21:38

last day of august! i hung out with my roommate a lot today and ate lunch with her, she is wonderful company. if we get really into a conversation we can talk for more than an hour or two. isn't it fun to have someone you can do that with? we talked about a lot of things throughout the day. d talked to me a lot about her family and she even showed me her aunt's cat who is the fluffiest short-haired cat i've ever seen!!!! i just wanted to pet her through the screen because she looked so precious even from the photos and videos d showed me.

there was a weird point in our conversation though. i told her my mom and i only have one car and then at some point d asked me what my dad does if there's only one car. there wasn't really any way of skirting around it, so i had to tell her my mom and dad are divorced. she looked at me really sadly and said "what! but that's so sad though..." and i told her it was better off the divorce happened and that it's been a long time since. but she said that she still felt bad for me and i just felt a little weird afterwards. i talked about it with my cousin and we came to the conclusion that people who haven't lived in north america and/or are very tied to family values tend to see divorce as a deeply negative and mainly north american concept. because we have family members who feel similar. and also just the fact that we're raised to believe that marriage is the end-all-be-all and pity anyone who can't or doesn't feel the need to pursue marriage (or even romance at all). but yeah. it's just weird for me when people will pity me because my parents are divorced, especially when they themselves have happy and loving immediate families.

after my last class we talked for... 3 hours! we talked about so many things and at some point we started talking about funerals for our long deceased elders. she said she started feeling sad by the end of that point so we ended up talking about other things. is it weird that i don't get deeply sad thinking about that? maybe it's because i was never close to my ông cụ that i don't feel much when looking back on him. i just remember he used to yell a lot and that he would hack up his food in the sink. i don't know what he thought of me. would he be ashamed of the person i've become now?

20:29

hellooo and happy... 2nd last day of august! majoring in gd means lots of work but i finished everything i needed to so far! i don't have to worry about stuff until this weekend, so i'll be relaxing and de-stressing for the rest of tonight. :)

some notable things that happened lately... one of my professors caught covid and so his classes will be getting put on hold for a little bit. it's only the first week too, i hope his symptoms aren't too bad and that he recovers well! i have two classes with him, so for now i'll only have three classes to really focus on until the faculty makes a decision on what to do in the meantime.

today i parted with an online friend group of mine. it's been clear for a while that i've been needing to move on from them and so i finally asked for advice and got the courage i needed to go through with it. it's not as if they were ever awful people, in fact because they've been so kind to me it really was hard to part with them. they were so kind to me when i made the decision too that i feel bad i'm even leaving. but our values and beliefs clashed so much that it was starting to get draining on my end. i am glad i finally went through with it though. i am realizing that i'm slowly metamorphosizing into a newer version of me that is looking for new experiences and wants to let go of things i need to stop holding onto.

aw i forgot to mention my instinct of flinching whenever i get surprised or startled by something surprised my roommate earlier when she was checking up on me. sometimes i flinch so violently it feels like my body is trying to jump out of my skin.

09:47

i have a few hours before i have to go to my first class, so i'll write another entry.

a lot happened yesterday! we had a power outage on campus and apparently most of the city experienced power outages too... how wild! it was nearly 100F/38C and it was sweltering without the AC working. i met up with my cousin and we just entertained ourselves for a few hours. we talked and laughed a lot, and at some point she gave me one of her books to read out loud and so i ended up voicing all the dialogue and making throwaway comments and we both laughed a lot because of it. the power came back after 5 hours, luckily! i also picked up some wlw manga that i've been thoroughly enjoying so far. hanamonogatari is a wonderful read about the developing relationship between two elderly women and i'm excited for the 3rd volume to get translated into english! the other one is collectors, which i've only read a few chapters of but it's such a cozy read that i almost don't want to finish it. i'm not sure how to end this entry? i'm considering going back to sleep because i woke up at 5 am because my roommate is an early bird. i might read some more of collectors today before i go to class.

21:36

i forgot to say that both d and i woke up at 5:30 am today. i went into the bathroom and immediately a huge cockroach crawled on the wall and both of us freaked out because it was so unexpected!

i went to class today and some of my classmates saw my haircut and funnily enough they started clapping and cheering for me HAHA. these are the classmates from my graphic design cohort, so they've seen how i looked before my haircut. it felt like the equivalent of when people sarcastically say "and everyone clapped" except it actually happened to me in real life, hahahaha. i also ate dinner with d today. we're both really introverted so we barely made small talk, which was honestly a relief cause i hate trying to make small talk with people. funnily enough, if someone is as introverted as i am somehow i feel the need to be the one who talks more cause i know how awkward it can be when someone expects you to carry a conversation that isn't going anywhere.

i forgot to continue this entry but it's an hour later HAHA. anyway i'm actually a little irritated right now because it's soooo frustrating dealing with hardcore gamers! a friend will ask them for urgent help and they'll reply with something like "uh sorry i'm playing pikmin 2 give me half an hour" like i dunno i'm so vexed when that happens to me or a shared friend. put the damn game down!

14:24

moved into my dorm yesterday! i met my roommate and she was super nice and friendly! i wasn't able to talk to her much yesterday because my mom and i were going back and forth bringing things in, unpacking everything, putting everything where it needs to be... but today we finally had a long proper conversation with each other and she was so kind and funny. i'll call her d in case i talk about her more here. she's visiting her family this weekend and apparently will be visiting them every few weekends or so, so every so often i'll have the dorm to myself. i am so lucky and happy to have a roommate as kind and friendly as her!

oh i forgot to finish my diary entry HAHA. i met up with my cousin at lunch today and we walked around a little while i tried to find my classes. we visited each other's dorms and we walked to a beach close to our campus. it was very hot and we were tired by the end, but we had a lot of fun looking for crabs and pointing out shapes in the clouds and watching the birds. she has made some friends from freshmen orientation and i'm so happy for her. i hope she finds fulfilling friendships during her time at college.

18:52

busy busy!!! i've been babysitting yesterday and today, i just came back a few minutes ago. before i left i helped my mom pack some stuff before i had to leave to babysit. i've also been helping my cousin with whatever i can to settle into uni. i forget if i've already mentioned this... no actually i have, but she's going to the same university as i am so i'll be helping her out a lot this year. so far she is stumbling a lot, but i was the same as a freshmen (freshman? university terms are confusing to me) so i try to be patient with her and help her the best i can. tomorrow we'll be on the road for... 3 hours! but i've become accustomed to the 3-hour drive these past few years. anyway the point is i will be veeeery busy these next few days!

20:21

i doodled a lot today! i remember i tried to doodle a few days ago but i didn't feel really happy about how stiff i felt with my pencil. today i felt really inspired to draw and then i ended up filling 3 entire pages in the little journal i dedicate to quick sketching. i had a page of sketches i liked so much that i ended up digitizing and fixing them up. actually those sketches were of an au from a creator whose works i enjoy, so i ended up sending the fixed doodles to them and they were super ecstatic that i loved their au so much to make fanart of it. that made me really happy! it's much easier to draw when you really want to draw and/or you love something so much you're compelled to draw it.

20:52

ahh well a lot of things happened today. my mom and i ran some errands. we ate at a vietnamese restaurant for lunch and we had a viet food i haven't tried before. i can't remember the dish name off the top of my head but it was similar to spring rolls except with different ingredients. my mom is very unkind when she teaches me. she lets me fumble and then makes fun of me for it or gets annoyed that i don't know how to do what i don't know. in the end i have to rely on other people to teach me or i end up teaching myself. my mom never taught me how to do things like fold laundry or use chopsticks or how to navigate a computer or tie shoelaces or many things that i needed to know, all of that was me looking up tutorials created by other people online or asking a friend or one of my cousins. it is humiliating when i am faced with something that my mom never taught me to do.

we went to the store today and i picked up a newspaper by the entrance. i've started reading newspapers because one of my classmates in my cohort is currently working for the university newspaper and so i've started picking them up whenever there's a new issue.

06:30

having a hard time going back to sleep. i have to make this entry quick because my mom will wake up soon and i don't want her to catch me awake. i closed my eyes and suddenly i thought about how little i know about myself and i cried.

10:14

i'm really tired.

i really don't know much about myself. when i try to define myself it feels like i'm lying, so i always have the urge to ask people "what do you think about me?". i am envious of people who have the ability to define themselves easily, who can easily say that they act ths way or like going to this place or they don't like eating this food or they like wearing these kinds of clothes. when i look inside myself i see nothing. i want to see a beautiful color inside myself in the future.

19:33

i try to avoid adding to a diary entry more than two times in a day, but i just found out aunt t was back in the ER yesterday. apparently part of the aftermath of liver transplant surgery is that the liver will act up sometimes and so the patient will have to go back in to get everything stabilized and take care of any other abnormalities. i dunno. sometimes drastic things will happen and change how you move through life forever.

21:45

lots of thoughts. i finally got around to watching revolutionary girl utena and finished watching it today! what a wonderful story. anthy's development made me think about myself. can i leave one day? in the end i will leave regardless, but will there be a time where i can free myself earlier?

sometimes it is startling how angry i can get at people. it's an anger that bubbles violently under the surface; i try to hold it in like boiling water in a pot but inevitably drops of water jump from the pot to burn the hand of the person who puts their hand near it. today my mom ordered some spicy thai food for dinner. my spice tolerance is okay but i'd like for it to be better. thai food is a level of spice that i'd love to build up to at some point in the future. it was so spicy my nose ran and i teared up a little and my throat hurt if i breathed too hard, but it was good. my mom asked me if it was too spicy and without waiting for me to answer she simply added "but that's how it's supposed to be" in the tone she uses when she's looking down on me. usually when it comes to my mom my thoughts are quiet but steeped in bitterness, but today i almost wanted to tell her to shut up because the phrase resounded so loudly in my head. it was a silly thing to get angry over, i surprised myself with how angry that thought was. but i thought about it while i showered and i am fully coming to the realization that i really despise when people dismiss me or patronize me or do something that makes me perceive their actions as such. it's to the point where when it happens the inside of my body starts to squirm and i get the sudden urge to claw myself open and scream. whittle myself down to my newborn self.

it is nice to look at my body and think "hm, i look nice". just earlier i looked at myself in the mirror and felt relieved that i had little reaction. at the moment i don't have enough love for myself to think that i look amazing or anything (i don't think i ever had enough love for that), but it is nice to simply think that i look normal.

20:36

babysat for aunt p today. surprisingly it was fairly peaceful today, it must have been a really good day. the oldest kid told me about how she wanted to be a grown-up quickly. a lot of kids have that thought at some point, right? that they want to grow up quickly and become an adult so they can do whatever they want. i remember thinking that a lot when i was little. i'm still too young to have anything meaningful to say about that, but when we're kids, university age is still so far away isn't it? kids think that's when they reach adulthood, but when you actually reach that age you feel like you're still a teenager because there's still so so much to learn. and then you feel like the age your teachers and professors are at is so far away.

11:37

yesterday was really tiring. my mom and i went out to run errands in the morning and didn't get back until the early evening. we went to an optometrist and then to a local hair stylist and then to pick out new glasses. i had my pupils dilated so i ended up wearing sunglasses for most of the day. apparently our insurance didn't work with the store we were getting glasses at so we have to go to another one today. we also have to go to aunt t's place later today to pick up her mail for her. aunt p asked me to help babysit her kids tomorrow and to be honest i've started dreading it. i love helping take care of kids but her kids are very... wild, to say the least. they're left mostly unsupervised and so they've become really entitled and rambunctious that it's tiring even for me to deal with them; everyone in the immediate family agrees that her kids are too much to handle. i've seen the other babies in the family and none of them are as wild as hers, they're all so nice and bubbly and sweet that they're so calm in comparison. i don't understand how parents can think it's okay to raise their kids so hands-off like that. but i have to step in because there's no one else aunt p can rely on considering my mom is working and my bà ngoại is helping aunt t recover. my ông ngoại is one of those husbands that had their wife do nearly everything for them and so he has difficulties taking care of himself and everyone has to step in when he's about to do something reckless. i sometimes get bitter because the concept of family feels like a leash to me. i don't love my family enough to want to be around them but i feel obligated to stay and care for them when no one else can. i need to read up on family abolition more! i have a sophie lewis book saved but i haven't gotten around to reading it yet. i owe it to myself to make time for the pile of books collecting dust in my files.

20:42

spent 1 and a half hours building this lego orchid set! my mom got it as a christmas gift and today she asked me if i could build it sometime, i just felt like working on it today for some reason. i thought it was going to take a few days at most to complete but apparently it's not that complicated to put together. it was a nice build though! here's some pictures i took:

09:36

i have been finding gray hairs in my hair lately. on instinct i just pluck them out since it's just a single strand or two. i like how the strands look when i put them under the light, they're really shiny and pretty and i wonder how i would look if i had a full head of hair like that. occasionally i consider dyeing my hair white because a lot of characters and people i like tend to have white/gray hair, but then my mind conjures up a generic white person with blond hair and i get a little irked honestly, haha. i suppose it's something to put on the bucket list just to try it out! surprisingly this is one of the things my mom would be okay with me doing; she recently had her hair dyed because she's starting to gray (even though i think she would look beautiful with gray hair), and i brought up dyeing my hair to her and she said we could do it at home if i wanted. i don't think i'm feeling adventurous enough right now though. something to keep in mind for the future.

on normal days i wake up once or twice during the night, i can only get a full night's sleep if i'm deeply exhausted. i may have mentioned it already (or on my defunct website) but my cousin once lent me her melatonin gummies just to see if they would work on me, but i ended up waking up at 3 am every time and couldn't go back to sleep until hours later. i wonder if sleeping pills or other aids would work on me, or if they don't work then i'd have to just continue dealing with interrupted sleep.

11:42

back from visiting aunt t, i thought about writing a diary entry yesterday but i was really tired. the visit went okay; aunt t is doing okay and is able to walk, but she can only walk for a few minutes at a time before needing to sit down. she lost all of her muscle mass during her hospital stay and so she'll have to work to build some of it back up in a few months' time. i wasn't as distressed or bored as i could have been because aunt t bought a lego set and i finished it by the time i had to go to bed. it took around maybe 6-7 hours to do? i took a break to eat dinner with everyone and then kept working on it. actually it wasn't a lego-branded set, but some company called enjbrick? i looked them up but they don't even have a website... very mysterious. when my bà ngoại saw the finished set in the morning she praised me and told me that i should be an engineer. i thought to myself "i think i'd need a lot more qualifications for that, but thanks i guess". my bà ngoại is kinder than my mom, because it is rare for my mom to praise me and when she does it feels half-hearted. i remember a few semesters ago i received an email stating i made the dean's list at my university and that i could pick up a certificate if i wanted. i got the certificate thinking that even if my mom doesn't like that i'm in graphic design, maybe she'd be happy that i'm at least doing well academically. i showed her the certificate and all she said to me was "oh, cool" and i guess i should have expected to be disappointed, but i still felt disappointed and vaguely upset anyway. i am constantly coming back to the conclusion that it isn't worth it to try and please my mom anymore because she has given up on me a long time ago and that there isn't any way she would be convinced to have faith in me again. it feels like we are awkwardly living in different worlds within the same house. i am slowly becoming averse to using the word "home" in relation to myself and whenever i catch myself using it i feel disconcerted.

yesterday i slept really horribly. my insomnia gets worse when i'm sleeping in a place i'm not familiar with, so i think i was waking up every hour or so, honestly i think i was even waking up between hours sometimes. when i sleep really horribly my back aches really hard for the rest of the day. my back is still aching today but much less intensely than yesterday.

21:49

my mom and i are going to visit aunt t tomorrow. currently my mom is in one of those moods where she's stressed out and so she starts taking her stress out on me. earlier she started nitpicking at things i did saying things like "i told you to throw this away in this specific trashcan, why did you throw it away in another one (they all go to the same dumpster in the end)" and "why do you always hang your clothes so close together and not spaced out the way i do it" and i just let her do it cause it's too ridiculous for me to say anything about. i am slightly relieved that i'll be going back to the city where my uni is in a few weeks. for some reason the uni moved the date classes start back by a week... though i'm not sure whether i like that or not. well whatever. i am back to waking up throughout the night.

on a more positive note, i finally added the quiz results and links pages to my website! i will tweak them when i get back from visiting aunt t this weekend, but i just wanted to get them out because i'm just happy i even finished them.

17:57

slept 6 hours, finally! i really don't know why my insomnia was getting so weird out of nowhere. i also just woke up from a 10 minute nap because apparently i got so bored of watching a video on my phone that i fell asleep, haha. that happens to me sometimes and it's actually how i've tried to put myself to sleep; sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. i wonder how people can nap for hours at a time? i've never been able to nap for longer than a few minutes at a time and i've had many of my friends tell me that they can nap for 2 or 3 hours which was shocking to me. i once asked my mom if i was hard to nap as a baby and she told me that i could never stay asleep for long.

i've been thinking of adding some new pages to the site! i compiled some quiz results in a document a while back and i've been meaning to put them in my about page, but since there's so many i figured it would be more worthwhile to just put them in a separate page. i also started a bakura ryou shrine page when i was first creating the website, but i haven't touched it since. i've also been saving some links for a fun links and misc. page. i've been feeling that i need to change up the index a little.

15:19

happy august!

i haven't been able to get more than 4 hours of sleep at a time since my last diary entry. every night i hope i get can more than that, but i keep waking up to see that it's only been 3 or 4 hours since i went to bed. i've started to get brief flashes of pain in my head and my drowsiness is making it hard to motivate myself to do anything than stare blankly at a screen and just scroll. i wonder if it's because i'm nervous about my upcoming semester? my sleep does tend to get disturbed when i'm nervous about something that will happen. but i've noticed it also gets disturbed when something is happening with the system. i don't know, i'll see how things go.