the primary reason why this blog is still active is because i am extremely nostalgic. there are times when i feel like i live more in the past than in the present. memories are vivid experiences for me. i like to wear the skin of three or five years ago and walk around. i think about the problems i had at the time and start to imagine what it would have been like to solve those problems while armed with the silver bullet of hindsight. sometimes i go back to my happiest moments: lying on an inflatable raft in my cousin's swimming pool, staring at a cloudless sky and listening to utada hikaru's "automatic;" driving home in my pink neon with the windows rolled down, blasting taesaja at midnight, triumphant after my first date; swaddled in my serenity browncoat hoodie and blankets, my body wracked with pneumonia induced coughing fits, while the love of my life held me for just a moment longer before i made the long trip back to san francisco.

i'm procrastinating again. it's been a long time coming, but i feel like putting this space to good use again. apologies for the past few months of depressed poetry -- but really, this blog is for me and i didn't have anywhere else to put it. plus, it's highly therapeutic. also, since i'm the only one that reads this, this apology is directed at myself. meanwhile, i'm in graduate school, part deux. i haven't mentioned it flat out here, but i'm in a really intense, one-year program to get a master's in teaching and teaching certification. i'm going to be a teacher, and i intend to be a damn good one, at that. i've realized that i wallow in the results of my mistakes. i sulk and sulk and sulk, but in the process i learn, learn, and learn. it only makes sense that i take these painful lessons and share them with incoming generations, so they do not make the same mistakes i did. rather, they will be left to make their own mistakes and have nobody to blame but themselves.

but i digress. the real reason for this particular post was to reminisce about my first graduate school experience. i was flipping through ancient emails and saved chat records and realized that i am far enough removed from my first stint in higher education that i have come to terms with it. i just had a deep conversation with a photo of someone who used to be ridiculously important to me when i first got to san francisco. i think that my emotional attachment to this person was so strong that i would have sacrificed myself to see them happy. actually, i did sacrifice myself for their sake. in this extremely creepy, one way conversation, i told them that i can no longer see why i put myself in that situation. looking at the emails and chats, it was like we were speaking a different language back then. i am no longer in touch with that part of my past. i ended the conversation by thanking them, for everything they didn't do, because it taught me a lot and i am a tiny bit stronger because of it.

life is better, nothing has changed since then. only my perspective. i've learned to accept that there are things that i cannot change, even if it means me never ever getting what i currently think i want most. it hurts something awful, and although i might think that the wound is fatal, i know that in not too long a time, i will see the scar and smile because despite the pain, it was only skin-deep.

the heart, not the body, is a roadmap of pain. luckily, all roads lead to a better place.

i don't miss you.

i will temper my longing and forge a sword so sharp that it cuts the world in half.