End of Fall Quarter/ End of February 2014 in a Nutshell...
I survived Fall Quarter. My roommate and I became friends. We spent Christmas separately. Her father died on Christmas day. We dealt and are still dealing with it. Roomie is pledging a secret society that I am not supposed to know about, but I would have to be an idiot to not know (seriously.) I am almost finished with Winter Quarter, usual bad things have ensued around me. I'm getting much better and worse at being alone. I made a great friend but she is graduating after Spring Quarter. I got a boatload of plant babies.
Ok, Now if you want to hear the long version here we go.
I honestly don't remember too much of the craziness after the blackout except that I somehow managed to get a very mild stalker. He talked to me one day at the MU and managed to find me on Facebook just from my old High School sweater I was sporting that day and from remembering my face; mildly impressive, unequivocally creeptastic. He would send me video links on facebook of a band I mentioned in passing and asked to meet up a couple of times. I admired his persistence and figured hey maybe he was lonely like me. Then I started to get weird messages. I'd be sitting in the library or walking through the bookstore and my phone would ping, (btw I got a Samsung Galaxy S4 after my iphone 4 fried. My parents were sweet enough to spoil me and I totally love it!) and I'd have a facebook message saying, you look nice in that pink scarf, or I saw you today, what were you reading? I would resist the urge to look around and act as though I was responding to a text message and would respond with stuff like, "oh sorry, I didn't see this till later, why didn't you come and say hi?" Because isn't that what normal people do when they see a friend or new acquaintance? Go and say hi?
That was a slight alarm bell, because even if the guy was harmless, I felt a vague sort of threat from the messages, "I see you, but you don't see me." (Have I mentioned how paranoid I am? Yes? Ok, just a reminder.) Needless to say I kindof got out of habit from studying anywhere that isn't home now. I finally replied one day after he said, "we should hang out." I replied with a simple, "I'm free to meet downtown from 2-6 today." He hasn't responded since and that was in November. Hopefully my forwardness burst his little fantasy bubble world and he is over me. Either way I blocked him on facebook and still spend most of my free time at home. I can't help but feel like I limited my social circle like this though so starting next quarter I'm going to be brave and start staying at school again. There are better resources there anyways.
Anyway onto the roomie. Somehow in all the hubub she and I became friends. She has learned to live with my overly excitable nature and avoidance of angular furniture ( I don't like anything square or rectangular, corners make me antsy and give me bruises guys!) I have learned that she is relatively deaf, but doesn't like it too quiet, which is perfect because I never shut up. My endless psychobabble and constant singing creates the perfect background noise for her study time. My roommate is not as quiet as I first thought, she is bold and brash but only once you get to know her and can be quite considerate on occasion. She always has to one up me on the gift department though dammit. We went to an army ball, ( did I mention my Roomie is a Seargent in the Army reserves?) where I discovered that she has night blindness and I had to drive though San Francisco, in the dark, in a ball gown, with a pair of broken glasses (I managed to snap the leg of the frame by shoving them gracefully in my clutch, I was in contacts so I didn't notice until the end of the night when I took off my contacts and put on my glasses to drive. Yay.) Nothing screams adventure like lurching up a hill, with your neck twisted in a crazy manner, in an insane attempt to keep your spectacles on your face. Also Roomie, let's call her M shall we? M has a brand new 2013 Honda something or other with all the bells and whistles and man is it a bitch to drive. Anytime I got close to another car the anti crash thing would beep and freak M out, or when I would go to turn the (over the lane divider thing) would go freaking berserk. It was a total pain in the ass. Plus her GPS wasn't working so I just had to take a leap of faith and hope to find my own way out. Obviously I did, so we are alive and well. I ended up having to use a wax strip to hold my glasses back together when we got to our hotel, neither of us had tape. But that is beside the point. This was the first time we actually did something together, starting our friendship. Then many study nights, New Girl episodes, Wine-glasses, rum-and cokes, boba-teas and a couple of questionable flavoured dinners later the friendship was pretty solid. By the way I sooooooo don't drink, so usually She would open the wine, give me half a glass and then polish off the rest with gusto. By rum and cokes I meant that she drank the rum and I the coke, haha sometimes we would mix the two and might I recommend pairing Coconut Rum with Cherry Coke? It's not iffy in the slightest, but If you're a lightweight like me go with, "half a finger," of rum as M says. I don't speak drink, google it if you're confused.
Anyway, M was totally into the guy in her Arabic class, let's call him Bueller. Bueller is tall and handsome, soft-spoken and well-dressed, with a bizarre Hawaiian print back-pack and an attachment to highlighter-inspired sneakers. Got an image in your head? Me neither, haha, but that is how she describes him no matter how many times I question her, I get no more details except for when he suddenly shaves his beard off that she likes so much. I say, "was," only because recent events have put romance off of her mind, but we did enjoy making terrible romantic scenarios when he was her crush charming for a time.
We had great fun getting the apartment dolled up for Christmas. I brought two miniature Christmas trees from home, one was silver and holographic, the other plain and pine-ish with white lights embedded in its branches. We then went to Micheal's and dollar only stores and got a ton of tiny Christmas ornaments and made a wreath for our door and put up lights on our windows and Window clings up of Santa and ornaments, stockings and poinsettias and all in all it was beautiful and festive. We went and met her family, who surprisingly enough adored me, quirks and all, and insisted that I come back to visit often. We went our separate ways for Christmas, I went home and she stayed at the apartment until Christmas Eve when she went home for family time. On Christmas day I got a horrifying text message at noon.
"My dad just had a massive heart attack, he is at the hospital right now, in critical condition. Please pray for him."
I told my family and after a couple of hours she texted me again telling me that her father was stable and they were all feeling much better. It was only the eye of the storm. At 5pm I got a single message consisting of 3 words:
"Dad passed away."
I never felt my heart go so still before. It was physically painful. I called her immediately and she sounded like she was in schock. she sounded so mechanical and broken I had to hang up before I started crying. I gave the only consolation I could. I told her that I was here for her and that if she needed me I would come back to the apartment. We both decided to stay with our families. I came back on Friday and she returned the Sunday before school. We kept the Christmas stuff up for a while. They haven't had a funeral yet but I did attend the Celebration of Life ceremony held for him. It was hard, and I still feel guilty about it but I couldn't help but wonder what was going to happen to me. Granted M was hurting and is my friend but I have never had to deal with a situation like this before and I am not a somber person by nature. I am loud, creative, overbearing at times and I didn't know how to act. I didn't want to be insensitive and act normally, but I also didn't want to pity her and give her that awful I'm sorry look all the time. Much to my surprise she acted as if nothing had happened. It wasn't until later that I would hear her crying in her room. I still haven't told her that I can sometimes hear her at night. We haven't had a formal talk about it but I try to make her feel at home whenever I can. I made her chicken soup when she got sick and she received sympathy flowers in a pretty blue vase. When I was getting to know her she once told me that she hates flowers because they die. The day I made her chicken soup I bought a bunch of daisies and carnations, because I noticed that her flowers were dying and quietly replaced them. M is not a touchy feely person; I am. I like hugs and hand holding, hair braiding, gentle massaging, just touch in general. I am physically affectionate and M is not; I have gotten used to reserving my hugs for my mother( and on those weekends when I see her she gets smothered believe me.) Therefore I was surprised when, after doing dishes and sitting down on the couch to read my textbook, M sat beside me and hugged me. We have kept flowers in the vase ever since; sometimes I buy them, sometimes she does.
By the way have I ever mentioned Bert? Bert is my plant baby. He's a succulent. Bert is my first plant baby. I was lonely and missed my pets so my Godfather gifted me with this little guy. As a busy student he's perfect because I can talk to him and watch him grow and only need to water him once a month or so.
Bert |
| This is Bertholomou Cactali Gertenschtein. I made up the hoity toity name while texting a friend and it stuck with me. |
Scylla |
| So named after the hydra in Homer's, "The Odyssey." |
Charybdis |
| Named after the whirlpool monster from Homer's, "The Odyssey." |
Cristae |
| As in the lining in Mitochondria where ATP is made. |
Henry  |
| My first Orchid! |
Ok, we're getting a little closer to present day now. About a week or so after coming back to the apartment, I asked M if we could go to see "The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug." It had been in theaters for a while and I had been dying to see it and i had roped her into seeing Frozen with me and she enjoyed that so she figured indulging me again couldn't be so bad. The movie was good, Smaug was fantastic and we had a good time overall. We were planning to go to a dollar store and buy Valentine's Day decorations after the movie before heading home to chow down on something or other and watch New Girl. It was a Friday so we decided we needed a good old fashioned Friday night without school worries. At the traffic-light just before our apartment complex my classic bad luck struck. The light barely turned green, the car in front of us hadn't moved yet and a girl who hadn't been paying attention, plowed into the car behind us who in turn, collided with M's car. A sickening crunch and whiplash ensued. M was not at all prepared to handle something like this and from her expression I expected her to either curse violently or burst into tears. Luckily a CHP officer saw the whole thing so he pulled over to write up a report, and M was able to somehow hide all of her emotions and cooperate with little to no difficulty. On the way home I had never heard such colorful language. If curses could be seen in color, it would have felt like a rainbow-skittles-rave inside that car. Needless to say we went home, called our respective parents, I got into my onsie ( My dad bought me a sock monkey onsie for Christmas. It was a gag gift but good lord when your apartment is freezing and you can't afford to keep the heater above 60, a onsie is absolute heaven,) started up New Girl and M popped open a bottle of wine. I had a whole glass that night.
Alot has happened since then. But it's all kindof a blur (my long-term memory is better than my short-term.) I spent Valentine's Day all alone for the first time in 21 years and am not ashamed to admit that I cried. I usually spend the day with family and friends, but I had midterms the week after V-day and a Pre-med student conference on the 15th and couldn't go home. All of my friends however did, M included. Saddest Day in a long time. My best friend told me I should have called her but I didn't want to bring anybody down, her included. (She lives in Texas so we couldn't hang out or anything. But I spent the night watching Clueless, Agora, Timer, leprechaun 2, Brother Bear, and Smithsonean Channel: Titanoboa. A couple of those films left me in tears, and before you ask, yes it was well into the 15th before I passed out for an hour before waking up and going to the conference where I heard alot about Osteopathic Medicine. My friend S and I had a great time trying out different techniques for alleviating neck tension and afterward she and I decided to hang out and went to where her husband works where they bought me pizza and then she introduced me to this nifty place where I bought S and I freshly baked cookie-ice-cream sandwiches before she dropped my off back at my apartment, where I was once again alone, but didn't feel like it anymore.
Now we're rounding off to last week. Midterms, migranes, and a day where I came home from class at 7 and slept until my 7am class the next day and really nothing much else happened. Now I'm back in my apartment late on a Saturday night (M had to do something secretive with her sorority that I supposedly don't know about) alone, recounting the end and beginning of 2013 and 2014 respectively. I feel like this is very therapeutic writing everything down. It's not exactly everything but I'm not ready to release some of the more personal disasters just yet. Oh well, chronically linear stories are boring anyway. Anyway's Ciao for now, and hopefully I will have more free time like this to log in and share my memories with whomever is out there reading this. And if you aren't me and you are reading this I wish you nothing but the best. If it is me reading this: get off the damn internet! Quit being narcissistic or overly-analytical. Who cares if there are spelling or grammar errors, no one is going to really care anyway (at least I hope not.) Besides, you have homework and you know it, so stop procrastinating.
I guess the lesson of the day is if you feel lonely, it means you aren't really alone anyway; it's temporary, you'll be ok.
Ink_Stained
No comments:
Post a Comment