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Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Monday, July 21, 2008

  • The Last Thing On Your Mind.


    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKoB_p-RlDs

    My so-called Motivational Playlist
    1. Sweet Sacrifice ~ Evanescence
    2. Going Under ~ Evanescence
    3. Lacrymosa ~ Evanescence //     Requeim- Lacrimosa ~ Mozart
    4. Pressure ~ Paramore
    5. Dead! ~ My Chemical Romance
    6. Wow, I Can Get Sexual Too! ~ Say Anything
    7. Something To Believe In ~ FM Static
    8. All These Things I've Done ~ The Killers
    9.  Navigate Me ~ Cute Is What We Aim For
    10. A Boy Brushed Red...Living in Black and White ~ Underoath
    11. Umbrella ~ McFly
    13. American Idiot ~ Gre    en Day
    12. Why Worry ~ All American Rejects

      So I arrive at that meet.  Already late to warm-ups because we didn't know where the pool was, so I already started hyperventilating in the car.  I take a nice view of the pool and it felt like someone was squeezing my lungs.
    I changed into my suit the fastest I have ever changed in the history of my life and after a lap or two, my coach, Arpod tells me to climb up to tell me what I should warm up and I'm trying to breath evenly, trying to keep my cool and then he already sees through all that and asks, "Are you sick?"
    My stomach did 5 flips and my heart rate started to increase from steady recovery to headingtotheemergencyroombecausethisladyisgoingtohaveababy fast.
    After begging Robert, my head coach, to scratch off 200 breast, I sat down with my teammates and I'm trying to calm myself by popping out my CD player, which I always carry with me these days because I don't bother telling my parents to go buy me an Ipod and because I'm very sad that I have the guts go carrying around a freakin' CD player out in the streets of the public, listening to that mixed CD I made for myself late last night. 
    So I'm closing my eyes, putting my head down, and I'm just listening...concentrating on the lyrics...And then I realize...
    These songs are not helping at all.  Not even one little bit. FUCK.
    I mean, come on.  Going Under?     Pressure?  Dead?  Why yes, that totally makes me feel better when I AM DYING OUT IN THE WATER AND START SUFFOCATING. 
    Why the hell do I do this to myself? 
    Late at the night, I was probably listening to these songs but was not exa    ctly in the aspect of the term "motivational".  I was probably going, "Oh hey, that song is fast and jumpy, this might help" and paying no mind to the words of each of the song which is exactly my tendency when I'm trying to concentrate on the songs.  The only "motivational" song I put there was Why Worry, but I've listened to that song a millions times in the past trying to calm my nerves for other things that it's to the point that the words are barely audible in my ears.  So I was fucked for the remaining of the meet.
    You don't know how many hands violated my left breast so they could feel how fast my heart was beating. All reactions led to, "WHY ARE YOU NERVOUS?!"     I swear, I thought it was going pop out or kill it if it went any faster.
    Then I just joked around with my friends and my teammates that I for    got that I was nervous, aha.  And then we were up, and I was almost late lining up. And then my heart started beating fast away.
    The  timekeeper  almost  got the medic because she thought I was going to faint because I was so nervous the words that came out of my mouth were, "How do I dive again?"
    I mean, there were only 3 people out of 8 lanes and everybody had different times.  Because it's me, and life has to fuck with me every moment possible, I had the slowest time, so already, I knew I was going to be last and I was closest to the audience...but I had to shut off everything that went through my head as soon I stepped on the board.  Swimming it...that was all quite a blur.  But it wasn't bad at all.  It was quite refreshing in fact.  But after swimming it,  thinking IT'S OVER IT'S OVER, I did something stupid.
    As soon as I hit the wall. I scrambled up, trying to get out, and I had no strength what so ever so my feet are dangling and my arms are holding on to the sides and it took a long time to get up.  And the timekeeper and this girl who was about to swim next were looking at me funny, probably because I looked like a dying chicken but then I moved my feet around and sat down, my back behind the pool and just tried to act casual, like tha    t didn't happen going, "yeah...well, uh Good luck."
    Later,  Kristi told me that they said to stay in the pool and I didn't listen so everybody was waiting for me as I scrambled up from the pool.  She was all shaking her head in disgrace, "That's April."
    WONDERFUL.

Friday, July 18, 2008

  • Try.


    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xj9x6kUJX98
    "I remember this clearly, when I was a little girl, I had a dollhouse.  Hours and hours I'd spend putting my dolls through whole lifetimes.  Work.  Kids.  Play.  All of that happened in that little house, I remember that perfectly.  The rest...it's a little fuzzy.  See, somehow, I left it outside for a couple of days.  When I went back to play with it, wasps had built nests in my dollhouse.  It looked like a twisted apple or something.  Back then, it was scary, terrifying.  But I remember thinking in a little girl way, they're just like my dolls.  Wasps needed a place to sleep too.  When my step-father came home, he burnt it all."

    "They don't know what it is to try and try fucking hard just to live."

    - I saw this at Audrey Kitching's page, and she's right, this video is well done but very intense.

Monday, June 23, 2008

  • We've Learned To Run From Anything Uncomfortable.

    This is something I've been really going through the entire year.
    Maybe my whole life.
    And I know I get really apprehensive posting up my problems, especially if they're extremely long(it is actually really long, longer than I intended to write)and have more than one point.  But I really need to let this out because not everybody lives in paradise, we all have problems.  And I think it's about time that I shouldn't run away anymore.  I'm going to tell you all what I told my sister on the phone from which she just cut me off. haha.  I'm continuing my rant here.  It's just for myself, you don't have to read all of it.  It's too much to ask.

    I'm going to tell you all the full story about my swimming dilemma.
    My friends ranging from close to acquaintances, well, anyone that has been talking to me recently know that I absolutely hate swimming.  So I've always been asked, "If you hate it so much, why do you keep rejoining the team that you're currently with?"
    Alright. So.  I swam ever since I was 3.  Just not competitively.  I've loved sports throughout my whole life, though I was never in the competitive field.
    Until 8th grade.
    I joined my middle school's volleyball.  I loved volleyball. That was an experience I will always remember.
    I was pretty good, but I wasn't the best.  Okay, I sucked.  But I had potential.
    So as time went on and when I went to high school, I signed up for several teams.  As ti    me, progressed I narrowed it down to swimming and jv volleyball.  I wanted to join the JV Volleyball team with Hikari (Hikari was in my volleyball team in middle school. :) ) especially since my middle school coach was the jv coach.
    However, my parents, especially my dad, a big fan of swimming(the best sport for your health and it uses all of your muscles and limbs in your body yadda yaddda..) pushed me towards swimming.  Well, turns out, I tanked the tryouts, and I didn't really care, haha, I wanted to join the volleyball team.
    You see, the next thing that happened was a life altering thing for me, I was too late for tryouts for volleyball and he didn't take me.  However, he did take Hikari, the captain of o    ur m.s. team, when she was late as well.
    Don't get me wrong, I would've have done the same thing, but I was pretty mad...okay, try infuriated.
    But now that I think about it, if he did have taken me in....a half of my life, an experience, my friends, my mentors, and the person I really care about would not have existed at all. A part of me wouldn't have existed.
    So, I was teamless.  Except, Amanda, my fellow swimmate and the best one at that, exp    lained to me, that the swim tryouts weren't really tryouts, they wanted to see how you did, but they took anyone who knew how to swim.  My parents, beamed at that, pushed me into it.
    So after grueling practices, ruthless coaches, endless amounts of laughter, advice, and competition /meets between schools (we were second best...the first has steroid-taking girls there, so the    y don't count), I had an amazing time and the best team I could have ever asked for.  Since I was a guppy, I didn't want to be anymoe, I wanted to be good, I wanted do well, not just for myself but for my teammates, they deserved 100% commitment, hard work, and wins.  Because my teammates, they are amazing, they are some of the greatest swimmers ever and all around the greatest people you'll ever meet.  They deserved all the credit and rewards for all of their hardwork.  On the contrary,  since it was a team, it reflected all of us.  Thus, I felt the need to push myself and to be a better swimmer for them.  Thus, there goes another altering decision  I have made for myself that completely changed everything.
    My dad, who's very intent for me to be a better swimmer than I was ever intent in the the history of my life, looked for a well swim team so I could swim well.  We found one, an asian one, haha, Dolphin Swimming.
    There was a tryout day, so my dad and I went to the p    ool near my house and swam and practiced.
    During that day, I met someone very important, Jose.  My future mentor/swim coach.  He was swimming with the same lane as us and he knew my father.  My father, the competitive person that he was, instigated Jose and I to a swim competition, just swim down freestyle.
    I was freaking out, saying NOOOO, I'd lose for sure.
    But we did, and he won obviously.
    No altering thing there.  But, the words that came out of his mouth after that...that changed everything.
    He said I had potiental.  I was in fact, pretty well.  I knew that he was just saying that, everyone is polite in this world if not brutally honest.  And he also said, that if I could have private lessons and h    e guaranteed me that I could do 30 seconds on a 50 freestyle.   I SCOFFED.  He just wanted my money.  And I knew myself, 30 seconds? AHA.  Not with me, you ain't gonna accomplish shit.  My dad, the intelligent thinker, kept it in the back of his mind.  Later on, I did get private lessons from Jose.
    H    aha.
    After my private lessons were up, he told me to join his aquatic team. THE MOST ALTERING CHOICE EVER. I could hear you guys go OH NO.  Because that is the very team that is leading me in this disposition.  I just wanted to be a better swimmer so how did I know that it would lead me into this kind of mess?
    So I joined.  AND I HAD NO IDEA THAT IT WAS THE MOST BRUTAL THING I EVER DID TO MYSELF.  The exercise, the warm-ups. OKAY, by the end of warms-up I died.  It was that difficult for myself.  The shortage of oxygen in my lungs, the weakness in my arms, the aching in my legs, the endless pounding in my head, and each stroke my chest is just caving in and I'm just telling myself, hang in there, hang in there, you're almost at the end of the pool and before I know it, I have to go through that again 12 more times.
    That's why I hate swimming, I hate it when I'm to the point where I'm just about to die. Where everything just hurts and aches.  It was like I was brutally torturing myself. 
    And whenever I'm not swimming, I'm thinking about it.  I wasn't always happy when there was nothing to be sad about, but then I knew, it was because of swimming.  It wasn't that I intended to feel sad whenever I thought about it, I was just unhappy for no reason and then I realized that it swimming.   The pit of my stomach would unra    vel just thinking about going through that again, which leads me to countless excuses of skipping out.  Even though my father and I had countless arguments about me, let me skip out more than I needed to.  I repeatedly ask myself, Why did I sign up? Why did I waste my father's money?  That's when I realized how much I disliked it.  I hated it.  I wanted to quit swimming for good.
    Though, I didn't want to quit.  The reason why I was     there was because of my high school team.
    Therefore, if I quit this team, that means I have to quit my high school team.
    The thought of that entering through my head, I couldn't imagine myself quitting.  I've gone too far to quit.  Too attached to quit.  And I really did like swimming, just not passionately...at least not yet, anyway.  I don't love it, but I do like it.
    And everywhere I went, every show/movie I watched, it always some    how always ended up relating what I was going through.
    The constant theme that's showing up everywhere in the media, in Hollywood is that nothing is going to come easy at all.  You have to fight for something you want and you can't give up.
    So after months of constant conflict, I've figured out what my problem really, truly, was.
    Do I really hate swimming or do I just hate anything that's hard?
    My sister goes, "It's a little bit of both."
    It's t    rue. 
    And my sister sighs, "You're just not a hard worker."
    I am a hard worker.  Just only at school-related work.  Because, you c    an't give up school, that's illegal.  Or that's what I've heard from my asian parents.  However, everything other than school, like sports, summer school, chinese school,  gymnastics, once it got hard for me...I stopped. I quit.  (Piano is a different situation; love piano, just hate practicing)
    "Maybe this will be good for you. For college. For life," she says.
    So this is where I am now.  Today is my first practice for the summer season.  And I have no excuses to skip out now.
    I have no school, and I have all the time     in the world.
    And I really don't want to go. haha. But I have to. I have to suck it up.   Please root for me, because I have to start building up my inner strength.   That's when  I'll  start being a good swimmer.
    (Right now, my stomach is turning into knots and I'm getting all nervous now. aha. This isn't healthy.
    Another conflict; I have too much anxiety...I think I have a problem.)

    My inspiration.  I really want to learn Muay Thai Boxing and Brazilian Jujitsu because of this ruthless woman.

Sunday, June 08, 2008

  • The Sun Always Comes Fashionably Late.


    I was in my room "studying" when my dad barged in my room like he always does shouts with his chinese accent(this time, I don't know if it's on purpose), "2 DOLLA 2 DOLLA"
    He made me lemon iced tea.
    It was so pretty, haha.  He used those glasses that we never use unless guests are over, ICE(we never use ice),  sliced limes, and come on, even the wrapper on the straw was half cut(let alone, we have straws?  I know we're asian, we steal napkins, but straws?!)
    This lemon iced tea was decked out from head to toe.
    I'm telling you, it's the heat. This weekend, the temperature just shot up.
    While the heat drives people insane, it makes my dad into a giving mood. Haha. I love my dad.

    So this little thing.  This iced beverage that he took the time to take from a carton to a mask that completely screams HOMEMADE made me realize When the hell is Father's Day this year?
    I researched it.
    June 15th.
    I have time, thank god.  But shit!  What the hell do I give him?

    I'll be honest.  This will make me sound like I'm a horrible daughter, and I probably am but we don't celebrate his birthday.  I know, sad. :(  He just doesn't want to.  Sentimental kind of stuff.

    And when I was younger, full of innocence and naivety that watched Full House and Saved By the Bell on weekend mornings, I always wanted to make birthdays a surprise and a joyous celebration.  Though, I guess the more older we get, the closer the realization gets that the age is just a number and nothing else.  Thus, my mother and my father  were not the surprising type.

    Though, I was rebellious.  In elementary school, for mother's day, the PTA would sell flowers and plants for us, kids.  Boy, do they know how to make money.  So I would always steal money from my mother's drawer and be the one with the most money and just spend it all on pretty flowers for my parents. They jumped around in joy for this shit.
    But after graduating elementary, no more PTA and it was up to me to find them a surprise of gratitude for having me and raising me up.  So it wasn't just Fathers day or Mothers Day or any sort of holiday, whenever I went out, or went shopping with my friends, I would always end up buying something for them.
    Usually, it came down to jewelry.
    They never wore it.
    Hahahaha.
    I also bought them cups, when I was younger, maybe in the 6th grade, that had these generic sayings of #1 Dad! or I <3 My Mom.
    Never drunk from it.
    I was heartbroken.
    Hahaha.
    From then on, I would occassionally waste my money anyway and give them something they would put aside, because that moment,
    when I give it to them.
    Their faces.  Their appreciation.  Maybe just for a few minutes.
    But their smile.
    It's what really the thought that counts.

    So after this.  This lemonade beverage. I'm going to force the surprise on them dammit!
    I know I should get something they would like.  I guess I will.
    and then they'll break into song and dance and know truly inside that I love them so much and that I really am not an offspring from the devil that was put on their doorstep!
    (a girl can dream)