368A — Is it easier to stay, is it easier to go?
Today was pretty good.
Like yesterday, I was perturbed by thoughts and random wakings throughout the night (1:42 AM, for one). I woke up at around 8:30, which I perceived to be a reasonable time to get up, but something inside me felt like it was dying, and, after some extended period of time spent reading and listening to things on my phone, I determined that it was probably reasonable justification for me to go back to sleep for a little while, to see if it was recoverable.
I woke up again around 11 and began reading again, feeling much better physically. At this point, my failure to get up was a simple function of my laziness, which does need to be curtailed significantly. Eventually, I rose from the dead, got ready, then read for a while longer before having a relatively light lunch. I read for the brief period after lunch that always seems to be very depressing, and then headed to a coffee shop where I met a friend. We talked about her summer and my summer and all the things we did and college applications (past tense for me, future for her) and everything else for an extended period of time, and then we headed to an ice cream place to meet a few other friends, where similar conversations continued.
As the mosquitoes became more intense throughout the evening, we eventually disbanded and I headed home, where I finally finished Call Me By Your Name. I'll end this post with some thoughts I had throughout the day and throughout my dying in an attempt to sleep, and some reflections on the goals I set at the very beginning of the year. Tomorrow, a bedcheck with my kids (💓), and honestly, I don't have much else planned. Yay!
Thoughts:
Is it too early for me to already be missing the physical locations at MIT? The walking around, the specific buildings and their associated numbers, the thrill of knowing exactly where to turn in the tunnels to get me to where I want to be? Probably, given that I'll be returning in just 11 days, and I've already agreed to take an acquaintance on a journey at some point. Still, I yearn for that freedom again. If this is all I do with my freedom at college, what's the problem? I don't see any.
I had swirling thoughts about inadequacies and an inability to commit myself wholeheartedly to difficult tasks all morning throughout my inability to sleep, and part of me had the sudden thought that maybe this is why I chose MIT. Maybe it was a choice to bury myself in work because I can't stand being alone with myself and my thoughts—if I have nothing else to do, maybe I actually have to be human and confront myself. Maybe I should confront myself more often in order to become an actually whole and better human being. Hmph.
Call Me By Your Name was a very interesting book. The grammarian part of me hated the way the style and syntax, but there's something about the feelings it conveyed that defied conventional grammar. It made it hard to read at points, but so much of what it said resonated with me. A few things I highlighted:
The word 'malaise'—this seems to characterize my current state of being, and it is unshakable, settling down at the core of my being.
"Sometimes, though, a mere nothing, like a sense of dread or shame, would slip its way out of my sleep and hover undefined about me..."
This was something that reminded me of not being able to sleep recently, and yet was applied in a wholly different context in this novel. In fact, a lot of the writing in this book was like this. It was in a situation not exactly like my own, and yet it fit so well.
"Stay focused on midnight yet keep my mind off every aspect of it."
A lot of this book was focused on saying goodbye and avoiding it, and building love (although in a much different aspect) in such a time-constrained environment, which of course reminded me of RSI and saying goodbye to it.
"I tried to imagine myself coming down this very same staircase tomorrow morning. By then I might be someone else. Did I even like this someone else whom I didn't yet know...?"
This is me trying to imagine myself at MIT during RSI. By the time I get there, I will not be the me from RSI, and questions remain about whether the me at MIT will be better or worse than the me at RSI, and how those differences will play out and whether I will even notice them. I am concerned that I will slide into someone too comfortable, too unwilling to question oneself and become someone different, and that complacency will be untenable. I guess we will see.
"No, I didn't hate it at all. But what I felt was worse than hate. I didn't want to remember, didn't want to think about it. Just put it away. It had never happened. I had tried it and it didn't work for me, now I wanted my money back, roll back the film, take me back to that moment when I'm almost stepping out onto the balcony barefoot, I'll go no farther, I'll sit and stew and never know..."
This reminded me so much of my incident from last year that it almost hurt me. I have had this exact train of thought, and this is I guess why I keep excusing the difficulty of reading this grammatical mess. It captures so much about pain and thought and yet it is so difficult to read, perhaps because such pain and thought is inherently difficult in the first place. It is so accurate and so poignant, and yet it frightens me to also see the different tracks I took from Elio—me, further withdrawal; Elio, further pursuit. I am not confident I am less happy now than I would be otherwise, and yet part of me still wonders.
"I shrugged my shoulders as though to put away another compliment. I was unworthy of compliments, most of all coming from him."
This is how I felt towards the end of camp, with all of the compliments coming from kids. (Just saying that sentence makes me shudder because it feels like acknowledging them is, in and of itself, acceptance of something that is much more noble than my current status.) They are so amazing and so wholesome and I struggle to see why they of all people should be complimenting me. I find it difficult to respond to such compliments—instead, I wish that, like Elio, I could just shrug.
"Perhaps we were friends first and lovers second.
But then perhaps this is what lovers are."
I don't know why I found this so jarring, and yet I did. I haven't felt like this in a while, and yet I have. It worries me.
"...every part of me seems miles and centuries apart and each swears it bears my name."
This is what I mean when I say I feel like I have multiple selves, and they each fit a different context. Each one of them swears it is me, or, at the very least, seems like it is some manifestation for me, and each of it inhabits a different context for a different place and time, and every part of me is like so, and this inherent contradiction exists and it is described so perfectly in this phrase that cannot even be formed into a complex sentence. Still, I find that I come back to who I am at some base level, perhaps best found at last year's RSI where I abandoned all caution, since this year I had to apply that caution to best care for my and the kids. Another fragment about this: "...we change and keep changing and come back to the same."
"You lose it, as you always knew you would, and were even prepared to; but you can't bring yourself to live with the loss. And hoping not to think of it, like praying not to dream of it, hurts just the same."
Like yesterday, I was perturbed by thoughts and random wakings throughout the night (1:42 AM, for one). I woke up at around 8:30, which I perceived to be a reasonable time to get up, but something inside me felt like it was dying, and, after some extended period of time spent reading and listening to things on my phone, I determined that it was probably reasonable justification for me to go back to sleep for a little while, to see if it was recoverable.
I woke up again around 11 and began reading again, feeling much better physically. At this point, my failure to get up was a simple function of my laziness, which does need to be curtailed significantly. Eventually, I rose from the dead, got ready, then read for a while longer before having a relatively light lunch. I read for the brief period after lunch that always seems to be very depressing, and then headed to a coffee shop where I met a friend. We talked about her summer and my summer and all the things we did and college applications (past tense for me, future for her) and everything else for an extended period of time, and then we headed to an ice cream place to meet a few other friends, where similar conversations continued.
As the mosquitoes became more intense throughout the evening, we eventually disbanded and I headed home, where I finally finished Call Me By Your Name. I'll end this post with some thoughts I had throughout the day and throughout my dying in an attempt to sleep, and some reflections on the goals I set at the very beginning of the year. Tomorrow, a bedcheck with my kids (💓), and honestly, I don't have much else planned. Yay!
Thoughts:
Is it too early for me to already be missing the physical locations at MIT? The walking around, the specific buildings and their associated numbers, the thrill of knowing exactly where to turn in the tunnels to get me to where I want to be? Probably, given that I'll be returning in just 11 days, and I've already agreed to take an acquaintance on a journey at some point. Still, I yearn for that freedom again. If this is all I do with my freedom at college, what's the problem? I don't see any.
I had swirling thoughts about inadequacies and an inability to commit myself wholeheartedly to difficult tasks all morning throughout my inability to sleep, and part of me had the sudden thought that maybe this is why I chose MIT. Maybe it was a choice to bury myself in work because I can't stand being alone with myself and my thoughts—if I have nothing else to do, maybe I actually have to be human and confront myself. Maybe I should confront myself more often in order to become an actually whole and better human being. Hmph.
Call Me By Your Name was a very interesting book. The grammarian part of me hated the way the style and syntax, but there's something about the feelings it conveyed that defied conventional grammar. It made it hard to read at points, but so much of what it said resonated with me. A few things I highlighted:
The word 'malaise'—this seems to characterize my current state of being, and it is unshakable, settling down at the core of my being.
"Sometimes, though, a mere nothing, like a sense of dread or shame, would slip its way out of my sleep and hover undefined about me..."
This was something that reminded me of not being able to sleep recently, and yet was applied in a wholly different context in this novel. In fact, a lot of the writing in this book was like this. It was in a situation not exactly like my own, and yet it fit so well.
"Stay focused on midnight yet keep my mind off every aspect of it."
A lot of this book was focused on saying goodbye and avoiding it, and building love (although in a much different aspect) in such a time-constrained environment, which of course reminded me of RSI and saying goodbye to it.
"I tried to imagine myself coming down this very same staircase tomorrow morning. By then I might be someone else. Did I even like this someone else whom I didn't yet know...?"
This is me trying to imagine myself at MIT during RSI. By the time I get there, I will not be the me from RSI, and questions remain about whether the me at MIT will be better or worse than the me at RSI, and how those differences will play out and whether I will even notice them. I am concerned that I will slide into someone too comfortable, too unwilling to question oneself and become someone different, and that complacency will be untenable. I guess we will see.
"No, I didn't hate it at all. But what I felt was worse than hate. I didn't want to remember, didn't want to think about it. Just put it away. It had never happened. I had tried it and it didn't work for me, now I wanted my money back, roll back the film, take me back to that moment when I'm almost stepping out onto the balcony barefoot, I'll go no farther, I'll sit and stew and never know..."
This reminded me so much of my incident from last year that it almost hurt me. I have had this exact train of thought, and this is I guess why I keep excusing the difficulty of reading this grammatical mess. It captures so much about pain and thought and yet it is so difficult to read, perhaps because such pain and thought is inherently difficult in the first place. It is so accurate and so poignant, and yet it frightens me to also see the different tracks I took from Elio—me, further withdrawal; Elio, further pursuit. I am not confident I am less happy now than I would be otherwise, and yet part of me still wonders.
"I shrugged my shoulders as though to put away another compliment. I was unworthy of compliments, most of all coming from him."
This is how I felt towards the end of camp, with all of the compliments coming from kids. (Just saying that sentence makes me shudder because it feels like acknowledging them is, in and of itself, acceptance of something that is much more noble than my current status.) They are so amazing and so wholesome and I struggle to see why they of all people should be complimenting me. I find it difficult to respond to such compliments—instead, I wish that, like Elio, I could just shrug.
"Perhaps we were friends first and lovers second.
But then perhaps this is what lovers are."
I don't know why I found this so jarring, and yet I did. I haven't felt like this in a while, and yet I have. It worries me.
"...every part of me seems miles and centuries apart and each swears it bears my name."
This is what I mean when I say I feel like I have multiple selves, and they each fit a different context. Each one of them swears it is me, or, at the very least, seems like it is some manifestation for me, and each of it inhabits a different context for a different place and time, and every part of me is like so, and this inherent contradiction exists and it is described so perfectly in this phrase that cannot even be formed into a complex sentence. Still, I find that I come back to who I am at some base level, perhaps best found at last year's RSI where I abandoned all caution, since this year I had to apply that caution to best care for my and the kids. Another fragment about this: "...we change and keep changing and come back to the same."
"You lose it, as you always knew you would, and were even prepared to; but you can't bring yourself to live with the loss. And hoping not to think of it, like praying not to dream of it, hurts just the same."
This was me with both RSIs, as I have previously mentioned. To say goodbye, one had to "think of the pain before the pain," and the pain was softened, but it was still there, and it was endured over periods that made it seem less real but still it existed, a testament to the length and yet brevity of the time we had spent together.
"But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything—what a waste!"
I have not yet all-out cried over this year's RSI, and this is how I feel about it. I have certainly shed many tears, but I want to feel something over it that is not just malaise and not just mild joy, and yet my emotions forsake me. "Time makes us sentimental. Perhaps, in the end, it is because of time that we suffer." I expected this, and I am perhaps suffering, and yet not as much as I would have expected. Maybe too much joy and too much love has carried over since my departure—but who would be worried about too much joy and love. None but me, of course. Maybe I should learn to accept it.
"I began to wonder what turn my life would have taken had someone else shown up instead. I wouldn't have gone to Rome. But I might have gone elsewhere. Wouldn't have know the first thing about San Clemente. But I might have discovered something else which I'd missed out on and might never know about. Wouldn't have changed, would never be who I am today, would have become someone else.
I wonder now who that someone else is today. Is he happier?"
I wonder now who that someone else is today. Is he happier?"
I too, have wondered this, as I have mentioned in both 366A and many other posts, including one which is unpublished because it reveals too much about RSI. It is so interesting to wonder, and I am constantly questioning who I would be without RSI this year, or last year. Would I have done SEES? Would I have learned something new, something different? I certainly wouldn't be as caring as I have learned to be from my role as a counselor. I certainly wouldn't have discovered the outrageous and exploratory me I did as a student. Maybe I would've have discovered some other 'me' from the multitudes I contain, however, and who knows what that would've been and what it would've led to. Would I be happier? Maybe I would've been more ignorant, and they do say that ignorance is bliss. But I think, with all I have been through and learned, I would rather know and discover than be totally blissful, both in regards to all this and to things as depressing as 'the incident.' Interesting.
Read Call Me By Your Name. Maybe it's not perfectly written, but it gets its point across. It makes you feel and think, and, at the end of the day, isn't that the point of language and literature?
Reflections on 2019 goals, over halfway through the year:
- Write everyday—this blog, the novella, and a prompt-based challenge I’m doing with a friend available here: https://thinkwritten.com/365-creative-writing-prompts
Mixed success. The blog has gone on for much longer than I thought it would, and this has satisfied the 'write everyday' portion of this goal, but the novella and the prompts have kind of disappeared. Oops. - Learn to play the Fantasie Impromptu, finish out your senior year of Orchestra strong (and think about what you want to do with it next), and figure out how to sing harmony parts again.
Mostly failure, as of yet. I definitely haven't learned the Fantasie Impromptu. My senior year of Orchestra ended relatively well, and I do plan on doing pit in the Musical Theater Guild at MIT, so that's the "plan" on what I want to do with this next. Singing harmony parts hasn't happened, but it might if I get the acapella group I'm planning on auditioning for. - Get accepted at Georgia Tech, and then get at least two acceptances out of Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Yale, MIT, and UChicago. (Although, to be fair, I won’t really be able to do much about this during 2019.) Don’t get whatever offers you do have rescinded.
Success, and completion! I got Georgia Tech, doubled my 'at least two' requirement, and, as far as I know, have yet to be rescinded from MIT, so this goal will be removed from future reflections. - Establish organizational structures that will make getting things done a near certainty, and have some sort of concept as to how productive you are during a day. (In doing this, however, also make sure you’re not over-extending yourself or burning your motivation out too much.)
Neutral. I'm not sure how good this has been—I did time-tracking for the first half of the year, but this habit is too easy to desert. On the other hand, I did get a really nice planner recently, and I've been making sure to get things done. I think I do have a general concept of productivity, and I've mostly avoided burnout and complacency, but we'll see how the year itself goes. - Attempt to create some semblance of a sustainable policy debate team in the last half of your last season in the hopes that policy will at least somewhat continue in the oncoming few years.
Failure, and surrender. Policy is dying in the entire state anyways, and the people left who know how to do it are limited both in number and power. It's a lost cause at this point, and I don't see much I could've done additionally (considering mine and others' mental and physical health) to improve the performance on this goal. - Make National Science Bowl for the last time!
Success, and completion—although I did not attend. I achieved my goal, however, which is good, and this goal can also be removed from future reflections. - Turn over a new leaf at the start of college, without being shy or overly hesitant about my identity—make friends, try new things, and learn!
Hasn't started yet. I'll need to try to keep this in mind. I think my schedule (including a hardcore humanities and a film crit class), and my communities (FPOP, Concourse) should bring me towards at least trying new things and making friends, and I have no doubt that I will learn a lot, both about the subjects of the classes as well as my ability to work (and time management), so we'll see how it goes. It should be pretty good, at the very least. I'm excited. - Read at least 10 books outside of school this year.
Success! This is kind of a surprise, since I (sadly) haven't been big on reading for a long while, between time constraints and lack of energy. I'll still be reading more throughout the year, however, especially in this brief, interstitial time I have before all hell (MIT) breaks loose. I'm keeping this on here and upping the number to 20, just to see if I can do it. - Take some edX courses this year.
Failure. So many things, so little time. I'm using one to study for the biology ASE though, so at least that's having some use? - Exercise…?
No...? It definitely didn't happen during the first half of the year. I've walked a pretty healthy amount during RSI—during the six weeks of RSI I averaged 16540 steps per day, or a total of 695000 steps over the entire time period. I'll also be walking quite a bit during the school year, living in Next House, and I'm required to take a PE credit for the next four quarters, so I should be "reasonably" fit. - Have fun!
Success-ish. I've certainly had a lot of fun, as the blogs and whatnot can attest. On the other hand, there have certainly been periods of seasonal/non-seasonal depression, so we'll hope to stave these off as MIT goes. We'll see what happens.
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