mynameishoneybee's blog: "just a story about a girl..."

Love… love …somehow that subject seems to pop up a lot these past few days. It is the singular force that's supposed to bind people together. Its power ripples throughout our culture and society like the shockwaves of a thermonuclear explosion... It is the object of devotion and scorn for many people alike depending on the sides they lived through. But the thing is… who the hell knows what love is about? Because I sure as hell don't know why that four letter word hurts and heals at times... We fall in love all the time; it's kinda sickening how many people "fall in love" …how many of us actually understand what that means? Is it a feeling of extreme like towards another? Is it a feeling of devotion and willingness to sacrifice for the subject of love? Is it a chemical reaction in our body driven by primal forces to mate and produce offspring? Thing is… I think its all of that… and a whole lot more that we don't quite understand. Love alone, in the end, is every human emotion combined, refined and amplified to an infinite fold. This is probably the reason why most people can't define the feeling of love in the first place. It's beyond words…either that or some of us need to read a little bit more. Nevertheless, think about it… aside from all the glorious things you feel when it comes to love, no greater hate, misery, suffering and torment can come from who or what you loved the most. People ask how is it possible to feel happy and sad at the same time. The answer to that is … fall in love. Maybe that's why I have no faith in love itself. I used to have faith ... and don't get me wrong: a part of me still believes in love. But, I have my own faith in it. And I honestly don't believe that love is enough between two people. I never do. So, what if it's every single human emotion... "Wow…I feel pain… but I'm happy as well. I'm confused" Nope… I certainly don't want that reaction again. But, it's inevitable. I don't know… perhaps being more practical when it comes to relationships isn't healthy. But… seeing that there has to be something you want from your partner, something that explains the reason for your attraction. I mean…love dies. That's the honest truth… love can die. But as human beings, there has got to be a fuel for it. The ultimate reason… this desiring something we can never have. Living the rest of your life… always out of reach of something only your significant other can give you. It doesn't have to be physical. I'm all for mind, heart and soul. But, it's something I don't have. Maybe for me… it's a heart, a soul and a future feared. Ok, maybe it's not as easy as that… but that's the best I can sum it up. At least, I know even in the absence of love…that alone warrants my devotion and willingness to sacrifice something. If that isn't love…well…it's so close no one can tell the difference. So much for love. Romantics may say love needs no reason nor words, but I say that's cause they're not looking far enough into the future. I've learnt my lesson. I may not have lost faith, but I've expanded it a little bit more than just devotion, trust and sacrifice. It's simple if not cold. Hehe…cold love…who'd have thought about it? Yeah…love…sometimes it can be the most wonderful thing in the world. Other times…well…it's just another way to bleed…

if i ever have children, i will not read them fairy tales with happy endings. i will read them stories with impossible dilemmas. cliff-hangers that leave them thinking, not smiling. books with covers that will never close. I will tell them there is a god but who knows if he's good or bad or what he wants from us? because i don't know either. life is a riddle that takes a hundred years to solve. and not even the smartest person in the world knows for sure what the meaning of life is. God can do whatever he wants whenever he wants so just keep on living. And if they are upset, i will tell them: Why should you be happy? That is not your task in life. Who said you were put on earth to be happy? - Federico Fellini 8 1/2

Speak easy, speak. Speak ee-zee, speak. Keep the atmosphere cool and issues on the “down low.” When they ask, “What’s up,” don’t mention depression or nothing folks don’t want to know. Speak easy, speak low. Speak crazy/hype/happy like good fortune made a permanent residence at your door, though hours before you pawned your favorite possesion to keep the lights on! Speak like those days are long gone you’ve forgotten how to spell broke, let alone unemployed. Speak crazy/hype/happy, like you’ve never known nothing but joy. Stock up on plastic smiles and rubber opinions, ready to follow the hype to the Jones’ backyard and with the proper set and props, disregard personal misfortune as you drown everyone in an endless ocean of personal accomplishments. Speak crazy/hype/happy, like good times never end. Speak deep inner peace, the kind that would make prophets jealous and leave apostles ill-equipped to compare to you. With eyes unblinking, stare desperation in the face, serenely quoting a clever “silver lining” quip, while tripping over your own heart, squelching tears before they start in public, only to drown later when you’re alone. But, in front of others, for, now at least, speak deep inner peace. Speak easy, speak. Speak ee-zee, speak. Speaking easy, speaking a crazy/hype/happy peace. Keeping it cool, keeping it low. "What’s up Mel?” “Ah, you know… it’s all good!” It’s… all… good… ‘cause no one really wants to know, so… speak easy.

The other day, I was with my mother, who is very invested in finding a good husband for her 23-year-old, overly educated, highly opinionated daughter. She tells me about an old high school friend of hers who now lives in L.A. and has two sons. One is an oncologist, and the other is a software engineer. And they're not at all ugly, she tells me. Fine, so maybe it's a little weird that they're both still living with their mother, but that just means that they value family and believe in saving money. (Yeah, okay, mom.) She also tells me that she forwarded to her friend my email address. Great. Generally, the idea of my mom setting me up with a man, regardless of how good he may look on paper, makes me queasy. I don't like my family let alone my mother getting involved in my personal life, and I'm pretty sure that the kind of guy my mother deems ideal would probably want nothing to do with a loudmouthed girl like me. That aside, I'm actually not opposed to the principle of being introduced to random boys. With luck, maybe mummy will find me a Mr. Darcy (sans reindeer jumper and bad sideburns, of course). What choice do I have, really? In the past couple of years I've been in school, I feel like I've joined a fucking convent. Most of the few men I've met lately are already married, taken, or oblivious, clueless men. From what I hear from my girlfriends, the pickings aren't any better in other parts of campus, either. (Interesting tidbit, though, that there seem to be plenty of single women in graduate school.) I frequent the popular student hangout spots, sometimes play eye contact games with boys, but mingling doesn't really happen in such a small town. And, as my friends oh so eloquently puts it, one can't help but run into the same damn people, even with a routine change. I've done the online dating thing, too-- That experience was exhausting, traumatizing, and bitterness-inducing. Thus, I have to promote an idea aptly called, "Viral Dating." Spread people like diseases. (And, yes, there is the risk that you end up with a virus you want to get rid of, so the pestilential connotation is totally appropriate.) If we're able to accept that networking works in our professional lives, why not use that same philosophy in our personal ones? And I'm not even talking about hooking up friends with each other, because I'm open to a variety of possible relationships: friends, friends with benefits, casual dating, serious dating, etc. (Really, I'm not looking for a baby daddy. I just want to meet people, and see what happens from there.) I'm just talking about a willingness to introduce friends to other friends and fostering interactions between people who would normally have no opportunity to get to know each other. One would think that this should be a no-brainer, right? But, the social stinginess I see on a daily basis staggers me. I can't tell you how many times I've met friends of friends, had to introduce myself to the stranger, and rack my brain for casual conversation so that we're not sitting in awkward silence. It's quite possible that graduate (and college within itself) school breeds and attracts people who lack social graces, but really, how hard can it be to just say, "Friend A, meet Friend B." Since I've tried to implement a system for myself to get at least one date per month, I should also institute a system for spreading myself like a goddamn contagion. (A suggestion a friend of mine told me; however, she knows I'm quite monogamous so having a date with a different guy would pose as a problem. Anyone have problems just "hanging out"?) I should just invite random groups of people to a party at someone's place, tell them to bring friends, get everybody drunk, and make the whole motley crew play embarrassing icebreaker games. I should bombard acquaintances with emails and Myspace friend requests and ask them to do random shit like go bocce balling or apple picking. I should subversively insist that boy-who-doesn't-want-to-da te-me-but-for-some-reason- doesn't-want-to-be-friends -either-despite-claiming-t o-really-like-me to be friends with me anyway (because, really, it makes no sense for us to behave as strangers), just in case he has a buddy who actually would want to date me. And, of course, I should introduce my girlfriends to guys whom I'm not interested in dating. Shit, I should introduce people to my ex-boyfriends. It's like in that Beatles' song: "And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make." If this kind of social generosity were the norm, I'd imagine there would be much fewer lonely people in this world. If one person can introduce you to, say, four people, and if those four people can each introduce you to another four people and so on, certainly someone among this tangled web could be your soulmate. Yes, there's the potential for creating a lot of weirdness when worlds collide, but really, that already happens anyway. And I just found out that another one of my cousins broke the heart of a friend of a girl I work with. I could get weirded out when degrees of separation get smaller all of a sudden, but instead I'm just going to revel in it. I like when people get under my skin and into my system. I should insist that it happens more often. Yes, dating should absolutely be viral.

It's no small coincidence that I'm working towards being a literary scholar.... I love when things are much more complex than they seem. I love digging underneath the surface, picking out details that may typically be overlooked, eating up contradictions, and arguing for the multiple ways a text can be interpreted. I also prefer my narratives to be non-teleological; that is, I don't like being told that there's some unified, orderly sense of "truth" I'm supposed to believe. I revel in deconstructionist thought and love teasing out the "warring forces of signification within a text." I believe that meaning is never inherent or natural, and that it's all produced by the discourses that rely on it. This explains why I'm drawn to movies and books that mess with my sensibilities and why I disdain anything heavy-handed that seems to bonk me over the head with its message. Even as a kid, I always wondered what happened after "happily ever after," and never bought into anything that Catholic school taught me. I would read those Choose Your Own Adventure books from the first page to the last, not because I insisted on linearity, but because I liked making the stories double back on themselves. I can't stand when politicians nostalgically refer to some originary moment when an idea was founded, when they say anything that sounds like, "Our founding fathers invented democracy." Messiness is good. Ambiguity makes life interesting. And yet, in my interpersonal relationships, ambiguity frustrates me to no end, and I can't stand when my analytical efforts offer me no clean, close-ended answers. I can't help but close-read--- I tally up my observations about people, notice what they say and don't say, try to compare what they say with what they do, all in an effort to answer questions like, "Are you a friend I can trust?" and "Are you a man who will love me?" I hate irony, multiplicity, and contradiction when I'm trying to figure people out, and when I can't explain people's actions, my impulse is to make up my own narratives about them. When a friendship turns sour, I try to convince myself that it's probably all for the better-- I say to myself, "We've become two different people, but we'll always remember each other as childhood friends," or "She's working out issues and I cannot help her with them." When a guy no longer wants to see me again and I can't figure out why, I joke about wanting to slap him with a questionnaire: "Are you any or all of the following: a.) still nursing a broken heart, b.) married, c.) a baby daddy, d.) impotent, e.) simply not that into me, or f.) gay? Circle all that apply." If only life were so easy. But it's not like I want it to be that easy! The fun of getting to know people, of making friends, of dating, of looking for love, is the open-endedness. I genuinely love getting underneath the surface of people and figuring out how they tick. I understand that people are constantly changing, and I'm bound to discover new things about even my closest friends. And part of the thrill of falling in love is the possibility that the other person won't. I often find myself thinking about friends whom I've lost from years past-- I guess it's my subconscious reminding me that they're always a part of me, as I compartmentalize my memories and decide how they've shaped me as a person. I can never be fully sure of what the people in my life mean to me, even within the immediate moment. They are "always already" understood in relation to what's around them and what's between them and me. And I don't much mind that. This isn't to say that I'm flighty or frivolous in my interpersonal relationships. On the contrary, I'm steadfastly loyal to people who have managed to get underneath my surface, who have succeeded in close-reading my character. It's true, though, that not too many people have. I'm definitely more guarded than for my own good. Even some of my closest friends have never seen me cry. I'll often say I don't care when I really do. I'll often say that I'm fine when I'm not. And, of course, as much as my imagination is bursting with narratives that I've constructed, I'll rarely confront the person in question to confirm or deny my suspicions. No, you'll never see me ask a guy, "So, do you like me or don't you?" And yet, at the same time, you'll also find me exaggerate my emotions-- I can speak very passionately about things that I care about, I take delight in entertaining people, and I'm very good at feigning rage. Unlike people who say, "What you see is what you get," (I'm always suspicious of those people.), I believe that we're all constantly performing. I know that for all these reasons I'm constantly being misread. I've been accused of letting things that should bother me slide-- It's not that I'm a pushover; I just like to pick my battles. At the same time, I've also been accused of being too emotional-- It's not that I'm a ticking time bomb; I'm just sometimes socially awkward. So maybe because I feel that my appearances don't always correspond to what's going on underneath, I see others with a similar perspective. I'm always reading people, and therefore I'm able to keep people in my heart for much longer than I probably should. While it might take very little for me to decide on an impression of you, it takes a lot for me to want to forget you. Lately, though, the messiness that I used to enjoy has been giving me pause. While reading texts is an intimate act for me, reading people can often create distance. I fear that I've used my curiosity as a defense mechanism of sorts, in that I've prevented the people in my life from creating narratives for me, from determining how I fit into theirs. I've been afraid of just letting things happen without explanation or justification. I've been too focused on constructing narratives that I want, rather ones that I should accept. I've held too tightly to control. So, I've decided, in the spirit of open-endedness, to treat my life, and my self, more as an open book.

First off, I have never EVER made resolutions before so if these sound a bit too much, it's because I do HAVE high standards for myself, and secondly, I think I need some kind of list in "written" form. Anyways, on with the list ::: [1] Health & Beauty -Emotional Strenth=Physical Strength. - 2006 was a rather emotional year for me ...I was so weak and gave my heart away too fast -and yet, i realized it was because I was only looking at from one side view... and not inputing what I saw and just took his view as the final say so. I shouldn't have done that. So, I think I will try to free myself from being avaricious with all the temptations and selfishness. I won't let myself down again... or when i do fall -and I usually fall hard and fast- I will get up again. - And I have a bet with myself -to lose a pants size / -10~13 lbs (remain) (Ultimate Goal is to lose 25 lbs and remain that way) and to tone muscles this year. Wish me a good luck. -Establish a regular workout routine (again). I've been severely lacking in the exercise department. -Take multi-vitamins. I don't eat enough so I figure I should start doing that. -And last, to try to have no more restless nights & insomnia problems... this one will be the hardest. [2] Education & Career -dreams are made not found... -Currently, taking a semester break, but I should follow politics and news regularly. Laws are being updated as I write this. -Devote at least three hours a week to LSAT. -No more excuses for not having enough time to read... will start going to library again. -I need to start dancing again. Looking for dance class ensues! -Continue learning the following languages: Japanese and Russian. Also, review Latin and Greek. And actually use my Spanish skills more often. -Find a new job that I both LIKE and ENJOY. I need to give up one of the three I already do... deciding which one is hard. I like working at all places. [3] Financial -Savings & Retirement -Start saving and not dipping into account! -Invest smart. Need to reevaluate stocks and see which stocks to keep/discard, and see what the yield is. [4] People & Relationship -Forgive & Forget. -I've come to realize that every individual is different. so I should try not to have any expectations, doubts, and whatever else... I need to LEARN how to trust instincts. Respect isn't given freely. It is earned. -I need to accept the unexpected things and events that happen in life ....people come and go in life. i can't always get away from trying not to get hurt... i've been putting myself on the edge of being too narrow-minded about people and relationships. And I've finally realized..maybe..i really dont have to see or judge like solid black and white..someone once said..don't be afraid to go out in the rain. [5] Personal Enrichment -Give the best gifts for yourself. -I want to be a stronger person who believes, sees, listens and hear, and speaks with a more open-minded heart. -I would like to think less;I'm going to try and set my mind and heart at peace. -I should stop and smell the roses more... I need to appreciate what I have and not wish too much. I need to stop wishing and HOPE more. -Travel: future destinations -- starting small, revisit the South. I miss Georgia. I'd like to go to Japan and tour Europe eventually. Who wants to come with? And I think that's what I have right now. I'm sure I'll add/subtract from the list... Also, I need to just be me for awhile. Just be. And I need to remember to breathe. Breathe deeply.