I’ve been trying to figure myself out my entire life. Can you just tell me your gameplan once and for all cause I’m seriously losing right now, and I hate losing to myself, I’m just so tired of that. I wish you knew that and stopped trying to be someone else. Because it’s probably easier to be anyone but you, Alison. It’s bound to be easier than being a freak. I hate it how no one ever TRIES to understand how much this actually means to me, and how nearly everyone whom I ever trusted regretfully turned away from me when I needed them the most, except them. I don’t want people to question my sanity. I want to unleash a whole string of black curses on this stupid kid who just cannot BE normal for once in her life and plague her with hatemail for the rest of her life because she’s such a bloody freaking hypocrite, especially to the ones who truly love her. I don’t even KNOW this girl who’s always sobbing in the rain as she walks, dodging evil glances from people, staring at the sunken reflections of herself in the rain-washed windows of the buses she rides alone at night, in the quiet echoes of the bathroom when she’s all alone and she hears that inner voice from childhood haunting her with that beautiful requiem, one that is so painstakingly familiar yet tinges with such irreparable sadness. This devilish loneliness gets magnified tenfold in the dark recesses of her soul, so much so that she can literally taste it. This burgeoning loneliness has become her constant companion; yes, she no longer feels lonely in that physical loneliness when no one is around her, because she’s already desensitized to that loneliness. I don’t want to talk to the people who love me because it is their judgement that I fear the most. I don’t feel enlightened or hopeful of a better life, I’m just not ready to decide now, at this point in my life. I seem to KNOW yet NOT know what I really want out of this life. I’m a human disaster, a walking contradiction. I don’t believe or care about love because I’m already so immuned to its absence that I no longer CRAVE for its existence, but at this point, I just cannot choose because I know that either way, I’ll end up hurting myself again. And I totally hate myself for that. I want to be immuned to choices, to deception, to judgement, to pain, to confusion, to this fatality that we’re all so vulnerable to as humans. It’s like you only start to fully comprehend and appreciate your tragic fate when you notice that nearly everyone else around you can actually regale happy tales of a normal childhood and you can’t, because you never even had one. And so you just want to stone it out for the rest of eternity without having to contemplate life on the bridge every fortnight, worrying about the existence of a judeo-christian hell when you don’t even believe in it. You lived in a world filled with deadly assassins and axe murderers, a world of darkness, with the only vibrancy you had coming from these monotonous shades of gray. If words could actually kill you, oh, trust me, darling, you would’ve died a thousand times, if not more. But you know what, your pain would’ve ended sooner, isn’t that what you want? You’re hurting them so much more than any other human has EVER caused them pain. What is so terribly wrong with you? It feels like my time is running out… and no one can help me. I no longer feel bolstered and shielded from anguish. I’m experiencing so much of it now that I no longer FEEL it, it’s amazing how feeling and knowing too much can actually destroy you. I hate being alone and getting run down in this suffering, without having anyone to turn to. I want to do this for myself and not feel accountable to the rest of humanity. I’m being forced into this narrowing alleyway right now and I’m given two tantalizing choices and I’ve only got to pick one and yet both are equally important to me, to my life in its entirety and right down to its very core. I’m reduced to a state of pure, existential panic, one that is slowly engulfing me, choking me. I’m sucked into this rut, I’m having a complete metaphysical crisis here and I’m letting it over-ride me and possess me like some vipera lebetina venom. How harrowing it is to see myself disintegrating all over, suspended mid-air in animation, watching the seconds fade away slowly like the post-chernobyl radiation that lingers on forever, a silent enemy that you can’t see, touch, feel, taste, hear or smell. I have lost all sense of time and space and identity and self-worth, I just want to pretend that this is all but a lucid dream and never, ever have to wake up. I don’t want to be a hostage to my own humanity, self-detained and forced to live in this mess that I’ve made. I am coughing out more blood than I can ever feel it coursing through my throbbing veins. These old wounds just keep getting torn apart again and again and I can even taste the sepsis that’s spreading all over me, wrecking me and causing me to degenerate like a leper, fading away into obscurity like another Robert Vincent Giglio the third. These horrible stitches that once held me together are now falling apart at their very seams. Everything inside me is screaming for supplication, for someone to just hold me wordlessly as I cry for hours and hours, to scream like a possessed banshee, to bawl out all my frustrations without restraint or fear, or just to unleash a whole dogpile of slaps on my effing desensitized face until I’m smart enough to wake up. Because this isn’t just the average coffee addiction that kills people sometimes; this is something that is so intertwined to my life and to who I am principally that I just CANNOT even begin to question what I would BE like without it. It feels RIGHT to me, but it is the biggest contradiction in my life. I don’t want to have regrets in my life. I don’t WANT to be such a freaking escapist. I CAN’T CHOOSE because I don’t WANT to choose. And surely, that’s a choice? I want to quit, and you know why, Alison? Because you’re just a weak and stupid moron. I know I’m letting many people down, I’m destroying myself in this misery, and I’m so sorry, hate me if you must. You might like it, Alison, but I hate being isolated in this anguish, in this ransacked world filled with horror, tragedy and hatred, often seeing things you don’t want to see, and not being able to stop things from happening. But you KNOW you’re not insane; it’s your conviction of the truth that keeps you grounded in the here and now. But sure, I would tell myself at eleven years old that this is really something that you’d get accustomed to someday. When you grow up, things will definitely get better, everything would seem more defined and logical and less hazy to you. But no, you only start to realize now that the pain of innocence actually carries with it an inherited bliss. It’s only at eighteen that it finally dawns on you how fucked up you actually are, and this painful awareness slowly kills you. Oh, you’ll get used to it.. to the absence of reason and rationality in your life, the lack of having people love, understand and accept you for who you are, to have people see YOU purely for WHO you are and not from the myriad of paranormal freakshows you can actually perform, and to even tell them what’s honestly bothering you. You don’t even NEED to speak in tongues or aramaic in order to achieve that LEVEL of understanding with people, yet half the time these people your age can’t seem to even COMPREHEND any of your profoundly stupid and ridiculously insane blabberings, and it’s not like there’s even ANY divine colloquialism involved. But I really don’t WANT to be me anymore. I’ve endured all this pain for so many years and I’ve just HAD it. You’ve spent a great deal of your life not saying anything, from the day you turned seven, to your perfectly-simulated chamaeleonidae tendency of trying so hard to fit into that high school desert of conformity and blending into that whole ‘hype’ of teenage normalcy, as ‘normal’ as God probably ever allowed you to, and guess what, love, you failed. So let me just escape for a while now and find peace in what’s left of an already shattered life. Let me just lie here in this bed and force myself to dream, and continue being the bloody escapist I already am. Jeesh, is that why people never take you seriously? Because you dream too much you no longer even question what’s real. But oh yes, you DO know what’s real, alright, more so than the average person you see dying on the street out there, more so than you actually give yourself credit for. But really, how can you even question THEM, these entities whom you’ve known your entire life? It’s EXACTLY because of this very thought darling, this human atrocity of yours, which makes you such a detestable specimen of humanity, a filthy hypocrite like everyone else. How can you actually do THIS to them? Do you have a conscience? Oh wait, no, you don’t. You never did, you loser. It’s just amazing how much I hate you, Alison. I never knew faith could cause you such misery, what an oxymoron. Please, hun, just wake up and save yourself this unnecessary humiliation. Keep writing those effing weeping letters to yourself cause you know what? Nobody’s ever gonna read them. So just keep writing those pathetic replies to yourself, really, and let all those furry voices in your head dictate and manipulate you. I no longer even question why that Idaho teacher labelled you a Hitler reincarnate when you were fifteen. Cause you’re just such a freak of nature it scares me… little kids were afraid of you in school, your parents don’t even know why you’re so unusual. Why couldn’t you just be like every normal girl with a happy, healthy childhood void of creepy shadows and talking possessed dolls and then make your safe transit into adulthood like what every normal, rational-thinking human does at the end of the day? Why let this tumultuous agony consume you like you deserve it? Cause maybe you just do. I don’t know how such abnormal people even came to be; get cornea transplants if it kills you to See so much and yet hate yourself over it. You’re such a cruel, heartless human, you’ve driven yourself to such a deplorable state you don’t even deserve my sympathy anymore. What an absolute abomination to my sight. You’re one of the biggest jokes, a failure in the entire record of human history… cause you’re a quitter. You would’ve totally died the instant you set foot in Auschwitz or Treblinka cause you’re no fighter. You’ve would’ve just renounced your entitlement to live and caved in right away to whatever the fascists and brownshirts wanted. You’re such a weakling it repulses me so much that I can just writhe in revulsion watching you. I no longer CARE how you feel you freaking bitch. Just kill your own faith, oh yeah, staunch that cerebral haemorrhage right now and get a freaking brain transplant lest everyone thinks you’re a schizophrenic. It’s not gonna render you any more pain than it already has thus far. Even some of your friends in school now think you’re a freak, they don’t even know if you’re possessed or just mentally disturbed, your own sisters think you’re a freak, oh you were such a disturbed child every teacher was afraid of you, even at five you were already a freak. You think you feel safer being around humans cause they can distract you from what’s real; their laughter can seemingly ground you in this timely existence, but other times you just hole yourself up in those stupid school bathrooms sobbing silently and letting it all kill you. I wouldn’t even be surprised if you died in there and nobody knew; you’d be the moaning myrtle that haunts the school bathrooms. You let all this fear and desolation consume you, thinking you’re so freaking great cause no one has ever seen your tears or know what really frightens you. But you’re scaring me… oh, you sick, perversed child. You’re like an eighty-year-old trapped in an eighteen-year-old’s body. You’re trying to be someone you never were, courting your own misery and demise. Tell me which normal teenager would write her own epitaph when she’s only fifteen. You’ve got to be the only freak I know who analyzes obituaries every day whilst listening to the hauntings of Chopin. That lady doth protest too much, so wise so young, they say never do live long; o villain, villain, smiling, damned villain, what, my dear lady disdain! Are you yet living? Please, I don’t even WANT to listen to you rant anymore, you freak. I think my eleven-year-old self would’ve been absolutely abhorred and traumatised by you, just seeing what you’ve become. You’re a bloody delusional girl who’s choking and suffocating in her own silence, thinking that what doesn’t kill her only makes her so much stronger, but you’re dying, love, and no human you ever care about actually knows you’re secretly wasting away. You’re almost perfecting that painful requiem that has essentially pervaded throughout most of your life, you just have to keep practising at it, just a bit harder now, till your fingers bleed. And your parents wonder why you’re so deranged and fixated on playing that piece over and over again in that locked room where no one can see your tears. You’d die just to get that piece perfect, Alison, because if you don’t, either way this inadequacy will kill you anyway. You submit yourself to the possession of all these demonic clefs and harmonic progressions and musical notations and abstract poetry; all these mere superficial distractions, pretending that you’re just a tortured protagonist of a tragic comedy, and that this mortal pain will elude you in your sleep, which you crave for so so much, yet you are just so afraid of it. Cause you hate seeing the things that you don’t WANT to see in the darkness. You’re such a farce, you see your life in the minor scale, everything that resonates within you is pretty much pentatonic or monophonic, whole-tone or phrygian, you can’t do anything but mouth the ritornello for the tutti in the lower key every time you hyperventilate. So much so that even your friends in school think you’re psychotic or dysfunctional. Really, you’re just plain neurotic and absolutely immature. That’s why you can never understand any of the crude sexual perverse jokes that your classmates make, just like they can never figure you out cause they don’t EVEN really know you anyway. So tell me, dear, what freaking potential do you have? You’re just a FREAK, yes, well that’s your potential, being a freak and excelling at it. You derive excruciating pain and equally tormenting pleasure from listening to an aria as depressing as dame janet baker’s rendition of Purcell’s dido and aeneas, because you’re such a demented lowlife. Only eighteen and you’re already writing a libretto in vengeance against that stupid unmarried german man called Ludwig Van Beethoven. Why? Cause you’re a fucking freak who’s frantically trying to find various sophisticated means of escape before you end up drowning in these depths of immeasurable pain and sorrow. You’re already half-drowning in this well of sorrow, yes, this well that’s not filled with water, but with your very own tears. I’m already being incinerated alive, everything in me is burning in mortal anguish; your salvation isn’t going to make any real difference to me now, you know that? And I don’t want to be saved anymore, Alison. Just let me be. Because the twisted malingerer in me always wins anyway. No point fighting against it. God has long forsaken you, that’s why none of your fasting and fervent prayers were ever answered. Just hush now, love, this pain is almost transient. Oh, only but for the rest of your life… just a few more years now honey, and it’ll all be over before you know it. You won’t live forever to endure all this. This beautiful bleeding will stop. I promise.

LDS yeah!

My beloved friend Sister Tawni Russell and I were hanging outside the chapel room with a couple of sister missionaries today gorging on some burnt-black brownies and chewy banana cakes which Sisters Jess and Kotogama made. Which was a pretty cool breakfast.. and that’s the funny thing about church actually; they fatten you up pretty easily because you have a quarter of the Relief Society sisters who are rather skilled in the culinary department. I still love Sister Laurie’s Pumpkin bars though.. oh man. Those are absolutely divine. And as far as my culinary skills go, I guess I can fry a mean egg without killing anyone. So anyway, the Bishop left the chapel pretty early and it was just the four of us with Sister Alford today so we took some really good pictures and then Russell and I fooled around in the RS room where the piano was. Haha I really love Sunday School and the sacrament room where the piano is. We also have an oven, a microwave and even a refrigerator in the kitchen. I was practising as usual and Russell was reading -ahem- something. Hahahaha. It was awesome cause we also did an absolutely crazy random piano duet which we managed to get on tape. Hehe. Too bad Squid lost the video of Russell in the cardboard box. That one was an ultimate classic. Ah well. As long as she stays in our ward, we can always do crazy stuff again.. though things are definitely different now without our wonderful SONIA GHAURI around. I guess Deep’s decided to ditch church now because his dear friend is gone. When is she coming back?!!! We really really miss her. Deep and I kinda cried the Sunday after Ghauri left.

Anyway, on a much happier note, the sister missionaries and I are gonna hang out on their P-day during Christmas night and we’re going around town to look at the lightings. Haha that’s gonna be so much fun and I really cannot wait.

And can I just take this moment to say I’m really grateful to our Heavenly Father to have met my wonderful Bagel darling and the Fantabulous because they are honestly, one of my craziest best friends I’ve ever had.. and they’ve really made my life remarkably different ever since knowing them. We literally can’t live without each other and we even have pet names for each other; we speak in codes too and are able to second-guess each other’s sentences and appreciate private jokes like the New York Times interviews, Ally Crapbag show, Chelly’s Dream Dates, Orange County, Maxine and Olga, and the piano-sensational-fridge-javelin-sofa-tossing Olympist and even King Mulciber who could lift six pianos at a rate of thirty tosses per second?!! HAHAHA oh man. That is a total classic. We even know what’s happening everyday with each other be it at work or at school (despite living in different time zones) because we talk almost everyday and we’ll even know stuff like which comrades amongst us would be getting sealed soon -like DADDY STANTON hahaha-, or who’s ill or who’s cracked their knees -ahem-, or who’s received a gift from the First Presidency and met the RS president at the Church Office Building which is like oh my gosh?!! ’It is not a sin to watch BYU cougars football on Sabbath Sundays if a direct descendent of Brigham Young is playing’. Hahahaha oh man. We also know each other’s secrets and hobbies; we know each other’s inner circle of friends and family too, and lest I seem unfair let me just say that people like Kallie are just absolutely wonderful too! I love Kallie! She’s really amazing and it’s so cool cause she writes equally long essays to me and she’s an awesome buddy who’s now a senior at Murray High and we both love Maxine to bits -she should be totally honoured, ahem- and we’re planning to play street hockey and have snow fights too when I go over in 2010. :) I wish I was at her Peter Pan musical though.. it must’ve been really nice. Oh I just cannot wait to go to BYU! Brooke would meet up with me too and that’s gonna be swell! I’m really looking forward to all that. And Chels might be transferring from Rexburg-Idaho to Provo after next year cause she wants to do music composition. I am so proud of her, she’s literally like my ‘mom’- like how Stan’s my ‘dad’, supposedly, haha, and she totally mothers the piano-man and me.  And it’s awesome cause Sharalee’s parents are taking me in for free and I’d be able to live off-campus and not have to rent an apartment in Utah cause I’d be given free boarding with them at their big house in Orem. And that’s really neat cause Orem’s only like thirty minutes from Murray so Chels can drive over anytime and we can hang out like crazy. She might be on her mission then but she’s gonna bring me around and we’ll have sleepovers and marvel at the SL temple together and Fabs and I are gonna get hypothermia at Orange County and the guy can fish us ‘ice blocks’ out of the frozen pond and Chels can go absolutely mental! HA HA HA. See I’m not even making much sense now; well, I guess that’s because I hang out too much with weirdos who shove banana peels into their pockets and forget about them till they rot, haha, but really, we’re all part of an eternal family that’s a lot bigger than ourselves and that’s the most amazing part.  Ms Brown and I are gonna join the Mo Tab when we’re like fifty! Recently we both joined the movement of ‘Stop Persecution of the LDS Church for Prop 8′ and I think that’s awesome. (: Temple Square is really beautiful now and I wish I was there.. I could hang out with Kals in our outrageously mismatched clothes (hear, hear) and Chels can throw chips at us and we’ll puke into the Atlantic again (like the last time) and shimmy to Michael Jackson’s medley, hahaha. The Bagel’s right, I’ll totally wipe out Deseret Books if I come to Utah. Haha.

Oh yeah! I heard the Christmas devotional message from the First Presidency today. I thought it was really good. Hmmph.. who cares about my over-zealous baptist relatives who discredit other denominations -seemingly- in the name of Christ when Chels was totally right in saying that their revival email was mostly a bunch of crap. :) And I’m so amused and grateful for Chelly’s manic lds-behavior cause it mimicks mine exactly which is perfect. (: Oh yeah.. Berlin was throwing a fit at home the other day -poor mom- so David actually asked if he should teach Berlin a lesson? And then he said matter-of-factly, ‘Well I’ll kidnap him and take him to Mongolia where he’ll be forced to listen to rare collections of John Denver CD’s. Then he’ll learn to herd and train the wild yaks in the region and search for food for a family of goats following his yak herd.’ Oh man, can you even believe he actually said that?! That’s hilariously random considering Chels merely said ‘tsk tsk Berlin’. Well, I think it takes a crazy person to know another crazy person. (: And have I ever mentioned before how brilliant Daniel is? He’s actually just as talented as David. I mean, he can actually SING! Like, really sing. And he does it really splendidly too. I’ve ever heard him sing Gavin DeGraw and it was so awesome. And Fabs said he’s heard Claudia sing before too. It totally runs in the family alright. So please don’t take his word for granted when he says ‘uhh.. I don’t sing, I just play the guitar’. Like yeah right. He’s just being really modest and shy.

Oh yes, this suddenly reminds me of something extreme- Fabs called me like five times when he was stuck on the mountain the other day, unbelievably.. insane, haha. The thing is, I guess.. partly because we know each other’s lives so well, Chels could easily just ask me why on earth did he call her at 5 am? And I’d be able to explain cause in fact I’ll know exactly why. And haha it’s hilarious too cause Fabs has seen Chels wash her fish tank before -that shows you how much we’ve already seen each other on such a frequent relaxed basis-, and well, I’ve ever heard him play on his piano -hmph, stupid piano, hahaha-, and I’ve heard Chels sing too; she’s heard me sing or should I say ‘croak’, I’ve seen her grandma and family before; she’s seen my mom before; his sister and cousins have spoken to me before; we’ve talked on the phone many times, I’ve seen Chels when she was three years old and she’s seen me in my geek phase, like ugh; I ever saw her in a tuba suitcase -awww man that was the BEST- and even a cardboard box and she’s seen me transform into Franbruka; and because we love each other so much, well, let’s just say if one of them doesn’t hear from me for as little as three days at least, a phone call from overseas would come ringing in and they’d go ALLY WHERE ARE YOU?!!!! We miss you! We thought you died; it’s been an eternity.. etc etc. Mental. But you know what? That’s exactly why I love them.. with all my heart. I’ve never ever met anyone as crazy and wonderfully sweet and devoted as them.. and the coolest thing is, we feel like we’ve actually known each other forever.. or at least, for our whole lives. And I think it’s really sweet that she spoke about me during fast and testimony meeting too.

Somehow.. we already know that this friendship is definitely gonna last us a lifetime.. or rather, even beyond death actually; we see each other like an eternal family rather than just mere friends. Honestly, in fact, I feel even much closer to the both of them than to the people I hang out with at lunch in school everyday, or even the good friends that I see on an occasional basis.. it’s really hard to define how much they mean to me or even to describe that mutual feeling.. of really loving a person so so much for just being there. They’ve been here for me so much more than any friend I’ve ever had been for me.. especially, well, considering we live in different countries and yet we actually make an effort to talk everyday (even while I’m in school and sometimes, we would even text each other and stuff, and they would almost always know if I’m ill or that if something bad’s happening at home again). The three of us feel weird not talking to each other for too long.. and no, we’re not in love, hahaha, even though Eve’s said that this crazy friendship seems even more intense than a courting relationship. We’re just really, really good friends who can’t live without each other. (: And the both of them really know me completely for who I am (which includes exhibiting classic symptoms of TAB and laughing till I get ulcers, among some abnormal things, and what’s best is that they can rival my madness equally). Ahhhh oh gracious Father in Heaven I just love them to bits.

I was touring Chels’ house the other night (even her bathrooms, lol) and I even saw Berlin sleeping and oh my gosh, his bedroom walls’ are just AWESOME! The ‘Berlin’ Wall, ha ha ha. And hello, I so do not have a crush on Berlin??! What kind of misguided assumption is that? Ray is totally off in his calculations. Nuts, and he gets jealous that I’m treating Chelsey as a ’best’ friend and that we’re apparently excluding him. Though of course, I’m still a little sad about her situation with Ray. ): I wish things would be okay somehow.. I mean, Ray’s my buddy too and it feels weird ignoring him altogether.. but every time we talk, it’s always either about Kelsey, Chelsey or Brittany, and I can’t really do anything to help him. It makes me feel so useless sometimes, even though he’s said I’m worth at least ‘ten thousand dollars’. It’s just that so much has actually happened within these three months.. and I’m not exactly sure why Chels is avoiding all her other friends as Ray puts it, ’yeah she basically has only you two and her family now’ and that ’she is getting all her social interaction through you two and doesn’t even care about anyone else because apparently, she said she wants her own space’. Sigh.. I wish as her best friends, Fabs and I could actually do more than just sit back and pretend that everything’s okay.. I know she’s really good at building up walls and concealing her emotions.. and that’s not healthy. She actually reminds me a lot of myself in some ways.. but Fabs isn’t even aware that anything’s wrong.. oh, this is so complicated.

Haha whoa I’m suddenly excited again!!! I absolutely cannot wait to see the ‘perfect gift’ that Chels said she’s got me for Christmas. (: She’s been going on about it in my face for quite some time already and I’m absolutely stunned that she actually spent about USD$100 on me and even gave Fabs a USD$50 Amazon gift voucher for Christmas..?!! She is absolutely mental. And Ray said as an ‘ex’ best friend of Chelsey, she has never even gotten him nor Jessika anything.. let alone blow off a hundred just for the two of us, who are apparently ‘all that she cares about now other than her family’. And Chels told me excitedly just a couple of days ago that she was out shopping for my christmas and birthday AND baptismal presents. Hmmm.. sometimes, she honestly amazes me and surprises me in so many ways I can never fully comprehend.. I’m quite at a lost for words to describe her. And I guess many a times, you don’t really need to understand a person in order to love that person.. and so so much in fact. But there’s this lingering sadness in me somehow that I can’t fully explain.. especially well, after talking to Ray about.. things. Oh well. I really think that sometimes, knowing too much kills you. ): But I’ve figured that no matter what happens.. I’ll always be there for her if she ever needs me.. just like she has so faithfully and loyally done so for me in all these months. And for that, I will never, ever forget.  Anyway, Flabs is gonna be mailing stuff over to me too.. ha ha, he makes me laugh a lot. (: And of course I can’t wait to see the composer’s reaction when she gets the mini-suitar and my secret project! Ahhh this is so exciting. I think I should start building a bomb shelter now. Oh, and the olympist ? Well then, he can just wait for his medal patiently.. very, very patiently. Hahaha.

I guess I’m just ranting here cause I’m really bored and I thought it’d be really cool to talk about my awesome buds. (: They’re so amazing and I love them so so much (with all thine heart, haha) and they deserve it, actually. Because they’ve really shown me what it’s like to feel loved.. and that loving others may not always be such a painful ordeal. And they’ve redefined what friendships mean to me and what friends are supposed to be.. and taken the place of the void in my life. And for that, I salute them and dedicate this to them. (: In fact, I do believe CTR does bring people from different ends of the earth together.. especially when you least expect it. And HAHAHA YES, I cannot wait for Institute in January! YAY!!!!!!!!!!!! GO BYU! :)

Figure skating practice on October 10, 2008

I had skating practice last Monday. But I probably won’t be able to skate for about a week or two now cause I fell really badly yesterday during training. It was a super long story which I’ve relayed to Fabs, Chelsey, Ray, Lydia and Sasha, and I still feel terrible now.. I sprained my shoulder blades, grazed my elbows and now my knees are blue-black and there might even be a hairline crack in my knee joints too cause I keep hearing those ominous crack sounds whenever I move.. I feel so crippled cause I sort of need my knee guards to help me walk and I can’t stand for long either.

My back and shoulders hurt, I can’t even lift my arms much- basically, my everything hurts! Jeeeeesh. I couldn’t even walk yesterday and Sherri’s Dad had to send me home. And I can’t climb stairs or walk fast enough and school’s already starting on Monday! =( This reminds me of how I sprained my toe when I was sixteen (because of Eve’s stupid inner-thigh reformer) and I had such a hard time walking to school every day and -holy salchow- climbing stairs was such an anguish for me! I had to endure the agony for more than a month. And because of that, even until today, my toes crack very easily even when I’m sitting and just fiddling with my toes.

Sigh, I will just follow Chelsey’s advice and request for a priesthood blessing from my ward bishop this Sunday if I can. And to think my Mum refuses to let me go see a doctor. How wonderful, just great, I feel thoroughly elated! I can’t even do off-ice or in fact, anything at all right now. And since I have to abide by my golden mormon standards here and not swear a word of injustice, I shall just say dasdfuijkhgfjdahskfjdfzhdzSKfhsdjff.

Oh please let me get well soon. Please.

Sometimes, personality tests tell you a lot more about yourself than you realise

You Are Classical Music

You are a somewhat serious person who enjoys studying subjects deeply.Art of all kinds interests you, and a good piece of art can really effect you emotionally.You are inspired by human achievement, and you appreciate work that takes years to accomplish.For you, the finer things in life are not about snobbery – they’re about quality.

                                                           What Kind of Music Are You?

Your Personality at 35,000 Says…

Deep down, you prefer spending time alone to spending time with others. You enjoy thinking more than talking.You are not too sure what your place in the world is yet. You often feel invisible in a crowd.Your gift is having a good eye. You take amazing picture and have the natural talent for most visual arts.You are inspired by what is unknown. You are drawn to the exotic.Your life has a lot of ups and downs, but things generally end up being pretty positive. It’s one big emotional roller coaster, that’s for certain.

The Personality Test at 35,000 Feet

You Are A Poplar Tree

People tend to look up to you, and it’s a bit lonely at the top.Inside, you are not always self confident, but you show great courage.Mature and organized, you are reliable in any situation. You tend to have an artistic or philosophical outlook on life. You are very choosy in love and take partnership seriously.

What’s Your Celtic Horoscope?

Your Slanguage Profile

Aussie Slang: 75%Canadian Slang: 50% Prison Slang: 50% British Slang: 25% New England Slang: 0% Southern Slang: 0%

What Slanguage Do You Speak?

My perfection lies in my imperfections

Written by Alison
Dated April 3, 2008
In Thailand (ENP), when I couldn’t sleep one night. Haha.

If life was any less perfect
my world would be enshrouded in silence
a veil of darkness that steals over the night sky
a blanket of stars that expands over the almighty cosmos.

If life was any less perfect
I would see the world with the aid of a single eye
my tears will dry up as the music fades away
into the abyss of time which is almost unreal
like the gossamer wings of the sylphs in the air
light, dainty, magical, surreal.

If life was any less perfect
the beggar on the street wouldn’t see me,
so much of even hearing me
I would be as much of a nonentity
as the next jack-and-jill mediocrity.

If life was any less perfect
I would crawl on my hands with no feet
neither could I feel the caress of the wind and the summer’s heat
the stillness of time and the lingering scent of foxglove-
one can almost hear the tinkling symphony of the barren soul.

If life was any less perfect
I couldn’t string words into an array of phrases
to weave a world so discarnate of human existence
But I am not perfect- though nearly so
blessed be and thankful-
for all there is to know.

The pieces in my heart are missing you

So I don’t really know why this thing is taking such a long time to load, but I just have a sudden, compelling urge to write.. and it is common knowledge that artists or writers should never dismiss their inspiration. I guess one could say I’m in another one of my Anne Frank modes again. The familiar haunting blues have caught up with me like a sickening melody, so tightly and relentlessly they’re clutching at me that it feels like I’m being wrenched apart.. suffocating. It’s been a while since I’ve written anything, or even to narrate my humdrum existence on paper which I used to do so rather religiously when I was eleven. I must stress that this blog is supposed to be my anthology; not the typical its-all-about-me blog, but I need a medium to vent at this point and paper (even virtual paper) has more patience than people, so what gives? Even though things are definitely not the way they were before, I’d say that this is probably the closest I’ve come so far (or will ever come) to reliving those times as though they were yesterday. Buffy was right. Why did I have to grow up?

So right now school’s been a bummer with all its monotonous routines and what-nots. Don’t get me wrong though, I do enjoy going to school and its fun when you have sincere teachers like Ms Zhang who’s just so earnest and easily one of the most commendable specimens of the teaching profession. No kidding. He’s thumbs up all the way and Ms Lloyd’s excellent too. Mr Sousand is passable I guess; I admit he gets pretty exasperated with me at times for my inevitable ignorance (especially since its something that he majored in.. but hey, he does try his best to explain those stupid genetic concepts to me, which sadly, are like boring stoichiometric scriptures to me but infinitely worst). Anyway, so on the subject of school, yes, it’s tough facing people and I know things aren’t going that well for me.. on the social front, I admit I was deliberately avoiding Dawn for a while.. even though she means so much to me. We’ve since come to a consensus though that what I did in the name of friendship was totally cruel and it just boils down to the fact that she actually loves me as much as I love her. Well, that’s just another thing.

Lately, I’ve had these weird bronchoconstriction sensations too; they’re almost like chest tightness and mini seizures that come and go at the most sporadic times and they can last for several painful seconds. I break out in cold sweat too and sometimes, I’d have these uncomfortable light-headedness and dizzy spells where I can’t exactly make out what’s in front of me, since there’s this haze of bright light that momentarily occludes my vision. And I’m having trouble hearing too.. something’s just terribly wrong with my left ear and it’s been partially-deaf for three weeks already.. and to think that all this while, I’ve actually suspected something dodgy and attributed it all to my supposedly-lousy earphones when in fact, the problem lies with me. And yes, I know some nice people have noticed that I’m no longer quite as bubbly and chirpy as before.. and they question me if anything is wrong. But even if it is, or let’s just say virtually everything is, its just not in my habit to broadcast it to the world. =(

It’s like I’m starting to become this entirely different person altogether, standing at the sidelines in pity watching myself disintegrate. I’m losing myself completely. At times, I can only hear muffled distant noises when people are talking. I can’t discern their voices anymore when everyone starts talking at the same time, and it gets really frustrating for me. I can only hear one person speaking at a time; I don’t even have to tune out to voices now cause the only ones I really hear are those in my head.

So I was learning Solfege’s theory and Chrematic scales yesterday. God forbid, it’s so complicated. I’m giving full credit to the musical aficionados of the heyday who actually composed all these musical pieces and theories hundreds of years ago. I completely succumb to their ingenuity. Time signature describing the structure and rhythm of a song, as quoted by my vocal coach. Half a semibreve’s a minim, and half a minim’s a crochet. Latin translation, not french. Not cro-shay, Alison. 4 beats in a crochet, so that makes 4/4. Half a crochet’s a quaver. Never try superimposing piano scores on guitar chords. Three degrees in every major chord of every key. Three degrees in every minor key. Half a tone’s a semitone. Christ. O_O I’m starting on some basic scale playing and guitar tablature too. I think chords are much easier.. though I’m still struggling with my D minor seven and stupid major F chord. And I secretly taught myself some notes in the major G key even though my guitar instructor’s started me off on major C only. Heehee.

Oh yes, I taught myself the chords of a new song two mornings ago within forty minutes, quite a commendable feat I should say, considering how slow I tend to be when it comes to everything else. Apologise by One Republic ft. Timbaland, a song that makes me reminisce soooo much about skating, especially since I first heard that song in Julia’s beautiful skating video last year. I still like that song a lot even though its all popularized now (ever since AI season seven). The novelty’s ebbing away now but it still reminds me a lot of skating (and David too, since he sang it with Ryan Tedders and it’s soooo goood). It’s quite funny that we’ve got to schedule our msn conversations across two different time zones, cause Germany’s time is seven hours behind Singapore’s.. all for the sake of talking to each other. So anyway back to the chords, I’ve been basking in this mini glory since mastering ‘apologise’, even if I’m dubbed crazy by Jessica but they’re honestly really easy. I just had to improvise a strumming pattern cause I’m essentially doing plucking styles now. I just love my new capo (and no, I didn’t name it) and I’ve got a nice chordbook on broadway musicals too. =)

I miss skating so much. And I don’t know why but I wish time would just go by faster, yet I don’t want to grow up. It’s an oxymoron just contemplating this life. Some part of me is clinging on to David as if he’s mine but I just don’t know why. He’s made such a profound change in my life. It reminds me so much of Willy Jughead Jones. He’s inspired me to pick up something that I’ve abandoned years ago.. something that I used to love so so much, yet what was it about growing up that meant I’d to give up half of my childhood dreams? It’s not even idolatry, I don’t even exhibit the classic symptoms of ODD. I just really love David for making me realise what’s important.. and I completely love him for who he is. His humble sincerity and earnest passion for music.. it puts colours into my otherwise grainy-filmed life. I’m piecing back all these small broken fragments, finding myself again even amidst all this mess. I can’t wait to finally see him in one and a half years’ time.. or even Lupe would suffice. She’s so amazing. =) I’m already missing his smile and I can’t wait to see it in person. For it is not into my ear he whispered, but into my heart. It’s totally random but I prefer David ballady than poppy though.. still, it doesn’t matter to me what musical style he chooses to pursue because I love him for who he is as a person. I’ve decided to pull through school now and pursue musical theatre when I’m twenty. By then I would’ve mastered my guitar and am probably a part-time busker at East Coast. Ha. And I really can’t wait to meet John and Robin. Sigh, it’s so sad that my long-cherished theatre studies (Ancient Greek theatre)’s ending next Tuesday too. =( I can only hope and pray above all else that I’ll get into music next semester. I’m even considering joining Music Vox in school too.

Speaking of music, Squid went for the SINGfest last weekend. She saw Jason Mraz, the Pussycat Dolls (I love Buttons!), One Republic and Alicia Keys perform LIVE oh my god!!! I was stuck at home mugging while she was out relishing quality music for a good ten hours at Fort Canning Park (I love their flame of the forest). Rich person she is. And I know this is totally random too but I’m grateful to the Sylphs for giving me that ray of hope yesterday. Think I’ll be spending some time with my royal gentry today. They deserve more love from me.. I’ve been so horrible to everyone and myself lately. Sometimes, I selfishly drown myself in all this bitter sorrow of our world thinking it’d make things better. How emotionally deluded can I be?

Well anyway, yesterday was the 2008 Beijing Olympics’ opening ceremony. It’s fascinating how it brings me back in time to the time I was fourteen, when I was diligently following the games in Athens, the Olympic history and grousing over the american election.. wondering if I’d live to see the 2008 Olympic games. Such heavy issues at fourteen already.. and then I’d worry about proselytizing at fifteen. And to think when I was ten all I had to think of was mac and cheese, my story-writing and finding some human means to finish my maths homework… oh, and like how much I hated my chinese tutor, really. Life loses its lustre as you age.. now I know why grams always telling me she thinks being a near-hundred’s meaningless even though I insistently maintain that it isn’t.

It’d be nice to see the rhythmic gymnastics segment in this 2008 Olympics. I was briefly watching some bits of the women weight-lifting earlier, in between Squid’s switching of channels from the MTV Asia Awards to the boring NDP. I can’t wait for the winter games 2010 in Vancouver though. =) I think Ladorna might be able to catch it there since she lives in Canada. And Evangeline’s making me salivate about ice skating again. I know she misses me but I’ve got my exams coming in two weeks’.. I’m nearly pulverising my head here over Molecular Genetics more than anything else. How I wish I could remove that overwrought brain of mine and soak it in glucose electrolyte solution and heat-shock it to restore my degenerating neurons. So, it’s another three more weeks of hellish drudgery and mugging at home for me. After which, it’d finally be my long-awaited holidays! And my life begins then.

My personality type- hmm wow, I’d say a hundred and one percent accurate. Haha!