It's Robin!

The season finale of How I Met Your Mother was mind blowing, and of course made me cry again. Although I feel relieved to know that Barney finally marries Robin, I still can't wait to know how they get there. I'm sure it'll be another great romantic story.

My parents were fighting in the morning on Mother's Day. My dad was throwing stuff at my mom and the farce made me cry so badly. I felt fear, anger, and extreme grief and cried for hours. Eventually I decided not to go through this thing along and called Cato.

I thought about calling others before I called Cato. I thought about calling Tanner, Matt, Tin, and some others. However, since Tanner told me about how it's difficult to be around me when I'm sad and that it takes too much effort to be my friend, I have become very conscious about being emotional around my friends. I decided to still call Cato because I could not lose something I already lost.

Cato tried to find me a solution and he was shocked to learn the kind of violence I grew up in; I told him I only needed someone to go through the emotions with me and didn't need a solution. Eventually all the talking calmed me down and comforted me. Interestingly he felt flattered that I chose to call him. In the end he prompted me to get some Haagen Dazs because I could feel hunger again after letting out all my emotions.

Matt is my new close best friend. I haven't written about how we became close recently but I will update soon.

Yesterday I found an amazing website for people who were born to be highly sensitive: http://hsperson.com/pages/test.htm

I have every single item on the checklist and I find it amazing to finally find a little test that describes me completely, even my sensitivity to caffeine and alcohol is right on the spot. I now have a habit of drinking coffee on the daily basis; in the past I couldn't because coffee makes my fingertips numb and tingle. Although my homemade coffee doesn't do that to me now, a few days ago I noticed the numbness and tingling in my fingertips again. It also explains my fear for pain and my menstrual cramp. The gynecologist told me there was nothing wrong with my womb or anything and it was just regular cramping but somehow the pain for me is just very severe. It stopped hurting for 1.5 years until Cato broke up with me. It began to hurt badly again because I began to feel myself, feel my body and emotions. It's fascinating how my brain was actually shut down from both physical and emotional pain under depression and now I'm opening up to the pain again. I do feel thrilled.

Too Difficult to Take Care of

Something unpleasant happened yesterday. Three really close male friends of mine, including Tanner wanted to get together. As we were about to move onto different phases of life and very unlikely won't be able to see each other for a long time, I thought the get-together thing would be our intimate moment. It turned out they invited a stranger and wanted to do another superficial meaningless gathering that made me feel very frustrated and decide not to go. We were in the same building the whole time but none of them called me or actually came for me; all the did was sending angry messages blaming me for this and that. That further made me disappointed because all I was asking was just anyone of them to come upstairs and invite me again.

So I saw them today at another gathering. I tried to explain how I felt and then cried, in front them, among hundreds of people. I didn't care whether other people saw it and I just lived in that moment, the moment when I was feeling sad. The dispute was kind of settled because I cried but one of them also said "none of us is your boyfriend and you can't expect us to do those things for you".

After some review of my life again I think I've figured out what's going on. I am someone who values friends more than my family. I can talk to my family about so few things; in front of my family I am always fine, always single. All they know is that I'm unhappy because I am a perfectionist at work; I demand straight A's and a high paying job and that's why I'm unhappy. They think they know too much about me but in fact they know so little. I have to be emotionless in front of my family; I barely cried in front of them. When I was very little, around 2 or 3 years old, I was crying at a hospital looking for my mom who was taking care of my younger brother under a surgery. My dad could not handle my emotions and lifted me to the window of the hospital and told me "I would drop you from this window if you don't stop crying".

As someone who grew up in emotional abuse and witnessed physical abuse I am constantly searching for new family, whether they're just friends or a romantic partner. The problem is most people did not go through what I did and they obviously do not value me more than their family. I don't know how to solve this problem. I can try to value my family more again but the trauma from the past still haunts me and their emotional shutdown is still there; it comes with too much pain. It takes many more years to form a cohesive group like those 5 in How I Met Your Mother. I can pull back some of the investments and wait until they feel I'm a family to them. But before that happens I will have to keep suffering from loneliness.

Then I recalled what Ivan told me when he broke up with me, "it's so difficult to take care of you. You need someone better to take care of you." Tanner also told me something similar when I told him I thought he was a bad friend, "You're sad a lot and that makes it difficult to be your friend. It requires much more effort to be your friend." Cato said the same thing when he broke up with me, "all the things you request are reasonable but I just don't feel like doing them".

I am able to take care of my emotions now; I feel them, let them out, and never suppress them. I also feel less guilty these days. Now I need to believe there is someone out there, bigger than who I am, and able to take care of both of us.

If my web of interpersonal relationships is like a ball, I am dropping the ball right now. It feels really tiresome to be the one holding the ball all the time. I shut down my Facebook. I don't initiate to arrange parties anymore. I want to know which ones of my friends are willing to pick up the ball before it goes off the cliff. If my Facebook friends really care about me, they would go through our mutual friends and find my email or LinkedIn very easily. That's why it doesn't scare me to go off from Facebook.

#100

This is my 100th entry in this blog although there's really no one that reads my blog.

I haven't updated my life for a while because my mood swings every day. As I mentioned before, I am being coached by someone in Los Angeles and I need to sink into my feelings at any moment. So far I have really completely stopped beating myself but I have become really emotional and oftentimes I find myself unable to cover up those emotions in front of other people; I shouldn't anyway according to the coach. As of right now I am feeling sad and afraid.

This afternoon I went to a library to work. On my way there I saw a puppy that looked exactly like my dog Baby. I played with it for a while and afterwards I cried in the library bathroom because I was missing Baby so much. I felt so guilty for leaving her to my parents. I recalled those parting moments with Baby and they are just so sad. Then I went back to work.

In the evening I went to a fast food restaurant for dinner, by myself. At the beginning I was feeling excited for finally having some junk food for the past 2 months. After ordering I sat down at a table listening to their blasting loud music. I was moving and humming with the music until I realized it was California Girls by the Beach Boys. I was shocked upon the realization and all of the sudden felt so heavy because I listened to the Beach Boys after Cato recommended them to me; they are his favorite band. But I didn't feel sad yet because the song was quite cheerful. Then the radio started to play something else so my mind just left it. And moments later, I heard the prelude of an extremely familiar song, and my tears just rolled down my face. It was With or Without You by U2. U2 is Ivan's favorite band and used to be my favorite band and that song was Ivan's favorite song and the saddest song to him too. I listened to the lyrics, thought about what has happened to me since Ivan broke up with me 3 years ago, and I really cried in public, although nobody saw me.

For the past month Cato didn't come across my mind that much until a couple of days ago when I got that weird flu. Before I felt sick, we were at a conference together and after the conference he drove to a party with some colleagues. It was my first time to see his car and to see him drive. After I got home I had an emotional meltdown. I cried for a few hours and talked to my mom on Skype about how scared I was. After a bout of cry my head began to hurt so I took some acetaminophen before bed. Somehow when I was suffering from the fever and body aches during sleep all I could think of was Cato. I have let go of him but every time when I'm sick there is really no one in my life that I could turn to for help, although a couple of days ago Tanner was the one who got me ice cream. I'm sure Cato will be out of my mind again as soon as I start to feel physically well, i.e. no more menstrual cramps.

Cato was the second longest relationship I had and the sexual intimacy we developed was the same as me and Ivan's. But it hurts just as much because before Cato I had not done anything intimate or even touched a guy for more than one year. I wanted a clean slate start because I wanted whatever that came along to be a perfect fairy tale. I put in so much hope and faith because Cato is young and he gave me all that big talk on romance and love. It's been 6 months now. When will I be able to forget about all the pain? Am I really unable to heal the wounds caused by past trauma? I got over that one-week thing with Richard after 6 years. How long will it take me to get over my one year with Ivan and 2 months with Cato?

This Beautiful What?

Yesterday I suffered from a few flu symptoms including fever, body aches, and nausea but somehow I became fully recovered today. However in the afternoon I began to suffer from menstrual cramps and they were really painful. After taking more acetaminophen I decided to go to downtown and work at a cafe. I put on really soft casual clothes--a tank top, sweatpants, tennis shoes, and a hoodie coat.

After work and dinner at the cafe I walked home. On my way home I saw this guy walk towards me talking on the phone. He said "there's this beautiful woman walking past me right now. She's got this beautiful..." I stopped and looked back but he kept walking so I didn't get to hear what the beautiful thing was that I had.

I spent the whole night wondering.