“I miss your smell. When you left I couldn’t wash the sheets because I didn’t want to lose that completely – you. And it fucked me up for a long time because I’d wake up and I’d smell you and I’d think you were there, and my heart would break all over again.”
- Hank Moody, Californication, s01e05
I hit the pause button on my media player just so I could scribble down these lines. Sure, it may not be literature with a capital L, but this passage was simple and raw in a way that I found utterly beautiful. Every time I stumble upon writing that stops me dead in my tracks, I ask myself why I can’t come up with anything remotely as good. It’s not because I’m too busy – while my old day job ate a lot of my time and energy, I still managed to find ways to capture my working class angst in words. It’s not that my life has become any less exciting either; it’s still very eventful in ways the Internet can never know. As I was basking in the jouissance of this passage, the answer hit me out of nowhere.
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ALL RIGHT ALL RIGHT I’LL DO THE MEME ALREADY YOU CAN STOP TAGGING ME NOW K?
Last night, I started working on the 25 Things About Myself meme everyone’s been doing on Facebook, but halfway through it I started blathering on about Lacanian psychoalanysis, jouissance, neurosis, and hysterical desire. The whole thing sounded like I was secretly hoping that the Lacanian terminology would disguise the fact that I am a crappy girlfriend for trying to break up with my boyfriend three times this week for no logical reason. Then friends started tagging the crap out of me to do the memories meme, which basically says:
Leave one (or more) memory (-ries) that you and I had together.
It doesn’t matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember!
Don’t send a message, leave a comment here.
So I figured, I’d hit two birds with one blog post and combine the two memes together! In this entry I shall list down 25 favorite memories I have of 25 different people, in no particular order. I will not name names, but feel free to guess which one of these is you! (Hint: If I tagged you on this note, you’re probably here. 
)
1.) The day after I arrived at San Francisco, I fell asleep on your lap at Golden Gate Park because I was too jetlagged to do anything else.
2.) Greeting 2008 by watching slasher movies in my room!
3.) Two days before you left for New York, you slept over and we talked about how you found out that your father isn’t actually your father. Then we went shopping the next day. Come back, I miss you. 
4.) Writing songs with you at school or outside my dorm. Being sad with you in general, because it makes me creative for some reason. Did you know that I haven’t made any music since then? Quit your job and write songs with me again!
5.) I have too many favorite memories with you, so it’s a toss between the time we rode through the coastal towns of Bohol on a motorbike to get to the tarsier farm, or you and me pigging out at random places. Food tastes amazing when we eat together.
6.) That time you chased me around Ortigas in your socks and pajamas because I got mad at you and kept walking away. I’m still a little embarrassed at how childishly I reacted. :\
7.) Two words: Sunday school. Okay, I have tons of way better memories with you, but you have to admit – this one is funny in retrospect.
8.) That small party you threw by the swimming pool of your condo!
9.) Being the legal witness to your marriage. I didn’t want to show it, but I was actually tearing up when you guys exchanged vows.
10.) Pigging out with you at Something Fishy after a long night of drinking! (I know, I know, I suck for never making the time to hang out with you guys again.)
11.) The time you left me Sartre on my bed. 
12.) Shisha and beer at your balcony while we made plans to go to the Hong Kong film festival. It doesn’t matter that we never made it to Hong Kong, it was great hanging out with you again after all those years.
13.) Those times we kept going to the Market! Market! food court after school with our respective then-boyfriends, whom we now kind of respectively hate.
14.) Taking turns puking in the bathroom the morning after the Hohobag Valentine’s Day party! You tried to teach me how I could induce vomiting, but I couldn’t bring myself to stick my fingers down my throat.
15.) The night before Ale arrived, you slept over and drove me to the airport at 4 am because I couldn’t do it myself. That was really, really sweet of you.
16.) You calling me up when I was in San Francisco to make sure that I was okay.
17.) That time when we were newly friends, and I was depressed, and you sent me that song from Explosions in the Sky to make me feel better. A confession: I actually ended up crying more cos I was *touched*. Yeah. Never mention this to me, k?
18.) Exploring Singapore like total cheapskates: hopping on random buses and trains with no plan in mind, and amusing ourselves by watching the city zip by.
19-21.) Two words: Jef’s condo.
22.) Sitting on the steps across Macy’s while we read through your Livejournal archives. Good times.
23.) That time you broke up with your boyfriend, because it’s when you and I started talking way more.
24.) Smoking with you at the soccer field after the worst gig ever.
25.)The night you randomly came over and made amaretto’s in my room!
A couple of days ago I had it all figured out. I realized that the secret to staying sane to grad school is to simply not care.
By “not care” I don’t mean “start being irresponsible.” I will still put my best efforts in whatever I do, but I will not care about the results – results being what other people might think of my work. I will not care about being the best in class. I will not care that I’m probably far from being the best in class because my classmates have more knowledge and experience than I do. I will not care that for me, it’s the academe or die. (The world won’t end if I don’t make it, but I really don’t see any sort of future for myself if I have to work in an office day in day out.) I will read what I can and study as much as I can and not care that in spite of the hours I put in reading all these things, there will still be a lot that I won’t understand.
I had that all figured out. The fire was back, and for once I sat in front of my computer looking forward to doing my paper instead of dreading it.
That all came crumbling down two nights ago when I spoke to a friend about my ideas for a paper and he reacted to it a little too critically. I suppose it wouldn’t be entirely fair to blame him for what happened to me after. He was just trying to help the only way he knows how, but I keep getting this sense of “What? I can’t believe you don’t know this yet” every time I speak to him about what I want to do. I realize that this sort of reaction affects me so much because those are the exact same things I tell myself; to have it echoed implicitly or explicitly by another person just confirms all the negative ways in which I see myself and my abilities. I ended up crying myself to sleep that night, and I woke up with an awful sense of frustration and hopelessness that stayed with me the entire day. Getting out of bed that afternoon (I slept through the morning) was an epic feat.
I don’t think it’s wrong that I put a lot of pressure on myself, but I have a feeling that the pressure is a little misdirected. Okay fine, a lot misdirected. Ale and Kristel both told me (on seperate occassions) that I focus too much on my shortcomings instead of what needs to get done. Kristel says I was very rigid on her and myself when it came to schoolwork – a funny observation, considering that I don’t remember a whole lot of studying going on when I was in college. It wasn’t uncommon for study sessions
to degenerate into drinking sessions within the hour
with a lot of gratuitous boob-grabbing in between.
(I kid you not when I say I didn’t learn jack shit about academic things in college. So now you probably understand why I’m constantly asking myself what the hell I’m doing in grad school.)
Anyway, so Kristel was telling me there’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to get things done perfectly. My problem is that instead of just getting things done, my mind goes overdrive on the “perfectly” part and the insecurities that come along with it. Whenever I do anything academic, I work work work for a while and out of nowhere I freeze, panic, and think:
“Gah, I can’t do this.”
“Oh god, why am I not as smart as my classmates?”
“Maybe I’m better off being an office monkey.”
And the penultimate, “What am I doing with my life?”
So, now. The Rules To Staying Sane In Grad School:
1.) I will not care (see first paragraph).
2.) I will take things as slowly as time will allow me and do things one step at a time.
3.) I will lighten up on myself, ease up on the loft expectations, and focus on what I DID do for the day instead of freaking out over what I wasn’t able to do.
(Rules two and three sound like appendages to rule one but meh, who cares.)
To be perfectly honest, I still feel mightily discouraged – and at this point, I don’t think anything anyone can say to me will help. Putting all this down into writing is my attempt at pulling myself together, as if by seeing this on paper the rules will automatically apply and I will handle this all like a healthy human being. But I’m just as lost as I was two nights ago (minus the crying, at least). That overwhelming sense of dread is still sitting on my chest. The question “What am I REALLY doing?” still matters and still has no real answer.
Perhaps I’ll give myself another day off and catch up on my pop culture. Which is really just a better way of saying, “I will avoid serious thinking and anything academic by seeing my friends, zoning out to movies, reading fun books, and getting my ass seriously kicked in Scrabulous.”
